European Theater · Operation Dragoon · Chapter 3 of 9 · 14–17 August 1944
Into the Dark: Commandos, the Special Service Force and the Airborne
The 1st Special Service Force on the Hyères islands, French commandos at Cap Nègre, and the scattered drop of the 1st Airborne Task Force around Le Muy.
The invasion of southern France began in the dark. Hours before the first landing craft touched the beaches, American and Canadian commandos of the 1st Special Service Force climbed ashore on the Hyères islands, French commandos scaled the cliffs of Cap Nègre, and hundreds of transport planes and gliders carried the 1st Airborne Task Force over the coast to the valley of the Argens around Le Muy. Fog scattered the paratroopers across the hills, but by the second day they held the towns that guarded the roads to the beaches.
Key facts
The islands and Cap Nègre
Off the western end of the invasion coast lie the Îles d’Hyères. Allied planners believed that guns on Port-Cros and the Île du Levant could fire on the assault fleet. In Operation SITKA the 1st Special Service Force, the American-Canadian commando unit that had fought in the mountains of Italy and at Anzio, came ashore on the two islands in rubber boats during the night of 14–15 August. On Levant the feared coastal battery turned out to be dummy guns. On Port-Cros the German garrison held out in an old fort until the morning of 17 August.
On the mainland, in Operation ROMEO, French commandos of the Groupe de Commandos d’Afrique landed near Le Lavandou and climbed the cliffs of Cap Nègre to destroy German artillery covering the western beaches. Some of them ran into a minefield and were captured; the rest took their objectives and by the night of 16 August had patrols in Le Lavandou.
Gallery · 4 photographs · select to enlarge
The islands and the cliffs
Interactive map · the landings
The Landings, 14–17 August 1944
The airborne drop
The 1st Airborne Task Force had been put together in July 1944 from the separate parachute and glider units in the Mediterranean: the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion under Lieutenant Colonel William P. Yarborough, the 517th Parachute Regimental Combat Team under Colonel Rupert D. Graves, the 551st Parachute Infantry Battalion, the 550th Glider Infantry Battalion, parachute and glider artillery, and the British 2nd Independent Parachute Brigade. Its commander, Major General Robert T. Frederick, had founded the 1st Special Service Force. In all, about 9,000 airborne troops went to France in the operation.
Pathfinders landed at 03:34 on 15 August, and the main force of C-47s from airfields around Rome began dropping its paratroopers about an hour later. Low cloud and fog over the hills scattered the drop badly. Some sticks landed ten to fifteen miles from their zones; one group of the 509th came down near Saint-Tropez, and seventeen men of its Company B jumped into the Gulf of Saint-Tropez and were never found. By dawn only about sixty percent of the force had assembled. Gliders began landing at 09:20, and a second wave of gliders came in during the afternoon.
Gallery · 8 photographs · select to enlarge
The airborne invasion
Le Muy, Les Arcs and Draguignan
The airborne task force had to seize the high ground and road junctions around Le Muy, to stop German reserves from reaching the beaches. The British 2nd Parachute Brigade failed to take Le Muy on D-Day, and an attack by the 550th Glider Infantry Battalion and part of the 509th after midnight also failed. The Americans came back at 09:00 on 16 August with artillery, fought into the town, and with the help of tanks of the 191st Tank Battalion took it that afternoon, together with hundreds of prisoners.
At Les Arcs, west of Le Muy, a battalion commander of the 517th, Lieutenant Colonel William Boyle, held on with a handful of men while a German battle group of about four infantry battalions from the 244th Division attacked the town on the morning of 16 August. Men of the 45th Division arrived from the beaches during the day, the 517th surrounded Les Arcs by dusk, and the Germans withdrew in the night, having lost the equivalent of two infantry battalions. To the north, the 1st Battalion, 551st Parachute Infantry, infiltrated into Draguignan, where the Resistance was already fighting, and by late on the 16th had cleared most of the town and captured part of the staff of the German LXII Corps and the military governor of the Var, Generalmajor Ludwig Bieringer.
Gallery · 6 photographs · select to enlarge
The people of Provence
The Carolinas connection
Camp Mackall and Fort Bragg
Several of the airborne units that jumped into Provence trained in the Sandhills of North Carolina. The 551st Parachute Infantry Battalion trained at Camp Mackall from August 1943 to March 1944, and two battalions of the 517th trained there too before the regiment went overseas. William P. Yarborough of the 509th, who as a young officer had designed the Army’s parachutist badge and jump boots, later commanded the Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, where he arranged President Kennedy’s 1961 visit that led to the Green Beret. And the sailor in the third photograph above, Nelson E. Hood Jr., came from Rock Hill, South Carolina. See Chapter 9.
Airborne deaths on 15 August 1944
Command decision · you decide
Wait for the drop zone, or fight where you landed?
You are a paratrooper officer of the 517th at dawn on 15 August. You have landed in fog miles from your drop zone with a dozen men from three different companies. You do not know exactly where you are. German vehicles are on the road below.
People, places and pages in this chapter
Sources and further reading
- Clarke and Smith, Riviera to the Rhine, ch. VII, “The ANVIL Beachhead” — the landings, Camel Red, Le Muy, casualties and prisoners
- Wikipedia, “1st Airborne Task Force (Allied)” — the airborne task force’s units and later service
- Wikipedia, “2nd Parachute Brigade in Southern France” — the British drop, timings and aircraft
- Wikipedia, “517th Parachute Regimental Combat Team” — the 517th’s training, Dragoon losses and later service
- US Airborne in Belgium, “551st Parachute Infantry Battalion” — the 551st’s training at Camp Mackall, Draguignan and its end in the Ardennes
- Wikipedia, “William P. Yarborough” — the 509th’s commander and his later career at Fort Bragg
- Wikipedia, “Operation Dragoon” — a general summary with references, used to cross-check dates and figures
More from The Lake Norman Brief
The Lake Norman Brief · History collections
Keep reading the Second World War
Every collection on lkn-law.com is free to read and built from official histories, archival photographs and primary sources. The Lake Norman Brief is published by Christopher Adkins of Adkins Law, PLLC in Huntersville, North Carolina.
Operation Dragoon collectionAll World War II collectionsD-Day and Normandy