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Contact Info
Home Town Hackensack, NJ
Last Address Middlebury, VT
Date of Passing Sep 15, 1972
Location of Interment U.S. Naval Academy Cemetery and Columbarium (VLM) - Annapolis, Maryland
Wall/Plot Coordinates 2 209
Official Badges
Unofficial Badges
Additional Information
Last Known Activity:
Henry Kent Hewitt was commander of amphibious operations in North Africa and southern Europe through World War II. He was born in Hackensack, New Jersey and graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1906.
Following World War II, he commanded U.S. Naval Forces Europe, advised the Naval War College, and served as a Navy representative to the United Nations. Hewitt retired from active duty to Orwell, Vermont in 1949.
Operation Torch/Naval Battle of Casablanca
From Month/Year
November / 1942
To Month/Year
November / 1942
Description The Naval Battle of Casablanca was a series of naval engagements fought between American ships covering the invasion of North Africa and Vichy French ships defending the neutrality of French Morocco in accordance with the Second Armistice at Compiègne during World War II. The last stages of the battle consisted of operations by German U-boats which had reached the area the same day the French troops surrendered. Allied military planners anticipated an all-American force assigned to seize the Atlantic port city of Casablanca might be greeted as liberators. An invasion task force of 102 American ships carrying 35,000 American soldiers approached the Moroccan coast undetected under cover of darkness. French defenders interpreted the first contacts as a diversionary raid for a major landing in Algeria; and Germany regarded the surrender of six Moroccan divisions to a small commando raiding force as a clear violation of French obligations to defend Moroccan neutrality under the Second Armistice at Compiègne. An escalating series of surprised responses in an atmosphere of mistrust and secrecy caused the loss of four U.S. troopships and the deaths of 462 men aboard 24 French ships opposing the invasion.
