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/* Battle */
U.S. General [[George Patton]] had operational command. His 35,000 soldiers sailed 4,000 miles direct from the East Coast then, on November 8, 1942, landed at three sites on the coast of French Morocco, the most important one being about ten miles north of [[Casablanca]]; two other landing forces landed in Algeria after embarking in nearby Gibraltar. Spain stayed neutral and the landings went well. The French forces resisted initially. Seven destroyers sortied from Casablanca on the first day to intercept the troop transports, but two were sunk by naval gunfire and the others retreated.<ref>''Historical Atlas of the US Navy'', by Craig L. Symonds, Naval Institute Press, 1995</ref> The fiercest fighting took place in the air. On the first day, French fighter planes (mostly American-made Hawks) downed a US Navy floatplane, five [[F4F Wildcat|Wildcat]] fighters, and probably a Dauntless bomber as well. Navy Wildcats shot down at least eleven French fighters, and five more the next day. 48 hours after the initial landings, most of the Vichy air force in Morocco had been destroyed, in the air or on the ground.<ref>''Wildcat Aces of World War 2'', by Barrett Tillman, Osprey Publishing, 1995</ref><ref>''P-36 Hawk Aces of World War 2'', by Lionel Persyn, Kari Stenman, and Andrew Thomas, Osprey Publishing, 2009</ref> A cease-fire was negotiated and went into effect on November 11, and soon most Frenchmen in Africa shifted allegiance away from Vichy to the pro-Allied "Free French" movement led by General [[Charles DeGaulle]].
The Germans were surprised—and outnumbered, outgunned, outsupplied and outmaneuvered. But they moved faster than the Allies and they beat Eisenhower to Tunis. Hitler vetoed any escape because he was fiercely opposed to retreats anywhere—a policy that made all his positions rigid, his armies vulnerable. He sent General Juergen Von Arnim with new forces into Vichy-French Tunisia, while Rommel retreated to a strong defensive position called the Mareth Line in the Tunisian hills. The pincer would not close so easily. However the Allies had a 2-1 advantage in infantry, and 9-1 in tanks. Allied [[logistics ]] worked well, and a naval/air blockade of the coastline cut off 80% of the enemy supplies. The few remaining panzer tanks ran out of diesel fuel. Under Eisenhower's general supervision, British General Harold Alexander had operational control of the Allied land forces in the west; Alexander made sure that British soldiers did most of the fighting. When the inexperienced Americans were called upon to hold the Kasserine Pass, they were whipped by Rommel's bold use of a few panzers, and lost 200 tanks. Eisenhower then replaced the unaggressive corps commander with Patton, his most flamboyant and pugnacious fighter. By May the inexorable pincers had closed; without a great fight Von Arnim surrendered 160,000 Germans and 90,000 Italians. Rommel escaped to fight another day.
Hitler, however, was not especially upset. At the cost of only 5% of his army, he had tied down two of his three enemies for six months in a peripheral campaign that allowed his main forces to fight the Soviets. In North Africa, 3,300 Yanks were killed and 10,000 wounded, about a fourth of all Allied casualties. DeGaulle's Free French established their headquarters in North Africa, received tanks, planes and equipment from the U.S., and provided several hundred thousand troops who fought in Italy and France.
