Operation Husky Mission Command

On 9 July 1943, the Allied Forces initiated the invasion of Sicily, or “Operation Husky”. This invasion was the largest amphibious operation conducted during World War II and utilized over 2,590 vessels and involved approximately a half million soldiers, sailors, and airmen. While this invasion was a victory for the Allies and provided them with a launch pad for its invasion of Italy, senior leaders made many mistakes in their planning, execution, decision making, and coordination. As a result, analysis of this operation provides excellent lessons learned that are still relevant today for future joint commanders and staff. Lastly, of the six joint functions integrated into joint or combined operations, this paper focuses on evaluating, at the
“Commander’s intent represents a unifying idea that allows decentralized execution within centralized, overarching guidance.” This intent insures a clear purpose for an operation and an expected end state. The first challenge that Eisenhower encountered with planning for this operation was the planning staff itself. These planners, inexperienced at this type of operation, had difficulty from the beginning, because most of the decision makers were still preoccupied with ongoing operations and geographically dispersed. As a result, Eisenhower gave no consideration to their first effort, nor did either he or Alexander provide “effective leadership during this critical stage... Instead, due to indecisiveness by Eisenhower and inattentiveness by Alexander, a frustrated Montgomery tasked his staff to develop their own plans for Husky. This became the norm and as a result the functional commanders – air, land, sea components – developed their own objectives and planning without closely coordinating their actions. Considering this invasion was a compromise between allied partners, it “left commanders in the field with an imperfect understanding of the ultimate purpose of the operation.” Thus, no
No clear commander’s intent existed; therefore, operational commanders chose to develop their own plans independently. As a result, operational commanders “failed to use all available forces to their maximum capability…” As a result, Axis forces successfully executed a phased withdrawal to the Italian mainland to regroup and prepare for the anticipated invasion of Italy. Although Husky did achieve its strategic objective of causing Italy’s withdrawal from the war, Husky also illustrated the effects of poor planning. Eisenhower and Alexander did not involve themselves early or often in the planning process nor did they insure development of a fully operational plan that established clear objectives and demanded unity of effort. Had this occurred, “the campaign may have been shorter, less costly, and more