North Africa, July, 1953

The war over Ifni evolved to a war to decide the fate of Morocco. With the very sanctity of the state in question, Morocco entered July of 1953 having held on to a rather surprising lead in the War - having fought back or stalled Spanish attacks along multiple axes, taking the Spanish Sahara, Ifni, Cape Juby, and Oujda without a fight. It had become a confusing war of contradictions, confusion and repetition.

Franco had been enraged at his commanders for their various failings over the previous two months. Spanish command had been forced to rethink a number of strategies - sending mechanized divisions into the mountains had been among a catalogue of bad ideas. So, too, was the massive scope of deployment effected in June - thus the beginning of the month saw Spanish troops leaving Morocco rather than arriving. Removing an entire corps from the battlefield significantly lightened Spain’s logistical hurdles.

Yet it was the Moroccans who, again, surprised the world with their stout defense of their country and martial spirit. Despite Spanish terror bombing of their logistical network, Moroccan supply lines remained well-stocked and supplied. Their redeployment speeds shocked local Spanish commanders, marching across difficult terrain with little rest and respite to attack from unexpected directions.

In Kenitra, the month began with another assault from the “Brunette” Division came against the port city, hoping to open the path to Rabat and Casablanca. The armoured division found the city a tough pill to swallow initially - the opening battle on July 3rd, 1953 made initial gains into the outer sections of the city, before being beaten back by intense street-fighting and resistance from all sides. Moroccan troops ambushed and massacred a company of Spanish mechanized troops in the Quartier Industrial, their bodies covered in petrol and set alight before the Moroccans began to pull back in the face of Spain’s overwhelming numbers. By the end of July 5th, the attack had came to a halt inside Kenitra. Fresh Spanish airstrikes and an enveloping action towards Lotis el Ouaffa finally turned the tide, with the Moroccan 2nd Division and Idris al Akbar brigade pulling away towards Rabat. The Brunette Division, after briefly regrouping, followed the Moroccan troops, occupying the outskirts of Rabat.

The assault on Meknes and Fes prevented any further advance, however, out of fear of creating a salient. Initial assaults on Sidi Kacem by the Spanish “Guzman El Bueno” division were inconclusive - Spanish air cover was spotty and inconsistent. The Moroccan 1st Division, still smarting from the initial battles in the war, began pulling back leaving Sidi Kacem to the Spanish - but the advantage would be short lived. The Division’s next objective, Meknes, was held by the Moroccan Royal Guard and the Moulay Ismail brigade. The ancient Imperial city held intense patriotic value for the Moroccans, and the elite Guards were more than ready for the Spanish advance. The initial Spanish assault, supported by air strikes and heavy artillery bombardment, nevertheless almost immediate stalled. Stiff Moroccan resistance and continuous counterattacks - as well as the collapse in Spanish air support which occurred concurrently (see below) - ground Spanish initiative into the dust. The long, exposed supply lines of the Spanish also became a problem, as Moroccan irregulars and even local civilians, engaged in sabotage of telegraph lines, supply dumps, and crossings. Continual Spanish assaults, with their overwhelming superiority in numbers, nevertheless made slow progress through the city’s streets. Things came to a head on July 11th when a Spanish armoured thrust came close to panic in the Moroccan ranks. A two-plane Moroccan airstrike, one of the desperate last in the war, damaged one of the tanks. The tank commander’s confused reports, which claimed at least 20 Moroccan planes, convinced the Spanish commander that the French really were supplying the Moroccans still. Despite their advantage in number and the momentum of the fresh assault, the commander of the “Guzman El Bueno” division called for a retreat and the Battle of Meknes became a Moroccan victory snatched from the jaws of defeat.

Chefchaouen would see another sustained assault by Spanish forces. Taking some lessons from the previous month’s events, the fresh Spanish assault was more light and mobile. The Moroccans, in preparation, had turned Chefchouaen into a stronghold, with emplaced machine-guns and barbed wire. Yet Moroccan shortages in manpower had pulled many of the Rif Irregulars into combat in the east - leaving only the remnants of the Moroccan 1st Division who had formed the core of the Moroccan war in the Rif since the beginning of the war to hold the city. With a significant amount of men acting as guerillas in the mountain, Morocco’s severe manpower shortage was nevertheless immediately felt. While the Spanish had to fight tooth-and-nail through the city itself, reinforced logistics networks brought the Second Battle of Chefchaouen to an end by July 13th, 1953, with the Spanish holding the town. The 1st Division had become combat ineffective, with their surviving number dispersed into the mountains to continue the war in the Rif, which still hummed with resistance against the Spanish onslaught.

The East of Morocco saw heavy combat, as well as another of what would be termed the “Moroccan Handshake” by English tabloids - the complete abandoning of vital territory without apparent plan or resistance. This would come from Morocco troops withdrawing from Oujda for an assault further west - which came just as Spanish troops marched into the city, capturing the Eastern terminus of Morocco’s railway network. The assault north, ensuing from Melga el Ouidane, was meant to overwhelm weakened Spanish defenses around Melilla. Yet problems reigned in both camps - Spanish redeployment of the 5th Infantry Division went poorly, meaning defenses in the area were initially left open. Waiting for the assistance of the Rif irregulars assaulting from the North, the Moroccan assault was delayed, giving time for the Spanish to bring up reinforcements. Moroccan morale, upon being confronted with the Spanish numbers advantage in the first fights on July 5th, quickly collapsed, with the Moroccans retreating to Guercif to defend the rail line west.

The disappearance into the Spanish Sahara of the Spanish 1st Parachutist Battalion resulted in brief skirmishes between local Sahrawi tribesmen, convinced into assistance by local Moroccan officials, and the wayward paratroopers. With a considerable firepower advantage over the rifle-armed local tribes, the Battle of Boujdour on July 6th was brief, and violent. The paratroopers were able to withdraw north towards Laayoune.

Having learned from their disastrous first attempt - and with the French Navy withdrawn due to international pressure - the Second Invasion of Dakhla went considerably better for the Spanish. While the Moroccans had been able to reinforce the town with troops from the 3rd Division, Spanish reconnaissance was considerably more accurate. Earlier restrictions against bombarding the town were also removed in a later-controversial decision. On July 7th, the Spanish Navy had assembled outside the town. A brief and accurate bombardment from seven cruisers and ten destroyers thoroughly obliterated the town and most of the more elaborate Moroccan defensive fortifications. Now equipped with American-made landing craft, the 6,000 Spanish Marines came ashore in the middle of the morning. Even in the ruined town, Moroccan defense was initially stout, with an organized Moroccan counterattack pushing the Spanish back to the water’s edge - but additional gunfire support and intense Spanish resistance kept the beachhead, and a counterattack in the afternoon brought the town under Spanish control. The brave Moroccan 32nd Infantry Brigade had been destroyed in the fighting, with its remnants surrendering. Spanish troops rapidly began to offload for a larger assault into Spanish Sahara, with the Spanish “Maestrago” Motorized Division moved north to take Laayoune.

Laayoune, the only logical place to defend in Spanish Sahara, was being held by the Moroccan 3rd Division. Despite the existence of only a single coast road, Spanish progress north made good time. Moroccan defenses were still being prepared when the Spanish Motorized Division arrived in the town. With the advantage of the paratrooper’s early reconnaissance, the Spanish had a well-formed plan of assault - yet it was getting late in the month at this point, and the threat of the imminent arrival of the UN Peacekeeping force fresh in every commander’s mind. Weather conditions in the area worsened, with high winds picking up and confounding the initial combat outside the city on July 15th. The Spanish assault was confused and piecemeal, requiring a regrouping the next day. Yet this assault ground to a halt when a massive sandstorm was spotted coming from the east. Both armies were forced to pull back to their previous lines. With the collapse in Spanish air cover and the perceived threat of the long coastal supply road, the Spanish commander had settled for the village of El Marsa remaining Spanish.

Spain’s War in the Air would become one of the most singularly studied examples in failures of air force planning for the rest of the 20th Century. Spain benefited from a large, extant air force at the start of the war, receiving a huge boost from Italian legionary support in the form of WWII-vintage combat planes. While these had performed reasonably well in June, the stress of constant combat and the willingness of Spain to make daily strikes with them soon began to cause problems within the decade-old airframes. The Caproni Ca.310 Libecce had been rather unsatisfactory in combat when it debuted in 1938, and by 1953 it was simply old-hat. Misfortune after misfortune seemed to befall this type - three had already been lost in accidents upon landing by the beginning of July, with one stalling and spinning in a low-altitude turn outside Malaga. Two of the crew subsequently drowned, with the accident later blamed on the weight of the plane’s bombs. A more bizarre incident occurred on July 13th, 1953. Four Ca.310 aircraft of the 4e Stormo had undertaken a dusk bombing of railway yards outside Fes. For some reason, the flight lead had then turned southeast instead of northwest as planned. The planes disappeared from Moroccan airspace shortly afterwards, their fate becoming the subject of controversy and myth for decades afterwards. Moroccan journalists, interviewing villagers years later in 1957, reported that the Spanish planes had been last heard flying over the village of Beni Yatti in the early morning hours, apparently heading deep into the desert. Predictably, speculation (in the US, at least) quickly turned to aliens, wormholes, and upward-lifting sky tunnels that led into the hollow Earth. Where the Spanish planes went, and the fates of their crew, became the central mystery of the Monday Bomber Incident, as it came to be known after an official Spanish Air Force report. Other types performed similarly poorly - several C.202 Folgores, an excellent type from the Second World War, were lost to mechanical difficulties or inexperience of the flight crews. The CANT Z.1007 Alcione suffered dreadfully from the heat, with up to three planes being lost a week due to the heat of the Moroccan climate warping the plane’s control surfaces. A particularly dramatic incidence of this confronted crewmen of 2o Stormo on the morning of July 8th, when they found two of their aircraft had snapped along the long empennage, rendering them complete write-offs. Even Spanish-manufactured planes had struggled. While these planes were, on average, much newer than their Italian counterparts, their performance was, as one German newspaper gingerly termed it, „sehr variabel“ (“highly variable”). Several Ha-1109 and Ha-1112 craft were lost in combat or navigational errors. Foggy landings in the Canaries were hazardous - a B.2L bomber flew into Pico de las Nieves on July 20th, killing all aboard. The stint of accidents, not to mention Morocco’s accurate anti-aircraft fire and the occasional Moroccan dogfight, gutted confidence in the air force and combat operations in the northern theatre were ordered reduced to bare-minimum defensive actions on July 21st, in advance of the arrival of the UN peacekeeping force.

Finally, the UN Peacekeeping Force, tasked with restoring order and law in the region, arrived in the port of Casablanca on July 25th, 1953. With neither side willing to fire on the Peacekeepers, who deployed behind the existent front lines, the War ground to a rapid halt through the rest of the month. What would happen now was in the hands of the international community...