The Amphibians

Never in the 6,000-year history of war had there been an operation to compare with the amphibious one which took the Allies to Sicily. In the American western task force alone there were 1,000 ships, and the British, off to the east, had as many. Those 2,000 ships had set out from different ports, at different speeds, on different courses; each had its appointed station for H-hour. As if the natural difficulties of such an operation were not enough, on the night of invasion a 40-knot westerly gale sprang up.

On the highest open platform on the bridge of one of the biggest transports stood Vice Admiral Henry Kent Hewitt, commander of the American ships, planner of the American half of the seaborne invasion and the man who had organized American amphibious warfare.

Admiral Hewitt had worried about plenty of things, but not about the weather. He had worried about the difficulty of accurate landfalls on a strange coast at night; about the virtual impossibility of anything but tactical surprise; about the deviation of compasses when the soldiers with their metal rifles got aboard the assault boats. But by 7 o'clock on the eve of the invasion, the storm was so bad that the Admiral was having to consider ordering the landing craft to stay offshore.

Then the storm abated. The armada crept under the lee of Sicily's shore. Just before the hour, all the ships were at the "transport area." Every single ship of the thousand had been accounted for. At a signal, the invasion began.

Cigar Box Fleet. First in were the little LCVPs (Landing Craft Vehicles, Personnel). The second type in were LCMs (Landing Craft, Motorized), which put ashore small tanks and bigger vehicles. Next came LCTs (Landing Craft, Tanks), smallest of the ships which reached Sicily's shores under their own power. LCIs (Landing Craft, Infantry) came next, carrying nearly 200 men apiece. And finally came huge LSTs (Landing Ships, Tanks), which can carry a tremendous cargo. They were hauled forward to the beach by "ducks"--two-and-a-half-ton amphibious trucks.

Job Without End. On his way back to his African headquarters on a destroyer, Hewitt wrote a congratulatory message to all his thousand ships. To his congratulations he added: "It is now our duty to support, maintain and build up the forces which have been landed. Carry on."

Carrying on would perhaps be less hazardous, but it would be even more complicated than the landings. There could be no fixed plan. The ground units would ask for things in a hurry, and shipping would have to be found to send them in.

All this called for mathematical precision, and Admiral Hewitt brought to his task one of the most brilliant mathematical minds the Navy ever had. To his natural bent he had added some formidable experience. Last July he was given the job of planning the Moroccan landings. He had to design armored force landings, organize transport divisions and train 3,000 amphibious boat crews. He had to send his huge force across the Atlantic and still have it rendezvous at the exact time for the landings. His success brought him this, the biggest job of his life.

Sitting in his headquarters last week, Admiral Hewitt said to TIME Correspondent John Hersey (who cabled this report) : "Yes, it went better than we dreamed it could. That's because in the thousand ships we sent out there were many thousands of men who knew what to do and did it."

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