7th Army (Seventh United States Army) 1952 US Army The Big Picture TV-220

more at http://quickfound.net/

'Documents the exploits of the U.S. 7th Army and the invasion of Southern France. Also, Colonel William Quinn interviews two war correspondents from Korea, Doug Larson and Francis Porter, on the value of war press coverage.'

Originally a public domain film from the National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh_United_States_Army

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The Seventh Army was a United States army created during World War II that evolved into the United States Army Europe (USAREUR) during the 1950s and 1960s. It served in North Africa and Italy in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations and France and Germany in the European theater between 1942 and 1945.

Originally the I Armored Corps under command of Lieutenant General George S. Patton, it made landfall at Morocco during Operation Torch as the Western Task Force, the first all-U.S. force to enter the European war. Following successful defeat of the Wehrmacht under Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in North Africa, the I Armored Corps was redesignated the Seventh Army on 10 July 1943 while at sea en route to the Allied invasion of Sicily as the spearhead of Operation Husky.

After the conquests of Palermo and Messina the Seventh Army prepared for the invasion of France by its Mediterranean coast as the lead element of Operation Dragoon in August 1944. It then drove a retreating German army north and then west toward the Alsace...

In a lead role in Operation Undertone launched 15 March, the Seventh Army fought its way across the Rhine into Germany, capturing Nuremberg and then Munich. Elements reached Austria and crossed the Brenner Pass into Italy by 4 May, followed shortly by war's end on VE-Day, 8 May 1945...

World War II

I Armored Corps

The I Armored Corps, the predecessor of Seventh Army, was formed on 15 July 1940 as the command element for armored forces of the United States Army...

...On 15 January 1942, Major General George S. Patton Jr. assumed command of I Armored Corps and began planning for the invasion of North Africa.

On 8 November 1942, General Patton was in command of the Western Task Force... I Armored Corps then began to drive east which complemented British forces driving from the west. The result was that Axis forces were trapped in Tunisia and were forced to surrender in May 1943.

Sicily

After succeeding in North Africa, Patton, now promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General, became commander of the newly formed Seventh Army, which was formed at midnight on 10 July 1943 by the redesignation of the I Armored Corps... Patton commanded the Seventh Army until early 1944.

The Seventh Army landed on several beaches in southern Sicily on 10 July 1943 and captured the Sicilian capital of Palermo on 22 July and, along with the British Eighth Army, captured Messina on 16 August... Seventh Army remained relatively inactive at Palermo, Sicily, and Algiers until January 1944, when Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark, then commanding the U.S. Fifth Army on the Italian Front, was assigned as commander and the Seventh Army began planning for the invasion of southern France.

...Within one month, the Seventh Army, which by then employed three American divisions, five French divisions and the 1st Airborne Task Force, had advanced 400 miles and joined with the Allied forces coming south from Normandy. In the process, the Seventh Army had liberated Marseilles, Lyon, Toulon and all of Southern France.

The Seventh Army then assaulted the German forces in the Vosges Mountains and broke into the Alsatian Plain. During the Battle of the Bulge in late December, it extended its flanks to take over much of the area that had been the responsibility of U.S. Third Army, then commanded by Patton who had previously commanded the Seventh, which allowed the Third to relieve surrounded American forces besieged at Bastogne... After capturing the city of Strasbourg, the Seventh went into the Saar, assaulted the Siegfried Line, and reached the River Rhine during the first week of March, 1945...

In less than nine months of continuous fighting, the Seventh Army had advanced over 1,000 miles and for varying times had commanded 24 U.S. and Allied divisions, including the 3rd, 36th, 42nd, 44th, 45th, 63rd, 70th, 100th, and 103rd Infantry Divisions...