Page:Charles Robert Anderson - Algeria-French Morocco - CMH Pub 72-11.pdf/10

 The landing of troops did not go much better. Although all battalion landing teams were to be ashore before sunrise, only about half the troops met that schedule, and the last off the transports did not hit the beach until noon. Despite the problems experienced by the Americans, the French garrison commander understood clearly that he was outnumbered and outgunned. At 1530 he surrendered. Eleven hours after stepping onto French Morocco, the Americans controlled Safi.

The next morning French leaders made clear that the surrender at Safi did not apply to other areas. At dawn several French planes flew through a thick fog over the town and landing area. However, only one managed to drop a bomb which landed unintentionally on an ammunition storage building. That afternoon U.S. Navy planes raided the airfield at Marrakech, destroying on the ground over forty planes and strafing two convoys of French troops bound for Safi. Moving east of town, American tanks and artillery overran a machine-gun position and took a bridge while losing one tank to mines. On the morning of 10 November, after an artillery duel, Harmon decided the French could be held in position by a small force. He formed most of his tanks and artillery on the road, and at 0900 the armored column raced north to join the ring closing around Casablanca.

Two hundred twenty miles up the Moroccan coast another Navy convoy debarked three landing teams to take Mehdia-Port-Lyautey and secure the northern flank of the Western Task Force. Maj. Gen. Lucian K. Truscott's Sub-Task Force consisted of the 60th Infantry, 9th Infantry Division; the 1st Battalion, 66th Armored Regiment, 2d Armored Division; elements of the 70th Tank Battalion (Separate); and seven coast artillery batteries. With support units, totaled 9,079 officers and men. Its main objectives were airfields at Port-Lyautey and at Sale, 25 miles south, near Rabat. To reach them the troops would first have to take the coastal village of Mehdia and the town of Port-Lyautey five miles inland on the Sebou River.

The operational plan was more complex than that for  because of local geographic peculiarities. While the coastline was smooth, the Sebou River meandered sharply in an "S" shape to form two peninsulas. The Port-Lyautey airfield lay in the larger peninsula. An advance straight inland from Mehdia was the most direct route to the airfield, but the troops would have to move through a narrow marsh between the river and a lagoon, and under the guns of a fortress. From bluffs between the towns artillery dominated all points. General Truscott thus decided to land his troops at five beaches along ten miles of shoreline. Two battalion landing teams, going ashore south of the river, would advance on separate axes to the