Short Story re Italy, "Operation AVALANCHE"

SALERNO

OPERATION AVALANCHE, September 9, 1943

Salerno, at the mouth of the River Sele

On September 11th the British landed unopposed in the harbour at Taranto, but Salerno was a far tougher nut. Apart from Dieppe, which was a special case, it was the first seriously opposed landing that we had ventured on, and there was a period when it was near to failing altogether.

The date selected for Avalanche was the 9th of September. The Italian request for an armistice was made public on the evening of the 8th, which led some of the more ill-advised among the troops, despite warnings, to expect something like a walkover. Top level arguments, and the consequent lower level adjustments, were still continuing when the first and slowest elements of the invasion force crept out from their bases and set their course for Salerno. Sixteen separate convoys sailed from five separate ports on six different dates, according to their speed and port of origin. There were several air attacks on passage, but the total damage was negligible; it amounted to only one LCT sunk, one Hunt Class destroyer damaged by a near miss, and one LST damaged by a bomb which passed clean through her without exploding. The last two reached their objectives, and the destroyer played a notable part in the bombardment of the beaches before being ordered back to Malta for repairs on the second day of the landings. It was a poor score for the Luftwaffe against 700 ships and landing craft.

Rendezvous and landfalls were made faultlessly, and the assault began more or less on time. The northern or British half of the front comprised of sectors, each of two beaches. On the northernmost beach the leading battalion got ashore successfully, and Brigade Headquarters followed it soon afterwards; but the right battalion on the next beach was less fortunate. By bad luck the LCT(R)s discharged their rockets too far south, and the Commanding Officer of the leading wave had to make up his mind quickly whether to land on his allotted beach, where the defenders had escaped attack, or to switch to where the rockets had struck, so as to exploit their effect. He chose the latter course, and it proved to be a wrong decision. Trying to fight his way north to the area in which he should have landed his men came under heavy fire. His supporting weapons, following in the next wave, did not know of the change of direction, and landed on the original beach, where, with no bridgehead to protect them, they were wiped out. This battalion and the reserve battalion following in its wake, each suffered 50 percent casualties.

Photo Credit - Office of Medical History

Once again the use of smoke, as in the crossing of the Messina Straits, proved to be a mistake. The enemy gunners had ranged on the beaches, and their aim was not affected by their inability to see their targets; whereas the attackers could not see what was going on, and coxswains found difficulty in recognizing the silhouettes which they had so carefully memorized. During an air raid on the first evening, two cruisers, Delhi and Uganda, were actually in collision in a smoke screen.

Destroyers were steaming close inshore to engage shore targets, cutting across the bows of landing craft as they steered their painstaking way. The exits from the beaches were bad, and there was not room in the beachhead to deploy all the artillery that careful planning had got ashore in the early stages. The deficiency in fire support was made by units of the Royal and United States Navies. Every round fired from the sea during those fourteen hectic days in September of 1943 was a horrid warning to professors of tactics not to be dogmatic. A strong case could be made out in support of a claim that Naval bombardment saved Salerno. The lessons deriving from this experience were to be applied with devastating effect in Normandy nine months later.

A U.S. Coast Guardsman signals to a landing craft whose bow doors yawn

empty off Paestum, twenty miles south of Salerno, as the invasion gets under way.

Photo with caption found at WW2Archives

On the extreme left of the British front, the American Rangers and British Commandos, were having a rough time. The LCAs which were to have landed the Commando stores apparently found the fire too heavy for their liking, and withdrew without unloading. Objectives changed hands more than once, but were finally captured and handed over to the left flank British division. Out of a total strength of 738, more than half were casualties. As the landing craft came ashore, all supplies were unloaded and stored, and the beach area was kept clear for incoming craft by the Indian Gurkhas and Italian prisoners.

In the American areas, south of the Sele River, the battle remained critical for several days. For some reason fewer close support craft were allotted to this part of the front, and all landings were made under heavy machine gun fire. Here again, the exits from the beaches were defective and the build-up caused many delays. American reports on Salerno are sternly self-critical. The scales of equipment taken ashore were far too generous; no labour was provided to unload the LCTs and the DUKWs. DUKWs were misappropriated and used as trucks instead of returning to the ships for more stores.

Many ships had been improperly loaded, with a lot of irrelevant and unauthorised items on top of the urgently required tactical ones, and at one stage there was a mass of unsorted material - petrol, ammunition, food, equipment - lying so thick on the beaches that landing craft could find nowhere to touch down. Eventually a thousand sailors were landed from the ships to clear the waterfront, and pontoons were rushed in to the sector to make piers. But for some time all landing of stores had to be suspended.

Although some of the troops had penetrated inland a mile or more by first light on the 9th, they were very weak; and when the Germans counter-attacked with tanks they had nothing with which to defend themselves. The first American tanks did not get ashore until 10 a.m. From 0800 onwards, regardless of the risk of mines, two American cruisers, the British monitor Abercrombie, and several destroyers, both British and American, were engaging enemy tanks from seaward. The American destroyer Bristol fired 860 rounds during the day, closing at one time to a range of 7500 yards.

USS Bristol (DD), torpedoed by U-371 off E. Algeria, 13 Oct 43

Photo Credit - Ships of the US Navy, 1940 - 45

On the 11th, the Germans produced a new and nasty weapon, the remote controlled bomb. These were released by aircraft flying at a great height, and steered on to the targets by electronic means. The first two fell within six minutes of each other: No. 1 missed the U.S. cruiser Philadelphia by only fifteen feet, and shook her from truck to keel and No. 2 scored a direct hit on the Savannah and set her on fire.

H.M.S. Uganda was hit a few hours later and severely damaged, though both she and the Savannah survived. During the next few days several ships were victims of the formidable new weapon, including the battleship Warspite. She had been shelling the shore batteries. She had just blown up an ammunition dump, and was moving contentedly to the north to shoot up another area, when three remote-controlled bombs came whistling down on her. Two were misses, but the third burst in one of her boiler rooms. In less than an hour her engine rooms were flooded and she was helpless. A hazardous tow of 300 miles brought her to Malta. It took five hours to get her through the Straits of Messina, due to the strong currents.

On shore, the race, as usual was between our own build-up and the arrival of German reinforcements. The critical period began on the evening of the 13th, the fifth day of the fighting. The British were in Salerno town, though the heights above it were in dispute. On the other side of the Gulf the Americans were in Agropoli. The deepest penetration on any part of the front was five miles, and it averaged less than four. Mark Clark's Headquarters had been established ashore for 36 hours. The Germans had been building up near Eboli, on the edge of the hills north of the Sele River; and that evening with the best part of four divisions and a large number of Tiger tanks, they drove a wedge between the British and the American forces, bursting out on to the plain and getting perilously close to the sea. Their guns were shelling the beaches and their aircraft bombing them. The closer they pressed, the more difficult became our own troop movements in an area which was getting more and more constricted.

Once again, Naval bombardment was called into play, and quantities of shells were fired, while the Allied Air Force made the most concentrated attacks that had ever been made in a battle area in one day. The German War Diary states that "the heavy ships' bombardment and the almost complete command of the fighting area by the far superior enemy air force, had cost us grievous losses."

By the 16th, the Eighth Army was drawing near from the south, and its leading patrols making contact with the Americans. The German bolt was shot and the Salerno battle saved; but as a measure of how nearly the German counter-strike succeeded, Clark's Headquarters had had to re-embark, and preliminary orders had been issued for the abandonment of some of the southern beaches.

It is pleasant to record that the three Winettes* - Boxer, Thruster and Bruiser - played a notable part in this operation. They made six separate trips between the beaches and bases ports in Sicily and Tunisia, and could have made more if they had not, on one voyage, been kept waiting about for 40 hours unloaded. They put 1345 guns and vehicles and 6000 officers and men ashore into the beachhead at a time when they were badly needed. The same applied to many officers and ratings on the LCTs and the LSTs who were deeply and severely involved in the landings.

So ended Salerno, a hard and difficult battle, the severest test so far of the technique of Combined Operations.

The above story is found in Combined Operations by Londoner Clayton Marks, pages 102 - 105, printed in 1993. Observant readers will notice similarities between it and part of an address delivered to the Maritime Museum of Vancouver, 1995 by Lt. Cdr L. Williams, RCNVR, RTD (Data from Lt. Cdr J. Gibb, RCNVR).

HM LST Thruster

Photo Credit - Combined Operations Command

*The Winettes were LST(1)s produced in the US. HMS Thruster was completed in January 1943, the Bruiser in March, and the Boxer in April. Link to Landing Ship, Tanks by G. L. Rottman, pages 5 - 6, for more information.

Please link to Story re "55th, 61st, 80th, 81st Flotillas" Part 2