Allied invasion of Sicily

Operation HUSKY, the Allied invasion of Sicily launched in July of 1943 was one of the largest joint operations of the Second World War. By mid-August, the Allies captured Messina, the campaign’s key strategic objective. A literal as well as a developmental stepping-stone between the Allies’ victory in North Africa and the invasion of Hitler’s Fortress Europe, HUSKY was an important Allied victory. However, it was an imperfect victory, diminished by the escape of over 100,000 Axis soldiers. An evaluation of HUSKY shows the nascent Allied command was not yet proficient in the integration of joint functions. Allied command and control (C2) during HUSKY was ineffective when evaluated against the mission command attributes of commander’s intent,…

Throughout the war the allied powers had tried different approaches at the initial landings on foreign soils, they have been pushed by rail, by air, by sea, and by parachute. Not one had been one hundred percent successful, prior to Operation Husky, the allied powers decided during the Casablanca planning conference that the primary invasion tool would be an amphibious landing with additional paratrooper forces pushed inland the night before, with hopes of knocking out axis pill boxes and…

Operation Husky was an invaluable experience for Allied forces in World War II. It opened the Allied forces eyes to the numerous challenges they must face internally before they could hope to be victorious in the war against Germany, Japan and Italy. This essay will show how a failure in operational leadership caused Operation Husky to fail to become the decisive victory it had the potential of being. Essential to command and control is a thorough understanding of the commander’s intent at…

“Joint functions are related capabilities and activities grouped together to help Joint Force Commanders integrate, synchronize, and direct joint operations.” The Sicily Campaign, known as Operation Husky, provides various examples of combined and joint functions. Although Operation Husky resulted in an important Allied victory, joint functions such as command and control (C2) proved dismal; fires were considered marginal; while maneuver was regarded as satisfactory. To illustrate this a brief…

attack the Japanese carriers. In the end the Japanese lost the battle and a lot of their navy soldiers. If they were to have better code than the US would have never broke the code to figure out when and what their planes were. Hearing the plans the U.S were able to ambush the Japanese navy and mess up the Japanese's plans. Another famous battle in World War II is the Invasion of Normandy .The Invasion of Normandy also called “Operation Overload”, during World War II. During World War II , the…

The Allied Forces wasted an opportunity to gain a position of relative advantage over the Germany Army by the failure to contain Germany forces in Sicily. The inability of Allied Force Headquarters (AFHQ) to seize the initiative allowed the Germany leadership time to develop the withdrawal of forces to Italy. The essay will address the dysfunctional command and control of the AFHQ at the various levels of leadership which allowed an orderly withdrawal of Axis forces. It will evaluate the…

Dwight D. Eisenhower Dwight D. Eisenhower was born on October 14, 1890 and died in March 28, 1969. He was a supreme commander of the allied forces in Western Europe during WW2. The years that Eisenhower served in the White House were from 1953-1961. In the year of 1916, Eisenhower got married to Mamie Geneva Doud. They also had two sons, Doud and John Dwight, who tragically died of scarlet fever as small children. Eisenhower returned soon after Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland,…

Operation HUSKY was the first major military operation following the Allied victories in North Africa. For the follow-on operation, the Americans favored a cross-channel invasion of Europe, but the British favored a peripheral approach to wear down the Axis. Ultimately, the decision to invade Sicily was the uneasy compromise reached at the Casablanca conference with the strategic goal of freeing Mediterranean shipping from Axis harassment, diverting German strength from the Russian Front and…

The successful execution of Operation Husky following allied victory in North Africa occurred despite failures in mission command and joint interoperability. This evaluation measures key command and control actions and consequences of Operation Husky against the three major components of mission command including understanding, intent and mutual trust as established in current military doctrine and guidance. A review of pertinent case studies indicates major flaws in allied mutual trust and…

the book I just finished, Front Lines by Michael Grant. WW2 was a war from 1939 to 1945 that involved over 30 countries, 100 million people and all of the great powers which would turn into 2 sides the Axis and the Allied. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust in which approximately 11 million people were killed the bombing of industrial and population centres in which approximately one million people were killed and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki an…