THE LANDING OF ALHUCEMAS
Authors: Pablo Baldo, Juan Antonio García and Francisco Pascual (Villena) Simón Sánchez (Alicante) and Sergio Mollá (Mutxamel)
The landing at Al Hoceima was carried out on September 8, 1925 by the Spanish Army and Navy and, to a lesser extent, a French allied contingent, which would bring about the end of the Rif War. It is considered the first amphibious landing in history that involved the use of tanks and massive air support by sea.
The Al Hoceima landings are seen as a precursor to the Allied amphibious landings in World War II, and the first successful combined operation of the 20th century.
It consisted of the landing of a contingent of 13,000 Spanish soldiers transported from Ceuta and Melilla by the combined Spanish-French navy. His commander in chief was the then Military Director of Spain, General Miguel Primo de Rivera, and as executive head of the landing forces on the beaches of Al Hoceima Bay, General José Sanjurjo, under whose command were the columns of the generals. heads of the Ceuta and Melilla brigades, Leopoldo Saro Marín and Emilio Fernández Pérez, respectively. Among the leaders participating in the action was the then Colonel Francisco Franco, who due to his actions at the head of the Legion troops was promoted to Brigadier General.
The American General Dwight Eisenhower years later studied in depth the tactics used by the Spanish in Al Hoceima to draw up the plan for the Normandy Landings.
The landing, scheduled for September 7, began, due to bad weather, on September 8, 1925 on the beaches of Ixdain and Cebadilla, in the territory of the Kabyle of Bokoia, using 24 type K barges purchased from the British.
On the coast, the Riffians had fourteen 70 and 75 mm field guns that had been captured from the Spanish and were now handled by foreign mercenary instructors.
They also had machine guns.
Supported by the guns of the naval squadrons and the bombardment of the aviation, the first wave began at 11:30 a.m. Due to the presence of rocks, the Ixdain beach contingent had to disembark about 50 meters from the coast. Meanwhile, it is discovered that Cebadilla beach is mined, with about 40 mines buried in the sand. Once the mines were detonated, the second wave began at 1:00 p.m., then making a rapid advance until they occupied the heights overlooking the beach. At first, 9,000 men disembarked and during the rest of the day the necessary material was disembarked to continue the operation. As the afternoon fell, the Riffian artillery resumed intense fire against the Spanish troops and the squadron, causing numerous casualties and hitting the battleships Alfonso XIII and Jaime I, which suffered minor damage.
The artillery was responded to with a Spanish air attack and, by the end of the day, 13,000 men were already on the ground.
It should be noted that in Al Hoceima, battle tanks were used for the first time in the history of the war in a landing, specifically 11 Renault FT-17 and 6 Schneider CA1, which were of little use, although they made a great impression. Furthermore, it was the first time in history in which the air support forces for the landing, the naval forces and the ground forces acted under a unified command (that of Primo de Rivera).
From Al Hoceima, in the spring of 1926, the operations were carried out that determined the defeat of Abd el-Krim and the total occupation and pacification of the Spanish zone of the Protectorate.
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