Origins of Combined Operations (2)

Information and Resources

Combined Operations Insignia

MOTTO: United We Conquer

There are several books and websites that provide information about how the Combined Operations organization began. A few are listed below.

1. Combined Operations by Clayton Marks, London, Ontario

Excerpt: With this new appointment (Mountbatten as Chief of Comb. Ops.) and the constant pressure from Stalin and Roosevelt to start a second front, all disagreements between Sir Roger Keyes and all other Chiefs of Staff ceased and all powers of Combined Operations were conceded to Mountbatten with the full backing of the Prime Minister.

Even while the threat of invasion still hung heavy over Britain, the earliest moves had begun. They were at first hardly discernible from necessary measures of defense. Light British ships had occasionally shelled the French coast, or attempted to break up the Channel and Biscay convoys which supplied German garrisons. Small British commando parties had descended by night on German-held ports to take prisoners, gain information and do what damage they could. By the end of 1941 these first efforts had lost some of their sporadic quality. Seamen and soldiers had begun to work out specialized landing techniques together, and were assembling into the nucleus of what would eventually become an amphibious raiding force. This nucleus was at first entirely British; but it soon began to absorb a few of the first Canadians trained in England.

Effingham Division, Canada's first draft assigned to Combined Operations

2. Hostilities Only by Brian Lavery, 2004, Greenwich, London England

Excerpt: Chapter 17, The Setting up of the Combined Operations Organization

Churchill, on becoming Prime Minister in May 1940, also took on the role of Minister of Defence and personally supervised the work of all three services (army, air force, navy). On 17 July, eleven days after the Dunkirk evacuation was completed, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Roger Keyes was appointed to a new post as Director of Combined Operations. He was as experienced as anyone in amphibious warfare, having been at Gallipoli in 1915 and he was the hero of a famous raid on Zeebrugge in 1918, of which he never ceased to remind Churchill. He had his headquarters in Richmond Terrace in Whitehall.

Combined Operations, by definition, involved all branches of the armed forces and more than a few civilians such as merchant seamen, scientists, and factory workers. The greatest burden, however, fell on the navy. The air force bombed the enemy in his strongpoints and lines of communication, dropped paratroops to secure vital points, supplied photo reconnaissance and aerial spotting and provided air cover for the operation, but these were tasks which its aircraft and men are able to do anyway. The army provided the bulk of the personnel, but most of their training and equipment was to normal army standards, and unless there was a disaster they would soon move away from the beachheads to fight in normal army fashion. The navy, on the other hand, had to provide hundreds of ships to designs that were virtually unknown before the war and were no use for anything else. It had to man them, using hastily-trained conscripts who learned how to operate these vessels, but little else about the navy. Some 113,000 sailors were employed on amphibious operations in June 1944, and it would not have been easy to transfer any of them or their ships to other work. (page 207)

Rehearsal for amphibious operations, likely in southern England

More to follow.

Link to Origins of Combined Operations

Photos GH