Late in 1942 the United States sent its first troops across the Atlantic, making amphibious landings in North Africa, followed by Sicily and the Italian peninsula. The first allied landings were in Morocco (Casablanca) and Algeria (Oran and Algiers) on November 8 of that year. (Algiers became the Allied headquarters in North Africa for the duration of the war.) The combined forces of the initial landing included more than 100,000 troops, launching the American military effort in the Atlantic theater of conflict. One American newspaper headline announced: “Yanks Invade Africa.”