History of the Second World War (80 page)

* Cunningham of Hyndhope:
A Sailor’s Odyssey,
p. 569. Only the last of these emergency measures is mentioned in S. E. Morison’s
History of US. Naval Operations,
vol. IX.

On the 14th all available aircraft, of the strategic as well as the tactical air forces, in the Mediterranean theatre were turned onto bombing the German troops and their immediate communications. They carried out more than 1,900 sorties during the day. Even more effective in checking the Germans’ drive for the beaches was the hammering they received from naval gunfire. Vietinghoff said in his retrospective account:

The attack this morning pushed on into stiffened resistance; but above all the advancing troops had to endure the most severe heavy fire that had yet been experienced — the naval gunfire from at least 16 to 18 battleships, cruisers and large destroyers lying in the roadstead. With astonishing precision and freedom of manoeuvre these ships shot with very overwhelming effect at every target spotted.

With such powerful support, the American troops succeeded in maintaining the rearward defence line to which they had been withdrawn during the previous night.

There was a lull on the 15th, while the Germans were reorganising their shell-and-bomb-battered units for a fresh effort, with the aid of some reinforcements. The still tankless 26th Panzer Division had now arrived from Calabria, after slipping away from Montgomery’s front as ordered by Vietinghoff on the day of the Salerno landing. Detachments of the 3rd and 15th Panzergrenadier Divisions had also arrived, from Rome and Gaeta respectively. But even with these additions the German strength was the equivalent of only four divisions, with little more than a hundred tanks, whereas by the 16th the Fifth Army had on shore the equivalent of seven divisions, of larger scale, with some 200 tanks. So the Allied Command had no cause for worry except for the possibility of a crack in morale before their manifold superiority took effect. Moreover the Eighth Army was now close at hand, to augment this superiority and threaten the enemy’s flank.

Alexander arrived at Clark’s headquarters that morning on a visit, having come across from Bizerta in a destroyer, and toured the beachheads. In his characteristically tactful way he squashed the idea of evacuating either of them. A fresh material reinforcement was provided by the arrival about 10 a.m. of the British battleships
Warspite
and
Valiant,
which had sailed from Malta the previous afternoon, along with six destroyers. They did not come into action until seven hours later, owing to communication delays with forward observers, but then bombarded targets up to a dozen miles inland, and the very heavy shells from their 15-inch guns had a shattering effect both physically and morally.

Another arrival that morning was a group of war correspondents from the Eighth Army. Feeling that its advance to the aid of the Fifth Army was too slow and needlessly cautious, they had gone ahead on their own the previous day in a couple of jeeps, using minor roads and tracks to avoid the blown up bridges on the main road, and came through the fifty-mile stretch of ‘enemy country’ without meeting any Germans. Twenty-seven hours later the leading reconnaissance unit of the Eighth Army arrived to make touch with the Fifth.

On the morning of the 16th the Germans launched their renewed effort, starting on the British sector, with a thrust from the north towards Salerno and another toward Battipaglia. These thrusts were stopped by the combined effect of artillery fire, naval gunfire, and tanks. This failure and the approach of the Eighth Army led Kesselring to the conclusion that the possibility of throwing the invaders back into the sea had passed. So, that evening, he authorised ‘a disengagement on the coastal front’, and a gradual retreat northward. The first stage was to be a withdrawal to the line of the Volturno, twenty miles north of Naples — which, he laid down, was to be held until mid-October.

In view of the way that naval gunfire had helped thwart the Germans’ counterattack — although largely before the big ships came on the scene — it was some consolation to them that the
Warspite
was disabled that afternoon by a direct hit from one of their new FX.1400 radio-guided gliding bombs. By the same new means they had also delivered a parting kick at the main fleet of their late Italian ally when this sailed from Spezia on September 9 to join the Allied Navies — sinking its flagship, the
Roma,
with one of these guided bombs.

In analysis it is evident that once the German efforts to throw the invaders back into the sea had been curbed, a German withdrawal from Salerno became inevitable. For although Kesselring had striven to exploit the opportunity allowed by what he termed ‘Montgomery’s very cautious advance’, it was very clear that he could not hang on to this stretch of the west coast when the British Eighth Army arrived 011 the scene and became able to outflank his position by advancing through the interior, after emerging from the narrow Calabrian peninsula. He had far too few troops to cover such a widening front. But the threat did not develop fast enough to endanger or hustle the German withdrawal. For it was not until the afternoon of September 20 that a Canadian spearhead of the Eighth Army drove into Potenza, the main road-centre on the ankle of Italy, fifty miles inland from the Gulf of Salerno. A hundred German paratroops, rushed to Potenza the previous afternoon, had imposed an overnight pause and caused the mounting of a brigade attack, with about thirty times their strength, in order to overcome their resistance — a significant example of the delaying power of skilful defence in a hazy situation. The attack which forced the retreat of this tiny detachment brought the capture of only sixteen Germans, but nearly 2,000 of the Italian inhabitants had been killed in the preliminary air attacks on the town. Canadian patrols pushed on cautiously during the next week to Melfi, forty miles northward, having only fleeting contact with enemy rearguards. Meantime the main body of the Eighth Army had halted, as its supplies were becoming short, while switching its line of supply to Taranto and Brindisi in the south-east corner of Italy.

For the landings here, on Italy’s heel, had been achieved without meeting any opposition. Taranto had been among the possible objectives considered in June, after the Combined Chiefs of Staff had instructed Eisenhower to prepare plans for following up the capture of Sicily. But it had been rejected largely because it did not fit the cardinal principle which his staff had immediately laid down, that no opposed landing could be contemplated outside the limit of fighter cover. Taranto, like Naples, was just beyond the 180-mile radius of action of Spitfires operating from airfields in the north-east of Sicily, whereas Salerno was just inside that radius. The Taranto project was only revived when the armistice with Italy was signed on September 3. It was then added to the invasion plan as an improvised subsidiary move — codenamed ‘Operation Slapstick’, following information that only a handful of German troops was posted in the heel of Italy, and a belated realisation that the port of Naples, even when captured and made usable, would not suffice to maintain an advance up the eastern side of the Apennines as well as up the western side.

Admiral Cunningham, who took the initiative in suggesting this move, told Eisenhower that if the troops were produced for the purpose he would provide ships to carry them. At that moment the British 1st Airborne Division was available in Tunisia, owing to a lack of sufficient transport aircraft for employing it in an airborne role, so it was hurriedly embarked at Bizerta in five cruisers and a minelayer, which sailed for Taranto on the evening of September 8. The next afternoon, as the convoy approached Taranto, it passed the Italian squadron based on Taranto sailing to surrender at Malta. At dusk the convoy entered the port, and found most of its facilities intact. Two days later the success was extended over the heel by the occupation of Brindisi (to which King Victor Emmanuel and Marshal Badoglio had fled from Rome), and also of Bari, sixty miles farther up the coast — on the back of Italy’s ankle. Thus three large ports had been secured in this area, for the maintenance of an advance up the east coast, long before any comparable one had been captured on the west coast — and it was all too clear that the long delay in reaching Naples, from Salerno, would allow the Germans ample time to demolish the port before abandoning it.

But the wonderful opportunity thus presented on the east coast went begging through want of foresight, and inadequate effort subsequently to redeem it. The codename ‘Slapstick’ became painfully apt. Visualised as merely an operation to secure the ports, the 1st Airborne Division was despatched without transport vehicles, except for half a dozen jeeps, and remained in this destitute state until the 14th. During these five days a few patrols in jeeps and requisitioned cars had pushed north as far as Bari without finding any enemy troops in the broad coastal belt. For the depleted German 1st Parachute Division had been the only one in this area, and part of it had been called away to the Salerno sector, while the rest had been ordered to withdraw to Foggia, 120 miles north of Taranto, to cover Kesselring’s deep eastern flank. Yet even when transport arrived to restore mobility to the British troops they were still held in leash while the planning and preparation for a large-scale advance up the east coast proceeded in a methodical way. Adherence to this cautious habit was the more unfortunate in such a period of far-reaching opportunity as the German 1st Parachute Division was too far back to counterattack, and its entire fighting strength was only 1,300 men, while that of the British was already four times as large, with much larger reinforcements on the way to back up a forward move. But habit prevailed.

The conduct of operations here had been given to the commander of the 5th Corps, General Allfrey — who had been in charge of the too cautious, and abortive, advance on Tunis the previous December — and his task had been defined by Alexander as being ‘to secure a base in the Heel of Italy covering the ports of Taranto and Brindisi, and if possible Bari, with a view to a subsequent advance’. Any likelihood of an early thrust beyond these bounds diminished when, on the 13th, Allfrey’s Corps was placed under the Eighth Army, for Montgomery could always be counted on to mass his forces and make sure of ample resources before advancing.

On September 22, the 78th Division began to disembark at Bari, followed by the 8th Indian Division at Brindisi, while Dempsey’s 13th Corps was being brought over to the east coast. But it was not until September 27 that a small mobile force, sent forward from Bari to explore the enemy’s situation, occupied Foggia, which the Germans promptly evacuated as soon as the British approached — so that the much desired airfields were captured without a fight. Even then Montgomery adhered to his earlier order that no main bodies were to advance before October 1, and when his advance began he used only the two divisions of the 13th Corps, keeping the three divisions of the 5th Corps back to ensure ‘a firm base’ and protect his inland flank.

The German 1st Parachute Division was now holding a line along the Biferno River, covering the small port of Termoli — a very wide front for its slender strength. Montgomery’s attack on this line was well designed to crack it open, by a seaborne stroke in its rear. In the early hours of October 3, a Special Service brigade was landed beyond Termoli and, with the advantage of night surprise, in driving rain quickly captured the port and town, then linking up with a bridgehead over the river gained by the direct advance. During the next two days two more infantry brigades, of the 78th Division, were brought up by sea, from Barletta to Termoli, to reinforce the bridgehead and continue the advance.

But the German army commander, Vietinghoff, benefiting from the British delay in building their east coast advance, had already (on the 2nd) despatched the 16th Panzer Division from the Volturno line on the west coast to reinforce the thin screen of paratroops which had been covering the distant left flank of his army’s withdrawal. Hurrying across the mountain spine of Italy they arrived near Termoli early on the 5th and promptly launched a counterattack which drove the British back to the edge of the town and came close to cutting their line of communications southward. But the Germans were checked and then pushed back as the 78th Division brought its seaborne reinforcements into action, supported by a stronger body of tanks, British and Canadian.

The Germans then disengaged and withdrew to positions covering the next river line, the Trigno, a dozen miles northward. The impression made by their sharp counterattack led Montgomery to pause for two weeks for a further build-up of his strength and supplies before tackling the Trigno line.

Meanwhile Mark Clark’s Fifth Army had been slowly pushing forward from Salerno up the west coast, and trying to hustle the withdrawal of Vietinghoff’s German 10th Army. The first stage was the stickiest, as the German right wing held on stubbornly to the hill-barrier north of Salerno to cover the extrication of the left wing as this wheeled back from the southerly coastal stretch around Battipaglia and Paestum. Nearly a week passed after the beginning of that withdrawal before the British 10th Corps, on September 23, developed an offensive to force the passage from Salerno to Naples. In this offensive the 10th Corps employed not only the 46th and 56th Divisions but the 7th Armoured Division, and an additional armoured brigade, against the small German force of three to four battalions which was holding the passes. Little progress was made until September 26, when it was found that the opposing Germans had vanished during the previous night — having fulfilled their mission of gaining time for the wheel-back of their comrades in the south. After that, demolished bridges were the main hindrance to the Allied advance. On the 28th the 10th Corps emerged into the plain at Nocera, but it was not until October 1 that its leading troops entered Naples, twenty miles on.