Torch Landed, and the French Fired Back

Before dawn on 8 November 1942, Allied troops came ashore in French North Africa. Operation Torch was planned as a pincer: the U.S. Western Task Force landed on Morocco’s Atlantic coast, while the Center and Eastern task forces struck Algeria’s Mediterranean coast. Their objective was to secure bridgeheads behind the German and Italian forces fighting the British in Libya and Egypt, and to open a second front. The landings were commanded by Lieutenant-General Dwight D. Eisenhower. The planners had decided against a preliminary naval bombardment, hoping French forces would not resist. They did.

At Morocco, the Western Task Force landed at Safi, Fedala and Mehdia–Port Lyautey. French resistance was initially stiff and caused losses among the landing forces. The Americans reached the approaches to Casablanca, where a brief but fierce naval engagement followed. The French surrendered the city before an all-out attack began. The restraint before the landings had not spared the force a fight; it had simply left the first exchanges to happen on the contested shore.

The Center Task Force, sailing from the United Kingdom, met resistance from French shore batteries and ground forces at Oran. Vichy French warships sortied from the port and were either sunk or driven ashore. An attempt to seize the port facilities failed. Oran surrendered on 10 November, after American ground forces closed in and British naval gunfire bore down on the city. The Eastern Task Force, also arriving from Britain, faced a different opening. An anti-Vichy coup in Algiers on 8 November helped reduce opposition at its landing beaches to little or none. U.S. infantry went into the harbor aboard British destroyers (Operation Terminal) to keep French forces from destroying facilities and scuttling ships. Algiers surrendered to U.S. and British forces that evening, 8 November.

Torch had begun across three separate coastal approaches, and the political uncertainty around Vichy France had produced three different kinds of landing: a costly beach fight in Morocco, shore batteries and a naval sortie at Oran, and a coup-assisted entry at Algiers. The operation’s first day did not settle the campaign. It did put American and British forces ashore in French North Africa, while the Vichy defenders’ response proved uneven rather than absent. After Admiral Darlan ordered French forces to cease fire on 10 November, the Allied bridgeheads had survived the opening resistance.