Post by son-of-tiny on Mar 6, 2007 23:09:08 GMT
[glow=red,2,300]Suez Crisis: Operation Musketeer[/glow]
www.palacebarracksmemorialgarden.org/Suez.htm
Even as the invasion armada loomed on Port Said's horizon, plan changes were radioed from London. First, "no gun of greater caliber than 4.5 inches will be fired." This eliminated the devastating firepower of the cruisers and the 15-inch guns of the French battleship Jean Bart, which was doubling as a transport, carrying most of two divisions from Algeria. A second order canceled pre-landing air and naval bombardments entirely. The on-the-scene commanders wisely decided to differentiate between "bombardment" and "gunfire support." Musketeer's amphibious phase began on November 6 with a 10-minute air sweep of the landing beaches and a 45-minute barrage by destroyers. The landing craft churned landward from ships lined up five miles offshore--Numbers 40 and 42 Commandos of the Royal Marine 3rd Commando Brigade and C Squadron of the 6th Royal Tank Regiment toward Said's casino pier; the French Foreign Legion's 1st Regiment Étranger de Parachutistes with a squadron of AMX-10 tanks, complemented by three regiments of the 7th Division Méchanique Rapide (Mobile Mechanized Division), toward Fuad.
Fifteen amphibious tracked vehicles, each carrying 30 men, wobbled like angry metal bugs from gaping British tank-carrier doors into the choppy sea at 4:30 a.m. as mine sweepers moved aside. Other landing craft deposited their loads at the surf line. Fourteen waterproofed Centurion tanks ground ashore alongside the canal's western breakwater. The Commandos landed on both sides of the casino pier to advance into Said behind the tracked vehicles against harassing sniper fire. During an improbable duel between a destroyer and an SU-100, slum buildings in Fuad burst into flame. By early afternoon, the 16th Parachute Brigade's 1st and 2nd battalions and the tank regiment's A Squadron had disembarked in the main harbor. The French, meanwhile, landed unopposed on the other side of the canal's eastern breakwater. The minimal resistance they encountered in Fuad was partly due to the thorough savaging the paratroopers had given the Egyptians the day before.
Aboard the British carriers Theseus and Ocean, the Royal Marines of No. 45 Commando prepared for the first helicopter-borne assault landing in history. An hour after the initial landings, No. 45 Commando's Lt. Col. Norman Tailyour lifted off Theseus' flight deck to reconnoiter his unit's touchdown site. The chopper descended into smoke-blanketed Port Said to set down in a sports stadium. Tailyour had barely made it back aboard when a hail of Egyptian gunfire peppered the helicopter. Back in the air, he designated the canal entrance by the western breakwater as a safer landing zone. Minutes after 8 a.m., the first wave of Westland Whirlwind Mark 2s, each carrying five green-bereted marines, moved away from Ocean. It was shortly followed by a flight of smaller helicopters, each with three soldiers aboard. Whirlwinds from Theseus joined them. The aircraft passed the beckoning arm of a giant statue of canal builder Ferdinand de Lesseps in successive waves to hover nearby just above the ground as the troops leaped out. Within 83 minutes, 22 choppers put ashore 415 marines and 23 tons of stores. The whirly-birds then brought in reinforcements and supplies, and ferried out the wounded, including 18 marines who had been strafed in error by a Fleet Air Arm fighter-bomber.
The British were frequently fighting house-to-house battles. General Moguy's capture made little difference to either side as the Egyptian resistance became increasingly vicious and disorganized. The 3rd Battalion paras made a tenuous linkup with No. 45 Commando in the evening. Had they been less impulsive, the Egyptians could have captured many of the invasion force high command. Misinformed that the enemy was ready to surrender at the Canal Company building in Port Said, Generals Stockwell and Beaufre, Admiral Durnford-Slater and Air Marshal Barnett chugged in a motor launch past the de Lesseps statue inside the canal. The small boat was only 100 yards from the Canal Company building when Egyptian gunners fired on them from the imposing, three-domed structure. Bullets hit the launch as it swerved away. As a spent slug dropped between them, Durnford-Slater said to Stockwell, "I don't think, general, that they are quite ready to receive us yet." An SU-100 supported Egyptian assault on the captured waterworks was broken up by French aircraft. Two nearby oil tank farm containers erupted into flames, sending up columns of greasy black smoke that lingered for days. Soon afterward, the French paras and No. 42 Commando linked up at the Raswa bridge. As the fighting raged in Egypt, thousands of miles to the west, Americans began casting 57 percent of their votes for Eisenhower, who was applying intense political and economic pressure on London and Paris to stop fighting and pull out.
Eden, ill and rattled by the growing pressure at home and abroad, finally caved in. The French, still eager to finish the campaign, were told of the British decision by phone. The "cease fire at midnight" order reached General Stockwell after 7:30 p.m. Aghast at being "thwarted in the midst of success," he reasoned that midnight in London was 2 a.m. in his war zone. The general ordered Brig. Gen. M.A.H. Butler, the wiry Irish commander of the Red Devil brigade, to "get as far down the canal as possible." Butler led his tank-supported 2nd Parachute Battalion speeding down the 300-yard-wide tarmac causeway between the canal and Lake Manzala. Musketeer, intended to topple the "Moslem Mussolini" Nasser and control the entire Suez waterway, came to a premature end after less than 43 hours of ground war. At 2:20 a.m. on No vember 7, Butler's force abruptly halted at Al Cap, about a fourth of the way down the canal and a mere 23 miles south of Port Said. Allied military reaction to the political meddling was summed up in a cable Stockwell sent to London: "We've now achieved the impossible. We're going both ways at once."
In mid-November, the first elements of a newly created, blue-helmeted United Nations Emergency Force, soldiers from half a dozen neutral states, reached the canal zone. A day earlier, the Soviets had completed their suppression of the Hungarian uprising. The last of the Anglo-French forces steamed out of Port Said just before Christmas. Israel tried to hold out, but also finally gave in to irresistible military and economic pressures to evacuate the last of its conquered ground in early March 1957. The following month, the Suez Canal was reopened after the removal of 51 obstructions ranging from scuttled ships to demolished bridges. During the two-front war, Egypt fielded about 150,000 men, some 50,000 of whom were committed against Israel. It lost an estimated 1,650 dead, 4,900 wounded and 6,185 captured or missing, most in the Sinai clashes. Israel, with about 45,000 of its 100,000 ground troops engaged in just over 100 hours of combat, lost 189 dead, 899 wounded and four captured. Britain's ground fighting forces numbered about 13,500, France's some 8,500. In all, they lost between 23 and 33 killed (some sources disagree on the number), and 129 wounded.
Britain, using 19th-century gunboat diplomacy in vain hopes of retaining imperial prestige with American consent but without offending other Arab nations, was the big loser in the Suez fiasco. The crisis marked the century's lowest point in U.S. British relations, the Commonwealth was shaken and British assets in Egypt were confiscated. In January 1957, sick and embittered, Eden resigned. Suez proved to be a slow-burning fuse for France. Its soldiers returned to the Algerian war angry over "political betrayal." In 1958, seeing another successful war being lost by politicians, they joined the European Algerians in toppling France's Fourth Republic and bringing Charles de Gaulle to power. The loss of Algeria followed. Suez also convinced France to become militarily and politically independent.
Musketeer proved to the world that the British and French were no longer superpowers. The result was a Middle Eastern power vacuum that could only be filled by the United States and the Soviet Union. Israel, besides demonstrating its growing military prowess, gained access to the Red Sea, enabling the gradual development of the port of Eilat. With the insertion of a U.N. force on its southwestern border, Israel also won a respite from Egypt-based guerrilla raids. Ironically, it was only after Suez that the Arabs of Israel showed the first clear signs of unrest, a portent of the violence to come in later years. Nasser remained in power, and a crack appeared in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, accompanied by Anglo-French animosity and suspicion.
The war's ultimate victors were Egypt and the Soviet Union. Nasser, who left to himself might never have gained the stature he did, emerged a hero of the Muslim world. Egypt's ownership of the Suez Canal was affirmed. The Soviet Union, after long peering through the keyhole of a closed door on what it considered a Western sphere of influence, now found itself invited over the threshold as a friend of the Arabs. Shortly after it reopened, the canal was traversed by the first Soviet warships since World War I. The Soviets' burgeoning influence in the Middle East, although it was not to last, included acquiring Mediterranean bases, introducing multipurpose projects, supporting the budding Palestinian liberation movement and penetrating the Arab countries.
Perhaps the most dramatic demonstration of both the end of European supremacy over the canal and the angry zeal of Arab nationalism came on Christmas Eve 1956. Egyptians surrounded the 40-foot-high de Lesseps statue at Port Said. They put up a ladder and placed explosives between the stone pedestal and the bronze figure of the canal builder. As crowds cheered, an eruption of fire and smoke toppled the 57-year-old symbol of colonial domination.
www.palacebarracksmemorialgarden.org/Suez.htm
Even as the invasion armada loomed on Port Said's horizon, plan changes were radioed from London. First, "no gun of greater caliber than 4.5 inches will be fired." This eliminated the devastating firepower of the cruisers and the 15-inch guns of the French battleship Jean Bart, which was doubling as a transport, carrying most of two divisions from Algeria. A second order canceled pre-landing air and naval bombardments entirely. The on-the-scene commanders wisely decided to differentiate between "bombardment" and "gunfire support." Musketeer's amphibious phase began on November 6 with a 10-minute air sweep of the landing beaches and a 45-minute barrage by destroyers. The landing craft churned landward from ships lined up five miles offshore--Numbers 40 and 42 Commandos of the Royal Marine 3rd Commando Brigade and C Squadron of the 6th Royal Tank Regiment toward Said's casino pier; the French Foreign Legion's 1st Regiment Étranger de Parachutistes with a squadron of AMX-10 tanks, complemented by three regiments of the 7th Division Méchanique Rapide (Mobile Mechanized Division), toward Fuad.
Fifteen amphibious tracked vehicles, each carrying 30 men, wobbled like angry metal bugs from gaping British tank-carrier doors into the choppy sea at 4:30 a.m. as mine sweepers moved aside. Other landing craft deposited their loads at the surf line. Fourteen waterproofed Centurion tanks ground ashore alongside the canal's western breakwater. The Commandos landed on both sides of the casino pier to advance into Said behind the tracked vehicles against harassing sniper fire. During an improbable duel between a destroyer and an SU-100, slum buildings in Fuad burst into flame. By early afternoon, the 16th Parachute Brigade's 1st and 2nd battalions and the tank regiment's A Squadron had disembarked in the main harbor. The French, meanwhile, landed unopposed on the other side of the canal's eastern breakwater. The minimal resistance they encountered in Fuad was partly due to the thorough savaging the paratroopers had given the Egyptians the day before.
Aboard the British carriers Theseus and Ocean, the Royal Marines of No. 45 Commando prepared for the first helicopter-borne assault landing in history. An hour after the initial landings, No. 45 Commando's Lt. Col. Norman Tailyour lifted off Theseus' flight deck to reconnoiter his unit's touchdown site. The chopper descended into smoke-blanketed Port Said to set down in a sports stadium. Tailyour had barely made it back aboard when a hail of Egyptian gunfire peppered the helicopter. Back in the air, he designated the canal entrance by the western breakwater as a safer landing zone. Minutes after 8 a.m., the first wave of Westland Whirlwind Mark 2s, each carrying five green-bereted marines, moved away from Ocean. It was shortly followed by a flight of smaller helicopters, each with three soldiers aboard. Whirlwinds from Theseus joined them. The aircraft passed the beckoning arm of a giant statue of canal builder Ferdinand de Lesseps in successive waves to hover nearby just above the ground as the troops leaped out. Within 83 minutes, 22 choppers put ashore 415 marines and 23 tons of stores. The whirly-birds then brought in reinforcements and supplies, and ferried out the wounded, including 18 marines who had been strafed in error by a Fleet Air Arm fighter-bomber.
The British were frequently fighting house-to-house battles. General Moguy's capture made little difference to either side as the Egyptian resistance became increasingly vicious and disorganized. The 3rd Battalion paras made a tenuous linkup with No. 45 Commando in the evening. Had they been less impulsive, the Egyptians could have captured many of the invasion force high command. Misinformed that the enemy was ready to surrender at the Canal Company building in Port Said, Generals Stockwell and Beaufre, Admiral Durnford-Slater and Air Marshal Barnett chugged in a motor launch past the de Lesseps statue inside the canal. The small boat was only 100 yards from the Canal Company building when Egyptian gunners fired on them from the imposing, three-domed structure. Bullets hit the launch as it swerved away. As a spent slug dropped between them, Durnford-Slater said to Stockwell, "I don't think, general, that they are quite ready to receive us yet." An SU-100 supported Egyptian assault on the captured waterworks was broken up by French aircraft. Two nearby oil tank farm containers erupted into flames, sending up columns of greasy black smoke that lingered for days. Soon afterward, the French paras and No. 42 Commando linked up at the Raswa bridge. As the fighting raged in Egypt, thousands of miles to the west, Americans began casting 57 percent of their votes for Eisenhower, who was applying intense political and economic pressure on London and Paris to stop fighting and pull out.
Eden, ill and rattled by the growing pressure at home and abroad, finally caved in. The French, still eager to finish the campaign, were told of the British decision by phone. The "cease fire at midnight" order reached General Stockwell after 7:30 p.m. Aghast at being "thwarted in the midst of success," he reasoned that midnight in London was 2 a.m. in his war zone. The general ordered Brig. Gen. M.A.H. Butler, the wiry Irish commander of the Red Devil brigade, to "get as far down the canal as possible." Butler led his tank-supported 2nd Parachute Battalion speeding down the 300-yard-wide tarmac causeway between the canal and Lake Manzala. Musketeer, intended to topple the "Moslem Mussolini" Nasser and control the entire Suez waterway, came to a premature end after less than 43 hours of ground war. At 2:20 a.m. on No vember 7, Butler's force abruptly halted at Al Cap, about a fourth of the way down the canal and a mere 23 miles south of Port Said. Allied military reaction to the political meddling was summed up in a cable Stockwell sent to London: "We've now achieved the impossible. We're going both ways at once."
In mid-November, the first elements of a newly created, blue-helmeted United Nations Emergency Force, soldiers from half a dozen neutral states, reached the canal zone. A day earlier, the Soviets had completed their suppression of the Hungarian uprising. The last of the Anglo-French forces steamed out of Port Said just before Christmas. Israel tried to hold out, but also finally gave in to irresistible military and economic pressures to evacuate the last of its conquered ground in early March 1957. The following month, the Suez Canal was reopened after the removal of 51 obstructions ranging from scuttled ships to demolished bridges. During the two-front war, Egypt fielded about 150,000 men, some 50,000 of whom were committed against Israel. It lost an estimated 1,650 dead, 4,900 wounded and 6,185 captured or missing, most in the Sinai clashes. Israel, with about 45,000 of its 100,000 ground troops engaged in just over 100 hours of combat, lost 189 dead, 899 wounded and four captured. Britain's ground fighting forces numbered about 13,500, France's some 8,500. In all, they lost between 23 and 33 killed (some sources disagree on the number), and 129 wounded.
Britain, using 19th-century gunboat diplomacy in vain hopes of retaining imperial prestige with American consent but without offending other Arab nations, was the big loser in the Suez fiasco. The crisis marked the century's lowest point in U.S. British relations, the Commonwealth was shaken and British assets in Egypt were confiscated. In January 1957, sick and embittered, Eden resigned. Suez proved to be a slow-burning fuse for France. Its soldiers returned to the Algerian war angry over "political betrayal." In 1958, seeing another successful war being lost by politicians, they joined the European Algerians in toppling France's Fourth Republic and bringing Charles de Gaulle to power. The loss of Algeria followed. Suez also convinced France to become militarily and politically independent.
Musketeer proved to the world that the British and French were no longer superpowers. The result was a Middle Eastern power vacuum that could only be filled by the United States and the Soviet Union. Israel, besides demonstrating its growing military prowess, gained access to the Red Sea, enabling the gradual development of the port of Eilat. With the insertion of a U.N. force on its southwestern border, Israel also won a respite from Egypt-based guerrilla raids. Ironically, it was only after Suez that the Arabs of Israel showed the first clear signs of unrest, a portent of the violence to come in later years. Nasser remained in power, and a crack appeared in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, accompanied by Anglo-French animosity and suspicion.
The war's ultimate victors were Egypt and the Soviet Union. Nasser, who left to himself might never have gained the stature he did, emerged a hero of the Muslim world. Egypt's ownership of the Suez Canal was affirmed. The Soviet Union, after long peering through the keyhole of a closed door on what it considered a Western sphere of influence, now found itself invited over the threshold as a friend of the Arabs. Shortly after it reopened, the canal was traversed by the first Soviet warships since World War I. The Soviets' burgeoning influence in the Middle East, although it was not to last, included acquiring Mediterranean bases, introducing multipurpose projects, supporting the budding Palestinian liberation movement and penetrating the Arab countries.
Perhaps the most dramatic demonstration of both the end of European supremacy over the canal and the angry zeal of Arab nationalism came on Christmas Eve 1956. Egyptians surrounded the 40-foot-high de Lesseps statue at Port Said. They put up a ladder and placed explosives between the stone pedestal and the bronze figure of the canal builder. As crowds cheered, an eruption of fire and smoke toppled the 57-year-old symbol of colonial domination.