Operation Alacrity

by Herz, Norman

• ISBN13: 9781591143642
• ISBN10: 1591143640
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-11-01
• Publisher: Naval Inst Pr

Summary

To win the war against German U-boats, the Allies had to protect their convoys in the vast black hole of the mid-Atlantic known as the Azores Gap. In 1943 they devised a plan to set up air bases on the Azores Islands, owned by neutral Portugal. It was essential for the operation to remain secret because the Allies had to get there before the Germans, who had their own plan to build bases. Author Norman Herz took part in the Allied operation as a corporal with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' 928th Engineer Aviation Regiment. At the time he was given little information about the operation and told never to talk about what he did. After the war, Operation Alacrity remained mostly unknown, kept secret, Herz suggests, so the U.S. government would not be embarrassed--they had claimed they would not invade the Portuguese territory. In researching the book, Herz found not a word of the operation mentioned in any official U.S. history of World War II but a treasure trove of declassified memos and others documents from the files of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and th

Author Biography

Norman Herz is professor emeritus of geology at the University of Georgia.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments	ix
Chronology	xi
1 The Black Hole in the Atlantic	1	(18)
2 The War Begins: Portugal Offers Succor, 1930-1940	19	(26)
3 The View from Washington, January-May 194	45	(24)
4 The United States Goes to War, May-December 1941	69	(37)
5 The U-Boats' Happy War, 1942	106	(25)
6 The Trident Conference, January-July 1943	131	(36)
7 Churchill Lowers the Boom, June-September 1943	167	(21)
8 The British Arrive, September-October 1943	188	(33)
9 Sailing Orders, November-December 1943	221	(33)
10 Almost War with Portugal, January-March 1944	254	(34)
11 Negotiating Santa Maria, April-July 1944	288	(16)
12 Pan Am Goes to Santa Maria, August-December 1944	304	(15)
13 Allied Victory and Beyond, 1945-	319	(16)
Abbreviations	335	(2)
Notes	337	(20)
Bibliography	357	(4)
Index	361