Battle of Salerno

Background

By August 1943 Sicily had fallen, Mussolini had been deposed, and the new Italian government was seeking peace with the Allies. The Allies resolved to follow up on the mainland. Montgomery's Eighth Army crossed the Strait of Messina on 3 September (Operation Baytown). The main blow, Operation Avalanche, was to be a landing by Lieutenant General Mark Clark's Fifth Army in the Gulf of Salerno, aimed at the port of Naples. Fighters from Sicily could just reach the beaches: a half-hour flight left them about ten minutes over the beachhead once they had dropped their drop tanks to fight.

The Salerno plain is a crescent of farmland ringed by mountains. The Sele river splits it in two, so the plan put two corps ashore on a front of some 35 miles, with the river between them. The British X Corps would land south of Salerno town, the US VI Corps near the Greek temples of Paestum. The key ground lay inland: the road junction at Battipaglia, Montecorvino airfield, the heights north of Salerno and Vietri on the roads to Naples, and Altavilla's Hill 424 above the Sele valley.

At 18:30 on 8 September, with the convoys at sea, Eisenhower announced Italy's surrender. The troops cheered, and many expected to walk ashore. Their senior officers now expected to meet Germans rather than Italians. The 16th Panzer Division had been at maximum alert since that afternoon. As the Italian coastal units left their posts, the Germans took over six of their batteries. The British planned a short naval bombardment before landing. The Americans held theirs back in the hope of surprise.

The armies

Clark's Fifth Army had two corps. Lieutenant-General McCreery's British X Corps landed the 46th (Hawkesworth) and 56th (Graham) Divisions, with three US Ranger battalions under Darby and two Commandos under Laycock on the left. The 7th Armoured Division would follow. Major General Dawley's US VI Corps landed the 36th Division (Walker), with two regiments of Middleton's 45th Division as floating reserve. Ridgway's 82nd Airborne waited in Sicily. Admiral Hewitt commanded at sea, with cruisers, destroyers and monitors for fire support and Admiral Vian's escort carriers flying Seafires. Assault shipping was short, so the build-up would be slow.

Vietinghoff's Tenth Army had only just been formed. It lacked an army signal regiment and a quartermaster staff, and it soon ran short of fuel. Balck's XIV Panzer Corps held the coast. Its 16th Panzer Division (Sieckenius) was the only fully equipped armoured division in southern Italy, with about 100 tanks, mostly long-barrelled Panzer IVs, but its crews were inexperienced. The Hermann Göring and 15th Panzer Grenadier Divisions, rebuilding after Sicily, lay around Naples. Herr's LXXVI Panzer Corps, with the 29th Panzer Grenadier and 26th Panzer Divisions, was retreating out of Calabria. The Luftwaffe was outnumbered, but it brought a new weapon: radio-controlled glide bombs carried by Do 217s.

The battle

The landings, 9 September. The Rangers landed at Maiori at 03:10 and took the Chiunzi pass above the road to Naples. The Commandos landed at Vietri. At H-hour, 03:30, X Corps came ashore after a 15-minute bombardment and had its beaches by 04:45. The 46th Division and the Commandos fought into Salerno (Port of Salerno, 395). The 56th Division pushed for Montecorvino airfield and Battipaglia (Amphitheater, 394), and naval gunfire broke up a tank attack. South of the Sele the 36th Division landed at Paestum without a bombardment and was met by flares and machine guns. Tanks of the 16th Panzer Division counter-attacked from 07:30 until naval fire arrived after 09:00. By nightfall the 16th Panzer had 35 tanks fit to fight, and a seven-mile gap separated the two corps.

Expanding the beachhead, 10–12 September. The 9th Royal Fusiliers entered Battipaglia after midnight but were driven out on 10 September. The Guards could not clear a tobacco factory west of the town. Montecorvino airfield fell on 11 September, but German guns kept it closed. The 45th Division came ashore, and on 11 September two of its regiments advanced up the Sele–Calore corridor towards Eboli and Ponte Sele (Sele-Calore Corridor, 396). The 157th Infantry's supporting tank company lost seven tanks at a second tobacco factory near Persano, and the 179th was stopped short of Ponte Sele. On 11 September a glide bomb put the cruiser Savannah out of action. On 12 September the 29th Panzer Grenadier Division threw a battalion of the 142nd Infantry off Altavilla, and the 56th Division was pushed out of the edge of Battipaglia.

The crisis, 13–14 September. Vietinghoff believed the Allies were re-embarking and ordered a pursuit. In the afternoon of 13 September more than 20 tanks and a battalion of infantry struck the 157th Infantry at the Persano tobacco factory (Tobacco Factory, 399), crossed the Sele and overran the 2nd Battalion, 143rd Infantry, of whom more than 500 were lost. By 18:30 German tanks were on the Calore. Two field artillery battalions there fired 3,650 rounds in about four hours at point-blank range, while cooks and clerks from Fifth Army's command post, a few hundred yards behind the guns, manned a firing line. The Germans pulled back at nightfall. Clark had his staff plan an evacuation of either corps. Hewitt thought re-embarkation impractical, and Commodore Oliver of the British landing force called it "simply not on". Meanwhile Clark ordered Ridgway to drop a regiment into the beachhead that night: "This is a must." At 23:26 the 504th Parachute Infantry began jumping near Paestum, about 1,300 men from 90 aircraft. VI Corps shortened its line, and on 14 September it beat off attacks in the corridor. Bombers and warships hammered Battipaglia and Eboli. North of the Sele the Germans attacked the 56th Division (Battipaglia I, 397) and the 46th around Salerno (Vietri, 398). On the night of 14–15 September 2,100 men of the 505th Parachute Infantry jumped near Paestum.

Stand-off and withdrawal, 15–19 September. Warspite and Valiant arrived on 15 September, and Colonel Schmalz's battle groups of the Hermann Göring Division were stopped short of Pontecagnano. On 16 September the 26th Panzer Division attacked from Battipaglia and the Hermann Göring at Vietri, and both were held. That evening Vietinghoff asked to break off the battle, and a patrol of the Eighth Army met the 36th Division south of Paestum. The 504th attacked Altavilla on the night of 16–17 September, and the Germans began to pull out. British armour entered Battipaglia unopposed on 18 September (Battipaglia II, 400). Americans reached Ponte Sele that evening and entered Eboli on 19 September (Eboli, 401). Only the Rangers and the 46th Division, facing the Vietri pass, were still on the defensive (Vietri II, 402).

Aftermath

Molony's official history puts Allied losses at 8,659 and German at 3,472. Blumenson gives about 3,500 American, 5,500 British and 3,500 German. Walker called the destruction of Battipaglia by Allied ships and aircraft "brutal and quite unnecessary". Clark relieved Dawley on 20 September, and Fifth Army entered Naples on 1 October.

Both sides claimed success. Vietinghoff told his troops "Success has been ours" and was promoted. Alexander conceded that the Germans could claim "at least an important success over us": they had kept the Allies from Naples and extricated their forces from the south. Blumenson argues that the Germans committed too little because Hitler meant to withdraw north whatever happened. He calls the airborne drops "a brilliant expedient", valuable more for morale than numbers. Participants disagreed over whether the beachhead was ever in real danger. Whether Montgomery's Eighth Army could have come up from Calabria sooner is, Blumenson concludes, impossible to answer unequivocally.

On 16 September about 200 veterans of the 50th and 51st Divisions, shipped from Tripoli in the belief that they were rejoining their own units, refused to join the 46th and 56th Divisions as replacements. McCreery admitted a mistake had been made. Of those who held out, 192 were charged with mutiny, the largest such case in British military history. Three sergeants were sentenced to death, but the sentences were commuted and later suspended. In 1999–2000 MPs pressed for a pardon, which the government refused.

Wargaming it

Salerno is a beachhead battle in which the defender holds the high ground and the attacker holds the sea. The plain is flat and blind, cut by irrigation ditches, stone walls and crops taller than a man. The Germans look down on all of it from the hills, so the fight turns on a few points: Battipaglia, Altavilla's Hill 424, the Persano tobacco factory, the Sele and Calore crossings and the Vietri pass.

The actions suit several scales. A company or battalion game at 15 mm or 20 mm fits the Paestum beaches at dawn on 9 September, the Royal Fusiliers in Battipaglia, or the 2nd/143rd caught in the corridor. A brigade or division game, at one stand to a company, fits 13 September: German armour against a thin American line, with the gun line at the Calore as the last stop. An operational game at battalion level can cover the whole race of build-up from 9 to 16 September.

The rules need to reward the Allies' naval and air support without making it automatic. Gunfire on 9 September waited on radio contact, and its flat trajectory made close support risky. German reinforcements should arrive piecemeal and short of fuel, and Allied units should land a few at a time.

The what-ifs: the 16th Panzer Division masses its armour on D-day instead of fighting in small groups; the 29th Panzer Grenadiers are not stranded without fuel; Hitler releases divisions from the north; or Clark orders the evacuation.

Maps and pictures