NOTES ON THE WAR "AMPHIBIOUS"

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 137, 11 June 1943, Page 5

NOTES ON THE WAR "AMPHIBIOUS"

COMING OPERATIONS

No phrase in recent speeches of leaders has attracted more attention throughout the world than Mr. Churchill's refenence in the House of Cammans to the approach of "amphibious operations of peculiar complexity and hazard."

Most people know what "amphibious operations" are. They are combined sea and land operations, and m the present circumstances of the war they are generally taken to mean the transport of troops by sea to be landed on hostile shores, but at what particular point or points, in which theatre of war, or whether in both present theatres, Mr. Churchill was careful not to say. He thus keeps both enemy and friend guessing. It is, however, fairly certain, from the trend of events, that, in Mr. Hanson Baldwin's words, quoted from the "New York Times," "the Mediterranean is scheduled to be the scene of one of the next great acts of the war." All else is uncertain. Amphibious operations, more simply, landings from the sea on hostile shores, are always more or less "complex" and "hazardous." The only big Allied landing from the sea in the present war was that in North Africa in November last. It was decidedly complex, but much of the hazard was removed by the limited hostility encountered. The other Allied landings —of the British in Madagascar and the Americans in Guadalcanal and Attu — were not precisely major operations, yet they had their hazards and their losses. The Japanese drive south in the Pacific was typically amphibious, but everywhere, except in the Philippines, the resistance was' lamentably weak and not a true test of the normally hazardous nature of such operations. The job they had to tackle was very different from that which confronts the Allies in the invasion of the European fortress. The German landings in Crete and the subsequent con-, quest of that island were also quite different from the task now before the Allies. ••■■■-.

No Parallel in Fast.

The full strength of the Mediterranean objectives of the approaching Allied amphibious operations remains to be tested. There is hardly any parallel in past military history to what the Allies have to do now. The nearest in the last World War was the Allied landing on Gallipoli, but here the objective was limited at the outset to the seizure of the Dardanelles, and then, if that succeeded, to' the opening of the Bosphorus and access to Russia by the Black Sea. In that respect it was a truly brilliant amphibious strategy; With better management it might have succeeded quickly and altered the whole course of the war. But it failed, and the consequences of failure were far reaching.

Since Gallipoli the developments in warfare have made amphibious operations more difficult and hazardous than ever. The most adverse factor is landbased aircraft, with, its double advantage of reconnaissance over the sea and attack on any approaching fleet covering the transport and landing* of troops. It is for this reason that the Allies in North Africa have for weeks kept a constant attack on enemy airfields and communications in Sicily and Sardinia and southern Italy. Pantelleria is being ruthlessly bombed and bombarded because, in the main, it is a forward observation post of the Axis from which movements of ships could be detected and warnings dispatched to rear bases in Sicily and the Italian mainland. Communications, particularly on both sides of the Strait p£ Messina between Italy and Sicily, are being pounded to prevent the dispatch of reinforcements to Sicily. The whole purpose of these elaborate preliminary preparations is to free the Allied landing forces as far as possible from the danger of air attack and the concentration of reinforcements against them at the points of landing. The Allies have virtually unlimited material resources of war in the shape of bombs and shells, but not unlimited man-power on. the spot. In these operations of "peculiar;, complexity and hazards" it is important to reduce the cost in casualties to a minimum.