page_title: Jerauld Wright
section_title: Operation Flagpole
hierarchical_section_title: Jerauld Wright / Naval career / World War II / North Africa, Sicily, and Italy / Operation Flagpole
caption_attribution_description: Image provided by the kind permission of the Barrow-in-Furness Submariners Association website
context_page_description: Admiral Jerauld Wright was an officer in the United States Navy. He served as the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Atlantic Command and the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Atlantic Fleet, and became the second Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, from April 1, 1954, to March 1, 1960, serving longer in these three positions than anyone else in history.
  Following World War I, Wright served as a naval aide for Presidents Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover. A recognized authority on naval gunnery, Wright served in the European and Pacific theaters during World War II, developing expertise in amphibious warfare and coalition warfare planning. After the war, Wright was involved in the evolution of the military structure of NATO as well as overseeing the modernization and readiness of the United States Atlantic Fleet during the Cold War.
  Upon his retirement from the navy, Wright subsequently served on the Central Intelligence Agency's National Board of Estimates and as the United States Ambassador to the Republic of China.
context_section_description: On October 16, 1942, Captain Jerauld Wright was summoned to Operation Torch's staff headquarters at Horfolk House in London for an important meeting with General Eisenhower, alongside other senior officers. Eisenhower informed the group that the War Department had forwarded an urgent cable from U.S. diplomat Robert D. Murphy requesting the immediate dispatch of a top-secret high-level group to meet with Général Charles E. Mast, the military commander of Algiers and the leader of a group of pro-Allied officials in French North Africa.
  The objective of this secret mission, code-named Operation Flagpole, was to reach an agreement through Mast and his colleagues to have Général Henri Giraud, a key pro-Allied French army officer, step forward, take command of French military forces in North Africa, and then arrange a ceasefire with the Allied invasion force.  Other alternatives, like Jean Darlan and Charles de Gaulle, had been rejected by the British and American governments for a variety of political reasons. Clark would be Eisenhower's personal representative, with Lemnitzer as the top invasion planner, Hamblen as the invasion's logistics expert, and Holmes serving as translator.  Wright would serve as the liaison with the French Navy, with the specific objective of convincing the French to have their fleet anchored in Toulon join the Allied cause.
  The group flew in two Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers to Gibraltar, and on October 19, they boarded the British submarine HMS Seraph, Lieutenant Norman Limbury Auchinleck "Bill" Jewell, RN, commanding. Seraph then transported Clark's party to the small fishing village of Cherchell, located 82 mils (132 kilometers) west of Algiers.  After midnight on the evening of October 21, the Seraph surfaced and set Clark's mission ashore, where they met with Mast and Murphy. Wright met with Capitaine de vaisseau Jean Barjot and learned that the French Navy was opposed to U.S. entry into North Africa, although the army and air force supported it.
  On October 24, Clark's mission returned to the Seraph and later met a seaplane that flew them back to Gibraltar, arriving back in London on October 25 where Wright briefed Admiral Stark.  Both Eisenhower and Clark recommended Jerauld Wright for a Distinguished Service Medal in recognition for his role in Operation Flagpole.  Wright's DSM was personally pinned by Admiral Ernest J. King, the Chief of Naval Operations, during the Casablanca Conference.
caption: HMS Seraph
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