The American military leadership and its British counterparts disagreed on the operation. The Germans withdrew to the north through the Rhne valley, to establish a stable defense line at Dijon. In Marseille, German forces were harried by the French Resistance, which undercut the enemys command and control. On August 18, Allied troops reached Digne while three days later the German 157th Infantry Division abandoned Grenoble, opening a gap on the German left flank. The consensus surrounding Anvil quickly vanished. Clarke, Jeffrey J., and Robert Ross Smith. Stalin also promised a summer operation against the Germans on the Eastern Front (Operation Bagration.) [11] Marshall insisted that the operation be included in the strategic planning, and Roosevelt found cancelling the operation to be unpalatable. In October, 524,894 tons of supplies were unloaded, which was more than one-third of the Allied cargo shipped to the Western front. Coalition Forces Land Component Command [ edit] Emblem of the Coalition Forces Land Component Command during the Iraq War After a successful initial landing, units of the French ArmyB were to land, given the task of taking the French ports of Toulon and Marseille. The 11th Panzer division was Blaskowitzs only mobile unit, and he kept it in reserve. In order to form the 1ABTF airborne units were withdrawn from combat in Italy. Battle of Provence - Operation Dragoon - Battlefield 5 4k UHD - YouTube The stretch of coast provided good sea approaches, had not been mined extensively, was not heavily defended (many German formations were understrength and of mediocre quality), and was a suitable bridgehead for attacks on the strategic ports of Toulon and Marseilles farther to the southwest. 2nd Parachute Brigade | ParaData [57] After the fighting, the Germans captured a copy of Dahlquist's operational plans, giving them a better picture of the Allied forces. This was a phase of the European Theatre of World War II. With both islands in Allied hands, the men of the First Special Service Force transferred to the mainland, where they were attached to the First Airborne Task Force. For the full order of battle for Operation Dragoon, see Steven T. Ross, eds., U.S. Army War Plans 1938-1945 (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 2002), 239. 2nd Parachute Brigade in Southern France - Wikipedia The 11th Panzer Division started several feint attacks toward Aix-en-Provence to discourage any further Allied advance. They were opposed by the scattered forces of the German Army Group G, which had been weakened by the relocation of its divisions to other fronts and the replacement of its soldiers with third-rate Ostlegionen outfitted with obsolete equipment. As part of a general air offensiveagainst southern France, Allied air forces had already begun bombing port facilities, coastal fortifications, bridges, and communications nodes in proximity to the landing areas at the end of April. Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower, with Roosevelts backing, supported an invasion of southern France. German air attacks on the landing forces were negligible, although an air-launched Henschel Hs-293 guided bomb sank LST-282on 15 August. World War II: 1939-1945: Operation Dragoon (Operation Anvil), the DANFS - Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Permitting Policy and Resource Management, The 9/11 Terrorist Attacks: 20 Years Later, "Ex Scientia Tridens": The U.S.