Allied logistics in the Southern France campaign

Logistics played a key role in the success of Operation Dragoon, the Allied invasion of Southern France during World War II that commenced with the US Seventh Army landings on the French Riviera on 15 August 1944.

The primary objective of the campaign was to capture the ports of Marseille and Toulon, preceding a drive northward up the Rhone valley to connect with Allied forces from Normandy.

The unexpectedly rapid Allied advance was the principal cause of logistical problems, although a theater-wide shortage of service units and an unanticipated dearth of French civilian labor also contributed.

Many soldiers had to subsist on K-rations for extended periods, because fresh meat and produce were unavailable in the first month of the campaign due to a lack of refrigerator cars and trucks.

[3] The Combined Chiefs of Staff therefore adopted a resolution to "launch Overlord during May, in conjunction with a supporting operation against the south of France on the largest scale that is permitted by the landing craft available at that time.

[5] To give Wilson the forces he needed to capture Rome, the British and American chiefs agreed to retain troops in Italy and postpone Anvil to 10 July.

[9] When the Combined Chiefs of Staff next met in London in mid-June, Eisenhower supported a three-division Anvil – which he saw not only as providing more troops, but as the best way to capture a major port quickly – something Overlord had not yet been able to accomplish.

The departure of Lieutenant General George S. Patton for the United Kingdom along with key members of the staff left numerous unfilled positions at Seventh Army headquarters.

As a result, when Anvil was revived in June, 75 percent of the required supplies for a two-division assault were on hand, although there were critical shortages of engineer, signals and transportation equipment.

When it arrived on 15 July, SOS NATOUSA calculated that all the supplies required for Anvil up to D plus 90 (ninety days after the landing date) were on hand or en route.

[35] When Général d'Armée Henri Giraud met with Wilson and Devers on 9 March to discuss the arrangements for Anvil, he ventured the opinion that it would be "a pity to waste excellent combat troops by converting them into service units in which duty they were poor",[36] and expressed the hope that the US Army could supply logistical support to the French forces.

By the end of March some service units were ready for deployment to Italy, where they came under the CEF or Base 901, which was now commanded by Général de brigade Jean Gross.

The store ship USS Ariel arrived on 15 July with 1,848 long tons (1,878 t) of fresh, refrigerated and frozen produce, which was discharged at Naples, Bizerte, Palermo and Oran.

[57] Beach operations proceeded smoothly, aided by fine weather, good surf conditions, the absence of strong tides, and weaker than anticipated German opposition.

The logistical organizations in northern and southern France were now merged into one, but SOLOC continued to exercise a considerable degree of autonomy, and still drew supplies from MTOUSA and directly from the United States.

It had 300 acres (120 ha) of deep water anchorages, a 3+1/2-mile (5.6 km) jetty that protected a harbor with ten basins, and rail facilities capable of handling 350 boxcars per day.

The engineers decided to bypass the harbor entrance by blowing a gap in the breakwater, but before this occurred the Navy managed to topple one of the seven sunken vessels in the pile, and this permitted ships to enter.

[80][81] On 4 September, the rescue and salvage ship USS Tackle (ARS-37) was being towed to the fueling and watering berth in the Basin Petrolier by the French tug Provencal when she grazed a buoy and set off a mine that had been attached to it.

[90] Since the US Navy had not expected to have to undertake the rehabilitation of a port with its own resources, the materials required such as lumber and welding and cutting gases were procured from French naval and civilian sources.

The 40th Engineer Beach Group found twelve intact locomotives and eighty cars at Carnoules, and a standard-gauge railway between Frejus and Sainte-Maxime commenced operations on the night of 23–24 August, albeit without signals and lights.

The latter was given priority because it was less badly damaged and could be restored to service more quickly, but it was much steeper, limiting capacity to 125 long tons (127 t) per train, and subject to flooding and to deep snows in the winter.

Fifteen quartermaster truck companies arrived in the first four days of Dragoon, but the swift movement of operational units meant that they were hard-pressed to keep up with demand for their services.

The Coastal Base Section required all newly arrived units to load their trucks with Seventh Army cargo and make at least one round trip to the beach dumps.

Every available vehicle was put to use to help clear the backlog of ships awaiting discharge, including horse-drawn carts, and additional sailings from Italian and North African ports had to be suspended for a time.

It was then linked to a section completed by the 784th Engineer Petroleum Distribution Company that ran another 32 miles (51 km) to a railway tank car installation at Le Pontet, where another road convoy refueling point was established.

At Marseille a dump for Class I supplies had been established at the Gare du Prado, but this was surrounded by narrow, crooked city streets that made access difficult for military vehicles.

[120] The 108th Bakery Company arrived on the beaches at Saint-Tropez on 30 August, but was separated from its equipment, and only began baking 32,000 pounds (15,000 kg) fresh bread each day in Vesoul on 26 September.

Due to uncertainty of receipts, Seventh Army abandoned rationing after the first two weeks of October and instead instituted a system whereby it advised VI Corps of the available ammunition on a daily basis.

Some 300 civilian vehicles that the Germans had confiscated were found in a warehouse in Besançon, and about a third of them were given a coat of olive drab paint and pressed into service as staff and command cars.

[138] A dump for class II and IV (clothing and general supplies) was established at Miramas at a site built by the French Army during World War I for ammunition storage.