History of the Second World War (76 page)

The Western Naval Task force (American), under Vice-Admiral H. Kent Hewitt, comprised 580 vessels, while a further 1,124 landing craft were carried with it. The 45th Infantry Division, for the right wing landing at Scoglitti, was brought across the Atlantic in two convoys and, after a brief pause at Oran, picked up its LSTs and smaller craft off Bizerta. The 1st Infantry and 2nd Armored Divisions, for the Gela landing, embarked from Algiers and Oran. The 3rd Infantry Division, for the left wing landing at Licata, embarked at Bizerta and was carried entirely in landing ships and landing craft.

The passages and assembly of the convoys in this vast armada were achieved, under naval and air cover, without any serious interference. Only four ships in convoy and two LSTs were lost — to submarine attack. No appreciable damage was suffered from air attack during the approach, and enemy aircraft were kept so well at bay that most of the convoys were not even sighted. The Allies’ air superiority in this theatre was so great — over 4,000 operational aircraft against some 1,500 German and Italian — that the enemy bombers were withdrawn in June to bases in north-central Italy. From July 2 onward the airfields in Sicily were so heavily and persistently attacked that only a few subsidiary landing strips remained usable when D-day came, and most of the undamaged fighters had retired to the mainland or Sardinia (though the actual number of planes destroyed throughout the campaign was not more than 200, compared with the 1,100 claimed by the Allies).

In the afternoon of July 9 the convoys began to arrive in their assembly areas east and west of Malta, and at the same time the wind rose sharply, stirring up the sea to such a steep pitch as to endanger the smaller craft and threaten to dislocate the landings. Fortunately, it moderated by midnight, though leaving a troublesome swell, and only a small proportion of the assault craft were late in reaching the beaches.

The worst effect was on the airborne drop that preceded the seaborne landings — carried out by parts of the British 1st and American 82nd Airborne Divisions. The first large stroke of this kind that the Allies had attempted, it would have been difficult in any case, because of inexperience and the call to make it at night. The high wind increased the navigational complications for the transport and tow aircraft in reaching their goals, and then combined with the anti-aircraft fire to disturb the descent. The American parachute troops were scattered in small parties over an area fifty miles wide. The British glider troops were also very scattered, and forty-seven of the 134 gliders fell into the sea. Nevertheless the unintendedly wide spread of these airborne troops helped to produce a widespread state of alarm and confusion behind the enemy’s front, while some of the parties had a more concrete effect by seizing key bridges and road-junctions.

The trouble that the sudden storm caused the attackers was, on balance, more than compensated by the extent to which it disarmed the defence. For although in the afternoon five convoys were sighted advancing northward from Malta, and a series of reports were received before dark, the warnings from the higher command either failed to reach or failed to impress the lower headquarters. While all the German troops in reserve were alerted an hour after the first report, the Italians on the coast tended to assume that the whistling wind and rough sea guaranteed them another night’s rest at least — Admiral Cunningham aptly remarked in his Despatch that the unfavourable conditions had ‘the effect of making the weary Italians, who had been alert for many nights, turn thankfully in their beds saying “tonight at any rate they can’t come”. But they came.’

But the Italians’ weariness was more than physical. Most of them were tired of the war, and not many had shared Mussolini’s belligerent enthusiasm. Moreover the coast defence troops were mostly Sicilian, the idea behind that choice being that they would be the more inclined to live up to their fighting reputation when defending their own houses. But this assumption did not take account of their long manifest dislike of the Germans, or of their practically minded realisation that the harder they fought the less would be left of their homes.

Their reluctance to resist was deepened when daylight came on July 10, and they could see the tremendous array of ships, filling the sea to the horizon, and the continual flow of landing craft with reinforcements to back up the assault waves that had poured ashore in the early hours.

The beach defences were quickly overrun, and the anguish that many of the assault troops had suffered from seasickness was amply offset by the slightness of their casualties from the enemy’s fire on arriving ashore. The first stage of the invasion was summed up by Alexander in two sentences: ‘The Italian coastal divisions, whose value had never been rated very high, disintegrated almost without firing a shot and the field divisions, when they were met, were also driven like chaff before the wind. Mass surrenders were frequent.’ Thus from the first day onward almost the whole burden of the defence fell on the shoulders of the two scratch German divisions, subsequently reinforced by two more.

There was one dangerous counterattack during the critical period before the invading armies were firmly established ashore. This was delivered by the Hermann Goring Division which, along with a detachment of the new 56-ton Tiger tanks, had been posted around Caltagirone, twenty miles from the coast in the mountain belt overlooking the Gela plain — where the American 1st Infantry Division had landed. Fortunately this punch did not come until the second day. A small group of Italian light tanks of obsolete type made a gallant little counterattack on the first morning, and actually penetrated into the town of Gela before they were driven off, but the main German column was delayed on the way and did not appear on the scene until next morning. Even then only a few of the American tanks had been landed — owing to unloading troubles in the heavy surf and congestion on the beaches. There was also a shortage of anti-tank guns and artillery on shore. The German tanks came down over the plain in converging packets, overran the American outposts, and reached the sand dunes bordering the beaches. It looked as if the invaders might be driven back into the sea, but well-directed naval gunfire helped to break up the attack in the nick of time. A menacing thrust on the left flank of the 45th Division by another German column, with a company of Tigers, was stopped in the same way.

Next day, two battle groups of the 15th Panzergrenadier Division arrived on the American front after a hurried march from the west of Sicily, but by that time the Hermann Goring Division had moved off to the British sector, on a call to stem the extending advance there, which at the time looked the most ominous — as it was already close to the port city of Catania, midway up the east coast, whereas the three American beach-heads were still shallow and not yet linked up.

The British landings had met as little opposition as the American landings, while progress was aided by the absence of any early counterattack. Although there were troubles and delays in the unloading process, this went rather better on the whole than on the western beaches, which were more exposed. Air raids were more frequent, after the first day, but the air cover provided was also better, so that shipping losses were almost as small as on the American sectors. Indeed, to those who had seen the earlier years of the war in the Mediterranean it seemed, as Admiral Cunningham remarked, ‘almost magical that great fleets of ships could remain anchored on the enemy’s coast . . . with only such slight losses from air attack as were incurred’. That degree of immunity was a key factor in the success of the amphibious invasion. But in the next stage its progress suffered a check from a different kind of air action.

The British forces had cleared the whole south-eastern part of the island in the first three days. Then Montgomery ‘decided to make a great effort to break through into the Plain of Catania from the Lentini area’ and ordered ‘a major attack for the night of July 13’. The key problem was to capture the Primasole bridge over the River Simeto, a few miles south of Catania. A parachute brigade was used for this purpose. Only about half of it was dropped in the right place, but this portion succeeded in securing the bridge intact.

The next phase is epitomised in the account provided by General Student, the Commander of the 11th Air Corps — which comprised the German airborne troops. His two divisions had been stationed by Hitler in the south of France ready to fly to Sardinia if the Allies landed there as Hitler expected. But airborne troops formed a very flexible strategic reserve, easily switched to meet different situations, as Student’s story shows:

When the Allies landed in Sicily, on July 10, I at once proposed to make an immediate airborne counterattack there with both my divisions. But Hitler turned this down — Jodl, in particular, was against it. So the 1st Parachute Division was merely flown [from the south of France] to Italy in the first place — part to Rome and part to Naples — while the 2nd Parachute Division remained at Nimes with me. The 1st Parachute Division, however, was soon sent on to Sicily — for use as ground troops to reinforce the scanty German forces which were there when the Italian troops began to collapse
en masse.
[Part of] the division was flown by air, in successive lifts, and dropped behind our front in the eastern sector south of Catania. I had wanted them to be dropped behind the Allied front. The first contingent was dropped about 3 kilometres behind our front, and by a strange coincidence it landed almost simultaneously with the British parachute troops who were dropped behind our front to open the bridge across the Simeto river. It overcame these British parachute troops and rescued the bridge from their hands. This was on July 14.*

* Liddell Hart:
The Other Side of the Hill,
p. 355.

The main British forces, when they came up, succeeded after three days’ stiff fighting in recapturing the bridge and reopening the way into the plain of Catania. But their attempt to press on northward was blocked by increasingly strong resistance from the German reserves now concentrating to cover this direct east coast route to Messina, sixty miles distant, where the north-east corner of Sicily lies close to the toe of Italy.

That frustrated the hope of a quick clearance of Sicily. Montgomery was forced to shift the weight of the Eighth Army westward for a more circuitous push through the hilly interior and round Mount Etna, in combination with an eastward advance by the Seventh Army — which reached the north coast and occupied Palermo on July 22, though too late to intercept the eastward withdrawal of the enemy’s mobile troops. The new plan brought an important change of role for Patton’s army. Its action as shield to the flank of the Eighth Army’s intended decisive drive for Messina, and as a distraction to the enemy’s concentration, was extended into that of an offensive lever — and, in the end, prime spearhead.

For the new push, planned to start on August 1, two fresh infantry divisions (the 9th U.S and 78th British) were brought over from Africa — raising the total to twelve. Meanwhile the Germans were reinforced by 29th Panzergrenadier Division, together with 14th Panzer Corps Headquarters under General Hube, who now took control of the fight. His task would not be to maintain the defence of Sicily, but merely to conduct a delaying action and cover the evacuation of the Axis forces — a decision reached, by Guzzoni and Kesselring independently, soon after Mussolini’s overthrow on July 25, and before the Allies’ renewed offensive.

Such a delaying action was aided by the shape as well as by the ruggedness of north-eastern Sicily — a triangle of mountainous country. While the ground favoured the defence and each step back brought a shortening of the front, so that fewer defenders were needed, the Allied armies became increasingly cramped in deploying their full superiority of force. Patton made three attempts to quicken progress by small amphibious leaps — a landing at Sant’ Agata on the night of the August 7/8, a second at Brolo on the 10th/11th, and a third at Spadafora on the 15th/16th — but in each case they were too late to be effective. Montgomery tried a small one on the 15th/16th, but by then the enemy’s rear-guard had gone north of it — and most of the enemy troops had already crossed the Straits to the mainland.

The ably organised withdrawal across the Straits was carried out, for the main part, in the course of six days (and seven nights), without suffering any serious interception or loss from the Allied air or sea forces. Nearly 40,000 German troops and over 60,000 Italian were safely evacuated. Although the Italians left behind all except some 200 of their vehicles, the Germans brought away nearly 10,000 vehicles as well as forty-seven tanks, ninety-four guns, and 17,000 tons of supplies and equipment. About 6.30 a.m. on August 17 the leading American patrol entered Messina, and not long afterwards a British party appeared — to be greeted with gleeful cries of ‘Where’ve you tourists been?’

The success of this well-planned ‘get away’ gave a rather hollow sound to what Alexander said that day in reporting the completion of the campaign to the Prime Minister: ‘By 10 a.m. this morning, August 17, 1943, the last German soldier was flung out of Sicily. . . . It can be assumed that all Italian forces in the island on July 10 have been destroyed, though a few battered units may have escaped to mainland.’

So far as can be gauged from the records, the number of German troops in Sicily was a little over 60,000 and the Italian troops 195,000 (Alexander’s estimate at the time was 90,000 German and 315,000 Italian). Of the German troops 5,500 were captured, while 13,500 wounded were evacuated to Italy before the withdrawal, so that the number killed can hardly have been more than a few thousand (the British estimate was 24,000 killed). The British losses were 2,721 killed, 2,183 missing, and 7,939 wounded — a total of 12,843. The American losses were 2,811 killed, 686 missing, and 6,471 wounded — a total of 9,968. Thus, in all, the Allied losses amounted to approximately 22,800. It was not a very heavy cost for the great political and strategic results of the campaign — which caused Mussolini’s downfall and Italy’s surrender. But the ‘bag’ of Germans could have been larger, with a consequent smoothing of the path beyond, if the Allies had made fuller use of amphibious outflanking moves. That was Admiral Cunningham’s view, and in his Despatch he pointedly remarked that after the opening days