Leavenwort

Papers 

No. 3 

w 

“Not War But Like War’: 

The American Intervention in Lebanon 

by Roger J. Spiller 

Combat Studies Institute 

U.S. Army Command and General Staff College 

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 

JANUARY 1981 
The Leavenworth Papers is a series of historicat studies undertaken by the U.S. Army Command and 

General Staff College’s Combat Studies Institute that examines subjects of concern to the Army. 

This latest Leavenworth Paper examines the US. military intervention in the 1958 Lebanese political 

crisis. By focusing on a relatively recent Army experience in planning and conducting a major contingency operation, the study illuminates the complexity of military planning and the incongru& between 

plans and performance. This focus promotes the value of the historical perspective in dealing with 

contemporary military subjects and provides a timely opportunity to apply the lessons of the past. 

“Not War, But Like War” offers insights that are readily applicable to today’s military planners at all 

levels. The disparity between the political purpose and the military objective of intervention will it/ustrate why national and service level planners must carefully describe what is to be accomplished by 

theater military forces. Theater and tactical level commanders and planners will be reminded that the 

nature of joint operations demands detaifed preparation of command and logistical arrangements and 

concerted operations. Finally, the study demonstrates that responsive contingency planning also 

depends upon a process that promotes both participant dialogue and repetitive review in order to lessen 

the dangers of “provisionalism.” 

The Lebanese contingency operation represents a gauge to measure the effectiveness of our planning doctrine for the 1980s. Future contingencies will likely involve more demanding requirements and 

confront more hostile environments than those of Lebanon in 1958. This study allows us to measure 

and to reflect upon the doctrinal implications of contingency planning down through the tactical unit 

level. It can contribute directly to more effective deployment as wall as employment of land combat 

power. 

WILLIAM R. RICHARDSON 

Lieutenant General, USA 

Commanding 

OiWCtOi 

Colonel WIlltam A Stofft 

John F Morrison Proiessor of M/lirary Hetory 

Dr 0. Clayton James 

Combrned Arms Cenrer Hisrortan 

Dr Roger J Spiller 

Chel. Research Commetee 

Lleufenant CaioneE Kenneth A Steadman 

Research Fellows 

LlWtenanf Colonel Rlcnard G Brown 

Mqor Charles E Heller 

Dr *Ilen F Chew 

Or EdwardS Drea 

Chief, Teaching Comm,tree 

Lleufenant Colonel Dsvrd M Glantz 

Teaching Fellows 

Maw Robert K Grifftrh. Jr 

Major Thomas W Sweeney 

Captam Patr,c~a B Genung 

Dr Robert t-i Berhn 

Or Michael J Kmg 

CSM Kenneth Chavls, Jr 

Bibliographer 

Ellzabetil R Snake 

Ed,@, 

Alice M McCart 

S1aff 

Major Scott L days 

SFC Nelson C Rogers 

SP4 Dasy M Wwon 

Mrs Tern L Casr,lto 

The Leavenworth Papers are issued by the 

Combat Studies Institute, an element of the 

U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 66027. The 

views expressed in this publication are those 

of the author and not necessarily those of the 

Department of Defense or any elements thereof. Requests~ for additional copies or for permission to reprint Leavenworth Papers in 

whole or part should be addressed to the Director, Combat Studies Institute, U.S. Army 

Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 66027. 

Leavenworth Papers US ISSN 0795-3457 
Papers 

No. 3 

+P 

“Not War But Like War’: 

The American Intervention in Lebanon 

by Roger J. Spiller 

Combat Studies Institute 

U.S. Army Command and General Staff College 

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 

JANUARY 1981 
The Library of Congress has cataloged the first 

printing of this title aa follows: 

Spiller, Roger J. 

“Not war but like war”: the American intervention 

in Lebanon/by Roger J. Spiller.--Fort Leavenworth, Kan.: 

Combat Studies Institute, U.S. Army Command and 

General Staff College, 1981. 

ix, 58 p.: maps; 25 cm.--(Leavenworth papers; no. 3) 

“January 1981.” 

Includes bibliographical references. 

Supt. of Dots. no.: D 110.9:3 

1. Lebanon-History-Intervention, 1958. I. U.S. Army 

Command and General Staff College. Combat Studies 

Institute. II. Title. III. Series. 

DS87.S65 

Library of Congress 

956.92’043-dc19 81602127 

AACR 2 MARC 

[ 184fiev 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 20402 
Contents 

Maps ....................................................... v 

Introduction ............................................... vii 

“Not War, But Like War”. ................................... 1 

Appendixes ................................................ 47 

Notes ...................................................... 53 

. . . 

111 
Maps %e t 

1. The Eastern Mediterranean in 1956 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

2. Lebanon. Religious and tribal districts. . . . . , . . . . . . . . . . . 

3. Dispositions of Marine units 14 July 1958 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

4. Beirut and environs. The landing of Z/2. (First day.) . . . . 

5. Beirut. (Second day.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . , . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

6. Deployment of Army Task Force 201 on 16 July 1958 and 

after. l.........l........................,........... ~ .., 

7. Dispositions as of ATF 201’s arrival 20 July 1958 . . , . . . . 

V 

. . 

. . 

. . 

3 

. 5 k 

19 

21 

23 

30 

35 
The study that follows began in August 1979 as a series of notes for a lecture on the employment of contingency forces at the U.S. Army Command and 

General Staff College. The lecture was intended to serve as a historical introduction to the subject, using the 1958 American intervention in Lebanon as a 

case in point. It was thought that by analyzing the Lebanon intervention one 

could demonstrate several important lessons: how political and diplomatic 

objectives directly affect the character of modern military operations; how an 

operational military plan is conceived and what evolutions it endures before it 

is executed; how such plans, though they appear to anticipate every operational problem, are usually unequal to the realities of operational practice; and, 

finally, how valuable a quality mental agility can be when put to use by a 

military commander and his subordinates. 

An examination of the available literature on this subject revealed little 

that was helpful. Monographs dealing with Lebanon during this period focus 

for the most part upon the diplomatic or political aspects of the crisis, legitimate topics all, and important for setting the American intervention into the 

context of international and regional affairs; but when it came to specific 

details of the military operation itself, there were few to be found. Several short 

articles written by participantsrevealed more about what happened to American troops during the intervention, but as such articles go, they were mainly 

memoirs. Some were faintly, others vagrantly, self-congratulatory. They were 

period pieces, really, best seen as historical artifacts than as reliable sources. 

More important, their fields of vision were limited to their experiences only. 

Interestingly, most of the literature dealt with the Marines if it took notice 

of military operations at all. In the service journals, the Marines and the Navy 

had much to say about their part in the operation. There is some justice in this: 

the Marines were the first Americans to arrive in Lebanon and the US. Sixth 

Fleet put them there. The task force was commanded by an admiral. And by 

the time the Army arrived, the crisis had subsided (although no one would 

have dared to predict it at the time). Eventually, there were more soldiers than 

marines in Lebanon. They stayed longer, and they were the last to leave. Their 

deployment covered a longer distance and was a much more complicated 

affair, and they were less practiced at such operations. But no one wrote of the 

Army’s participation in any depth. 

vii 
There was a considerable body of information which had gone unnoticed, 

however-the official records. These consisted of recently declassified reports, 

made at nearly every echelon, dealing with unit operations. Only one published study had made effective use of these records: Mr. Jack Sehulimson’s 

“The Marines in Lebanon,” an official work of the U.S. Marine Corps’ Historical Office. This study was far and away the best available operational accounting and did for Marine Corps operations that which I wanted to find for Army 

operations That work was not to be found. 

As it so often happens, what began as a minor, brief foray into a particular 

subject became the makings of an article. 

About that time, in the fall of 1979, the Combat Studies Institute was being 

established at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. In the 

main, this institute was to act as the new history department for the College, 

but it was charged also t.o undertake original historical research in military 

history for the U.S. Army’s Training and Doctrine Command on subjects of 

interest to the modern Army. When it was proposed that the study on Lebanon 

become a part of the institute’s official research program, I was not convinced 

that the Army was much interested in contingency force operations, During 

the previous summer, there had been a flurry of interest in whether the American defense establishment was capable of meeting military challenges in the 

Middle East, and indeed, planning had begun for a “‘Rapid Deployment Force”’ 

within the Army. But the interest of the summer had waned by fall to cast an 

uneasy shadow over American military policy. 

A few weeks later, Iranian revolutionaries stormed the American embassy 

in Tehran and took its occupants hostage. As time passed, the Iranian crisis 

deepened. And although this study was about an intervention which occurred 

twenty-two years earlier, the current crisis gave a peculiar and ironic edge to 

my work. While I wrote about the planning for the Lebanon intervention, I 

wondered how the planning for this new crisis was preceeding. One can 

always count on planning, not so actual execution. 

When the American rescue mission-and its failure-became known, the 

dismay among my students was palpable. They expressed wonderment at how 

the operation could have misfired, and they looked for reasons. The study on 

Lebanon had taught me that such military operations usually stand an excellent chance of failure and that the ingenuity of ill fortune is sometimes beyond 

our powers to predict. To say that neither the mission nor its failure came as a 

surprise because I had been studying contingency operations of the past was 

small comfort. What I most wondered was whether the planners of that mission had respected sufficiently the play of chance. 

If there is any general theme to the analysis here, it is how great the distance ean be between planning and action, and that is how the study proceeds. 

It begins at the broadest consideration of policy and attempts to trace a military idea-the projection of an emergency force to the Middle East-from its 

v.. Vlll 
inception to its execution at the lowest tactical level. The focus of the study 

throughout is upon the U.S. Army, although the Army’s activities are only 

occasionally seen in isolation. The intervention was a joint operation, after all. 

Finally, this study is offered in the hope that it may be of some relevance to 

modern soldiers by illuminating one incident in their profession’s past. 

Roger J. Spiller 

Combat Studies Institute 

U.S. Army Command and General 

Staff College 

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 

ix 
“Not War, But Like War”: 

The American Intervention 

in Lebanon ALiD 

For the past few years, the political and military leaders of the United 

States have become less circumspect about defining the stability of the Middle 

East in terms of American national security. Accelerated by recent events, this 

trend bespeaks a willingness to consider openly the possibility, however remote, of the deployment of a military force to this region. The inauguration of 

planning during the past few months of an American ‘“unilateral corps” of 

110,000 men designed to undertake contingency operations has imparted an 

air of reality to this trend as well. Yet, as the authors of a recent report sponsored by the Congressional Research Service argue-and argue forcefullysuch an operation today would be fraught with danger and of extremely dubious utility. The difficulties of mounting a contingency operation in which sizable military forces figure, never inconsiderable, have been compounded by a 

host of political, diplomatic, and military problems.’ 

Once before in the recent past, the United States dispatched military forces 

to the Middle East. On 15 July 1958elements of the U.S. Sixth Fleet landed several battalions of marines on the shores of Lebanon. The marines were quickly 

reinforced by other American troops taken from the Army’s European commands. Simultaneously, a powerful Composite Air Strike Force was sent from 

the United States and established an operational command at Adana Air 

Base, Incirlik, Turkey, during the early hours of the intervention. After serving 

for 102 days as a peace-keeping force, during which time one American soldier 

was killed by hostile fire, these intervention forces withdrew.” 

The American intervention in Lebanon, code-named BLUEBAT, has since 

been hailed as one of the most successful operations of its kind, and with some 

justice. But it was by no means a perfect operation; many of the problems 

which attended Operation BLUEBAT doubtless would present themselves again 

today. Other problems were peculiar to the time and the situation, but in any 

case those who planned and executed BLUEBAT did so under conditions all too 

familiar to military commanders throughout history. When blithe assumptions 

are being made about the ease with which a similar operation could be 

mounted today, a look back at the intervention in Lebanon is instructive: it 

displays vividly the difficulties of such operations in general, and it reminds 

us of some of the special problems of oprations in this region, problems which 

our current military and political planners might well bear in mind. 

1 
2 

In the aftermath of the Suez crisis of 1956, the influence of the Western 

powers in the Middle East declined almost beyond precedent. The AngloFrench invasion of Egypt had in fact contributed to the growing alienation 

between the former colonial powers and the new forces of Arab nationalism, 

whose chief patron was Egypt’s president, Carnal Abdul Nasser. Although not 

directly involved in this adventure, the United States’ prestige nevertheless 

suffered both by association and by “its own recent dealings with Egypt. 

Shortly before Suez, the United States had withdrawn its support of the 

Aswan High Dam project, and Nasser had turned to the Soviet Union for the 

economic and military aid that the West was now withholding3 Thus the 

Economist reported, “the Americans . . . have inherited not so much the British position as the animosity which it left behind.” This new order of international relations was felt quickly, and American diplomats were treated on 

occasion to a confusing hostility. One American official returning from Egypt 

shortly after the crisis had subsided was heard to exclaim frustratedly, ‘“Anyway, who did invade Egypt?“l 

The consequent Soviet association with Egypt was a signal event in the 

recent history of the Middle East. Hitherto little interested in the region, the 

Soviets naw came forward-as they had promised at the Bandung conference 

of non-aligned nations the previous year-with aid for countries with which 

they had little ideological affinity. At a time in the Cold War when the West 

was acutely sensitive to any gesture which might be construed as pro-Soviet, 

Nasser’s acceptance of Soviet aid, and his increasingly strident pronouncements in support of nationalism and “positive neutralism” misled the West. 

When even non-aligned nations were held in suspicion, a country which actually accepted assistance from a communist state appeared to be little more 

than a c&s-paw for the Soviet Union.5 

With the reputation of the former colonial powers irreparably damaged by 

the Suez invasion and that of Pan-Arabism improved thereby, the United 

States initiated a diplomatic counteroffensive in the MiddIe East. In early 1957 

Congress approved the “Eisenhower Doctrine,” which was in the main a geographical and diplomatic extension of the older Truman Doctrine. Like its 

predecessor, this new doctrine offered military and economic assistance to 

nations believed to be in danger from communist-sponsored invasion or subversion. In 1957 the regional members of the Baghdad Pact-Turkey, Iran, 

Iraq, and Pakistan-were of particular concern to American policymakers 

because of their ties to the West; but, as the new doctrine made clear, any 

nation in the general area was eligible for aid. To that end, President Eisenhower sent a special envoy, James P. Richards, to the Middle East in search of 

subscribers even before Congress had taken final action on the policy.6 

. 

But the Suez invasion was still too vividly remembered for most leading 

Middle Easterners to consider the possibility of having Western troops on their 

soil again, even by invitation. Pan-Arabism was now so widespread even in 

the pro-Western nations that any regime that accepted the promise of American military protection was sure to elicit severe criticism from the nationlists 
TURKEY 

EGYPT 

Map 1. The Eastern Mediterranean 1x1 IYDO. 
among its own citizens. This was certainly the case in Jordan and Iraq, where 

nationalists were already quite restive. In the event, only the Republic of 

Lebanon agreed publicly to be a party to the new policyP 

Yet, even Lebanon’s acceptance of the Eisenhower Doctrine was not so 

straightforward as it appeared to some at the time. Lebanon’s president, 

Camille Chamoun, had taken up the American offer despite considerable political opposition. It was believed by Charnoun’s opponents that his real motive 

in subscribing to the Eisenhower Doctrine had more to do with his determination to succeed himself as president for another six-year term (a succession 

forbidden by the Lebanese constitution) than it did with any rea1 foreign 

dangers to Lebanon. This was a question that had troubled the peace of 

Lebanon before Bisharah al-Khuri began a second presidential term in 1948 

with the aid of a constitutional amendment, but by 1952 he had been forced to 

step down, two years before the expiration of his term, by political opposition 

and popular resistance. One of the leaders of the “Rose Water Revolution,” as 

this episode was called, was Camille Chamoun. And now in 1957 it appeared 

that Chamoun contemplated a constitutional amendment of the kind passed in 

1948. Thus, quite apart from the disapproval that Chamoun might well have 

expected after having made an agreement with a Western power at this time, 

the president’s own political fortunes became entangled with those of American foreign policy.a 

More broadly, however, the outbreak of political controversy that followed 

in the spring of 1957 was merely the latest in a series of disputes turning about 

the religious and ethnic divisions which had so long animated Lebanese politics. When Lebanon won her independence in 1943, the republic’s new leaders 

had thought to accommodate these diverse sectarian interests by founding a 

government under the terms of a “National Covenant.” An unwritten agreement of honor among the major Muslim and Christian leaders, the Covenant 

set the new republic upon a neutralist course of foreign policy designed to 

make Lebanon the “Switzerland” of the Middle East, and created a parliamentary system of government wherein popular representation was calculated 

along religious lines. Higher executive and judicial offices were filled according to the same rule: it was understood, for instance, that the president would 

be a Maronite Christian, that the prime minister would be a Sunni Muslim, 

and that the president of the Chamber of Deputies would be a Shi’a Muslim. 

But within the seemingly equitable “confessional system,” as this arrangement was known, there existed a considerable imbalance of power in favor of 

the Christians. Representation was based upon a census that dated from the 

days of the old French protectorate before World War II and so did not reflect 

increases in Muslim population that would have made those confessing that 

religion the majority. Because of this, the confessional system perpetuated the 

imbalance of power by maintaining the legal fiction of the old sectarian percentages. Political parties which in theory might have diminished the power of 

the confessional system did exist, but they were ill developed, usually extreme, 

and sometimes illegal. Being an affair largely of clan rather than program, 

Lebanese politics by their very structure required that any sitting government 

serve at the pleasure of the major factions.3 

_-_- _--- -- 
5 

Map 2. Lebanon. Religious and tribal districts. 
6 

The Chamoun government began to fail of its already tenuous support in 

the months following its agreement with the Eisenhower administration. In a 

move reminiscent of the days before the Rose Water Revolution, several deputies of parliament resigned in protest and helped establish a “National Union 

Front (NUF),” dedicated to setting aright what was seen as Chamoun’s corrupt’ion of the old National Covenant .la Campaigning fur summer parliamentary elections was especially heated and produced a serious, bloody clash on 

the streets of Beirut between government forces and NUF strikers. From other 

towns and the outlying districts of the Lebanese transmontane, the Chouf, 

came word of similar outbreaks. The Chamoun government survived the elections handily, but it was a campaign in which all sides showed little compunction about resorting to violence and fraud. ll Such tactics were not of themselves unusual where it was said that “though a Lebanese does not have to 

carry a gun to the polls, it helps”12 It was recognized too that elections were 

commonly “a procedural fiction rather than a constitutional reality,” but the 

National Union Front’s claims that Chamoun’s government had used “pressure and intimidation’” in winning the contest encouraged popular disaffection. Far from being weakened by their loss at the polls, the NUF, according to 

one observer, ‘<grew in strength until it virtually became another government, 

existing side-by-side with the legally constituted authorities”l3 

The Army of Lebanon, six thousand men strong, was caught in the same 

web as the society it defended. Christians dominated the officer corps (about 80 

percent), while in the ranks the proportion of Christians ta Muslims and other 

sects was closer to that in the country generally. Yet the commander of the 

army, General Fu’Bd ShehZb, was a Maronite Christian patrician, a descendant of a family of amira who had once ruled Lebanon for 150 years. As an 

aristocrat, he had much in common with several leaders of the opposition, 

many of whom were his friends, By comparison, it was said, President Chamoun, once removed from office, “would pale into a middle class nonentity, 

except for such glamour and prestige as go with having been a president.“*” 

Though small, ShehZb’s army was well equipped with American, British, and 

French weapons, was well disciplined, and was equal to putting down any civil 

disturbance. Once before, in 1952, General ShehZb had been faced with a similar situation.15 Fearing that his army would disintegrate under the pressures 

of enforcing political and sectarian peace, Shehab had kept his army above the 

dispute, and so he planned to do again in 1958.16 His greater concern was 

reserved for the very fate of Lebanon, however. On the eve of the crisis that 

summer, the general explained his policy to a foreign reporter: 

Solutions by force are impossible in a country like this, founded on compromise and 

the need for mutual tolerance. If the army moved against the rebels, it would have 

little difficulty in reestablishing order, even without the tanks and other equipment 

which the United States continues to supply with what seems needless generosity. But 

if it cleared the Muslim quarters of Beirut and Tripoli, knocking down a few houses in 

the process, the army-which is predominantly Christian-would in fact be destroying the structure of Lebanon as a political entity. The memories of 1860, when the 

Druzes massacred the Christians and the Muslims joined in, are still alive today, 

dimly amid the vulgar cosmopolitanism of Beirut, but vividly in the mountain villages 

beyond. The present opposition is principally, though not entirely, Muslim, especially 

in its lower ranks. If it were to be suppressed by force, the memories of 1958 would still 

be green in Sfty years” time, and Lebanon would have ceased to exist.1” 
7 

Thus, the Army of Lebanon and its commander were to take no sides during the crisis of 1958, acting instead as a passive sort of constabulary. And 

while this was confusing to the Americans when they first arrived (even the 

most politically sophisticated among them were mystified that President 

Chamoun had little power over the general or his army), the stance taken early 

on by the army of Lebanon was in essence the same eventually adopted by the 

American forces during their stay.‘” 

Increasingly, daily life in Lebanon in 1957 was punctuated by explosions 

and gunfire as members of all the factions armed themselves. Charges of official terrorism were leveled against the Chamoun government.‘9 The government’s supporters replied that the opposition groups had been penetrated by 

agents prouocateurs from Egypt and Syria and so were only pawns in the 

hands of Arab extremists.“” Amid the histrianics, a group of “non-aligned politicians” perhaps characterized the crisis most accurately: 

\~e are witnessing a political struggle which in the beginning might have disguised 

itself in the shape of a conflict over the foreign policy of Lebanon but which is, at the 

moment, only a pretext for settling old accounkJk 

American military planners had begun to apply themselves to intervention 

contingencies for the Middle East well before the crisis developed in Lebanon. 

The Army’s Continental Army Command was directed in January 1956 to 

create “a family of war plans for contingency operations.“2P Within five 

months, the command was distributing a trial plan called SWAGGERSTICK, 

which envisioned the landing of two divisions at one of several places in the 

Levant and was intended to put down an outbreak of war by interposing 

American troops between the belligerents.‘” Seen in the context of recent 

events, SWAGGERSTICK'S purpose was evident. Only a month before the plan 

appeared, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen had agreed to a military 

pact for common defense which was clearly aimed at Israel. This alliance, following as it did a recent and unprecedented Czechoslovakian arms shipment 

to Egypt, made the affairs of the Middle East even more ominous.24 The “first 

draft” of SWAGGERSTICK explicity, if disingenuously, reflected American concerns over this turn of events: the plan assumed, for instance, that one of the 

prospective belligerents would “permit entry and operations of US military 

forces.” The possible entryways for the American forces were given as Port 

Said, Tel Aviv, Haifa, or Beirut, although it might have been thought at the 

time that Port Said would have been the last place in the Middle East to witness an unopposed landing of American troops.“j 

SWPlGGERSTICK became more fanciful as it evolved during the rest of 1956 

and into the following year. The plan was unable to rise above its origin: it 

was being formulated wholly within the Army. Only the most informal approaches had been made to the other services. There also seemed to be no disposition to lay SWAGGERSTICK before the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and for good 

reason: such a plan would not have received a very sympathetic hearing from 

a JCS whose strategic doctrine was founded squarely upon the idea of “massive retaliation.” But only the JCS could make of SWAGGERSTICK something 
8 

more than a staff appreciation, for only they could guarantee priorities for 

surface and air transportation, dedicate monies for the required stockpiling of 

supplies, and authorize the creation of specially structured units to carry out 

the mission. SWAGGEFSTICK had units deploying from the United States to the 

Middle East, but no less a figure than the Army’s own Chief of Staff, General 

Maxwell Taylor, doubted that units marked for contingency deployment would 

be ready without essential reforms in their design and equipment. In this 

regard, the plan was instructive: it made manifest the Army”s deficiencies and 

it provided General Taylor with an important argument in his campaign to 

prepare the Army for limited war.26 

When a nation requested assistance under the provisions of the Eisenhower 

Doctrine, outright military intervention was obviously just one of several 

courses of action available to the president, but the text of the doctrine made 

plain that the United States was “prepared to use armed forces.“27 Two years 

earlier, the retiring Army Chief of Staff, General Matthew Ridgway, had 

bluntly informed Eisenhower’s Secretary of Defense, Charles E. Wilson, that 

the Army could not support America’s diplomatic objectives without “a fastmoving, hard-hitting, joint force in which the versatility of the whoIe is 

emphasized.“‘28 But since Ridgway’s warning it had been the habit of the 

Eisenhower administration to make commitments around the world without 

insuring first that the military aspects of those commitments could be honored, 

and so it remained after the passage of the Eisenhower Doctrine. As if to 

underscore the fact that the Army need not plan on any more money to 

upgrade the units necessary to enforce the doctrine, Secretary Wilson prepared 

during the spring of 1957 a 200,000-man reduction and an elimination of two 

divisions from the Army. The Air Force and the Navy were to suffer reductions 

as well.2g 

Faced with these significant limitations, Army staffers continued to work 

on both contingency plans and new designs for contingency forces during the 

summer of 1957. By September, General Taylor had decided to move as far as 

possible toward the creation of the light strike force he and General Ridgway 

believed was necessary. This force, the Strategic Army Corps, was to be eomposed of two divisions for limited war and other circumstances not requiring 

the declaration of a national emergency. For general war, an expanded version 

of four reinforced divisions was contemplated. Subsequent planning focused 

upon the two-division corps for the simple reason that this could be done, like 

SWAGGERSTICK planning, within the Army alone. To have gone further would 

have required the involvement of the JCS. The units making up this corps 

were the 1Olst Airborne Division and the 4th Infantry Division. The Continental Army Command had the responsibility of insuring their operational readiness, while the XVIII Airborne Corps was to see to the Iogistieal planning. 

General Taylor’s September directive further required that this corps be capable of arriving at its objective within one month of receiving its orders. 

The Strategic Army Corps was to encounter many problems during its 

development, but one of the most critical had to do with its need for mobility. 
Units could be designated and even redesignated, provided that such reforms 

accorded with the Army’s current budget and force levels, but a corps of this 

sort, once given a mission, would obviously outrun the Army’s own transportation resources. Airlift services available to American forces had been predicated upon the outbreak of a general war in Europe. The Military Air Transport Service could deliver up to 188 million ton-miles of mobility under the 

general war scenario, and it was calculated that the Army’s part would come 

to 80 million ton-miles of the total. From these figures, the Army’s Deputy 

Chief of Staff for Operations, Maj. Gen. Earle Wheeler, made the assumption 

that “if the general war requirement could be met, it, would seem likely that the 

limited war requirement of the Army could be met in most circumstances.” 

This may have been true in strictly mat,hematical terms, but the fact of the 

matter was that the deployment of contingency forces from the United States 

to the Middle East would consume 143 million ton-miles of the Military Air 

Transport Service’s capacity. Without the declaration of a national emergency 

by the president, it was highly unlikely that the Joint Chiefs of Staff would 

release such a large proportion of t,he nation’s strat,egic airlift. Such problems 

as these would not be solved by the Army’s planners before the intervention in 

Lebanon. The Strategic Army Corps would have no part to play in t,he largest 

American troop deployment since the Korean War.:“’ 

Events in the Middle East followed a course quite without reference to military deliberations in the United States. Within one month of its being approved by Congress, the Eisenhower Doctrine had been invoked. On 13 April 

1957 King Hussein of Jordan foiled an attempted pro-Nasser coup d’etat. Jordan was not a party to the doctrine, but the United States quickly agreed to a 

request from Hussein for aid: the Sixth Fleet was ordered to the Eastern Mediterranean as a demonstration of American concern and 10 million dollars were 

sent as the first installment of a new military and economic aid program.“’ If 

there had been any doubt that the doctrine would actually be used, the Jordanian crisis educated official Washington once more to the speed with which 

upheavals were possible in the Middle East. No doubt this latest crisis moved 

the JCS to assess more carefully the military dimensions of the Eisenhower 

Doctrine. 

Naturally, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were in a position to add the degree of 

realism to their plans which was so lacking in the Army’s. Unlike the Army, 

the JCS had no interest in altering the prevailing strategic wisdom: if anything, the Chairman of the JCS, Admiral Arthur Radford, was more intent 

than Secretary Wilson on finding ways to live within current defense policies? Furthermore, the JCS could reckon on the participation of all the military services to an extent that the Army could not. If necessary, specific binding requirements could be set for logistical preparations. Plausible allocations 

could be made for airlift and sealift requirements by taking a different view of 
the problem of mobility: contingency forces could be deployed from Europe 

rather than the United States if the JCS were willing to run the risk of temporarily weakening NATO defenses. 

The tempo of JCS planning was also quicker than the Army’s. While the 

Army was still discussing the main features of the Strategic Army Corps in 

late 1957, the JCS began making arrangements to insure the operational readiness of the U.S. European forces far contingencies in the Middle East. As 

earIy as September, exploratory discussions were held in London between 

Admiral James Holloway, then Commander in Chief, Eastern Atlantic and 

Mediterranean, and representatives of the Army’s 11th Airborne Division 

(later the 24th Infantry Division). 33 Two months later the JCS, apprehensive of 

the “distinct possibilities of an overthrow of the Jordanian government or a 

coup d”etat in Lebanon,“’ directed Admiral Holloway to establish a “Specified 

Command” which could be activated upon their order. In the event of a crisis 

in the Middle East, Holloway was to transfer his flag from London to the 

Mediterranean as the Commander in Chief, Specified Command, Middle East, 

or CINCSPECOMME. The actual dimensions of any deployed force depended 

to a degree upon the magnitude of the crisis, but evidence suggests that from 

the beginning it was assumed at the highest level that any such operation 

would be a joint action.3d 

Theat’er-level contingency planning began soon after Admiral Holloway 

received his charge from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when in November a joint 

planning session was convened in London with representatives from the 

Army, Navy, and Air Force.33 Whether the outlines of what came to be known 

as Operation BLUEBAT were established here or earlier in Washington by the 

JCS is unknown, but two basic mans were ready by the time of the actual 

intervention. The first, CINCAMBRITFOR OPLAN l-58, was code-named 

BLUEBAT and envisioned two courses of action: one in which British and American ground forces would cooperate; the second version substituted Marines for 

the British contingent. While shortly before the emergency broke out in Lebanon, the British did participate in what their official accounts call “unobtrusive planning” with the Americans, exactly at what point the British entered 

these negotiations is uncertain. Available documents are silent on the question 

of whether British representatives attended the meeting. However, the second 

plan called for an exclusively American contingency force; this was CINCSPECOMME 215-58, encompassing eight different courses of action, each of 

which in all likelihood differed in the composition of American forces to be 

deployed. In the actual event, the Joint Chiefs of Staff directed Admiral Holloway to execute only “the US portion of BLUEBAT.)'~~ 

At least two important commitments were made by service representatives attending the London meeting. The 11th Airborne Division had already 

been detailed-since 1956-for any contingency operation which might be 

launched by the U.S. Army in Europe. Here, as many as two airborne battle 
11 

groups from the division were placed at the disposal of the Specified Command. In support of these deployments, the Air Force agreed to supply up to 

110 C-119 cargo aircraft (or their equivalent). 37 Similar commitments would 

have had to be made, either then or later, by the Air Force for tactical air 

support, and by the Navy, both for sealift support and for what proportions of 

the U.S. Sixth Fleet would be used. 

The plans made by each of the military services following this meeting can 

in some cases be detailed, in others only surmised. The Air Force, for instance, 

still classifies its records concerning this operation, In the light of subsequent 

events, however, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that Air Force planners 

assumed that general arrangements made earlier would suffice in this situation also. Little thought seems to have been given, for example, to the sequence 

in which various types of aircraft would arrive at their destinations, and one of 

the more fundamental decisions which should have been made in contingency 

planning-how much of the airlift would come from the United States and how 

much would come from European locations-was not made until the day of the 

alert to deploy, 14 July. The real explanation lies, perhaps, in the mood of the 

Air Force’s high command at the time. For several years, the Tactical Air 

Command had, in the words of one observer, “aspired to become USAF’s 

primary local-war force,” but had not proved to skeptics that it was capable of 

such a mission. TAC’s answer had been to create a Composite Air Strike Force 

(CASF), a “package” of air power composed of fighters, bombers, reconnaissance, and support aircraft capable of independent action for a month without 

resupply. And although by the time of the Lebanon intervention such a force 

was ready to deploy from the United States to the Middle East-CASF 

Bravo-no effort appears to have been made to stage these aircraft at clusters 

of airbases near the east coast of the United States. Instead, elements of CASF 

Bravo were located as far west as New Mexico: these were the fighters of the 

strike force which by the canons of air strategy should have been the first 

units to arrive on any scene to insure air superiority.“” Thus, the emergency in 

Lebanon seems to have been regarded as an operational test of a concept 

settled upon by the Air Force well in advance of the JCS’s new-found interest 

in Middle Eastern affairs. 

In the Mediterranean, the U.S. Sixth Fleet mounted a formidable seventyseven vessels in alI, including three aircraft carriers, two battle cruisers, and 

twenty-two destroyers, under the command of Vice Adm. Charles R. Brown. 

The fleet was divided into three task forces: TF 60, the Fast Carrier Strike 

Force; TF 61, Amphibious Group IV, which was made up of Amphibious 

Transport Squadrons 2, 4, and 6; and TF 62, the Fleet Marines.3s How this 

naval array was disposed throughout the Mediterranean when an emergency 

was declared was obviously an important consideration, but to have arranged 

for the fleet to be within striking distance of the Levant for long periods of 

time would have been both impolitic and militarily unwise. Admiral Brown 

could only hope to arrange his forces so that a convergence of the necessary 

vessels would not be too long delayed to accomplish the mission at hand. 
12 

Ordinarily, the Marine contingent of the Sixth Fleet amounted only to one 

reinforced battalion landing team, but after the JCS’s November directive to 

Admiral Holloway, the Marine Corps began augmenting what would surely be 

the first American units in Lebanon Brig. Gen. Sidney S. Wade organized the 

2d Provisional Marine Force headquarters at Camp Lejeune, Nor& Carolina, 

in January 1958 to oversee a combined exercise with the British Royal Marines 

in Sardinia later that year. This headquarters staff could of course be used also 

to direct Marine participation in any contingency operation in the general 

area. At the same time, the landing team actually on station with the fleet, the 

1st Battalion of the 8th Marine Regiment, commanded by Lt. Cal, John H. 

Brickley, began making its own preparations. At some time in early 1958, the 

battalion operations officer, Maj. Victor Stolyanov, had traveled to Beirut in 

mufti and examined the beaches around the city-certainly not an arduous 

task, considering Beirut’s reputation at the time as the Riviera of the Middle 

East. When the marines went ashore in July, their intelligence would be based 

upon Major Stolyanov’s observations, As the situation in the Middle East grew 

more tense during the spring of 1958, it was decided that the 1st Battalion 

would not return to the United States as planned. Instead, Lt. Cal. Harry 

Hadd’s 2d Battalion of the 2d Marine Regiment joined the fleet in May. At the 

same time, yet another battalion landing team, the 3d of the 6th, was held in 

readiness in the United States. Eventually, all three battalions would see duty 

in Lebanon.*” 

Following the November meeting with CINCSPECOMME in London, the 

Army began considering its part in Operation BLUEBAT. Early in December, the 

24th Infantry Division (formerly the 11th Airborne Division} held a three-day 

war game at its headquarters in Augsburg, Germany, with joint planning 

representatives in attendance. For the first time, logistical requirements were 

analyzed and, according to the division’s command report, “all aspects of an 

operation to drop on an airfield and secure a populated area was [sic] examined.“’ What emerged from these deliberations was another provisional organization, considerably more elaborate than the kind the Marines were then 

assembling. The organization was designated Army Task Force 201, and the 

plan-Emergency Plan 201 (EP 201)--ostensibly was prepared under the aegis 

of the U.S. Army, Europe (USAREUR). ATF 201 was composed af five 

“forces”: Force Alpha, including ATF headquarters and one airborne battle 

group from the 24th Infantry Division; Force Bravo, a second airborne battle 

group from the 24th, to be deployed as circumstances warranted; Force Charlie, support units drawn from bases in Germany and France and styled the 

201st Logistics Command; Force Delta, other support units which were to be 

sealifted; and Force Echo, a medium tank battalion which was to be sealifted 

from Bremerhaven, Germany. Each of these forces had its own operational 

plans; for instance, the 24th Infantry Division had Plan GRANDIQS, which saw 

chiefly to the deployment of Forces Alpha and GRANDIOS had a series of 

graduated ale&-AMBER, AZURE, GREEN, and which the airborne 

battle group could be readied, marshalled at and deployed. It 

was expected that the battle groups would leave ermany ready for a parachute assault and use Adana Air Base, Incirlik, T forward staging 
13 

area. As time passed and these contingency plans took shape, Army planners 

had become convinced that there was “a better than even chance” that EP 201 

would amount to something more than an exercise, but the evolution of planning also meant that security requirements increased to the degree that coordination between the elements of the Army Task Force was made more difficult. The same may be said of the coordination between the planners from the 

various military services. Whether at some juncture in the joint planning 

scheme for Operation BLUEBAT sufficient liaison existed between the many 

parts of the contingency force is unknown, but subsequent events imply that it 

did n0t.l’ 

All of the services had created provisional or temporary organizations to 

deal with Middle Eastern contingencies. Air and naval forces were more adept 

than the Army at forming and working with such organizations, however; 

their styles of operation and equipment permitted them to do so more readily. 

But aside from very good operational reasons why the Army was uncomfortable with the task force concept, there was another. The Army was at that 

moment attempting to create a permanent organization in the United States 

specially designed to undertake the very kind of mission which had been 

assigned to Army Task Force 201. But only the headquarters of such a forcethe XVIII Airborne Corps-existed as yet. That a special task force had to be 

established in the European Command in lieu of something more permanent 

in the United States told much about how far the Army had to go before it 

convinced the JCS that it had created an organization as flexible as the Air 

Force’s Composite Air Strike Force was supposed to be. 

Very gradually over a period of several months? a powerful and complex 

military organization had been built for use in the Middle East. Beyond that, 

little attention had been paid to what specific missions the force might be 

called upon to accomplish. All the plans made the assumption that deployment 

meant combat, but early in the year, Admiral Holloway was asking his 

planners to consider something decidedly less- the restoration or maintenance 

of governments. Political judgments on whether a government could-or 

should-be sustained by the deployment of an American task force were quite 

beyond Admiral Holloway’s purview, even though some judgments might conceivably have affected both the composition and the mission of his force. The 

cast of military planning thus far had been in the direction of a sizable force, 

capable of quick dispatch, and innocent of the political nuances of the region 

where it might be employed. The opportunity to fashion a military force which 

corresponded closely to the demands such nuances might make upon it was in 

any case long past by early 1958. The convoluted birth of Operation BLUEBAT 

seems to accord with Walter LaFeber’s more general view concerning this 

period of American foreign policy: 

The problem would always be less a proper choice of the military means than a wise 

understanding of the objectives. In postwar American foreign policy, the debate over 

the nature of the Communist threat usually lagged behind the debate over which 

weapons to use against the threat.f” 
On 1 February 1958 Presidents Nasser af Egypt and al-Quwwatli of Syria 

announced the merger of their two countries with Yemen to form the United 

Arab Republic. For the Western powers and their friends in the Middle East, 

this was ominaus news; for the advocates of Arab nationalism, it was a godsend. Throughout Lebanon, popular demonstrations filled the streets. In the 

predominantly Muslim cities of Tripoli, Sidon, and Tyre, shops were closed for 

the day. In Beirut, the Maqasid society, which supervised the education of 

local Muslim children, declared a celebratory strike which released fifteen 

thousand students for the day. Little more than a week had passed before a 

delegation from the National Union Front had traveled to Damascus to congratulate the Syrian government on the formation of the UAR. This was the 

beginning of a pilgrimage of Lebanese to Damascus during the spring which 

one account places at more than three hundred thousand people. This outpouring of jubilation was inereased when, on 24 February, President Nasser himself arrived unexpectedly in Damascus. Among the throngs of admirers who 

gathered to see the Egyptian president were SB’ib SalZm, KamZl JunblH$, and 

several other prominent figures in the anti-Chamoun movement. 

This series of events could only have served to hearten the opposition in 

Lebanon: the formation of the UAR lent an air of authenticity to Pan-Arabism 

which had been lacking and so also made opposition claims.against the Chamoun government more importunate. The government’s answer to the now 

increasing demonstrations and opposition manifestos calling for Chamoun’s 

resignation was intransigence. A ban was placed on demonstrations; it was 

widely ignored. Chamoun’s Council of Ministers asked the Chamber of Deputies for authority to suppress foreign propaganda deemed harmful to the interests of the state. In reaction to the papering of the city streets with pictures of 

President Nasser, similar posters of President Chamoun appeared, with the 

explanation that these were the work of his supporters. Chamoun himself 

refused to make any statement disavowing an intent to seek another presidential term; on the contrary, the president’s supporters in the Chamber of Deputies began lobbying for the long-expected constitutional amendment which 

would allow Chamoun to continue in office. 

The popular demonstrations of February grew into riots during March and 

April. In Tyre more than 150 people were arrested in less than a week, and by 

the end of March that city was in the hands of the army. The government 

accused Syria of assisting the insurrectionaries with arms and technical 

advice, and protested Cairo’s nearly constant barrage of what Robert McClinto&, the American ambassador to Lebanon, called ‘“audio-visual aggression.” 

President Chamoun, meanwhile, was reported to have told the American, British, and French ambassadars of his desire to seek another term. And on 10 

April an ardent Chamoun member of the Chamber of Deputies armouneed his 

intention to move soon for a constitutional amendment on presidential succession.“” 

It is difficult to see at this distance how the tragedy that followed could 

have been averted: its causes were long-standing and deeply ingrained, in 
15 

Lebanon”s modern history. The civil war was also partly a reflection of turmoil 

in a region which had for the greater part of the century been merely an 

appendage of one great power or another. The forces inside Lebanon felt themselves to some degree to be part of this larger controversy and, indeed, activist 

extensions of it. Each group saw itself as possessing strength greater than its 

own actual power inside Lebanon, and by the same token, external powers 

viewed the fortunes of their Lebanese supporters as their own. Such complications, along with subsequent events, gave the outbreak of general violence an 

air of inevitability. Observers close to the scene later agreed that by the beginning of May 1958 there existed in Lebanon a climate in which the most dangerous strife was about to appear; all that was needed was an act of some 

“symbolic significance.” Such an act occurred in the early hours of 8 May, 

when a popular, anti-Chamoun editor of the newspaper al-Telegraph, Nasib 

al-Matni, was assassinated in Beirut.“l 

Matni’s assassination incited an immediate convulsion of violence more 

severe than Lebanon had yet seen. In Tripoli’s first three days of rioting there 

were more than 120 casualties. Strikes and counterstrikes, both local and general, were called by various groups. In the streets of Beirut the army, the gendarmerie, and the armed members of the pro-Chamoun Parti Pop&ire Syrien 

all contested NUF street fighters for possession of numerous barricades. Both 

the government and the opposition attempted to take control of events. The 

government imposed censorship and curfews in the disputed areas and made 

plans for the deportation of potentially seditious foreigners-mostly Syrians. 

After hearing of the casualties in Tripoli on 9 May, the leaders of the NUF 

agreed that the time had come to mount an insurrection. In fact, events had 

overtaken leaders on both sides, and their decisions merely ratified those 

already taken by their supporters in the streets.l” 

Three days after the now-celebrated murder, President Chamoun hinted to 

American Ambassador Robert McClintock that the government might ask for 

the Marines. When KamZ.1 Junbl@‘s Druze followers attacked the president’s 

palace at Bayt al-Din on 13 May, Chamoun summoned the American, British, 

and French ambassadors and put them on notice that a request for foreign 

military assistance might be forthcoming. By the next day, McClintock had 

been empowered to tell Chamoun that the United States would entertain such 

a request, provided certain conditions were met.. Lebanon was to file a complaint ‘<against external interference in its internal affairs” with the United 

Nations Security Council. Further, Lebanon was to seek public support from 

the governments of “at least some Arab states,” and finally, in the event of 

American intervention, the government of Lebanon should understand that it 

had nothing to do with the presidential succession question.J6 

Doubtless Ambassador McClintock was obliged to stand by the Chamoun 

government in any case, but his cables to Washington likely had been colored 

by an attack on the U.S. Information Service Library the previous day. 

According to one witness, demonstrators ravaged the contents of the building, 

but took care to first remove,them to the street before they were set afire. No 
16 

damage was done either to the building or to people in it. Yet, this benign 

account by an NUF sympathizer would not have been so convincing to an 

American ambassador at the time (had he known of it), to his superiors at the 

Department of State, or to the Joint Chiefs of St,aff. The attack on the USIS, 

when considered along with the Tripoli riots, the new fighting in Beirut, and 

President Chamoun’s assessment of the situation, must have painted a dark 

picture indeed in official Washington. There was a noticeable, immediate response.a7 

On the same day as this latest conversation between Chamoun and MeClintack, Brigadier General Wade received orders from the Fleet Marine Force, 

Atlantic, to transfer his headquarters of the 2d Provisional Marine Force from 

Camp Lejeune to the Mediterranean. General Wade was on. his way by the 

next day, 14 May, and within a week he was on board the IVount ,34cMinley off 

the coast of Crete with the Sixth Fleet’s amphibious task force commander, 

Rear Adm. Robert W. Cavenagh. Here they were joined on 21 May by Brigadier J. W. C. Williams of the staff of the British Middle East Land Forces, and 

on the following day, by Brig. Gen. David Gray of the 24th Infantry Division 

In the staff meetings that ensued it was decided that one of several variations 

of CINCSPECOMME OPLAN 1-58 would be used in the event of actual 

deployment.48 

While General Wade moved his staff to the Mediterranean, the United 

States had already begun to send anti-riot, arms and ammunition into Beirut 

aboard U.S. Air Force transport aircraft, and on 17 May the State Department 

announced that tanks were also being sent to Lebanon. At the same time, 

according to one press report, a U.S. cargo ship (presumably from the Sixth 

Fleet) had picked up fourteen American citizens from the city of Tripoli, where 

serious riating continued.“g And in Germany, major elements of Army Task 

Force 201 were placed on alert. Forces Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie all were put 

on notice. Force Alpha, then the 1st Battle Group, 503d Airborne Infantry, 

marshalled and deployed to Erding and Fhrstenfeldbruck airfields, went so far 

as to rig for a heavy drop and fully load transport aircraft. After a week-long 

alert, the 503d made an exercise drop near Munich. 50 These milit,ary activities 

gave substance to Ambassador McClintock’s announcement on 14 May, that 

“We are determined to help this government to maintain internal security.“ji 

Even as these moves were being made, Lebanon’s foreign minister, Dr. 

Charles Malik, was preparing to press charges of subversion against the United Arab Republic before the United Nations Security Council. Another official 

complaint was lodged simultaneously before the Arab League, but Dr. Malik 

and his government appeared to have little faith in the ability of that regional 

body to settle Lebanon’s difficulties. Malik did not attend the League meeting, 

but went instead directly to New York; and when the League proposed a compromise settlement, Lebanon rejected it summarily.52 President Chamoun and 

Foreign Minister Malik apparently were more interested in seeing the question 

come before the United Nations; quite apart from what course of action the 

Security Council might decide upon, this action also satisfied one of the pre- 
17 

conditions for American military support earlier described to Chamoun by 

Ambassador McClintock. The Security Council addressed the Lebanon question in early June and quickly resolved to dispatch observers to the scene. By 

19 June the United Nations Observer Group in Lebanon (UNOGIL) was in 

place, charged “to insure that there is no illegal infiltration of personnel or 

supply of arms or other material across the Lebanese border.“s3 

These developments were important, not only for obvious diplomatic reasons, but also because if UNOGIL’s mission failed! the United States would be 

less reluctant to intervene. But while the Chairman of the JCS, Air Force Gen. 

Nathan Twining, announced 1 July that ‘we are prepared for any eventuality-all out war or limited war, right now,” the dispatch of UNOGIL and its 

subsequent reports minimized the seriousness of the crisis.“l UNOGIL’s first 

report on 1 July, for instance, detailed the results of an inspection of a large 

opposition camp in the Chouf. Only light arms of various nationalities were 

observed. As to the insurrectionaries themselves, UNOGIL reported that it was 

impossible “to establish if any of the armed men had infiltrated from the outside; there is little doubt, however, that the vast majority were in any case 

Lebanese.“55 Whether the United States government was unsure about the 

“competency” of UNOGIL, as one author has claimed, the group’s work did 

seem to contribute to a dissipation of the high tensions of May.“6 

In contrast to Lebanon, neighboring Iraq posed no anxieties for the United 

States. Iraq was squarely in the Western camp at this time, so that when trouble came from this country, the surprise was all the greater. There, in the early 

hours of 14 July, King Faisal and Crown Prince Abdul Illah were assassinated 

in a coup d’etat led by Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim al’Kassim, a nationalist and 

UAR sympathizer. At the same time, rumors were heard that another coup 

was in the making against King Hussein of Jordan.57 As the news spread 

throughout Lebanon, there was a palpable heightening of tensions: the opposition celebrated, and President Chamoun became fearful that he might be the 

next head of state to be deposed. He lost no time in summoning Ambassador 

McClintock to ask for military intervention-and this time he insisted that it 

arrive within forty-eight hours.5x 

News of the Iraqi coup reached Washington shortly after midnight, 14 July, 

and by 0200 the Joint Chiefs of Staff had been alerted by Pentagon duty officers. McClintock’s cable, transmitting Charnoun’s invocation of the Eisenhower Doctrine, arrived later but was on hand for the day-long round of meetings between President Eisenhower and his advisors. At 0930 Admiral Burke, 

as executive agent for the JCS, warned Admiral Holloway in London that the 

Specified Command might soon be activated. As the meetings in the White 

House wore on, participants seemed little disposed toward any action other 

than unilateral intervention. Secretary of State Dulles elevated the immediate 

problem to a matter of national strategic principle, insisting that the time had 

come for the United States to meet head-on the challenges of the new Middle 

East. During the day, a worldwide American military alert had been declared, 

and the JCS Chairman, General Twining, was confident that the Soviet Union 
18 

would not dare risk interfering with the coming operation. “The Russians 

aren’t going to jump us,” Twining told Eisenhower, “if they do jump us, if they 

do come in, they couldn’t pick a better time, because we’ve got them over the 

whing whang and they know it.” With this kind of advice prevailing, few other 

options of American policy were discussed. When Speaker of the House Sam 

Rayburn suggested that the crisis might be only a civil war in which the United States had little business, it became obvious that such a notion irritated 

Eisenhower.“” At 1823, 14 July, Eisenhower directed that the first echelons of 

the American intervention force arrive at Beirut by 0900 on the following day, 

when he planned to announce the action on national television. At 1830 Admiral Burke conveyed the president’s order to Admiral Holloway. The Specified 

Command had been given less than fifteen hours to establish a beachhead at 

Beirut.60 

The dispositions of the U.S. Sixth Fleet at this time reflect well how unexpected these events were. Although Chamoun wanted troops within forty-eight 

hours, decisions later taken in Washington called for the first American echelons to arrive in Lebanon much earlier. In fact, the fleet was steaming away 

from the Levant toward Athens and Nice for shore leave, and several elements 

were more than twenty hours away from Beirut. Of the three Marine battalion 

landing teams earmarked for the operation, only Lieutenant Colonel Hadd’s 2d 

Battalion of the 2d Marine Regiment was sufficiently close to Beirut, and Capt. 

Victor McCrea’s Amphibious Transport Squadron 6, of which Hadd’s unit was 

a part, was lacking the LSD PlymouCh Bock. The LSD contained the battalion’s artillery battery, its heavy equipment, two of the battalion’s normal complement of five M-48 tanks, shore party detachments, and an underwater 

demolitions team; it was on the way to Malta for repairs. Another vessel of this 

kind with the same load, the LSD Fort Snelling, normally served the 3d Battafion of the 6th Regiment as part of Amphibious Squadron 2. The Fort SPzeZling 

was near Rhodes, but even at flank speed the ship could not catch up to Hadd’s 

marines in time for a coordinated landing. 61 Political requirements and the 

disIocations of the fleet meant, therefore, that the original Marine plan for 

BLUEBAT could not be effected. It was meant that three battalion landing 

teams should arrive at Beirut simultaneously, two along the Khalde beach, 

south of the city, and one other northeast of the city at Hollywood Beach, in 

order to take up blocking positions to seal the city off from any external threat. 

Obviously, now the Marine contingent would be committed piecemeal into an 

altogether confused-and therefore very dangerous-situation. 

When the order to execute BLUEBAT reached McCrea’s transport squadron 

from CINCSPECOMME at 0400, the squadron lay 120 miles off the Lebanese 

coast. The five vessels of the squadron quickly began to make for their objective. Two LSTs in the squadron, the Traverse County and the Walum-th. 

County, were forced to run at maximum speed to make the deadline. The rest of 

the vessels, including McCrea’s command ship, the attack transport Tacanic, 

made flank speed. As the force closed on its objective, Lieutenant Colonel 

Hadd’s marines made their preparations. Rations, ammunition, and body 

armor were passed out to the men, and maps of the area were ferried from one 
Map 3. Dispositions of Marine linits 14 July 1 Qm 
20 

vessel to another by helicopter. By these expedients, the squadron arrived in 

time to put the advance parties of marines ashore while President Eisenhower 

spoke nearly six thousand miles away. 

It is instructive to consider just how little Lieutenant Colonel Hadd knew 

about what awaited him when he led the 2d Battalion into Lebanon. Clearly, 

his uncertainty had demanded that he plan for the worst: had he not expected 

opposition, it is doubt.fuI that he would have issued ammunition and body 

armor to his men. He knew well enough that he was required to establish a 

beachhead, move several hundred yards inshore and seize the international 

airport-. Later, circumstances permitting, he was to take his battalion northward in armored column six miles to the Port of Beirut and establish control 

there also. But he surely did not know how the Army of Lebanon would react 

to these proceedings: perhaps Hadd assumed that the Lebanese Army would 

support-or at least not hinder-his operation, but neither the president of 

Lebanon, nor the commander in chief of the Lebanese Army, General ShehZb, 

nor the American ambassador could have told Hadd that. Immediately before 

the landing, General ShehZb told Ambassador McClintock that while he was 

confident that t,he opposition would take no steps to prevent the American 

landing, he could not be so sure about the Lebanese Army. Hours before, some 

of Sheh?&‘s officers had proposed taking over the government and resisting 

the landing of American troops. Hadd knew nothing of this, nor could he. 

McClintock had tried to radio the Sixth Fleet but failed to make contact. And 

because radio silence was being observed, it would have been difficult to pass 

news to the battalion commander anyway. Later communications passing 

between Hadd and others had to be conveyed by local phone. As to the 

opposition-Hadd called them the “rebels’‘-there was little chance of identifying them. Even native Lebanese had difficulty discovering the allegiances of 

the many armed civilians in and around Beirut at that time. Nor could Hadd 

have been very well informed of the positions known to be in opposition hands 

at this early stage in the intervention. The road Hadd was scheduled to take 

toward his secondary objective at the port cut directly through the main opposition stronghold in Beirut, the Arab quarter known as the Basta. Furthermore, judging from original plans, the notion of defending the city by blocking 

off the main roads seemed ta imply that the real threat was going to reveal 

itself in the rather conventional form of a foreign, communist-dominated 

army, probably from Syria, marching from Damascus to invest Beirut. But 

what is finally more startling is the impression that no one, either in the Lebanese or American high commands, was much better informed than Lieutenant Colonel Hadd.“l 

Within twenty minutes of the first, landing, all four rifle-companies of the 2d 

Battalion had come ashore. Company F had landed first in tracked craft; 

Companes G and H Ianded next, followed by the reserve, Company E. Their 

supplies remained in their LSTs, however, for these had run aground on a 

sandbar a short distance from the waterline. The presence of this obstacle, in 

addition to the very loose beach sand which made wheeled traffic nearly 

impassible, testified to the poor quality of beach intelligence available to the 

22 

landing force. Even so, the problems on Red Beach, as the landing site was 

now called, would not have been insurmountable had the squadron had its 

normal complement of heavy equipment. As it was, the LSD Fort: SnelCing did 

not arrive off the beach until 2000, and it was not until the next morning that 

supplies began to move ashore smoothly. By that time, a great deal had happened.@ 

As Hadd was seeing the last of his battalion get ashore, the local American 

naval attache arrived at Red Beach with word that the American ambassador 

was asking the marines to re-embark and land instead at the Port of Beirut. 

This unusual request had been inspired by General Shehgb, who feared that 

Lebanon was “on the brink of disaster.“63 Disaster or not, Lieutenant Colonel 

Hadd had no brief to change his own orders and saw to it instead that the 

naval attache met with Captain McCrea aboard the Taconic. McCrea refused 

to alter the landing at all, and shortly thereafter he was upheld by a signal 

from Admiral Brown, Sixth Fleet commander. Only thirty minutes after this 

exchange, yet another emissary arrived from the American embassy with a 

different request. President Chamoun had received word that an attempt was 

about to be made on his life by the Lebanese Army, and he was no’w demanding that marines and tanks be sent immediately to guard the presidential 

palace. Hadd was having nane of this. As he later wrote, “the beachhead 

perimeter for the BLT was extended for over 9,500 yards, whereas a normal 

battalion frontage is usually 600 to 1,500 yards. In my judgment, the BLT was 

extended to the maximum and the situation was still too obscure to risk fragmenting the command.““4 Ambassador McClintock was disappointed, as no 

doubt was President Charnoun. McClintoek later scored the marines for their 

“extremely inflexible orders,” but it is doubtful that Hadd would have agreed 

to guard the president even if he had had flexible orders.65 What is more certain, though, is that the sudden appearance of marines around the presidential 

palace would have caused an outbreak of fighting, because the palace was very 

close to the edge of the Basta. 

By 1600 Hadd”s Company G had moved to the international airport and 

taken control, evicting civilians from the terminal and halting air traffic. Here 

the marines first encountered troops from the Lebanese Army, who offered no 

resistance. At 1640 the American air attache arrived with Cal. Toufic Salem 

the chief of staff of the Lebanese Army, and with Hadd agreed that the local 

airport guards would cooperate with the marines in cordoning off the area. Air 

traffic was restored but remained under Marine control for the time beingsc6 

The lack of opposition to the American landings was a promising sign, and 

the 2d Battalion, after posting perimeter guards and sending out local patrols, 

passed a calm night at the airport. But the battalion was still alone in 

Lebanon: no reinforcements would arrive before early the next morning, when 

the 3d Battalion of the 6th Regiment, commanded by Lt. Cal. Robert M. Jenkins, would land at Red Beach, Perhaps the placid scene was merely an illusion: no American force had actually entered the city, and altbough General 

Shehab, Captain McCrea, and Lieutenant Colonel Hadd discussed the situa- 

24 

tion later that evening at the embassy, the question of the Lebanese Army’s 

response was still unresolved. These talks. seemed to indicate that Lebanese 

and American military officials were moving toward a modus uivendi, but the 

opposition had taken no action beyond t,he occasional bellicose public announcement. Sa’ib SalZm, a leading and highly respected National Union 

Front member in the Basta, had already called on his supporters to “‘dfive any 

Americans landing in Lebanon back into the sea.“67 Nothing had happened 

yet to say that this was impossible. Indeed, the only aspect of the intervention 

clear so far was that this was not at all a typical military operation. The 

government of Lebanon spoke with too many voices: while the president 

favored the American presence, his armed civilian supporters seemed more 

committed to Chamoun’s continuance in office than did the army and so, presumably, more amenable to the landing of the marines. The opposition was 

also less than conventional: no lines of resistance manned by uniformed soldiers appeared to face the marines. Instead, the countryside and the cities were 

dotted with enclaves of lightly-armed, poorly organized insurrectionaries who 

so far had shown no disposition to expand, and nowhere did the level of violence speak of the kind of emergency which President Chamoun had declared 

implicitly when he invoked the Eisenhower Doctrine. The situation, in all its 

ambiguity, was summed up when a Pentagon spokesman told reporters after 

the first day that the situation in Lebanon was “not war, but like war.“@ 

Perhaps these uncertainties accounted in some way for what transpired on 

the second day of the intervention, 16 July, which began with the arrival at 

the airport of Admiral Holloway at 0400. The presence of CINCSPECOMME 

with the forward element of his contingency force testified to the unique direction the operation had taken, and it set the tone for the rest of the day: the 

most dramatic-not to say critical-events would involve the most senior task 

force officers. As Lt. Cal. Robert Jenkins brought his battalion (the 3d of the 

6th) ashore at 0730, the main business now at hand was to get Hadd’s battalion to the Port of Beirut. General Wade came ashore at 0800 and before leaving 

for the embassy alerted Hadd that’ he would start his column northward by 

0930. Upon arriving at the embassy, however, General Wade found that General ShehZb was still resisting the idea of moving the marines into the city 

proper and was still anxious that his soldiers might try to stop the marines. 

ShehEb’s fears seemed realized when, as General Wade returned to Hadd’s 

position at the airport, he saw several Lebanese tanks forming a roadblock. 

Soldiers there told Wade they had orders to prevent the Americans from entering the city, though they were unsure as to whether they would actually open 

fire. Wade sped on to the airport, where Admirals Holloway and Yeager (the 

commander of the Fast Carrier Strike Force} arrived shortly. As Hadd’s battalion finally began moving toward the city, the two admirals and the Marine 

general decided to go to the embassy. Unknown to them, Ambassador McClintack and General Shehab were on their way to the airport themselves, and the 

two official cars passed each other en route. The ambassador’s car gave chase 

and caught up just at the roadblock, where Hadd’s battalion now faced the 

Lebanese tanks. There ensued an impromptu conference, where arrangements 

were made to have the Lebanese Army escort the marines into town Cstu- 
25 

diously avoiding any contact with the Basta) and thereafter to insure that the 

American and Lebanese military forces cooperated as much as possible in 

their operations. This done, Hadd’s battalion moved out once more, but this 

time with Lebanese jeeps at intervals in the American column, the whole being 

led by two official cars containing the American ambassador to Lebanon, the 

general in chief of the Lebanese Army, the American task force commander, 

the commander of the Fast Carrier Strike Force, and the commander of the 

Marine task force. It was one of the more unusual politico-military processions 

in American history, and its progress marked the passing of the crisis of the 

American intervention in Lebanon.69 

With two Marine battalion landing teams already ashore and two more due 

to arrive by 19 July, the dimensions of the U.S. intervention were becoming 

clearer to observers in Lebanon but its objectives were not. President Eisenhower had said that he wanted no “further sizable increases” in forces, but the 

four BLTs amounted to six thousand men alone and a good part of the U.S. 

Sixth Fleet lay offshore.7’1 The Army contingents had yet to arrive. Local circumstances certainly warranted no more ground troops. The joint LebaneseAmerican jeep patrols that began on the evening of 16 July had calmed the 

city.:] There had been a few instances of harassing fire around the airport, but 

only once had the marines been obliged to open fire themselves. And after two 

marines had lost their way and been taken captive in the Basta, they were 

released unharmed after a lecture on American imperialism. Their arms were 

returned a little later.:” The leaders of the National Union Front took stock of 

the general situation: the presidential elections were little more than a week 

away, and for one leader, this fact alone explained the presence of the Americans. “The opposition has always maintained that. President Chamoun would 

play every card in the pack to stay in power,” he told a Western reporter. As he 

pointed toward Red Beach, he added, “There is the proof.” Whatever the ulrimate aims of the opposition had been, it was evident by 18 July that it would 

be impossible to achieve those aims without the approval of the Americans. As 

for the Americans themselves, one correspondent commented, “Now that 

[they] have established their bridgehead in Lebanon-and effectively secured 

the country from a Syrian invasion that never was-the best course might be 

to sit down with some ice packs and think out a realistic objective for the operation. “7.3 There is no evidence that this advice was heeded. 

The call from the Chief of Naval Operations on the afternoon of 14 July to 

Admiral Holloway in London (where it was nearly midnight), activating the 

Specified Command, was also the signal for the Army elements of Operation 

BLUEBAT to prepare for deployment to the Middle East. At the same time, the 

CNO, still acting as the JCS’ executive agent, promptly made another call to 

General Lauris Nor&ad, the United States Commander in Chief, Europe 

(USCINCEUR), ordering him to 

bring one battle group and airlift therefor to a state of readiness to enable their arrival 

within 24 hours of execution order on Beirut airfield assuming it is safely held, or 

within 36 hours if airdrop is required and to be prepared to follow with second battle 

group.T4 
26 

The putting together of a special military force which existed only on paper 

a few hours before is a business with its own peculiar complications. Between 

the planning and execution of any military operation there lie opportunities 

for miscarriage which often have little to do with the plans Less than perfect 

plans embody risks in addition to the play of ill fortune, however, while many 

times plans are considered perfect until they prove otherwise. Such was the 

Chief of Naval Operations’ assumption when he sent the terse message to 

General Norstad. It was a message that concealed a host of practical difficulties. 

After receiving the admiral’s message, General Norstad notified his immediate subordinates in the European theater, Generals Frank Everest of US. 

Air Forces Europe (USAFEI and Henry Hodes of U.S. Army Europe (USAREUR). General Hodes had already put the 24th Infantry Division on notice 

that an alert might be in the offing because of the revolt in Iraq. Hodes’ warning caught all the divisional staff officers who were to make up the staff for 

the task force preparing to go on a field exercise near Bad T%z. Moreover, the 

battle group of the 503d Airborne Infantry which was to act as Force Alpha 

was getting ready for the same exercise and so was in no condition to reconstitut,e itself in time to go to Lebanon Thus, a decision was made to substitute a 

sister unit, the 1st Battle Group of the 187th Airborne Infantry, as a new Force 

Alpha in the event of an actual alert order? 

Shortly after midnight, the division received another call from USAREUR 

headquarters which relayed enough information to cause the declaration of a 

higher state of division readiness- code-named AMBER-at 0200,15 July. Until 

that time, warnings from USAREUR were merely rumors. Now, AMBER required the division’s staff officers to dust off their plans, find key officers (most 

of whom probably were close at hand already}, and begin assessing the state 

of the divisionas equipmentY6 

For several hours after his first hint that Operation BLUEBAT might be 

ordered, it was the business of Brig. Gen. David Gray, the assistant division 

commander of the 24th and the commander now of Army Task Force 201> to 

make his task force operational as quickly as prudence ahowed. Perhaps even 

before AMBER alert was declared, the procedures for marshalling and deploying the task force which looked sufficient on paper were beginning to seem 

superficial. There was first the problem of actually assembling the force. The 

battle group for Force Alpha was to be augmented to 110 percent of its full 

strength. Because the battle groups were maintained usually at less than their 

authorized strength, the disruption caused by rapid reinforcement at the 

expense of the rest, of the division was all the greater.s7 In search of the best 

available officers, for instance, General Gray was given the dossiers of all the 

division’s officers and told to take his pick, both to fill out his officer complement and to build his brigade-size staff.78 No doubt the same rule was followed 

with regard to the most experienced noncommissioned officers. By this mefhod, a later report calculated, the staff of the 24th Infantry Division was “rendered almost inoperative until replacements could be secured and trained.“7g 
27 

The replacement question was a crucial one, because for the men of Army Task 

Force 201 the move to the Middle East was to be a “permanent change of 

station,” meaning that there was every possibility that they would not return 

to their old assignments once they had completed their missions. Still, the 

haste to deploy was such that some officers and men actually went to Lebanon 

without orders.“” 

The marshalling of all Alpha forces at their stations became official with 

the receipt of another call from USAREUR headquarters at 0430 which 

directed an increase in the division’s readiness-this time to a status known as 

AZURE. While not technically an alert, AZURE did nevertheless require the cancellation of passes and leaves and begin the process of bringing task force 

units up to deployment strength through transfers of men and equipment from 

other units in the division. After inspections, for instance, the 187th principally drew upon the 1st Battle Group, 21st Airborne Infantry, for any extra 

men or equipment.“’ 

Shortly after AZURE was declared, a division muster alert was sounded. So 

much of the division was now involved in some way with the launching of the 

task force, this was just as well. For example, during the alert in May, when 

the task force had marshalled and moved to Fsrstenfeldbruck airfield, it was 

found that the task force ought to be relieved from certain duties associated 

with the mobilization. Immediately after that alert was cancelled, a series of 

critiques within the command recommended certain revisions in Plan GRANDIOS, and one of these was the establishment of a provisional support force. 

The force was to be commanded by the division’s artillery commander, Brig. 

Gen. George S. Speidel. “Support Force Speidel,” so called, was charged wit,h 

seeing to the marshalling and loading of Task Force 201, including the establishment of operation and control centers at the assembly areas and the airfields, and to coordinate the t,raffic in between. Forty-five minutes after this 

newest division muster alert was announced, General Speidel was briefing his 

“Departure Airfield Control Group,” which had been taken out of the 1st Battle 

Group, 21st Infantry. This battle group, with a Heavy Drop Platoon attached, 

was to work out of FGrstenfeldbruck airfield for the remainder of the operation. 

Speidel’s “Marshalling Area Control Group” was to be taken from another 

unit not scheduled to go on the operation, the 1st Howitzer Battalion of the 

13th Field Artillery. In sum, the creation of Army Task Force 201 required the 

24th Infantry Division to cannibalize itself. The shock to combat effectiveness 

was immediate, considerable, and long-lasting. By one estimate, the division’s 

capability to carry out its primary mission was diminished by as much as 60 

percent during this operation. Neither was it possible to recover very quickly 

from such a shock: two months after the operation began, the division still had 

not recouped.8z 

The subsequent declaration of a GREEN alert at 0545 hardly took the division off its guard. Having been in some state of readiness since at least midnight, the division had anticipated the time when the GREEN alert would be 

declared. Under GREEN, the Alpha element of the task force was to execute all 
28 

of its plan short of actually going to FBrstenfeldbruck. So there was perhaps a 

natural tendency of the division’s leaders to get slightly ahead of themselves. 

The advanced elements of Support Force SpeideI were not to move to F&stenfeldbruck until the GREEK alert, for instance, but General Speidel already had 

seen the Heavy Drop Platoon off for the airfield a good forty-five minutes 

before the alert order arrived.“” 

USAREUR headquarters had instructed the division that it had twentyfour hours to get the task force to Lebanon after the final alert-called 

PCRPLE was declared. PURPLE required “all aspects of Plan GRANDIOS tobe executed,‘” and so while the task force may have been ready to move to the airfield 

early on the morning of 15 July, the division was told to hold the task force at 

the marshalling area to insure that the operation remained covert until the 

marines had made good their landing later that day. Apparently, a successful 

Marine landing at Beirut was to be the signal for higher headquarters to 

declare PURPLE. At 1415, PURPLE was declared for the Alpha element of the 

task force, the 1st Battle Group of tne f87th, and the program of deployment 

began.“l 

It is in the execution of this part of Operation BLUEBAT that the difficulties 

of joint operations-especially joint contingency operations which usually are 

hastily mounted-can best be seen. For a time early in the sequence of notification not only the Joint Chiefs were involved in issuing directions to the various commands, but also the Chiefs of Staff of both the Army and the Air 

Force and the U.S. European Command. Even as the Specified Command was 

being activated, the JCS had to take action to see that the US. National Military Representative at SHAPE was kept abreast of military developments in 

the theater.85 Inasmuch as it was estimated that the Army’s only deployable 

European division was reduced in effectiveness by 60 percent by the move into 

Lebanon, it is interesting to note that contingency procedures did not demand 

that the Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers in Europe, be automatically 

informed of deployment details .X6 At lower echelons the situation was different: high security classifications on such plans as BLUEBAT and GRANDIOS 

prevented most people from knowing enough about what they contained actually to make the plans work when the time came. Several staff officers later 

complained that these restrictions impeded planning and made execution even 

more vexatious than it would have been otherwise.87 

When Force Alpha left Gablingen Kaserne near Augsburg for Furstenfeldbruck airfield, the battle group entered the realm of joint operations. What had 

been up until that time a smooth operation for the 187th quickly became 

confused. Despite a long period of preparation under the aegis of CINCSPECOMME which included several joint conferences, the coordination between the Army and the Air Force left a great deal to be desired. The general 
29 

structure of the Army Task Force had been known at least since the previous 

May and probably was discussed by joint planners as early as February. Yet, 

on the day of the actual emergency two significant shortcomings in preparation were discovered: first, the “configuration” of the task force-the dimensions and number of loads to be carried by the Air Force-had not been 

determined; and second, USAFE had not informed the task force of the 

number and type of aircraft actually available for the movement.Ba This last 

piece of information was not conveyed to the task force until 1430 on the day 

of the deployment, when Col. C. W. McCafferty arrived at Fi;rstenfeldbruck for a conference at the Army Command Post.8g It was at Fiirstenfeldbruck airfield that the configurations for loading the task force were first 

calculated, although not with finality: nearly every element of the task force 

had underestimated its load .90 The truck convoy from Gablingen had been 

loaded in reverse, and because there was much re-rigging to be done, the 

Parachute Maintenance Company which had actually left for the airfield quite 

early could not begin its operations until the last truck arrived. Complicating 

matters further, the make-up of the airlift kept changing, forcing the task force 

to change its loading schemes.9’ Finally, there does not seem to have been any 

thought given to how the dimensions of the airlift might affect aircraft 

availability. At the time, just how long it would take aircraft to get to Turkey, 

unload, and return to Germany for subsequent loads had not been estimated.9” 

Even the most sophisticated planning could not have anticipated every 

problem, however. That is why it was important to have provided for joint 

consultations at every critical juncture of the operation. At FGrstenfeldbruck 

airfield on the afternoon of 15 July, there was no such thing. Colonel McCafferty was the senior air liaison officer present. g3 As early as 24 June, division 

planners had asked the Air Force for a full-time liaison officer from the 322d 

Air Division, the combat cargo unit that had been assigned the airlift mission. 

In a compromise, the Air Force had promised to make monthly liaison visits 

to the division; but by the time of the emergency, no liaison officers had yet 

appeared.gd Perhaps even more important, no aerial port team to assist in the 

loading operation had been assigned. 3j The soldiers of the 187th were pressed 

into service; those not “re-configuring,” rigging, or loading aircraft spent a 

damp night on the tarmac near the aircraft. 96 The entire force had arrived at 

the airfield by 1705, but the loading operation took until 0300 the following 

morning to complete.gT 

At 0100 on the morning of 16 July, Force Alpha encountered yet another 

obstacle. A question arose as to whether U.S. military aircraft carrying combat 

troops to the Middle East would be allowed to fly over certain countries en 

route. 98 Once again, available documents suggest that this was the first time 

that this problem had been considered. According to one report, “previous 

guidance from the JCS on foreign overflight and clearance rights for the 

deployment of forces allocated to CINCSPECOMME has repeatedly indicated 

that wherein such privileges were not obtained, they would be ignored.” EMy 

italics]99 But in fact prohibitions were forthcoming from some governments 

and in fact were not ignored. The first echelons of Force Alpha had been 
die\ 

sties\ 
31 

airborne for about three hours en route to Turkey when it was learned that 

Greece had denied overflight permission. Greece’s action immediately added 

two hours to the flying time of the C-11!& and required different refueling 

stops-mostly at Marseilles, Rome, and Naples. During the evening of 17 July, 

the government of Austria also denied the use of its airspace.*“O 

The “airstream” bearing ATF 201’s Force Alpha to Turkey began with the 

take-off of a C-119 at 0817 on 16 July, nearly eighteen hours after the 

PURPLE alert had been declared. At 0930 the first C-130 took off from 

Fiirstenfeldbruck with the task force command group on board, including the 

ATF commander, Brig. Gen. David Gray (the assistant division commander of 

the 24th), and, strangely, Colonel McCafferty of the air liaison staff. This 

group arrived at Adana around 1500 the same day, and by 2300 all of the 

newer, faster C-130s had landed. As for the aging C--119s the last of their 

number did not get to Adana until 1420 the following day.lQ1 

With Force Bravo (the 1st Battle Group, 503d Infantry) still being held in 

GREEN alert, Force Charlie was the next group scheduled to leave. Force 

Charlie was a congeries of support units which had been cast into a provisional structure, styled for Operation BLUEBAT the “201st Logistics Command.” Elements of Force Charlie were synchronized with the whole sequence 

of the task force’s deployment; thus, in Force Charlie there were Alpha, Bravo, 

Charlie, Delta, and Echo elements. These elements were scattered around 

Europe and were to deploy from F&rstenfeldbruck, Rhein Main Air Base near 

Frankfurt, and Ch&eauroux and Evreux Air Bases in France.lo2 The Alpha 

element of Force Charlie, composed of a small command group led by Col. A. 

W. Meetze, arrived in Turkey on 17 July from France. On the same day, after 

the Bravo and Charlie elements had been integrated, a bus carrying the 

officers and enlisted men attached to this group from Orleans had a serious 

crash at Olivet (Loiret). Three men were killed and others were hospitalized. 

Substitutes for the killed and injured men were gathered up, however, and by 

the end of the day a newly-constituted Bravo/Charlie element of the command 

had been deployed from Ch%eauroux.‘03 

On 16 and 17 July literally hundreds of aircraft were closing on Adana 

Air Base. Three hours after all the C-130s had landed, the slower 

C-124s began arriving and for the next six hours the C-124s continued to 

unload tons of equipment and thousands of men at an airfield ill equipped to 

handle either.104 During the first two days, the congestion was so great that 

some incoming aircraft had to be put in a holding pattern aloft until ramp 

space had been cleared for them. Apart from that, Adana had no suitable port 

facilities and was virtually isolated by a poor ground transportation network. 

And despite the fact that alerts for deployment of forces to the Middle East 

had been called three times during the previous two years, there had been no 

improvements in the ground facilities nor had any stockpiling of supplies been 

attempted. Finally, Adana was to serve a dual purpose as a forward staging 

base both for the Army Task Force (meaning that a sufficient number of 

transport aircraft would have to remain for the subsequent move to Beirut), 
32 

and the Composite Air Strike Force which the Tactical Air Command was 

dispatching at that moment from the United States.l”j 

Composite Air Strike Force Bravo was composed of a command group, 

commanded by Maj, Gen. Henry Viccellio at Headquarters, 19th Air Force, 

stationed at Foster Air Force Base, Texas; twenty-four F--loos at Cannon Air 

Force Base, New Mexico; six RF--lOIs, six RB-66s and three WB-66s, all at 

Shaw Air Force Base, South Carolina; and twelve B--57s at Langley Air Force 

Base, Virginia. lu6 The Tactical Air Command also had received its orders from 

the JCS around midnight, 14 July, but as in the case of the Army Task Force 

those orders required a deIay in execution until the marines were safely ashore. 

Under its general plans for deployment to the Middle East (there was no 

specific plan correlated with Operation BLUEBAT), CASF Bravo was to have 

arrived at Adana within forty-eight hours .loi But events proved that a schedule of this kind was most unrealistic. 

The order to delay take-off untiI the morning of the 15th, and an obstruction 

on the runway at Cannon Air Force Base combined to cause a substitution of 

the two F-100 squadrons there by two others at Myrtle Beach Air Force Base, 

South Carolina. At 0900 the commander of the 354th Tactical Fighter Wing 

was told to launch two of his squadrons within the next seven hours, and the 

fact that these units had no deployment experience, were only partially qualified in aerial refueling, and had incomplete Ylyaway kits” (one of which was 

described in one report as “nothing more than 5,000 pounds of random items”) 

did not prevent the mission’s being assigned. The hasty reassignment of this 

mission to a green squadron had its cost: of the first squadron of twelve 

aircraft the 354th launched, one crashed, seven landed en route, and four 

actually completed their journeys in one uninterrupted leg. The second squadron arrived without mishap, but far behind its schedule. The rest of CASF 

Bravo duplidated this performance. By the forty-eighth hour after the first 

take-offs, fifteen of the twenty-six tactical fighters, ten of the twelve tactical 

bombers, none of the reconnaissance aircraft, and twenty-three of forty-three 

transport aircraft had landed in Turkey. The command group aboard a C-130 

had actually arrived well in advance of most of the fighters.lo8 How mueh the 

congestion at Adana had to do with the piecemeal and poorly synchronized 

execution of CASF Bravo’s mission-as has been claimed-is not entirely 

clear, but there is no question that the single staging base for Operation 

BLUEBAT had no less than 165 aircraft of all types parked on its ramps by 

the end of 17 July.lOg Moreover, those watching the air operation unfold were 

treated to the spectacle of unarmed, fully loaded transport aircraft closing at 

an area of potential combat before fighter squadrons had established air 

superiority, certainly a violation of the most basic canon of air strategy. 

Perhaps this was just as well, for it was later found by a visiting TAC staff 

officer that few of the F-100 pilots had any strafing experience, nor had any of 

them launched rockets or delivered conventional bombs. The B-57 crews were 

reported as being “incapable of performing efficient conventional weapon 

delivery.“’ Instead, CASF units were quite skilled in a form of air warfare 
33 

utterly unsuited to the mission at hand: the delivery of nuclear strikes. Of 

course, CASF Bravo was far more powerful than any opposition in the general 

area, and despite these shortcomings Bravo doubtless would have overwhelmed any enemy by sheer weight. Had it been required to do so, CASF 

Bravo would have been entirely in keeping with American military traditionssubstituting materiel superiority for technique. But to argue, as has one 

author, that “no opposition appeared, so who can say it was wrong?” does not 

entirely absolve those in charge of this operation .ll* One cannot help observing that about 18 July, Adana Air Base would have made a wonderful target 

for anyone who wished to take advantage of it. 

By the end of the third day of the intervention in Lebanon, the airlifted 

elements of the Army Task Force had finished their movement to Adana. Lt. 

Col. T. W. Sharkey, the commander of the 187th, arrived on the last C-124 

from Germany that morning and by the afternoon even the last of the C-l 19s 

had 1anded.l” With the task force now at the forward staging base, it was the 

proper time for Admiral Holloway to consider whether he needed more ground 

troops in Lebanon. The Admiral wrote later that although little outright 

opposition had been encountered he still considered the situation to be very 

sensitive.llZ But before very long there would be more marines ashore than the 

total force of the Lebanese Army. A problem more insistent than opposition in 

Beirut was the nearly critical overloading of Adana Air Base: members of 

CINCSPECOMME’s staff would have recognized a need to relieve the pressures on that airfield by moving the Army elsewhere-perhaps. A less charitable interpretation would be that now that the Army had moved a task force 

2,100 miles, it had to have a part to play in the intervention. Whatever the 

cause, Admiral Holloway summoned General Gray and Air Force Gen. James 

Roberts (the Commander, U.S. Air Forces at Adana) to the command ship, 

Taconic, at Beirut. There, Holloway asked the two generals to plan for an air 

assault on Kleiat airfield at Tripoli. I13 Exactly why Holloway wanted such an 

operation is not known. It is true that Tripoli had been the scene of some very 

serious rioting and that the National Union Front was very strong there, but 

what an air drop would have accomplished remained unspoken. What is 

known is that Generals Gray and Roberts actually set to work on the plan but 

found quickly that intelligence on that city was poor. No photographs of the 

drop zone existed, and none were possible because the reconnaissance aircraft 

at Adana did not have the proper equipment to take any.l”” This may have 

caused Admiral Holloway to change his mind: he ordered Force Alpha to move 

instead to Beirut on 19 July, where it would land “administratively.” Now the 

congestion at Adana would also be moved to Beirut, but in this case it would 

be more severe and of longer duration and to even less obvious purpose. 

As ATF 201 made ready to leave Adana, Marine troop movements initiated 

on the day the crisis broke out were continuing. Late on 15 July Admiral Burke 

had directed the reinforcement of the 2d Provisional Marine Force by yet 

another battalion, which was to be airlifted directly from North Carolina to 

Lebanon. The first planes carrying the 2d Battalion of the 8th Marine Regiment touched down at Beirut International on 18 July after a fifty-four-hour 
34 

flight, at the very time an advance party from Force Alpha was puzzling out 

where the bivouac for their battle group would be. On 16 July, a regimental 

landing team and a Marine air group were being readied in North Carolina 

for the Middle East as well, while on Okinawa still another Marine battalion 

Ianding team was due to be shipped to the Persian Gulf.115 Fortunately, by 20 

July reason triumphed and it was decided not to commit this many more 

troops to the contingency. The landing on 18 July of the 2d Battalion from 

North Carolina had already put a strain on local resources; so much so, that 

they were quartered aboard the USS Chilton as a floating reserve. And there 

was still the Army Task Force to be brought into the area.lL6 

This occurred on the morning of 19 July when the lead elements of the 

battle group began taking off at Adana. Force Alpha completed its movement 

at 2230 the same day. As expeditious as this move was, it was not without 

some problems. With an airstream of C--119s C-124s and C-13& (all fully 

loaded) behind them, the command group of the ATF found upon landing that 

no spaces had been prepared for what was about to be a vast armada of 

aircraft looking for a place to land. Moreover, the transports had to be 

squeezed into the ordinary air patterns at Beirut. Despite the absence of an 

aerial port team, the military aircraft were offloaded rapidly (at four-minute 

intervals in the case of the C-119s) and sent on their way. But, as no decision 

had been taken on whether there was to be an airdrop in the near future, the 

heavy loads were not broken apart.ll; Instead, these were lined up along the 

runways by a detail of officers and men from the 187th. Lacking even a fork 

lift at first, these troops made offloading aircraft their main business for the 

next week, for at 0730 the following morning the airloaded elements of Force 

Charlie began arriving at Beirut and 170 sorties were unloaded before al1 the 

supplies had arrived. Now the concentration of American military men and 

their supplies dominated the scene at Beirut International Airport. Official 

photographs show that all manner of equipment was positioned along the 

main runway. Just to the east of the airport, the olive groves burgeoned with 

Force Alpha and its various support units. IL8 Five days after the initial landings there were upwards of 10,000 men and their accouterments concentrated 

in less than four square miles south of Beirut. 

As the size of the American force in Lebanon grew during the last part of 

July, new obligations of the Specified Command began to assert themselves. 

With the deployment of the various forces either complete or in train, and with 

the crisis inside Lebanon assuming an aspect of routine (if sometimes violent 

routine), questions which had been obscured during the exertions of getting 

some kind of force into the country now took on a certain importance. After the 

Army came to Beirut, the soldiers came to outnumber the marines and what 

had been until then a naval operation in Lebanon was transformed into a 

multiservice, joint undertaking. The assignment of ATF 201 of course complicated the activities of the CINCSPECOMME, mainly because a need now 

arose to coordinate the doings of disparate military units trying to carry out a 

common mission. Admiral Holloway first had augmented his own staff by 

drawing upon local US. naval units. When only one Marine battalion had 
35 

Map 7. Dispositions as of ATF 201’5 arrival 20 July 1958. 
36 

been ashore the question of a ground force commander had been inconsiderable-indeed, during the early hours of the intervention it seemed that 

there were altogether too many potential commanders ashore. Brigadier Generals Wade and later Gray dealt directly with Admiral Holloway during the 

early operations, but the complications and requirements arising from this 

business were such that on 21 July the Admiral asked the Joint Chiefs to 

appoint an American Land Force Commander (AMLANFOR). Why such a 

request was made at this peculiar time is very simple: during nine months of 

joint planning, no provisions had been made in the contingency plans for such 

a command. A matter which should have been settled long in advance of any 

operation had been left unattended. Now the commander of the contingency 

force had to deal with a matter which should not have been his burden. The 

marines hoped that Lt. Gen. Edwin Pollock, then commanding the Atlantic 

Fleet Marines, would win the appointment and were “disappointed’” (the word 

their official history used) when Army Maj. Gen. Paul D. Adams was given the 

job.119 Adams’ arrival on 24 July with virtually no staff did not exactly help 

matters, for the ATF was immediately stripped of all the staff officers it could 

spare to serve under the new CINCAMLANFOR. In effect, this meant that 

those staff officers were serving two masters, the new joint ground commander 

and the Army Task Force itself, whose command for administrative and 

logistical matters General Adams had appropriated. Finally, although the new 

AMLANFOR Chief of Staff was a Marine, and although “a number” of other 

Marine staff officers, were brought into the headquarters, the composition of 

the new staff made ground operations in Lebanon henceforth an “Army 

show.“1*o 

Despite the dislocations and shortages in staff officers caused by the 

creation of the new command, certain benefits attended the structuring of the 

contingency force along more orthodox lines. At the very least, the creation of 

AMLANFOR drew attention to the need for close coordination between the 

various elements of this polyglot force. At the same time, the appointment of 

an Army general from USAREUR helped Admiral Holloway deal more effectively with what could be called his “Army factor.” Long-standing traditions 

made naval operations run quite smoothly, but for operations between naval 

and Army forces this was not the case. Because the decision had been taken 

early on to launch Army contingency forces into the Middle East from Europe 

rather than the United States, the exact delineation of how much support the 

Specified Command could expect from USAREUR was very important. The 

proximity and ease of communications with USAREUR made it easy for the 

contingency force to depend more on the Army in Europe than it would have 

done had the Army contribution come from the United States. 

Both CINSPECOMME OPLAN 215-58 and USAREUR Emergency Plan 

201 made clear that operational control of Army forces coming from Europe 

passed to the Specified Commander %pon arrival of units concerned at Middle 
37 

East aerial or sea ports of debarkation,” but in fact there was confusion on 

this point alone.lzl One of the elements of the Delta Force in ATF 201 was an 

“Honest John” rocket battery which was to be sealifted from Bremerhaven, 

Germany. Admiral Holloway had asked that this battery be sent with conventional warheads. To this, USAREUR strongly objected on the grounds that 

“the few available were already committed to other purposes and because the 

lethal radius of this type warhead hardly warrants the expenditure of the 

rocket.” The real question seems to have been, however, whether the battery 

would be deployed with nuclear or conventional warheads.122 When, at a joint 

critique much later, it was recommended that such weapons not be deployed at 

all unless they were specifically requested by the Specified Commander, representatives of USAREUR insisted that batteries with both nuclear and conventional warheads be deployed unless they were deleted from the troop list by the 

Specified or higher commands. I23 USAREUR’s confusion on what the policy 

would be with regard to the use of “Honest Johns” was merely a reflection of 

the confusion about such things at much higher levels. In one of its own 

assessments of the Lebanon operation, the Department of the Army complained forthrightly that, concerning the rockets, there had been an absence of 

“proper policy guidance” on what was chiefly “a political issue.“1z4 The 

resolution of this issue was finally made by the Joint Chiefs, who directed that 

the battery not be landed in Lebanon at all, types of warhead notwithstanding. The battery was already at sea, however, and General Adams had 

concluded that there was no need for the battery anyway. When Battery D, 

34th Artillery, reached Beirut, its personnel were returned to Europe by air. As 

a kind of concession, General Adams asked USAREUR to have another 

battery stand by for airlift if one proved necessary.1z5 The dispute over the 

dispatch of the “Honest John” was merely the most dramatic of several such 

questions to confront the task force command. The BLUEBAT plan required 

USAREUR to provide logistical support to Army contingents for as much as 

forty-five days after deployment, but the degree to which this dependency upon 

USAREUR extended to other kinds of support such as personnel replacements 

was unknown. Even the question of whether USAREUR would eventually getr 

back the forces it had lost was left unanswered until the withdrawal of forces 

began, And, naturally, one of the reasons the new AMLANFOR headquarters 

was forced to absorb the Army Task Force staff was because the headquarters 

had not been anticipated by the planners.*26 

Predictably, the pressures of joint operations were most acute-or at least 

more immediate-within the Specified Command itself. None of the service 

elements had much trouble in conducting its own affairs; it was when the Army, 

Navy, Air Force, and Marine operations coalesced that procedures were put to 

the test. Admiral Holloway had of course established a joint operations center 

aboard the Tuconic, but this alone did not insure cooperation. Taken together, 

all the units of the American intervention forces mounted a considerable 

potential in firepower, for instance; but, the presence of Army and Marine 

artillery ashore, the naval fire support afloat, and the air supports aloft did not 

mean that these capabilities were linked together,automatically. The Air Force 

at’ Adana and the Sixth Fleet’s naval air elements were launching sorties over 
38 

Lebanon and were responsible for the cover of forces there, but their operations 

in such a confined space were made all the more dangerous because there was 

no doctrine for joint operations to call upon. Failure to use common radio 

frequencies only heightened the problem.127 Beyond that, “panel codes,“’ by 

which ground forces would mark their positions, and target and frontline 

markings had not been agreed upon. Neither had agreement been reached as 

to how artillery and naval gunfire would be coordinated with airstrikes. All 

these matters were finally taken up at a joint conference held in Beirut-on 4 

August, twenty days after the marines came ashore and long after even the 

military commanders realized that they had overestimated the magnitude of 

their opposition.128 

Shortly after Force Alpha reached Beirut, General Gray called the men of 

the 187th together for a talk. He wanted to tell them why they were in Lebanon 

and what they were supposed to do while they were there. He began by 

implying that communists were responsible for the troubles besetting Lebanon. Exactly how Force Alpha’s enemy would manifest itself, General Gray 

did not-perhaps could not-say. He was confident that in acting promptly and forcefully the United States had prevented the collapse of ‘“the government we wish to support,” but as for ‘“what our future mission may be,” he 

said, “I cannot tell you exaetly.“12g 

In all likelihood, the general was not just being coy: the realities of service 

in Lebanon did not live up to military expectations and so the force which had 

come to the Middle East to fight a conventional enemy had to make accommodations. American patrols still reached out as much as twenty miIes from 

Beirut, as though a foreign army threatened the city, but by the end of the 

month the views of the U.S. high command about the threat had changed so 

much that these patrols were mere exercises. By 29 July Army troops began 

relieving the marines sector by sector around the city. Now, according to one 

report, “‘it was believed that the major threat facing U.S. Forces was from 

possible small groups [sic] infiltration into the area with the view of causing 

some minor incident.“>30 

The reason it was taking so long for the Americans to understand the real 

military situation in Lebanon is not hard to find: intelligence available before 

the operation began was either poor or nonexistent. As far as American 

military authorities were concerned Operation BLUEBAT was a military 

operation, and so one might charitably grant that their only concern was to 

gather intelligence useful to that end, but even that was not done. During the 

May crisis, it was found that the only maps of Lebanon available through the 

Army Map Service were based upon 1941 and 1945 French productions. 

Immediately, the British began drawing new maps based upon a 1957 survey 

of the area. CINCSPECOMME and the Sixth Fleet did have a few of these 

available by the time the real emergency occurred, but USAREUR and 

USAFE got theirs aper deployment. The situation was so confused at first 

that Admiral Holloway held off deciding what the standard map for his task 

force would be until the operation was well advanced.l3l This problem charae- 
39 

terized the general intelligence situation. A J-2 analysis of the information 

on hand for the Army Task Force is eloquent. Army Col. Stewart McKenney 

wrote that there was an 

absence of current knowledge of the situation existing in Beirut specifically, and in 

Lebanon in general while the assault elements were at ADANA. Although the situation was known to be noncombat in nature in BEIRUT through reports of Marine 

activities, the deployment of the Lebanese Army in the city, the exact location of rebel 

controlled areas, extent and nature of barriers and rebel defensive capabilities on the 

major airfields throughout Lebanon were unknown. When liaison was effected with 

CINCPECOMME in BEIRUT, answers to these EEI [Essential Elements of Information] were so nebulous that it was necessary to plan to meet resistance in strength in 

any operations considered outside BEIRUT and envjrons.“,‘a 

This was only part of what one report called “voids in intelligence”;‘JJ as we 

have seen, the marines suffered from poor beach information, and planning 

for the airdrop at Tripoli was cancelled at least in part because there was no 

reliable photographic intelligence. 

The general misunderstanding that Operation BLUEBAT was to be a 

“purely military operation” naturally worked against the production of accurate political intelligence for use by the contingency force. In anticipation of 

combat, the niceties of political intelligence seemed hardly to matter. But when 

the operation revealed its true shape, political intelligence was all important: 

the American commanders were forced to assess the situation on the spot and 

quickly. To make up for the earlier deficiencies in political intelligence, American military forces relied heavily upon the American embassy for information 

“as to the disposition of rebel forces, biographical sketches of rebel leaders, 

[and] personnel to contact in order to obtain information concerning rebel 

forces . . , .” It is to be wondered how objective much of this support was: a 

good deal of the fighting in Beirut and elsewhere before the landing had been 

the result of clashes between gunmen of the National Union Front and the 

Parti Populaire Syrielz. Interestingly, local officers of the Central Intelligence 

Agency put their military counterparts in touch with PPS leaders, whose rightwing group was pro-government but still at that time quite illegal. Force 

Alpha’s intelligence officers made “immediate contact” with PPS headquarters in the town of Chimlane just south of Beirut, where PPS militiamen-it 

was said-“cooperated superbly with this headquarters.“1:i4 

That such contacts were thought necessary says much about how the 

character of Operation BLUEBAT had changed between planning and execution. Now the business at hand was every bit as political as military and the 

remaining distinctions blurred as time went by. In changing the tenor of their 

operations, the Americans were reacting realistically to the situation they had 

found: after all, it had been the militarization of Lebanese politics which had 

brought them to the Middle East in the first place. What this meant in 

practical terms was that the American military presence had to be largely a 

passive one, had to assume a stance of impartiality in the political struggle 
40 

before the election of the new president. The most that the Americans could 

hope for was that the Chamoun government would be succeeded in accordance 

with IocaE political practices instead of the gun. 

The tactical reflection of this change in American objectives in Lebanon 

was of course substantially different from what had been expected when all 

planning had been “‘predicated upon a combat sit,uation.“l3s As they later 

wrote their reports, staff officers understood that the military character of the 

intervention had came to depend upon the peculiarities of Lebanese politics. 

Every now and then, a note of disappointment creeps into these reports; what 

promised to be a military operation had all of a sudden become too political. 

Cal. Lynn Smith, the J-3 for the American Land Forces Command, went so far 

as to speculate how the operation would have gone had political expediency 

not overruled the possibility of ordinary military actian. Smith wrote: 

The tactical element would not be confined to the restricted beachhead actually OCCupied due to politieal reasons. Instead, the tactical elements wcdd have fanned out to 

cover the critical routes of approach into l3eirut, and would have conducted patrol 

operations along the frontier of Lebanon.l”fi 

Smith’s speculations did correspond nicely to the early Marine operations, 

however. Not yet knowing the political turn the operation would take, the 

presumption was that this would be a conventional military operation 

against conventional enemies. Within their limitations, the marines initially 

acted as they would have in any case, with the exception that frontier patrols 

were not established. Hadd’s battalion moved to the Port of Beirut after 

having been relieved at the airport by another battalion. This battalion, the 3d 

of the 6th Marine Regiment, took up positions south and east of the airport on 

the high ground commanding the original Red Beach, where men and equipment were still landing. Another battalion, the 1st of the 8th, landing northeast of the city at Yellow Beach, assumed responsibility for the defense of what 

Smith Eater called “the critical approaches” to Beirut, the bridges which 

carried the Damascus road into the city proper. It was these battalions, not 

Hadd’s, which were said to be in “forward positions,” because they were 

assumed to be the first units to stand the chance of meeting a conventianal 

enemy closing on the city. But no enemy came from that quarter, nor would 

one. 

Instead, Hadd’s battalion was really in the most demanding position of all. 

The 2d was in control of the port facilities, and when the Specified Command 

headquarters aboard the USS T~~onic tied up at the Beirut docks, the responsibility for the security of the command group fell into the battalion’s hands. 

Quite soon after the battalion had taken control of the docks, it was also 

ordered to provide a rifle squad to protect the British ambassador’s residence 

nearby. During the night of 21 July, the American Community School took 

some small arms fire, and as it was in the area, the 2d was charged to protect 

it as well,lj7 But then most of the points which the Americans were first 

interested in defending were in the extreme north and northwestern parts of 
41 

the city, and it could be fairly said that Hadd’s battalion was the principal 

security force for this district. All these areas were quite close to the Basta, and 

more hostile fire came from there than any other quarter in the city during the 

critical first days of the operation. In an operation where there were no front 

lines or forward positions, Hadd’s battalion was as close to potential military 

action as any other unit. 

Still, these operational realities had not yet taken hold of the American 

command. On 23 July, more than a week after the first landings, the 1st of the 

8th Marines began making patrols as far as twenty miles from the city. Each 

of these patrols was made up of a reinforced rifle platoon with a forward air 

controller, an artillery forward observer, and a communications officer attached. These heavy patrols were borne by three Z&ton trucks and three jeeps, 

and were supported overhead by helicopters from the carrier Wc~sp.~~~~ Aside 

from the little psychological value they might have had in impressing the 

natives of the rural areas, these military processions were wholly unimportant 

to the business at hand. No resistance was ever encountered on these patrols. 

What was always more important to the Lebanese, and what eventually 

became important to the American command, was the establishment of peace 

in the city of Beirut. For the Americans, the question that became uppermost 

was how to maintain peace without, disturbing the Basta, which General 

Sheh5b had declared off limits to Americans, and also how to cope with the 

enormous influx of men and materiel.“‘” At first, because the chances for an 

accident’s causing a renewed outbreak of fighting were very great, the tendency of the American command was to stay where it was, to consolidate its 

positions at the airport and the port area, and to exercise restraint, in dealing 

with all Lebanese. A standing order was issued to the troops soon after the 

intervention began not to return fire unless they had a clear target. Lieutenant 

Colonel Hadd expressed the individual marine’s dilemma very well. He wrote 

later: 

\Vhen a youngster lands ail prepared and eager to fight and finds himself restricted 

from firing at a known rebel who he sees periodically fire in his direction and in every 

instance restrains himself from returning the fire, it is felt that this is outstanding 

and indicates good small unit discipline.“” 

Early in the intervention, the Specified Command exercised as much tactical control as possible over the troops of the task force. The uncertainty of the 

situation demanded concentrated bivouacs with constant guards. Where positions allowed, there was a good deal of digging in; a few random shots in the 

direction of an American position was enough to encourage the troops to 

protect themselves. The 1st of the 8th Marines alone prepared 108 different 

emplacements before the end of the month. The tactical dispositions of the 

American troops had become a matter for compromise between General 

ShehZb and the principals of the Specified Command. Shehab’s army had 

created a buffer zone between the opposition forces and American positions, 

and any adjustment required prior consultation with the general. Reflecting 

the larger situation, specific tactical dispositions also took on a political 
42 

complexion which tested the presence of mind of the small unit commanders. 

When Delta Company of the 187th began to establish a position athwart the 

Damascus road, Lebanese army officers argued that the Americans might be 

more comfortable closer to the beach. After some time, the Americans won the 

argument, but with words rather than combat. That the Americans, clearly 

negotiating from a position of superior military strength, would countenance 

these restrictions on their activities says much about how sensitive they had 

become in the time since their arrival. In essence, for them the situation in 

Lebanon had been a quick education in the politics of military action.141 

Cleariy, however, there was a limit to how much American force needed to 

be put ashore in Lebanon, and General Gray thought that the command had 

reached the saturation point by 22 July. Discussing the impending arrival of 

the 3d Medium Tank Battalion by sealift, from Bremerhaven, Gray doubted 

that this battalion was needed at all. The marines had brought 15 medium 

tanks along, plus 31 LVTPs and 10 Ontos (self-propelled, multibarrelled, recoilless rifles). In Gray’s opinion, 72 additional medium tanks were too much. 

But Holloway’s staff disagreed, especially since motorized patrolling had 

begun in the city and the surrounding area, and asked that at least a company 

of tanks be sent by USAREUR. However, USAREUR insisted upon sending 

the entire battalion anyway, on the grounds that the battalion was already 

loaded and that the ‘“tactical integrity of the unit would be destroyed.” After 

calculating how best to crowd a new armored battalion into the already 

crowded olive groves near the airport, Gray relented. The armor was coming, 

whether he needed it, wanted it, or not.l”” 

With the end of July and the arrival of most of the ground troops, there was 

a realignment of tactical responsibilities between the Marines and the Army. 

Admiral Holloway recommended, and General Adams accepted, a plan whereby the Marines would provide security for the city while the Army would focus 

its operations south of the Damascus road. Connecting the two forces was the 

“Main Supply Route,” the road between the port area and the airport. So far, 

American patrols and outposts in the city and its environs were devoted more 

to “showing force’” than to actually using it, for despite the occasional hostile 

fire there were no serious incidents involving Americans and the task force’s 

commanders felt confident in turning their thoughts to settling down in 

Lebanon. There was no question whatever that by the end of July there was 

more than enough American military force on hand to meet any threat, 

however constituted. 

No doubt on occasion it was difficult for the Americans to hold to their 

mode of operations. General ShehZb was elected president of Lebanon on 31 

July as the only candidate whose election gave some hope of national reconciliation, and indeed efforts did get underway to settle grievances before his 

inauguration on 23 September. In early August a cease-fire was declared in 

Tripoli, the scene of some of the most desperate fighting early in the summer. 
43 

A few days later Lebanese security forces were directed to confiscate all 

weapons carried by civilians in central Beirut. ShehEb meanwhile met with 

opposition leaders in order to reach a political settlement, and with some 

success.143 But such was the character of the strife in Lebanon that even after 

the politicians had shown some signs of making their peace, the violence went 

on without sanction and assumed aspects of brigandage, revenge, and sheer 

hooliganism. There had been sporadic incidents of harassing fire upon all 

security forces, including Americans, but it was not until 1 August that Sgt. 

James Nettles was killed by a sniper’s bullet near the Basta. There was no 

military reaction to the killing, and the city remained calm for the next two 

weeks. But as the warring elements of Lebanese society became accustomed to 

the presence of the Americans, violent outbreaks occurred with more regularity, particularly near the Basta. On 21 August the French vice consul was 

wounded while driving into town along the main road from the airport, and 

an Army trooper was wounded in the back close by the Basta. On the next 

day, employees from the American embassy were pinned down by machine 

gun fire from the same part of the city, but no one was hurt. Still, there was no 

overt American reaction to these incidents.lq4 

Thus civil violence continued, in search only of a new political reason. Four 

days before General ShehZb was to take up his new office, an assistant editor 

of the newspaper al-‘Amal was kidnapped. Al-‘Amal was a publication of the 

Phalange, a right-wing Maronite Christian militia organization with strong 

ties to the PPS and President Chamoun. The Phalange declared a general 

strike on 20 September to protest the kidnapping, and politically-inspired 

street fighting began anew. As the demonstrations grew, the Phalangists and 

their supporters took the opportunity to make known their dissatisfaction with 

the new Sheh’ib government. Particularly galling to the Phalangist leader, 

Pierre Jumayyil, was the new cabinet under the leadership of the former 

opposition chief in Tripoli, Rashid KZrami. Jumayyil pointed out that all but 

one member of the cabinet came from various opposition groups. “We cannot 

but oppose this government,” Jumayyil announced. The demonstration continued for the rest of the month, as General ShehEb tried to form a different 

cabinet acceptable to all factions. In some ways, the period immediately following Sheh’ab’s inauguration was the most dangerous since the arrival of the 

Americans. For the first eight days of October, the Phalangists demonstrated 

against the government.ld5 Then, near the Basta, several American soldiers 

were captured and relieved of their weapons, but later were released. No source 

identifies who their captors were, but hearing of the incident General Adams 

apparently decided that a pointed “show of force” was called for and sent 

armored vehicles to the very edge of the Basta. There was no fighting. Some 

said that the tension in the city diminished after thati 

The origins of what came to be known as the “counterrevolution” of 

September and October are important to note: the new agitation began with 

the militant, right-wing, predominantly Christian supporters of the old government and was leveled against the new. The presence of the Americans was not 

an issue: had their conduct and operations followed a different line, it well 
44 

could have been. No doubt, the American intervention was objectionable on 

many counts to those who wished for a Lebanon more closely aligned with the 

powerful new forces abroad in the Middle East of 1958, and doubtless, too, the 

intervention violated sentiments within Lebanon for a strict neutrality amid 

all the passions of the region; but the Americans showed no inclination to stay 

very long in Lebanon and so gave hope to all that their influence would be 

fleeting. It did not take very long for the American intervention to end: the 

Marines bad already begun their withdrawal during the last days of August, 

and elements of the Army Task Force began their preparations to leave not 

1ong thereafter. By 15 October, the remainder of the American troops had 

departed. They left behind them a government presided over by a military 

man, but one who was far more conciliatory toward his opposition than his 

predecessor. The government proper was so constituted as to contain many 

members whom the Americans would have earlier called “rebels.” This was 

only a beginning for Lebanon, and no one could say then whether its promises 

would be fulfilled. From the perspective of more than twenty years, it is 

difficult to see how the American action affected the subsequent history of 

Lebanon. Beirut now lies in waste, and Lebanon is a country occupied by a 

congeries of armies, its society torn into many more directions than in 1958. 

What happened during the summer of 1958 was not an early American 

experiment in “counterinsurgency,” a strategy which only became current a 

few years later in American military thinking. It was the Eargest American 

troop deployment between the Korean and Vietnam wars, and it was designed 

and mounted to contest what was believed to be a rather traditional military 

threat to a country friendly to the United States. That the real nature of the 

crisis was not al1 that simple may be easy to see at this remove, but it was not 

so obvious at the time. The Americans adjusted very we11 to the peculiarities of 

their mission. Subtleties were unwelcome in the idiom of Cold War thinking, 

but Lebanon served as a powerful reproach to the dominance of “nuclear 

thinking” in American defense policies. At a time when the American Army 

was struggling to transform itself into a force capable of operating in a nuclear 

war, the operation in Lebanon was an anomaly. Lebanon’s traubIes were 

beyond the power of nuclear weapons to solve. 

The intervention in Lebanon was one of 215 separate instances of American contingency force operations between 1945 and 1976, by one count;147 but 

for a11 this experience-in which more than one service often participated-the 

American military establishment in 1958 was stiI1 not very well practiced in 

joint operations and the deployment of forces over Iong distances. Looking 

back at the preparations for contingencies in the Middle East after the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff directive in November 1957, one is impressed by the wave of 

“provisionalism” which dominated military planning as well as by a certain 

parochialism in the services. The vision of what was really three separate 

provisional military organizations-the Marines, the Army Task Force, and 

the Composite Air Strike -Force -descending upon Beirut may have been 

unnerving to the hapless “rebel” in the Basta, but it would have been welcomed by a determined and -professional enemy. Arrangements left unmade 
45 

until the crisis broke out were not merely important for the sake of organizational elegance. Virtually every official report opens with the caveat that had 

Operation BLUEBAT been opposed, disasters would have occurred, and 

argues that problems encountered during the operation’s course could have 

been solved well before the order to execute was given. Some of the reports at 

higher echelons sounded hopeful notes: future reforms would prevent such 

problems, should an operation of this kind be launched again. Modern soldiers 

are in the best position to consider whether such predictions have come true. 
47 

Appendix 1. Specified Command, Middle East 

I I 

U.S. Sixth Fleet 

Vice Adm. Charles Brown Commander, American Air Forces 

Brig. Gen. James Roberts I 

t I 

Task Force 60 

Fast Garrier Strike Force 

Rear Adm. Howard Yeager 

I 

Task Force 61 

Amphibious Group IV 

Capt. Victor McCrea 

I 

Task Force 62 

2d Provisional Marine Force 

Brig. Gen. Sidney S. Wade 

c 

I 

I 

Commander, Amc [can Land Forces 

Maj. Gen. Paul D. Adams 

I 

c I 

I 

j,,inr y Viccellio 1 

c 

ATF 201 

Brig. Gen. David Gray 

I 

(Ashor:July 24) 

( I,,,...,, 

I C- I \ 

I I 

Force Bravo 

(held in reserve) 

I I I 1 

L- i 

Force Charlie 

(201st Logistics Cmd) 

I I 

Force Delta 

Force Echo 
49 

Appendix 2. AMLANFOR Task Organization as of 19 August 1958 

Headquarters AMLANFOR 

Headquarters and Headquarters Company 

585th Signal Support Company (-) 

320th ASA Detachment 

24th Airborne Brigade 

Brigade Headquarters 

Combat Team, 187th Infantry (Reinforced) 

1st Airborne Battle Group, 187th Infantry 

Battery A, 1st Howitzer Battalion, 13th Artillery 

Battery A, 23d AAA AW Battalion (Self-Propelled) 

Ambulance Platoon 

Clearing Platoon 

Headquarters, Flight Section 

3d Medium Tank Battalion, 35th Armor 

Troop C, 17th Armored Cavalry 

Company E, 3d Engineer Battalion 

Detachment, 1 lth PS & M Company 

Detachment, 24th Aviation Company 

Detachment, 24th Quartermaster Company 

Detachment, 24th Signal Battalion 

2d Provisional Marine Force 

Provisional Marine Force Headquarters 

3d Battalion, 6th Marines (Reinforced) 

1st Battalion, 8th Marines (-) 

2d Battalion, 8th Marines (-j 

Detachment HLR 262 (Helicopter) 

2d Battalion, 2d Marines (Reinforced), Floating Reserve 

201st Logistical Command 

Headquarters and Headquarters Company 

38th Transportation Truck Battalion (HHC) 

533d Truck Company (Light) 

583d Truck Company (Light) 

299th Engineer Battalion (Constructionj (Combat) 

79th Engineer Battalion (Construction) (-) 

22d Ordnance Direct Support Company 

570th Terminal Service Company 

Provisional Chemical Company 

Provisional Quartermaster Company 

28jth Military Police Company I-) 

58th Evacuation Hospital (-) (semi-mobile) 

583d Ambulance Company (-) 

4th Mobile Surgical Army Hospital 

Adana Sub-Command 

2Qlst Logistical Command Provisional Headquarters 

78th Medium Truck Company (S/P) 

Company B, 79th Engineer Battalion (Construction) 
51 

Appendix 3. Army Task Force 201 Airlift Configuration 

Force Alpha (Fiirstenfeldbruek airfield) 

iXVI TS PERSOiVIVEL S TONS C-119 c-124 C-130 

Bde Hq 167 60.8 8 

187th Inf 1356 292.3 19 7 24 

Resupply 3 142.3 9 

USAF (USAF Equip. & Maint. AC) 3 

Subtotal 1526 495.4 22 16 32 

Alpha Supplemental (6 aircraft of Force Charlie taken to carry Alpha equipment): 

32 96.5 6 

TOTAL 1558 

Force Charlie (Filrstenfeldbruck airfield) 

TF HQ 171 

533d Truck Plt 37 

Air Land element (187th) 27 

Bravo Adv 11 

Det 724th Ord 73 

Det 24th QM Co 36 

Amb Plt 29 

Sig Sup 54Sth 28 

Trp “C” 9th Cav. 214 

Btry “A” 13th FA Bn 121 

Arty HQ “E” Co 3d Engr 75 

ASA Det 85 

187th Area Comm Cen 27 

691.9 22 22 32 

137.3 3 13 

107.4 16 

34.7 4 

67.4 1 s 

21.9 3 

23.4 3 

11.6 1 

120.1 4 11 

127.3 11 

133.6 2 12 

103.5 5 4 

32.3 3 

TOTAL 964 939.8 15 87 

NOTE: Aircraft listed carried an additional 173 short tons of supply. Two aircraft were used to 

transport elements of the 17th Signal Battalion on a special mission. 

Force Charlie (Rhein Main airfield) 

Supply Team 19 28.6 2 

POL Sup Det .54 130.5 9 

Unit Mess Tm 4 12.5 1 

Bath Plt 28 30.7 4 

MP Co (-) 99 69 5 

Mag Pit Ammo 47 34.8 4 

Evac Hosp 169 36.5 4 

Engr Co 179 306.7 22 4 

ASA Det 17 41.2 3 

TOTAL 616 710,s 54 4 

Force Charlie (Ch&eauroux airfield) 

Aerial Sup Team 78 28 1 2 

TOTAL 78 28 1 2 

Force Charlie (Evreux airfield) 

Sup Cmdr HQ 18 40 2 1 

& Prov Port 

Sup Det 

TOTAL 18 40 2 1 

Alpha and Charlie total 3234 2310.2 22 94 126 
NOTES I I 

lOn his last day as the Army’s Chief of Staff, General Bernard Rogers announced the 

formation of a llO,OOO-man joint force “for contingencies in the Middle East and developing 

countries.” See the New York Times, 22 June 1979, p. 3. See also, John M. Collins and Clyde R. 

Mark, “Petroleum Imports from the Persian Gulf: Use of U.S. Armed Forces to insure supplies,” 

Congressional Research Service Issue Brief Number IB 79046 (Washington, D.C.: Library of 

Congress, 1979), passim. An excellent analysis of U.S. intervention operations since World War II 

may be found in Barry M. Blechman and Stephen S. Kaplan, Force Without War: U.S. Armed 

Forces as a Political Instrument (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1978). 

LUseful works, including reminiscences by participants, on various aspects of military operations in Lebanon are: H. A. Hadd, “Who’s a Rebel? The Lesson Lebanon Taught,” Marine Corps 

Gazette 46, no. 3 (March 1962): 50-53; and by the same author, “Orders Firm but Flexible,” United 

States Naval Institute Proceedings 88, no. 10 (October 1962): 81-89; J. L. Holloway, “Comment on 

‘The American Landing in Lebanon’ and ‘Orders Firm but Flexible,“’ United States Naval 

Znstitute Proceedings 89, no. 9 (September 1963): 96-97; Robert McClintock, “The American 

Landing in Lebanon, ” United States Naual Institute Proceedings 88, no. 10 (October 1962): 65- 

79; Guy S. Meloy III, “A Look Back at Lebanon,” Infantry 50, no. 1 (January 1960): 20-25; Jack 

Schulimson, “Marines in Lebanon,” Marine Corps Historical Reference Pamphlet (Washington, 

D.C.: Headquarters, United States Marine Corps, 1966); Albert P. Sights, Jr., “Lessons of Lebanon: 

A Study in Air Strategy,” Air University Review 16, no. 5 (July-August 1965): 28-43; and S. S. 

Wade, “Operation Bluebat,” Marine Corps Gazette 43, no. 7 (July 1959): 10-23. 

:‘For the impact of the Suez intervention upon American foreign policy, see Chester L. Cooper’s 

memoir, The Lion’s Last Roar: Suez, I956 (New York: Harper and Row, 1978), pp. 263,92-99, on 

the withdrawal of American aid to Egypt. See also Patrick Scale, The Struggle for Syria (London: 

Oxford University Press, 1965) pp. 283-89; Walter LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War, 

1945-66 (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1968), pp. 173-200,205-6; as well as Richard J. Barnet, 

Intervention and Revolution: America’s Confrontation with Insurgent Movements Around the 

World (New York: World Publishing Company, 1968), pp. 132-52. Albert Hourani, A Vision of 

History: Near Eastern and Other Essays (Beirut: KHAYATS, 1961), pp. 117-44, is also an 

excellent corrective to contemporary Western views of the event. 

‘This unnamed American official is quoted in “Britain and the Arabs,” Economist, 8 February 

1958, p, 493. See also Hourani, Vision of History, p. 122. 

See LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War, pp. 194-200, for an accounting of American 

thinking during this period. 

“The text of the “Joint Resolution of Congress, 9 March 1957,” approving the Eisenhower 

Doctrine, is in M. S. Agwani, ed., The Lebanese Crisis, 1958: A Documentary Study /New York: 

Asia Publishing House, 1965), pp. 15-16. See also LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War, 

pp. 157, 188. 

7“Communique on the talks between Mr. Richards and the Government of Lebanon, Beirut, 16 

March 1957,” in Agwani, The Lebanese Crisis, pp. 16-18. 

KFahim I. Qubain, Crisis in Lebanon (Washington, D.C.: Middle East Institute, 1961), pp. 22- 

25. Indeed, so great are the similarities between the “Rose Water Revolution” of 1952 and the 

events leading up to the American intervention six years later that one wonders at first why the 

53 
54 

West took the trouble to notice this latest evolution in the politics of Lebanon. The answer lies in 

the fact that the Middle East had not yet become a pawn in the Cold War. 

QIbid., pp. 17-21. See also Don Per&, 2”he &fiddle East Today, 2d ed. (Hinsdale, Ill.: Dryden 

Press, 19711, pp. 328-35, 

I”‘“The United National Front’s Memorandum to the President of Lebanon, 1 April 1957,” in 

Agwani, The Lebanese Crisis, pp. 33-34. 

“LQubain, Crisis in Lebanon, pp. 52-58. 

ItPeretz, The Middle East Today, p. 329. 

‘SQubain, Crisis in Lebanon, pp. 55,58. 

‘jIbid., pp. 81-82. 

‘6s. H. Steinberg, ed., The Statesman’s Year-Book ,Statistical and Historical Annual of the 

States ai the Warld far the Year 1959 (London: Macmillan & Co, 1959), p. 1200. 

IeQubain, Crisis in Lebanon, p. 83. 

“Michael Adams, “A Little Trip ?” The Spectator (London), 6 June 1958, pi 721, quoted in M. H. 

S. Mustafa, “‘The United States and Lebanon Before and During the Crisis of 1958” (Ph.D. diss., 

Duke University, 1976), p. 126. 

““See Robert Murphy, Diplamat Among Warriars (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1964), 

pp~ 40a-4ar. _... ~- ~. lQ“The United National Front’s policy statement, 8 July 1957,” in Agwani, The Lebanese 

+sis, pp. 35-36. 

ZOAt the very least, both Egypt and Syria had been lending moral support to the Muslim 

opposition in Lebanon throughout 1957. The Chamoun government had banned the sale of 

newspapers from either country at various times during the year. The loss of support in this form 

was more than compensated for by Radio Caira, however; its broadcasts were consistently antiChamoun and, after the fashion of political rhetoric in the Middle East, strident and polemical. 

Such broadcasts hardly conduced to still the controversies inside Lebanon, and, perhaps even 

more important, did much to convince outside observers that the allegations of fareign subversion 

inside Lebanon were true. See, for instance, the reaction of the Western press as represented in 

Time, 26, May 1958, p. 3. See also Qubain, Crisis in Lebartoq’pp. 58-60. 

2’“Manifesto issued by a group of ‘non-aligned’ politicians, 2 October 1957,” in Agwani, irhe 

Lebanese Crisds, p. 37. 

z*“STRAC Briefing: Tactical and Strategic Mobility in the US Army,” (Lecture before a panel 

on the Strategic Army Corps, March 1959), typescript, U.S. Army War College, pti 9. 

*3An explanation of the first SWAGGERSTICK plan may be found in H. R. Yoshpe and J. 

Bykofsky, camps., “Lebanon: A Test of Army Contingency Planning,” bound typescript, (Washingtoa, DC.: Department of the Army,,Office of the Chief of Transportation, 25 November 195&), 

pp. X3-15. 

ZdLaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War, pp. 176, 189-200. 

2jYoshpe and Bykofsky, “‘Lebanon: A Test of Army Contingency Planning,” p. 13. 

*‘jIbid., pp- 14-15. While it is true that both General Taylor and the Chief of Naval Operations, 

Arleigh Burke, were dissatisfied with the “New Look” as the Eisenhower administration’s defense 

policy was called, it is also true that President Eisenhower demanded public consensus from the 

service chiefs on matters concerning the strategic doctrines of the United States. Eisenhower 

personally interviewed General Taylor before his appointment as Army Chief of Staff to insure 

that this public consensus among the chiefs would obtain, By far the most ardent supporter of the 

‘<New Look” on the JCS was the chairman, Admiral Arthur Radford. Radford retired in the 

summer of 1957 and was replaced by Air Force General Nathan Twining. Useful works discussing 

the debate over American strategic doctrine occurring for the most part beyond public view & the 

time are: Russell Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy 

and Pa&y (New York: Macmillan Co., 1973), pp. 418-Z; Douglas Kinnard, President 

Eisenhower and Strategy Management: A Study in Defense Politics (Lexington: University Press 

of Kentuckji, 1977), pp. 37-65; Lawrence J. Korb, The Joint Chiefs of Staff: The First Twenty-Five 

Years (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976), pp. 106-10; SamueI P. Huntington, The 

Common Defense: Strategic Programs in National Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 

1961), pp. 91-95; and Edward A. Kolodziej, T/ze Uncom&n Defense and Congress (Columbus: 

Ohio State University Press, 1966), pp. 225-31. See General Taylor’s views expressed at length in 

his The Uncertain Trumpet (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1959), pas&m. 
“See n.6, supra. 

2”Matthew Ridgway, Soldier: The Memoirs of Matthew B. Ridgway, as told to Harold H. Martin 

(New York: Harper and Brothers, 1956), pp. 327-28. 

29Weigley, American Wuy of Wur, p. 421. 

,?“Yoshpe and Bykofsky, “Lebanon: A Test of Army Contingency Planning,” pp. 4-9. General 

Wheeler is quoted on p. 8. 

“Reretz, The Middle East Today, pp. 312-13. Hussein’s government, led by Prime Minister 

Sulaiman Nabulsi, had rejected the Eisenhower Doctrine out of hand when it had been first approached. Earlier Nabulsi’s National Socialist Party had been responsible for the cancellation of 

the long-standing Anglo-Jordanian Treaty and its attendant British subsidy and was known to 

favor rapprochement with Egypt and Syria. 

“‘Huntington, The Common Defense, pp. 93-94. 

““Headquarters, 24th Infantry Division, “After Action Report on Operation Grandios, IS-31 

July,” Command Report. 13 August 1958, bound typescript, p. 1 (hereafter cited as 24th Inf. Div., 

AAR). 

‘Wchulimson, “Marines in Lebanon,” p. 7. 

“Command Report, 13 August 1968. p. 1,24th Inf. Div., AAR. 

““Headquarters, U.S. European Command, “Final Report on Critique on USCINCEUR Participation in CINCSPECPMME OPLAN 215-58,” Agenda Item 2, Requirement for senior Ground 

Force Commander and Joint Staff over USA and USMC troops when used jointly, bound typescript, p. 3 (hereafter cited as “CINCEUR Critique”). See also W. B. R. Neave-Hill, “British Assistance to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, 1958.” bound typescript (London: The Historical Section, Ministry of Defense Library, January 1969). 

“:Command Report. 13 August 1958, p. 1,24th Inf. Div., AAR. 

z%ights, “Lessons of Lebanon,” pp. 29-32. 

Wchulimson, “Marines in Lebanon,” pp. 7-9. 

I”Ibid. 

“ICommand Report, 13 August 1908, p. 1, 24th Inf. Div., AAR. See also “CINCEUR Critique.” p. 

3. See also Headquarters, Department of the Army, “Lessons Learned from Lebanon,‘* memorandum from the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations to Chief of Staff, U.S. Army, n.d., typescript, 

Combined Arms Research Library, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas (hereafter cited as “DCSOPS Lessons Learned”). 

JJLaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War, p. 1’79. 

~‘The foregoing account is based upon Qubain. Crisis in Lebanon, pp. 60-66, and official 

documents reproduced therein, viz.: app. I, “The Lebanese Presentation at the Security Council [of 

the United Nations], Speech of Dr. Malik (Lebanon) on June 6, 1958,” pp. 181-96; and Desmond 

Stewart, Turmoil in Beirut; A PersonaE Account (London: Allan Wingate, 1938), pp. l-23. Both 

authors were in Lebanon at the time of the crisis, Stewart as the Inspector of English for the 

Maqasid Society. Stewart appears to have been one of the few Westerners allowed safe transit of 

al-Basta during the troubles. See also Robert McClintock, “The American Landing in Lebanon,” p. 

66, for his remarks on “audio-visual aggression,” and pp. 65-79, for an abbreviated account of the 

crisis. 

AdIbid. Qubain’s assessment of the circumstances surrounding the act of “symbolic significance” is in his Crisis in Lebanon, p. 68. Concerning the regional situation, see Albert Hourani’s 

Vision of History, pp, 117-20, 124, for a respected view. 

JsQubain, Crisis in Lebanon, pp. 72-73. 

$eIbid., p. 73; and McClintock, “American Landing in Lebanon,” pp. 66-67. 

?‘Stewart, Turmoil in Beirut, p. 29. 

‘YSchulimson, “Marines in Lebanon,” pp. 7-8. 

+gQubain, Crisis in Lebanon, p. 113; Time, 26 May 1958, p. 33. Seventeen M41 tanks were sent 

from the United States in May and when the Army’s 3d Medium Tank Battalion arrived in 

August, the M4Is had not been broken out of their shipping crates. William B. Wallace, “Activities 

of the 3d Medium Tank Battalion, 35th Armor, while in Lebanon August-October 19.58,” typescript (Fort Knox, Ky.: U.S. Army Armor School, n.d.), p. 8. 

SoCommand Report, I3 August 1958, p. 2, 24th Inf. Div., AAR. 

SlQubain, Crisis in Lebanon, p. 113. 

52Ibid., pp. 89-91. 
56 

J3“Resolution of the United Nations Security Council, 11 June 1958,” in Agwani, %&ebonese 

crisis, p. 198; and “First Report by the Secretary-General on the implementation of the resolution 

adopted by the Security Council on 11 June 1958,16 June 1958,” ibid., pp. 198-93. 

Y?wining is quoted in Qubain, Crisis in Lebanon, p 114. 

j”‘“Extracts from first report of the United Nations Observation Group in Lebanon, 1 July 

1958,” in Agwani, The Lebanese Crisis, p. 214. 

SfiQubain, Crisis in Lebanon, p. 115. Time magazine in its 14 July 1358 issue reported, “Lsbanon’s odd little sporadic war did not end last week, but some of the international tension over it 

abated.” Ironically, on this very day the coup in Iraq that triggered American intervention 

occurred. 

“:Tirne, 28 July 1958, pp. 22-25. 

j~McClintock, “American Landing in Lebanon,” p. 69. 

“9The foregoing summary of events is based upon Schulimson, “Marines in L&anon,” pp. 9-10; 

New York Times, 16 July 1958, pp. 1-3; &me, 28 July 1958, pp. 10-13; Dulles and Twining are 

quoted in LaFeber, America, Russia, and the C&d War, p. 205; and for Eisenhower’s reaction to 

Rayburn’s comment, see “Lebanon Landing,” Economist, 19 July 1958, p. 206. All times given are 

local, unless otherwise noted. 

Wchulimson, “Marines in Lebanon,” p. 9. 

ElIbid., pp. 8-12; Hadd, “Orders Firm But Flexible,‘” pp, 82-86. 

“%Ibid. 

edIbid.; McClintock, “The American Landing in Lebanon,” p. 70. 

64Hadd, “‘Orders Firm But Flexible,” p. 84. 

65McClintock, “The American Landing in Lebanon,” p. 70. 

66There is a discrepancy in the time given for the arrival of the air attache at the airport. 

Schulimson, ‘“Marines in Lebanon,“’ p. 14, says this occurred at 1640. Hadd, “Orders Firm Rut 

Flexible,“’ p, 84, says 1700. 

YSee Hadd, “Orders Firm But Flexible,” p. 82. For a sampling of opposition reaction, see 

“Address by Mr. SZ’ib Sallm, the opposition leader, to the Lebanese people on the eve of the 

landing of US troops in Lebanon, 15 July 1958,‘” and ‘“Statement by Mr. SH’ib SalZm, the opposition leader condemning the US intervention in Lebanon, 16 July 1958,” in Agwani, The Lebanese 

Crisis, pp. 293-94,235. In the last noted speech, SalHm styled himself the “Commander in chief of 

the people’s forces.” 

A less strident condemnation of the American intervention was delivered by the Speaker of the 

Lebanese Chamber of Deputies, Adil Usayran, in a letter to the United Nations Secretary General 

the day after the landings. Usayran called for the immediate withdrawal of American troops from 

Lebanese soil, which he called an “attack on the sovereignty and independence of Lebanon” and a 

“threat to the peace and security of the Middle East.” Clearly, not only the opposition was disturbed by Chamoun’s invocation of the Eisenhower Doctrine. See ibid., p. 284. 

6”Quoted in AreLo York Times, 16 July 1958, p, 1. 

WI’his summary of events is drawn from Wadei‘Operation Bluebat,” pp. 13-14;Hadd, “Orders 

Firm But Flexible,” pp. 85-86; McClintock, “The American Landing in Lebanon,” p. 71; and 

Schulimson, “Marines in Lebanon,” pp. 18-19. All items noted here, with the exception of the last, 

are accounts of participants and agree in their particulars. 

%‘!$chulimsan, *‘Marines in Lebanon,” p. 25. 

TlMcClintock, “The American banding in Lebanon,” pp, 71-72. 

Wchulimson, ‘Marines in Lebanon,‘” p, 22. 

73Econamist, 19 July 1358, p. 218. 

:@‘DCSOPS, Lessons Learned,” p. 3. 

Wommand Report, 13 August 1958, pp. 2--3,24th Inf. Div., AAR. 

FeIbid., p. 8; see also Annex A (Alerts) to Operation Plan GRANDIOS, 1 July 1958,24th Inf Div., 

AAR. 

77Chronology, p. 12, 24th Inf. Div., AAR. 

T*Interview with Col. Gerald Carlson, August 1979, U.S. Army Command and General Staff 

College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas (hereafter cited as Carlson interview). 

Whronology, p. 13,24th Inf. Div., AAR. 

*orbid.; see also Headquarters, U.S. Specified Command, Middle East, American Land Force, 

“After Action Report, 15 July-25 October 1958,‘” J-l [Administration] Analysis, pt. II, sec. II, sub-sec. 
57 

B, bound typescript, pp. 1-7 (hereafter cited as AMLANFOR AAR). 

“‘Chronology, p. 2, and Annex A (Alerts) to Operation Plan GRANDIOS, 24th Inf. Div., AAR. 

Ybid., and Command Report, 13 August 1958, p. 3. See also Support Force Speidel AAR, 9 

August 1958, pp. 1-4,24th Inf. Div., AAR; and “DCSOPS Lessons Learned,” p. 9. 

Wommand Report, 13 August 1958, p. 3,24th Inf. Div., AAR. 

&aIbid. 

asAgenda Item 6, Command Channel for Alert and Implementing Instructions, ‘“CINCEUR 

Critique,” p. 9. 

s6“DCSOPS Lessons Learned,” p. 9. 

9See Agenda Item 45, Security, “CINCEUR Critique,” p. 71; Chronology, 13 August 1958, pp. 

12-13, 24th Inf. Div., AAR; Problem Areas, Operation GRANDIOS, ibid., p. 5; J-2 [Intelligence] 

analysis, pt.‘II, sec. II, p. 6, AMLANFOR.AAR, and J-3 [Operations] analysis, ibid., p. 2. 

*aAgenda Item 5, Requirement for Mutual Exchange of Information Regarding Activities of 

Participating Forces, “CINCEUR Critique,” p. 8. See also Command Report, 13 August 1958, p. 2, 

24th Inf. Div., AAR, in which it is revealed that an agreement between Army and Air Force 

planners on this very subject had been reached-again-at Ramstein AFB, Germany, only the 

week before the emergency. 

Wommand Report, 13 August 1958, p. 3,24th Inf. Div., AAR. 

$“After Action Report, Operation GRANDIOS, 9 August 1958, p. 4, 24th Inf. Div., AAR. Ultimately, low estimates of TF 201 Alpha Forces tonnage required an additional six C-124s for the 

airlift. These were taken from Force Charlie’s airlift allocation. 

9iCommand Report, 13 August 1958, p. 3,24th Inf. Div., AAR. 

“ZHeadquarters, U.S. Army Europe, “Lessons Learned from the Lebanon Operation,” Memorandum from the Office of the Chief of Staff to the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, Department of the Army, n. d. [early 1959?], Combined Arms Research Library, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas (hereafter cited as “USAREUR Lessons Learned”), p. 2. 

93Command Report, 13 August 1958, p. 3,24th Inf. Div., AAR. 

9”Agenda Item 8, Liaison Requirements, “CINCEUR Critique,” p. 12. 

Wommand Report, 13 August 1958, p. 4,24th Inf. Div., AAR. 

gX!arlson interview. 

9:After Action Report, Operation GRANDIOS, 9 August 1958, p. 5, 24th Inf. Div., AAR. 

g*Ibid., p. 4. 

99Agenda Item 27, Foreign Overflight Rights and Clearances, “CINCEUR Critique,” p. 42. 

*UoAfter Action Report, Operation GRANDIOS, 9 August 1958, p. 5, 24th Inf. Div., AAR. 

‘“‘Ibid., pp. 3-4. 

‘UzAfter Action Report, Operation GRANDIOS, 9 August 1958, pp. 2-4‘24th Inf. Div., AAR. 

‘Whronology, pt. I, p. 5, AMLANFOR AAR. 

‘Wommand Report, 13 August 1958, p. 4,24th Inf. Div., AAR. 

L”jAgenda Item 1, Saturation of Staging Base, “CINCEUR Critique,” p. 1. 

lOGAlbert P. Sights, Jr., “Lessons of Lebanon: A Study in Air Strategy,” Air University Review 

16, no. 5 (July-August 1965): 30 (hereafter cited as Sights, “Lebanon Air Strategy”). 

‘07Ibid., pp. 38, 31. 

‘asIbid., pp. 39, 41. 

IoVommand Report, 13 August 1958, p. 4,24th Inf. Div., AAR. 

“Sights, “Lebanon Air Strategy,” pp. 41-42. 

l~lC!ommand Report, 13 August 1958, p. 4,24th Inf. Div., AAR. 

““Quoted in Schulimson, “Marines in Lebanon,” p. 26. 

““Command Report, 13 August 1958, p. 4, 24th Inf. Div., AAR. 

1145.2 [Intelligence] Analysis, pt. II, sec. II, pp. 2-4, AMLANFOR AAR. 

“Wommand Report, 13 August 1958, p. 5,24th Inf. Div., AAR. 

li6Ibid. See also, Sehulimson, “Marines in Lebanon,” pp. 25-26. 

*‘7Command Report, 13 August 1958, p. 824th Inf. Div., AAR. 

LIdIbid., pp. 5-6; Carlson interview. 

il%chulimson, “Marines in Lebanon,” p. 26. 

‘Whronology, pt. 1, p. 9, AMLANFOR AAR. See also Command Report, 13 August 1958, p. 7, 

24th Inf. Div., AAR, and “Staff Representation on Joint Staffs” in “USAREUR Lessons Learned,” 

n. p. 
58 

lL*Agenda Item 10, Relationship of USAREUR and Deployed Forces under CINCSPECOMME 

Control, “‘CINCEUR Critique,” p. 14. 

lJ”‘“Adequaey of Command Arrangements,” in “USAREUR Lessons Learned,” n. p. 

‘““Agenda Item 7, Deployment of USAREUR Atomic Delivery Units, “CINCEUR Critique,” p. 

11. 

ls4“DCSOPS Lessons Learned,” p. 11. 

‘Whronalogy, pt. I, p 9, AMLANFQR AAR. 

‘“““Adequacy of Command Arrangements, ” in “USAREUR Lessons Learned,” n. p.; see also, 

Agenda Item 10, Relationship of USAREUR and Deployed Forces under CINCSPECOMME Control, “CINCEUR Critique,” p. 14. General Adams’ original table of distribution for AMLANFOR 

was based upon a headquarters of corps size. The new headquarters took 28 officers and 66 

enlisted men from the Army Task Force staff, but because even this fell far short ofwhat General 

Adams felt he needed, he made a further request of USAREUR for 88 officers and 203 enlisted 

men. USAREUR gave Adams only 32 officers and 42 enlisted men on TDY. See J-l Analysis, 

Unified Command Phase, pt. II, sec. I, sub-sec. B, p. 1, AMLANFOR AAR. 

‘*?XSOPS Lesson Learned,” p. 8. Sights, ‘Lebanon Air Strategy,” p. 41. 

‘Whronology, pt. I, p. 11, AMLANFOR AAR. 

i2Wommanding General’s Speech, Inclosure I, p. 1, Command Report, 13 August 1958, 24th Inf. 

Div., AAR. 

i”OIbid, p. 8. 

i3iAgenda Item 42, Maps, “‘CINCEUR Critique,” pi 66. 

isnJ.2 Analysis, pt.. II, sec. II, p. 2, AMLANFOR AAR. 

‘:l”Agenda Item 41, Voids in Intelligence, “CINCEUR Critique,” p. 63. 

‘Wommand Report, 13 August 1958, p. 2,24th Inf. Div., AAR. 

lWhronology, pt. I, p. 1, AMLANFOR AAR. 

1365-3 [Operations] Analysis, sec. III, p. 3, ibid. 

“Sehulimson, “Marines in Lebanon,” pp. 27-29; Chronology, pt. I, p. 5, AMLANFOR AAR. 

13sSchulimson, “Marines in Lebanon,” pp. 27-28. 

lWhronology, pt. I, p. 6, AMLANFOR AAR. 

Ia-UQuoted in Sehulimson, “Marines in Lebanon,” p. 32. 

~~1Ibid., pp. 31,27; Command Report, 13 August 1958, p- 6, 24th Inf. Div., AAR. 

‘42Ibid. 

‘““Qubain, Crisis in Lebanon, pp. 156-58. 

:Whronology, pt. I, pp. X2-14, AMLANFOR AAR. 

:W&bain, Crisis in Lebanon, pp. 156-58. 

IWhronology, pt. I, pp. 25-31, AMLANFOR AAR. 

!“‘Blechman and Kaplan, Force without War, p. 16. 

0 lJ.S Government Printing Offce- i991-554-001/~2028 
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- Dr. Roger J. Spiller - 

Roger Spiller serves as the Command Historian, 

Combined Arms Center and Fort Leavenworth, and 

as an associate professor of military history with 

the Combat Studies Institute, USACGSC. He holds a 

doctorate in American history from Louisiana State 

University and is the editor of the forthcoming Dictionary of American Military Biography for the Greenwood Press. Aside from his official duties, he is 

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