AAR - Sicilian Brideghead Reinforcement Failure:
Sir John Dir, Chief of the General Staff, tasks the up and coming Major Sean O'Conner to investigate and write an after action report on the failure of this impulse operation to reinforce the Sicilian bridgehead and capture Palermo.
It takes Major O'Conner less than a week to produce the report, the conclusions of which are sent straight to PM Churchill.
These conclusions were:
(1) Naval, air and ground forces employed were adequate to achieve capture of Palermo and expansion of the Sicilian bridgehead.
(2) However, forces and plan included no provisions for worst-case scenario.
(3) Employment of French TRS with NED TRS still docked in Gibraltar forced French TRS, when aborted, to return to the bridgehead at Trapani, Italy, which resulted in over stacking and the loss of the elite British inf II corps.
(4) Planning mitigation for this could have been accomplished by either using British/NED TRS to carry II corps, moving NED TRS out of Gibraltar and/or reembarking 1 of 2 divisions currently in the bridgehead leaving room for the II corps.
(5) In the end the failure was due to a combination of aggressive Italian RM actions, poor performance by the RN and failure to plan for the worst case outcome.
(6) In summary, mission planning failure directly resulted in the loss of II corps (3 BPs). However, if next impulse-pair is fine in the Med (50%), bridgehead expansion including the capture of Palermo is likely this turn. If not, then the allied situation in Sicily just got significantly more harder.
