Surrounded by enemy positions, with many wounded at risk, a small group of glider troops overcame the odds.
Glider 88 smashed through a stone wall that marked the boundary of LZ 2. It ended up mainly in the LZ, with its nose in a field of tomatoes, while the tip of its tail protruded across the track that bordered the field. Source: US National Archives.
Glider: Waco CG-4A number 88, ‘Powder River Montana’, serial no. 245697. Glider carrying: part of 11 Platoon of B Company, 1st Battalion of the Border Regiment, 1st Air Landing Brigade (1ALB). Troops’ objective: Capture the outskirts of Syracuse.
Manifest
Ray Davison
1 sjt 8 men 2 men R Coy 1 sig, Bn HQ 1 handcart
L Sjt F Terry Cpl Coates Cpl John ‘Pongo’ Waring, Bn Signal Cpl L Cpl Morgan? Pte John Raymond Davison Pte Lathan Pte Jones Pte Miller
Tug Pilot’s Report
Tug: C-53, serial 42-47381, 51 Troop Carrier Squadron, 64 Troop Carrier Group, 51 Troop Carrier Wing USAAF. Takeoff: Between 19:05 and 19:22, 9 July 1943, from Airstrip D, Goubrine Base, Tunisia, as part of Operation Labroke. Priority 12. Tugs returned: Between 00:38 and 04:15, 10 July 1943.
Pilot: 2nd Lt Dennis E McClendon
Glider 88’s raised nose reveals the tangle of tubing that broke the glider pilots’ legs. Source: US National Archives.
The pilots of 62 TCG must have submitted individual reports at debriefing, but if these were recorded, the document does not seem to have survived. However McClendon’s story appears in the book “The Glider War” by James Mrazek (1975).
McClendon’s plane, like all the other tugs towing Waco gliders that night, was one in a group of four, called an ‘element’. He described how the element was flying echeloned left at 200 feet when it came under AA fire from an Allied merchantman a few miles south of Cape Passero. McClendon vividly describes the scene being brightly lit by star shells, so presumably there can be no mistake as to who was firing. The ship was part of the vast fleet approaching Sicily to start the seaborne invasion landings at dawn. Five miles later it happened again. On each occasion the element leader (towing glider 85) took evasive action, turning into the path of the other three tugs, and risking spinning into the sea. In the second case he turned so abruptly he caused the formation to dissolve. McClendon then identified landmark after landmark on the route north, finally signalling the glider to release in the right place. He says was 40 minutes late, but there is no explanation as to why.
McClendon’s report is highly unusual. No Operation Ladbroke aircraft were shot down by friendly fire that night, and hardly any reported being fired on by ships at all, let alone twice.
First Glider Pilot: Sgt Kenneth ‘Taff’ Evans Second Glider Pilot: Sgt Richard ‘Dick’ Martin
“Statement by Passenger. Flight uneventful but bumpy – glider hit telegraph wires on landing and crashed into wall 2 miles S. of CAPE MURRO DI PORCO. 3 wounded”
Glider 88 landed right on the edge of LZ 2
This short record in 1ALB’s report is by a passenger because both glider pilots were in hospital. Its errors cast doubt on the whole debriefing process. Seven men were wounded, not three, and the glider landed 2.5 miles WNW of the Cape, not 2 miles south of it, which would have put the glider in the sea.
In fact Glider 88 was one of the most accurate landings of the night [satellite][view].
80 gliders were supposed to land in LZ 2. Aerial photographs show not one landed fully in the LZ (although burned gliders do not show up). Two gliders ended up straddling the boundary, partly in LZ 2, partly out. One of these two was glider 88. Its front ended up in a tomato field after smashing through a stone wall, leaving the tip of its tail outside the LZ.
A later inspection revealed:
“Forward part of floor crushed in, wings washed forwards. Indication of very high speed landing. No indication of fatalities.”
Glider 88 ended up in a field of canes for growing tomatoes. Source: US National Archives.
Glider pilot Taff Evans wrote an account for the August 1998 issue of ‘The Eagle’, the magazine of the Glider Pilot Regiment Association. As usual with eye-witness testimony, especially many years later, it disagrees in detail from McClendon’s account. But there are also signal differences. Evans makes no mention of star shells, or of being fired on by ships. He does recall his tug pilot making a violent turn at one point, flying into the rest of the formation, weaving right and left. Appalled, the glider pilots struggled to follow without breaking the towing cable. Evans reported: “I had impressions of other aircraft flashing past us in the blackness and not very far away either!”
Later, after releasing at 1900 feet over the sea, Gilder 88 was coned by two searchlights from the Maddalena Peninsula, and came under accurate light AA fire (presumably from the Italian coastal battery ‘Lamba Doria’ on the cape). Evans describes taking violent evasive action, diving repeatedly and even doing a stall turn. The latter in particular seems exaggerated, as it would have entailed the glider (loaded with men and a hand cart) in effect standing vertically on its tail, momentarily motionless in the sky, a sitting duck target. Plus all the manoeuvering would have used too much precious height. Releasing at 1900 feet, two miles out and gliding into the 35 mph headwind left scant margin for error. Perhaps Evans was being tongue-in-cheek, knowing that his audience was other glider pilots.
Evans managed to dodge the searchlights, but blinded by the brightness, he could not see properly when suddenly there was a crash and he was knocked out. Glider 88 had narrowly missed the top of low cliffs, then ploughed through power lines and a stone wall.
HM Hospital Ship Aba
Evans broke his foot and his co-pilot broke his thigh bone. They and other wounded men lay in the glider for a day and a half, during which time they were intermittently under fire and even strafed by a German fighter plane. Eventually they were taken to hospital in Syracuse, then transferred to the hospital ship ‘Aba’, which took them to hospital in Tripoli in Libya.
The Action
The senior NCO in glider 88, L Sgt Terry, wrote a report shortly after the operation, which follows in full. Text in square brackets is editorial.
“On approaching the enemy coast, the tug and glider (No.88), in which we were travelling came under fire from the enemy ground defences. We took evasive action, breaking formation, and splitting up from the rest of the flight. We then released about two miles off shore, and crashed on the island about two hundred yards inland. [No mention here of violent evasive manoeuvres after release]. The glider hit telephone wires, and then crashed into a wall. This was at approx. two miles south of Cap Murro di Porco.
On landing we suffered the following casualties. Both glider pilots (broken legs), Pte Lathan (broken leg), Pte [Ray] Davison (body sprained or fractured leg), Cpl Coates (Head and leg injuries) Ptes Jones & Miller (lacerations of the head), remainder sustained bruises, cuts and shock.
The first thing we did, that is, those who were not badly injured, was to grab our weapons and the bren gun, and take up a defensive position round the glider, owing to the fact that we were subjected to fire from enemy ground forces immediately we landed.
Enemy fire ceased, and after checking our position, those who were able to do so moved off to try and locate the original landing zone, leaving one man behind to protect casualties. We travelled about half a mile North east and came across another crashed glider and a mortar det of the S Staffords who were in posn in a ditch about two hundred yds with their mortars and handcarts.
We joined forces and L cpl Morgan, a sjt, and a pte of the S Staffords went out on patrol for 30 mins to try and contact the remainder of our tps. On return they reported having met none of our tps, but enemy patrols. We were uncertain of our posn, and that of the Bn, so we decided to return to our glider, treat our casualties and try and contact any British tps in the vicinity. We sent out patrols throughout the night and made our casualties as comfortable as we could. We were unable to remove them from the wreckage because of the risk of complicating their injuries. We retrieved all serviceable arms and amn, but could not remove the handcart or its contents because of its damaged state and danger of falling on the injured. When this was completed, and our patrols had returned we took up defensive posns round the glider covering the beach with our gun.
When it became light we saw another glider [Waco 125A] which had crashed about 150 yds from us on our right. This glider belonged to the Bn Mortar Pl. With it were the following. One glider pilot offr [Lt Carn] with both ankles broken who was lying in the middle of the field, one glider pilot sjt [Sgt Richards] with both legs broken, Cpl Allen, and a Pte who had head and arm injuries. We attended to them, joined forces under command of the offr. He told us to take up a defensive posn around the area of both gliders.
Shortly after this enemy tps were seen approaching our posn from the beach. We engaged them, and they immediately retired to a blockhouse on the beach. L Cpl Morgan and Cpl Waring recced the blockhouse, and owing to our strength (six fit men) and the numerous wire defences around the blockhouse, no available cover to use, we decided to contain them with fire.
We were subjected to fire from MGs, from another blockhouse about a thousand yards to our left front, our front being the beach.
About this time a party of S Staffords (l sjt and 4 men) joined up with us, retrieved the 3” Mortar and bombs, and set it up in the vicinity of a house on our right, and proceeded to mortar the enemy posns.
We then came under heavy fire again by enemy tps on our right flank, and to the rear. We decided to use smoke (77 grenades) to cover our move to another posn, as we were well marked, and could not return fire effectively. The first grenade failed to go off, but the second one succeeded in setting fire to the stubble field in front.
This fire spread rapidly, and the offr who was injured was in danger of being caught in it. Cpl Waring went out, under fire, and managed to get the offr clear, and to the house. Also assisted by a Pte succeeded in evacuating the sjt pilot to the same place before their glider caught fire. This fire was instrumental in disturbing the enemy on the beaches by its rapid approach to them.
We were then joined by another party. They were as follows – two glider pilots, one medical orderly and five RE, some of whom had no arms or equipment as they had been captured by the enemy and later rescued by the comrades they were with.
The medical orderly proceeded to our glider to attend to our casualties. We were again subjected to fire from snipers who had taken up positions round us. As shots were hitting the glider, and our casualties were in danger of being shot, the medical orderly placed a white flag above the glider and turned the glider into a dressing station because it was impossible to move the casualties, and at this time we had been subjected to a MG attack twice from a flight of three enemy planes.
We then decided to turn the house near us into a first aid post for the medical orderly, and defend it till dark, when we could move. The medical orderly’s conduct during this period was first class, and all the injured were attended to by him.
At about seventeen hundred hours, owing to the mortar fire from our det, the enemy fire practically ceased, except for mortar fire which was very inaccurate and coming from forces inland.
Two men, Ptes Davison 12, and Brook of B Coy joined us after having swum ashore, and seeing us in our posn.
Enemy fire had now ceased altogether, and they were waving white flags. This was at about 1600 hrs. We took them prisoner (five of them).
After a talk with the injured offr [Carn] we decided to move towards Ladbroke [Syracuse], the offr saying he would be responsible for the injured and prisoners, and also the walking wounded who were to guard them. The following men were left behind for this purpose. Ptes Miller, Jones 14, Bennett and Davison [12] and Brook who were unable to go with us owing to the fact that they had no boots.
We then formed three secs, the S Staffords under their Sjt, one sec or Border under myself, L sjt Terry, and another party of RE and glider pilots under L cpl Morgan, and made our way towards Waterloo [the Ponte Grande bridge]. We contacted our own tps at an ADMS under Lt Tate of D Coy, and came under his command, reporting our landing posn and casualties in that area. In these actions our casualties were nil.”
Military Medal
Cpl Waring was awarded the Military Medal for his actions. His citation shows that he was considered for the superior DCM, but the demotion to an MM was initialled by General Montgomery, the commanding officer of the 8th Army in Sicily. The citation reads:
“Cpl Waring is Bn Signal Cpl. His glider [88] crash landed on the beach during the night 9/10 Jul 43. There was no medical orderly in the glider and Cpl Waring dealt with the injured. While moving to join his Bn a second glider [125A] was found which had also crashed. This glider was under light automatic fire from an Italian post nearby. Both glider pilots [Carn and Richards] were injured and unable to move. Cpl Waring approached the glider and managed to drag both glider pilots to a place of safety. He then dug a small slit trench for each of them with his entrenching tool. At this time grass and gorse caught fire close to the wounded pilots. Cpl Waring at once attacked the fire and prevented it reaching the wounded men. All this was done under fire from the Italian position 100 yds away. Having made the injured pilots as comfortable as possible, Cpl Waring organized a small party of men and with one 2” Mortar which he had never fired before, assaulted and captured the Italian pill-box. He then proceeded on his way and during the march to rejoin his Bn encountered two more small Italian posts both of which he liquidated. On arrival at his Bn H.Q. he continued to succour the wounded in the neighbourhood, and to search for others who had been reported to be lying by crashed gliders. He was working incessantly from the time of landing until mid-day Jul 10 when he was picked up in an exhausted condition. It was due to the self-sacrifice and devotion to duty of Cpl Waring that two glider pilots were brought to a position of safety and also to his powers of leadership and the initiative shown by him that three enemy posts were captured and the occupants killed.”
Gunners without guns, an LZ without defenders, impenetrable fog – the British glider assault in the invasion of the South of France went seriously awry.
The north end of LZ O in Operation Dragoon. 30 Horsas can be seen – four have overshot on the left. Top right is the hamlet of Le Mitan. Near bottom right is the fluorescent T marker. Close by, Wacos of Operation Bluebird have been pushed to one side. Others have been deliberately burned, leaving a shape in dark ash. Source: US National Archives USAF 51741
Operation Dragoon was the code name for the Allied invasion of the South of France in the summer of 1944. But before it was Operation Dragoon, it was Operation Anvil. Anvil was originally planned to take place in conjunction with Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Normandy. According to Field Marshal Alexander, Overlord was to be the hammer in the north of France that smashed the Germans against the anvil in the south. Lack of landing craft meant that Anvil in June became impossible, much to Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s delight.
He had been opposing Anvil from the start, preferring an invasion of the Balkans. Eventually the exasperated Americans ganged up on him and he submitted. There’s a story that Anvil became Dragoon because Churchill felt he had been dragooned into it. So the invasion of the South of France eventually did go ahead, although not in conjunction with D-Day the 6th of June in Normandy. Instead, D-Day in the south ended up being set for the 15th of August 1944.
By invading the South of France the Allies hoped to gain more ports (Toulon and Marseilles) and to put pressure on the Germans’ southern flank. The plan was to land three divisions by sea between Cannes and Toulon. Airborne forces were to be dropped further inland to block German counter-attacks.
It was for exactly this kind of eventuality that a squadron of the Glider Pilot Regiment had been kept behind in the Mediterranean when the 1st Battalion returned to England in 1943 after the invasions of Sicily and Italy. Christened the Independent Squadron, it was formed from the 3rd Squadron. By the time of Operation Dragoon, it was more formally titled the 1st Independent Glider Pilot Squadron.
Sgt Will Morrison, one of its pilots, characterised it as the ‘heavy’ (i.e. Horsa) squadron of the Battalion. Many of its pilots had participated in Operation Beggar, fetching Horsas from the UK to North Africa for the invasion of Sicily. At the time, the rest of the Battalion had been flying the smaller American Waco glider.
At first the newly formed Squadron was sent to the Allied Airborne Training Centre, initially at Oujda in Morocco, then at Comiso in Sicily. Ironically, here the Horsa pilots trained not in Horsas, but in Wacos, with a liberal allocation of flying hours. Even more ironically, as the Squadron began to ferry in and receive Horsas for Operation Dragoon, training hours dwindled to almost nothing.
In July 1944 the Squadron moved to mainland Italy, eventually ending up at Tarquinia, one of several airfields near Rome which were being set aside for the airborne forces that were assembling for Dragoon.
A temporary, ad hoc selection of airborne units had been put together just for the invasion. Roughly equivalent to a division in strength, it comprised both American and British units. It was named the 1st Airborne Task Force (1ATF). A temporary grouping of Troop Carrier aircraft units was also assembled, under the title of the Provisional Troop Carrier Air Division (PTCAD). It consisted of C-47 (Dakota) aircraft in the American 50th, 51st and 53rd Troop Carrier Wings.
Four separate airborne landings were scheduled for 15th August:
Operation Albatross, a dawn mass drop by paratroopers at about 5am
Operation Bluebird, a glider landing at about 8am
Operation Canary, a reinforcement drop of paratroopers at about 6pm
Operation Dove, a mass landing by gliders immediately following Canary
Original Operation Dragoon map of LZ O and Le Muy. Source: US National Archives
The area chosen for the landings was around the critical crossroads town of Le Muy, some nine miles from the coast. Three drop zones (DZs) were chosen near Le Muy for the drops by parachute troops. Two of them also doubled as landing zones (LZs) for gliders. The British troops were due to land in DZ / LZ O. It was in a valley about a mile wide and two miles long north of Le Muy. It consisted of a patchwork of fields and vineyards interspersed with hedges and trees. The hamlet of Le Mitan, inside the LZ, was chosen as the site of the British and 1ATF Headquarters (HQs).
The British element in 1ATF was the 2nd Parachute Brigade Group. It was due to drop on DZ O as part of Operation Albatross, while American paratroopers dropped on DZs A and C. The American units included air-dropped artillery. This consisted of 75mm Pack Howitzers which were broken down into several separate parachute loads. British doctrine was against parachute-dropped artillery, so 2nd Parachute Brigade’s artillery would have to be delivered by glider.
Operation Bluebird
This glider landing of the British artillery units was called Operation Bluebird. It was timed to arrive a few hours after the dawn parachute drop, so that the paratroopers would have time to consolidate their hold on the LZ before the vulnerable gliders came in.
There were two groups of aircraft taking part in Operation Bluebird.
The first group comprised 35 Horsas piloted by the British glider pilots (GPs) of 1st Independent Squadron. The Horsas were to be towed by C-47s of the American 435th Troop Carrier Group (TCG) based at Tarquinia. The Horsas carried jeeps and guns of two British airborne artillery units. One was the 64th Air Landing Light Battery RA equipped with 75mm Pack Howitzers. The other was the 300th Air Landing Anti-Tank Battery RA armed with 6 pounder anti-tank guns.
The second group in Operation Bluebird consisted of 40 Waco gliders piloted by American GPs, towed by C-47s of the American 436th TCG. 26 of the Wacos carried British artillerymen of 64th Light Battery without their howitzers, which were in the Horsas. The other 14 Wacos carried the US 512th Airborne Signal Company, and parts of 1ATF HQ. The HQ was due to be located at Le Mitan in LZ O.
The first of the Horsas of the Independent Squadron took off at 5:19am from Tarquinia. The Squadron was commanded by Major Coulthard, and divided into three flights under Captains Turner, Mockeridge and Masson. These four men now commanded echelons each comprising a quarter of the Horsas. The group finished assembling above the base and set off at 6am. Meanwhile the first of the Wacos took off at about 5:30am from Voltone, not far from Tarquinia. There were immediately a couple of problems.
One of the Wacos had a tow rope break shortly after take-off, and it ditched in the sea about five miles off the coast. The American signallers on board shared a bottle of whisky while they waited for rescue. The men were soon picked up by boat and reassigned to a later lift. The glider was towed back to shore.
Also shortly after take-off, one of the tugs developed engine trouble and released its Waco back onto the airfield. A substitute tug was found, and the lone combination later took off and headed for France on its own.
Once assembled, the rest of the Waco group set out, about eight minutes behind the Horsas. The route from Italy to France looked easy on the map. The islands of Corsica and Elba both have fingers of land at their northern ends, and the route ran past the tips in a completely straight line. But the planners were taking no chances. Lessons had been learned from the disastrous over-water approaches during the invasion of Sicily a year before.
Now there were radio beacon ships and rescue vessels all along the route, and navigational aids such as Gee and ground-scanning radar were in use. Pathfinders had been dropped on LZ O to set up fluorescent and smoke markers, as well as Eureka homing beacons. The route ran alongside, rather than over, the Allied assault ships, with their nervous anti-aircraft gunners. What could go wrong?
The Fog of War
The answer, of course, as so often with airborne operations, was the weather. The two groups of Operation Bluebird had passed Corsica when the leading tugs received a signal from PTCAD back in Italy. The LZ in France was shrouded in thick mist and landing the gliders safely was impossible. The Horsa group was ordered to return to Italy. C-47s could only tow the large and heavy Horsas with difficulty, and the strain consumed fuel at an alarming rate. There was not enough fuel for them to loiter and wait for the fog to burn off. So the 435th TCG, towing the Horsas, turned 180 degrees and headed back to Tarquinia.
The Waco group being towed by the 436th TCG had no such problem. The smaller, lighter Wacos did not strain the C-47s. The group circled near Corsica, waiting. Already short of two Wacos due to the mishaps just after take-off, the group suffered a harrowing accident when the right wing of a Waco fell off, rolling it over and snapping the tow rope. The glider then disintegrated, tipping the GPs and passengers into the sea far below. The tug circled above the wreckage until Air-Sea Rescue arrived, but, inevitably, there were no survivors.
While the Waco group circled near France, the Horsa group reached its base at Tarquinia in Italy at 8:40am. On the way back it had lost two Horsas when their tugs ran low on fuel and released them. Both gliders landed safely at an airfield on Corsica.
The Horsa group had also encountered the lone Waco and its substitute tug coming the other way, still headed for France. Thinking that the whole operation must have been scrubbed, the Waco tug pilot turned about and unwittingly followed the Horsas.
Equally unwitting, after landing back at base in Italy, was the crew of a jeep in one of the Horsas. The story goes that they thought they had landed in France, and they were keen to drive out of the back of the glider into action, wrecking it in the process. They could only be restrained with difficulty. (This sounds like a tall tale told after dinner in the mess, or “shooting a line”, as GPs of the time would have called it.)
It was quickly decided that the Horsa group should head back to France later in the day, at the front of Operation Dove with its many hundreds of aircraft. Horsas were hurriedly fetched from wherever they had landed on the airfield. All the aircraft were remarshalled, the tow-ropes laboriously laid out again and everything checked and rechecked.
Waco Group
Meanwhile, near France, the Waco group had circled for about an hour. Finally the morning mist cleared and the group headed inland towards LZ O. To everybody’s surprise, there was no warm welcome from German anti-aircraft guns. A bigger surprise for the GPs as they glided down was the sight of anti-glider poles all over the LZ, which they had not been told about (though sources differ on this).
Wacos of Operation Bluebird landing in the north-west corner of Operation Dragoon’s LZ O. The original caption points out: “Dust can be seen as the gliders land”. Another source notes signal smoke identifying the LZ. The Horsas later landed in the fields in the upper part of the picture. Source: US National Archives USAF 53130
The British pathfinders and parachute engineers already on the ground had been working frantically to take down as many poles as they could, but by the time the Wacos started landing at about 9:30am there were still plenty left. A photograph of the Wacos landing at the north end of LZ O (left) shows no signs of impacts to their wings, so perhaps the paras had succeeded in that sector. However, later photographs of other fields show poles still standing, and there were many crashes and bad landings due to the difficult terrain and the obstacles.
Despite this, it seems the gunners of 64th Light Battery arrived comparatively intact. Only one man was killed on landing, when his Waco turned upside down (two had already been killed when the Waco disintegrated over the sea). 13 men were wounded in crashes, although eight of them soon returned to duty. One of the injured was the CO, so the 2 i/c, Captain Martin, took over.
Without their howitzers, which were still in the Horsas back in Italy, the gunners could not fulfil their role, so Martin deployed them in infantry positions. Reporting to the HQ at Le Mitan, Martin met an American major who said he knew where some guns could be found. He sent a scout with Martin, and by the middle of the afternoon four guns had been brought in. (It is not known whose guns these were, but Martin was explicit that they were not the 64th’s.)
The Bluebird Wacos may not have brought the 64th’s guns, but they had a different kind of impact on some Germans who were holding out in a farm in the LZ. A parachute battalion war diary explained: “the sight of the gliders bringing in reinforcements was too much for the Germans, and acting on [a British sergeant’s] suggestion the whole force of eighty odd men laid down their arms and surrendered to him, handing over 48,000 francs from the canteen.”
Preparing the Ground
Meanwhile efforts continued to prepare LZ O for the arrival of the Bluebird Horsa group and the Wacos of Operation Dove. Scheduled for late afternoon, Dove comprised 335 gliders, piloted by American GPs, and carrying an American glider infantry battalion, along with other units, vehicles and tons of supplies. It was vital to clear as much space as possible to avoid unnecessary crashes and casualties. Captain Martin sent some jeeps to help the pathfinders and the engineers in pulling down glider poles.
However, it was not just poles and trees that threatened the incoming gliders – the already-landed Wacos from Bluebird posed almost as great a hazard, in what was to become a massively overcrowded LZ. Parties of men began manhandling the empty gliders across the fields and parking them in a line against the nearest hedgerow, out of the way. Through the day the crack of explosives could be heard as others were blown up and burned, leaving the shadowy shapes of Wacos smudged in black ash on the ground.
While this was going on, the men of the British 2nd Parachute Brigade were trying to follow their Phase 1 orders, which were to hold the LZ, to block the bottle-neck roads against German counter-attack, and to dominate Le Muy. In Phase 2, they were supposed to attack the town. However, thanks to the fog many sticks of paratroops had gone astray, particularly from the 5th Battalion, who were due to guard the north side of the LZ.
Captain Martin was alarmed to find nobody there, precisely where the Horsas carrying his 75mm howitzers were due to land. Without enough men, there was little the commanders at HQ in Le Mitan could do about it, and, apart from patrols, they kept the remnants of the 5th, along with Martin’s handful of scrounged 75s, to defend the hamlet.
The British paras did not attack Le Muy, perhaps partly because of the lack of artillery support. Of course, it wasn’t just the 64th’s howitzers that were missing. All the 6 pounder anti-tank guns of the 300th Anti-Tank Battery were also absent. The original plan was to parcel them out among the three para battalions, to proof their roadblocks against enemy armour. Without them, if the Germans had attacked with tanks down the road from the north, there would have been nothing to stop them overrunning Bluebird’s landing fields. Luckily, no such attack materialised.
Back in Italy the Horsa group started taking off again for France in the middle of the afternoon. To make up for the two gliders that had landed in Corsica, two substitutes were provided from reserves, bringing the total back to 35. En route however the group was joined by one of the Corsica Horsas, making 36 (the remaining Corsica Horsa flew into France the next day, bringing the final total to 37). The lone Waco from the morning’s aborted take-off also tagged along.
Massed Gliders
Behind the Horsas streamed the 700 or so aircraft of Operations Canary and Dove. They were escorted by 54 P-51 Mustangs liveried in silver and red, with black and yellow chequered tails. The harlequin fighters zipped around and between the troop carrier formations at speeds that made the lumbering C-47s seem to be hardly moving. To the relief of the tug and glider crews, but possibly to the disappointment of the fighter pilots, the Luftwaffe did not make an appearance.
Anti-glider poles In a valley similar to LZ O in Operation Dragoon. Source: US National Archives USAF 116012
The journey was uneventful, although some ineffective fire was directed at the Horsas as they approached LZ O. They headed for the north end of the LZ, aiming for fields next to those where most of Bluebird’s Wacos had landed in the morning.
Photographs of the LZ show many good landings in open fields, even those where there were anti-glider poles still standing. It seems the massive wings of the Horsas smashed through them. Other gliders landed among the trellises of the vineyards, losing their nose wheels in the process. At least four Horsas overshot, including the lead glider flown by Major Coulthard, which burst through the boundary trees. Photographs also show one Horsa landing very heavily, apparently bouncing before stopping in a cloud of dust.
The British troops emerged from the gliders and began removing the Horsas’ tails to extract the guns and jeeps. Other gliders had their tails high in the air, and the crews opened the forward side doors instead. Soon all the men were running for cover as the sky filled with hundreds of Wacos coming in to land. The gliders of Operation Dove had arrived. Due to various mishaps, the squadrons had bunched, and Wacos were simultaneously descending from many different heights and many different directions.
LZ O rapidly began to fill with careening and crashing Wacos, leaving few spaces for those still gliding in. Pilots frantically watched for other gliders coming at them from any direction, while co-pilots equally frantically looked for a vacant spot to aim for. Gliders competed for open spaces, funnelling in dangerously close to each other, speeding up to land quickly, then landing too fast.
Left: Sgt Roy Jenner, a photo inscribed to Bert Patton, “my pal”. Right: Sgt Albert Patton. Source: Robert Patton
Being Alive and Well
The Horsas had been lucky to be at the head of all the gliders, and, apart from some of the morning’s left-over Wacos, they had the LZ all to themselves. Nevertheless, nine British GPs became casualties – two officers and seven sergeants. Six of the nine were seriously wounded and ended up in hospital in Naples. The two wounded officers were the CO, Major Coulthard, who broke both legs, and Lt Hain, 2 i/c of No. 1 Flight, who broke his back when he ended up underneath the jeep he was carrying. The only fatality was Sgt Roy Jenner.
Sources differ as to what happened to Jenner. One says he was hit by a German gun as he was landing, and then crashed on top of it. Another says he was hit by artillery fire. Yet another says he flew into a tree. The same source says he died that day, although CWGC records give the date of his death as the 19th. Sgt Albert Patton, who flew with Jenner, made no mention of artillery, and recorded in his log book simply: “very heavy crash – Sgt Jenner killed”.
Despite the rough landings and casualties, most of the cargos of guns and jeeps were undamaged, even if it took a while to extract some of them from the Horsas. By the end of the day, 300th Battery had 14 of its 6 pounders available, and 64th Battery had eight of its own 75s. The British GPs may have brought their charges late to the battlefield, but their efforts were not entirely wasted.
Later that night the 64th supported an attack by an American glider infantry regiment against Le Muy, although the darkness meant observed and adjusted fire was not possible. The attack failed. British gunners had better luck the next day, when a 6 pounder gun fired four anti-tank and 21 high explosive shells at a house in Le Muy that the Germans had used as a strongpoint to thwart the night attack. This time the Americans captured the town.
The Allies were very complimentary about each other. Captain Martin of the 64th described the cooperation he got from American troops as “100%”, while a report by the American 76th TC Squadron noted: “Towing a Horsa is no mean feat, particularly in formation … however … all of our pilots commented on the ‘smoothness’ of the British glider pilots in their handling of the bulky ‘Horsas’. This made the task of the tow planes far easier than it would otherwise have been.”
At the end of D-Day, the British GPs, who had hardly slept the night before, and who had wrestled their “bulky Horsas” for an unexpected seven hours, felt the exhaustion of a very long day fuelled mainly by adrenaline, even though there had been no combat. Suddenly life’s small pleasures seemed more precious. Sgt Morrison (in his book “Horsa Squadron”) later recalled savouring a gourmet meal concocted from British and American rations by Sgt Bert Patton. The distraught Patton had been chosen to be duty chef by his mates, perhaps to help take his mind off having survived the crash that killed Jenner, his best friend. Being alive and well, Morrison mused, was almost sufficient.
US National Archives images and help with original US Troop Carrier Command documents courtesy of the Leon B Spencer Research Team of the US National WWII Glider Pilots Committee.
In Operation Beggar, Horsa gliders desperately needed for the invasion of Sicily were flown all the way from England to Tunisia, through skies patrolled by German aircraft.
RAF Flight Lieutenant D A ‘Tommy’ Grant was one of the key men behind the coup-de-main successes of the Glider Pilot Regiment in the invasions of Sicily and Normandy. For Sicily he towed the only Horsa glider to reach its LZ next to the Ponte Grande bridge. For Normandy he trained the glider pilots who landed with such spectacular accuracy to seize the Orne River and Caen Canal bridges.
In early 1943 Grant was a test pilot at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, where he was one of a small number of expert pilots dedicated to exploring and developing the techniques and technology of the new art of glider warfare. When he heard that a glider operation was in the offing in North Africa, he arranged to have himself posted on an operational attachment to 295 Squadron. The Squadron comprised the Halifaxes that were due to tow Horsas during the invasion of Sicily.
Three night operations were planned against bridges in Sicily: Ladbroke, a glider assault near Syracuse; Glutton, a parachute and glider attack near Augusta; and Fustian, a parachute and glider attack near Catania.
Most of the gliders involved were to be American Wacos, which could be shipped by sea, disassembled in crates. The Horsas, however, had to be flown all the way from England to Tunisia, through skies patrolled by German aircraft.
Although fraught with difficulties and dangers, the effort was considered vital. The Horsa could carry a whole platoon of troops, which could immediately deploy as a tactically cohesive unit in a coup-de-main operation, such as seizing a bridge.
A Horsa could also carry both a 6 pounder anti-tank gun and its jeep. The smaller Waco could carry only a gun or a jeep, but not both, thus requiring two gliders per gun. The chances of the gun crew finding each other after a night landing in rough country were slim, leaving the lightly armed airborne troops exposed to enemy tank attacks.
All this meant that each additional Horsa that took part might tip the balance between success and failure. It was crucial that as many Horsas as possible should reach Tunisia, where the departure airfields for the invasion were clustered.
What follows is a transcript of Tommy Grant’s after-action report on the Horsa ferrying operation, Operation Beggar, also known as Operation Turkey Buzzard. Text in square brackets is editorial.
Operation “Beggar”
This was the first attempt at long range ferrying of gliders, and it should be of interest in considering whether gliders can be used as long range freight carriers.
The plan was to ferry 36 Horsa gliders to Kairouan, Tunisia, by the 9th July [the eve of D-Day for the invasion of Sicily]. ‘A’ Flight, No.295 Squadron, were to do the ferrying, using 12 Halifaxes Mk.V. These Halifaxes were also to tow the gliders into operation on the night of the 9th July [when the gliders took off for Sicily in Operation Ladbroke].
The ferry journey was divided into three stages, the first, Portreath [in Cornwall] to Salé, near Rabat, Morocco, the second, Salé to Froha [in Algeria], 10 miles South of Mascara, and the third, Froha to Kairouan [in Tunisia, where the take-off airfields for the invasion were located]. This operation was not fully successful. At Kairouan on the evening of the 9th July there were only 19 Horsas and 7 Halifaxes with their crews and one spare Halifax. That is to say, just over 50% of the gliders and Halifaxes with crews arrived. The last Halifax and glider arrived on mid-day on the 9th.
The Squadron had certain initial difficulties. I believe that No.38 Wing were told to go ahead with the operation when there was very little time left for preparation. The conversion of ‘A’ Flight to Halifaxes had in consequence to be hurried. Three crews were lost on this conversion. Replacement crews were converted in even less time. One pilot who had only recently come to the Squadron from Oxfords flew his first Halifax on 1st June: he left England towing a Horsa on 14th June, towed four Horsas to North Africa, and took part in the operation. My crew made up the number to 12, but it was not complete until 25th June. Unfortunately, about ten days earlier one Halifax had crashed flying to Portreath in bad weather, and the number of crews was reduced again to 11.
The ferrying had to be carried out in about six weeks. To tow 36 Horsas to Kairouan entailed some 77 hours flying for each Halifax crew, 50 hours of which were towing. Counting glider hours, the total amount of flying required was approximately 1300 hours. This demanded first class serviceability of the tugs.
The Squadron also had bad luck with their stores. The stores for the Halifaxes were sent ahead by direct Air Ministry arrangement. They had not begun to arrive at the Squadron until the operation was completed. In consequence, the Squadron had to do most of their ferrying not only far away from their bases in England but also away from any proper facilities for inspecting and servicing the aircraft.
Portreath to Salé (1,400 miles)
31 gliders left Portreath in about 40 days for Salé; only 27 arrived, one of which crashed on landing, and another went unserviceable on landing and was not used in the operation.
The Halifaxes for this journey were at full petrol load (2,500 gallons), making an all up load of 62,000 lbs. None of this petrol was jettisonable. The Halifaxes were above three-engined load, and as the auxiliary tanks were in the bomb bays, if an engine had cut, it would have been impossible to force land wheels up without the risk of fire. The Squadron did have one fatal accident caused by fire when force landing, wheels up, at full fuel load.
I was told that the gliders had never been towed by Halifaxes at this load before. The Squadron said that they had asked A.F.E.E. [the Airborne Forces Experimental Establishment] to clear the Halifaxes for towing this load, but were told that they were too busy. The Squadron, therefore, had to do it themselves. For this tow, the Horsa jettisoned its undercarriage, and carried a spare undercarriage.
The flight was carried out in daylight, as it was thought too risky to fly by night, in case the tug flew into cloud. The blind flying instrument developed by the R.A.E. [Royal Aircraft Establishment] was fitted in the first few Horsas. However, it had never been seen before by the glider pilots, and was looked at with distrust. Neither glider pilot nor tug pilot liked the idea of the glider flying under the slipstream; the glider pilot because he thought that the slipstream of a Halifax was so powerful that it would make the glider uncontrollable, the tug pilot because he thought that it would stall the aircraft at that load.
The authorities at Portreath had to guarantee the combination that they would not have to go through cloud. This meant considerable delay awaiting good weather. In fact, several pilots had to fly through cloud. Two glider pilots climbed through 2,000 feet of cloud successfully on an Aldis lamp shone from the rear turret of the tugs. One glider pilot got into trouble in cloud, the rope broke and he ditched the glider in the Bay of Biscay. He was picked up by a destroyer ten hours later, and the Horsa was still afloat.
For safety, the tugs were sent a considerable distance out to sea, making a journey of approximately 1,400 miles. In spite of this, one tug was shot down by two F.W. Condors, who were returning from a raid on a convoy off Portugal. The glider was released during the battle and the three glider pilots were picked up by a Spanish ship after eleven days in a dinghy. Another tug and glider were missing from this part of the journey; no news has yet been received of them.
I myself never did this tow. I waited at Portreath for five days for good weather, and then was re-called to the Squadron as the wrong hydraulic fluid had been put in my aircraft. As there was a considerable amount of towing to do in Africa, I was then sent out in an aircraft which had not had a consumption test, and could not tow. It was not a very pleasant tow for the pilots, apart from the worry about the weather. I towed a glider with a loaded Halifax in England. The recommended speed was 130 to 135 m.p.h. I did not feel that at that speed with a loaded Halifax there was much in hand. One pilot told me that in order to get as quickly as possible into weak mixture (plus 4 lb. boost, 2650 revs.) he flew at 120 – 125 m.p.h.
An escort of Beaufighters was provided for the first three hours of the trip. They insisted that the flight should be made at 500 feet, to avoid interception on their return flight.
One tug pilot had a starboard outer engine failure at 400 feet three hours out to sea; he managed to bring his glider back to England. It was a very good bit of flying, as he can only just have been under the three engine load for a Halifax alone.
The casualties on this trip were as follows:-
Horsas Halifaxes
1 Shot down by enemy action. 1 Shot down by enemy action.
1 Missing. 1 Missing.
1 Forced landed into the sea. 1 Crashed on the way to Portreath.
1 Brought back.
1 Written off on landing at Salé.
Salé to Froha (350 miles)
For this trip and the trip to Kairouan the Horsas undercarriages were not jettisoned. The tug pilots considered that the undercarriage made a difference of at least plus 1 lb. boost on their throttle settings. This would seem to be true, because in no case did any tug pilot manage to get into weak mixture during a tow in Africa. Most pilots were flying at +5 1/2 lb. boost, 2650 revs., even after nearly four hours towing.
Unfortunately, there was frequently low cloud in the early morning at Salé. As we could not fly through cloud, we had to wait until the sun cleared the cloud away. I did two tows from Salé; both were done late in the day, and they were extremely bumpy.
During this part of the journey, two gliders were dropped in the desert. I believe that in both cases it was the fault of the tug crew. One was recovered in time for the operation.
Froha to Kairouan (600 miles)
This journey was more difficult than the journey from Salé. The mountains between Salé and Froha were 3,000 – 4,000 feet. Between Froha and Kairouan we had to fly over mountains up to 7,000 feet. I used to fly at 9,000 feet. Some pilots flew lower, even at 6,500 feet along the valleys. This was all right if one got there early in the morning, but later in the day one could lose as much as 1,300 feet in one bump. During my last trip I lost about 3,000 feet over a period of 10 minutes.
This was an extremely tiring trip for the pilots. It involved a long climb at 100 feet a minute to 9,000 feet, and either a very bumpy journey if they started late, or an hour and half flying dead into the morning sun. The first glider was delivered on the 28th of June. I delivered the second one on the 29th. We were obviously behind schedule, and the Officers in charge of the operation did their best to rectify this. Each tug was to do one journey there and back per day, 7 – 8 hours flying. The aircraft were serviced in the evening, and if necessary at night. According to the programme I was down for 42 hours flying in six days. The other pilots were to average about 35 hours flying in five days. Needless to say, nobody completed this programme, as the Halifaxes could not stand up to it.
My starboard oleo leg [part of the undercarriage] went flat, and I did not do a long tow between 29th June and 5th July. For this reason, I delivered only two gliders to Kairouan. I did not have any engine trouble. Other pilots were not so lucky. On five occasions gliders were released owing to engine trouble and landed in the desert. Four gliders remained in the desert during the operations. On the whole the Squadron was lucky not to lose more gliders. On three occasions Squadron Leader Wilkinson had engine trouble. On two he brought his glider back to Froha. On the third he managed to get it to Kairouan. After releasing the glider he had to feather the second engine and landed on two. That Halifax was unserviceable for the operation awaiting three engine changes. In all, on this part of the trip, there were 5 Halifaxes which had to have engine changes. Two Halifax crews were not able to reach Kairouan at all, and took no part in the operation.
Conclusions
Long distance towing
It is impossible to use a Halifax/Horsa combination economically for carrying freight over distances exceeding 1,000 miles – the fuel load of a Halifax is too high. The safety factor is so small that it is impossible to put any appreciable freight into the Horsa.
Horsas can be ferried light over long distances, provided great care is taken to ensure that the Halifax is in very good condition. Special attention should be paid to the loosening of joints in oil and coolant systems by vibration. I calculated that during my attachment to No.295 Squadron they had approximately 25 engine failures on Halifaxes in flight. One pilot had six engine failures during flight in three weeks. Some, no doubt, could be attributed to the fault of the crew, but the majority were oil or coolant leaks due to vibration. An oil leak may easily force the Halifax to jettison his glider, and two oil leaks on a long sea journey may cause complete loss of the Halifax.
My own experience is, perhaps, interesting. I had no engine failures while towing. Counting the operation, my aircraft did approximately 22 hours towing in Africa. Before returning to England, it was given a 40 hour inspection. On the journey back to England I had three engine failures, one on the journey to Ras-el-Ma, one in the Bay of Biscay, and the third as I came over Valley Aerodrome, where I landed on two engines. All these were caused by oil leaks, and all within 17 hours ordinary flying (not towing) after a 40 hour inspection.
The other two aircraft which left Africa for England at the same time are missing. I do not imagine that they were shot down by enemy aircraft, as there was plenty of cloud cover. Both may have had two engine failures. Each had had a 40 hour inspection before leaving.
On all long ferrying tows it is absolutely necessary for the glider to jettison his undercarriage. I suggest that the blind flying instrument should be used. This should enable the flight to Africa to be done by night, thus making it shorter and safer.
It is essential that the bomb-bay tanks in the Halifaxes should be made jettisonable. I think that it would be advisable to have an auxiliary hand pump from these tanks, in case the electrical immersion pump fails, as it did on one occasion.
Ferrying gliders long distances is practical, but it is not a very simple or quick way of delivering them. It requires considerable ground organization and adequate inspection facilities for the tug at each stage. If this journey were to be attempted again, I think that the journey from Salé to Kairouan should be made in one trip, the Horsa jettisoning its undercarriage on take-off. The Halifax should have one auxiliary tank of fuel.
3 Commando’s capture of the Italian strongpoint at Torre Cuba helped prepare the ground (literally) for the surrender of Italy and the signing of the Armistice.
Major Peter Young had a disappointing start to Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily on 10 July 1943. He was the commanding officer of half of 3 Commando, and he had been ordered to neutralise Italian defences on the shoulder of George Beach, prior to the main seaborne forces arriving. However he and his men spent the night in their landing craft shuttling from one wrong position to another. They finally arrived off George Beach after the assault waves had gone in and the beach had been captured. Already annoyed at missing the action, he was even more frustrated when his men were then given what was in effect a lowly garrisoning role, well behind the front lines.
After the area had been secured, the Allies converted the farmland around Torre Cuba into Cassibile Airfield. The tower became an air traffic control tower. Source: NARA
The main seaborne forces had pushed forwards to capture Syracuse as quickly as they could. Their job was to relieve the glider troops holding a key bridge, the Ponte Grande, and then to capture the town’s port facilities before the Italians could blow them up. These objectives were critical to the success of the entire invasion, so the leading troops only tackled obstacles that were in their way or which directly threatened the landings. This left several Italian strongpoints more or less unmolested.
The next day, much to Young’s satisfaction, part of 3 Commando was selected to deal with two such defensive posts. Young’s report describes what happened:
“On the morning of [11th] July, 1943, Lt-General DEMPSEY, Cmdr. XIII Corps, gave orders that a fighting patrol, from No 3 Commando, should clear the area between the road junction Torre Ognina and Cassibile. This mission was entrusted to 3 Troop under the command of Capt. J. N. de W. Lash. I accompanied this expedition as an observer. The Troop made very good speed from CASSIBILE to road and railway junction.“
The first objective on the list was a farm called Torre Cuba. Like many farms near the Sicilian coast, it had been fortified back in the days of the Barbary pirates, who constantly raided these shores (‘torre’ means ‘tower’). The tower allowed the enemy to be spotted offshore in good time, and crenellated walls allowed for defence.
Now Torre Cuba was being used for exactly the same purposes by the Italians, to fend off another seaborne invasion. The tower was used as an OP (observation post) by the spotter for a field gun battery further inland. The battery had been put out of action on D-Day by glider troops acting on their own initiative, which left only Torre Cuba’s role as a strongpoint. It was garrisoned by men of the 2nd Company of the Italian 430th Coastal Battalion under Captain Alfredo Covatta. Young continued:
“We received information from a R.A.S.C. Coy. that there had been firing from the direction of TORRE CUBA during the night, but that, as everything had been quiet that morning, they assumed that the enemy had withdrawn or surrendered. This was misleading, for when the Troop arrived close to this farm, they came under a well sustained fire from at least three Breda guns, not to mention riflemen. At this time Capt. Lash [was] with H.Q. and L/Sgt Knowland’s sub-section to the right of the road, Lt. Buswell to the left of the road, both within one hundred yards of the farm. I myself, with my runners, was advancing 200 yards from the farm, and Lt. Nicholas with his Section was somewhere to the right of the road.
Torre Cuba today (the tower has been altered). Source: Lorenzo Bovi
“The engagement lasted for about 15 minutes and during most of that time I was busily engaged crawling backwards on my stomach, to get out of the line of fire of 2 of the aforementioned M.G.s. A point of detail as regards equipment to be improvised is some better method of carrying hand grenades than the present one of sticking them on the belt by lever. I, several times, had to crawl back for mine when I least wished to do so.
“Meanwhile, Capt. Lash approached the TORRE CUBA crawling up the right hand side of the wall bounding the road to the S.W. corner of the Farm where there was a concrete M.G. Post. Every time that he advanced, Lt. Herbet D.C.M. M.M. sprang up and plastered the Post with a Bren gun fired from the shoulder. While this was going on the party was sniped ineffectively from their right, from the direction of a glider which had crashed about 300 yards away. Capt. Lash threw a grenade at the M.G. Post but missed it; the gunners however ran away.
“Taking advantage of their momentary confusion, Capt. Lash, Lt. Herbet D.C.M. M.M., and Tpr. Underwood of Sgt. Knowland’s sub-section entered the farm followed by C.S.M. Fawcett. They wounded about 8 Italians and unfortunately one British parachutist who was a prisoner in the farm. A general surrender ensued. About the same time Lt. Buswell and L/Sgt. Shaw’s sub-section, which had advanced through an orchard under a fairly hot fire and without any hesitation, effected an entry on the north end of the farm. Tprs. Knill and Hough both showed dash in pushing on to the water tower on the sea side of the position, but resistance was at an end.
“A little before this, Tpr. Pritchard enabled my H.Q. and Lt. Nicholas’ section to advance without casualties by coming coolly back along the wall and indicating which line of approach was clear. In this attack 2 Officers and 51 O.R.s of the 206th Coastal (Italian) Division were taken prisoner, and 1 Officer and 10 other ranks of-the British Airborne Division were rescued.
“Tpr. Smith was our only casualty, he was wounded a little in rear of me by the first burst. As the prisoners were filing away to the rear, I singled out the Coy. Cmdr. Captain COVATTO and kept him with me. I should like to say that, in my opinion, good troops should hold this position until a cannon is brought against it. The farm was more or less square with strong walls and buildings around it, which were loop-holed. There was a Breda M.G. at each corner and another in the tower and trenches 12 feet deep inside the position.
Generals Montgomery, Bedell Smith, Patton and Alexander (L-R) meet at Cassibile Airfield to coordinate plans. They are using Montgomery’s Humber Snipe staff car as a map table. Source: Eisenhower Library
“The enemy had seen us approaching when we were 3/4 of a mile away through an excellent telescope on top of the water tower, which was about 60 feet high. They held their fire quite well. They had previously beaten off 3 smaller fighting patrols from a bridgehead and had captured the parachutists aforementioned. It is alleged that some of the Italian private soldiers said they would not have fought if Capt. Covatto had not forced them to do so. In my opinion, the credit for the capture of Torre Cuba must go to Capt. Lash, Lt. Herbet D.C.M. M.M, and Tpr. Underwood.
“The Airborne troops and a few men under C.S.M. Fawcett took the prisoners back to CASSIBILE. The remainder of the troop now advanced on Torre Ognina.”
Torre Ognina
Torre Ognina [map] was another centuries-old watch tower. It stood alone on the scrubby headland of Capo Ognina. Young thought his landing craft had probably been machine-gunned from here the day before while hunting for their landing spot. Young continued:
“On the way Capt. Covatto indicated to us a minefield at about (114210) [on the coast road] where we passed an evacuated Italian strong point. We then captured Torre Ognina without any resistance. The Garrison of 1 Officer and 16 other ranks surrendered when Capt. Covatto informed them that they would receive no quarter if they fired. The patrol then returned to CASSIBLE, with its prisoners, having examined two crashed gliders but found nobody to rescue.”
After these actions the men of 3 Commando were kept out of action in readiness for their next major mission. This took place two days later, when they were sent to seize a bridge near Lentini in support of the drive on Catania.
The tower (beyond the truck) of Torre Cuba in use as an air traffic control tower at Cassibile Airfield. To the left of the truck, a B-17 bomber can be partly seen. It is presumably the personal plane of General Montgomery. Source: NARA
Cassibile Airfield
Italian General Castellano signs the Armistice in a tent in Fairfield Camp. Source: NARA
As for Torre Cuba, it became the air traffic control tower for a brand new airfield hurriedly constructed by the Allies. The area had been preselected from aerial photographs during planning in North Africa. Major Young may not have known it, but the need to get started on preparing the airfield may have lent urgency to his mission to Torre Cuba.
The nearest place on the map was Cassibile [map], so the airfield took the village’s name. At the northern end of the airfield a large camp, called Fairfield, was erected near the fortified manor house of San Michele [map][photos]. The airfield and camp became a convenient headquarters hub. Senior generals would fly in in their personal planes, hold meetings, and then fly out again. Eisenhower and Montgomery both had B-17 Flying Fortress bombers.
Finally, on 3 September 1943, the Italians signed an armistice in a tent in Fairfield Camp. One of Winston Churchill’s fondest dreams thus came true – the invasion of Sicily had led to Italy being knocked out of the war.
.
With thanks to Lorenzo Bovi for permission to use his photo of Torre Cuba.
The SAS Special Raiding Squadron (SRS) could have withdrawn after taking the gun battery on Cape Murro di Porco. Instead Major Paddy Mayne opted for more fighting.
Jubilant men of the SAS SRS celebrate the capture of Battery AS 493, with the battery’s rangefinder tower in the background. Source: Muirhead
Fascist ‘Blackshirt’ artillery militia (Milmart) manning a 102/35 gun. This could be a scene from AS 493. Source: Ufficio Storico Marina Militare
In one of the opening moves of Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily, Major Paddy Mayne’s SAS Special Raiding Squadron (SRS) destroyed an Italian gun battery in the pre-dawn hours of 10 July 1943 [story]. The battery, called Lamba Doria, sat on the southern tip of the Maddalena Peninsula south of Syracuse. Here, on top of a headland called Cape Murro di Porco, the Italians had direct line of sight of the invasion beaches. The battery’s three 6 inch guns could have wreaked havoc on Allied troop transports anchored like sitting ducks offshore. The SRS had been told that the success of the entire invasion depended on them knocking out the guns before they could open fire.
The SRS were led by Major Paddy Mayne. Mayne had a reputation as a gifted leader and a natural-born warrior. He also had a reputation for having little respect for senior officers, and for going his own way. Thanks to books and TV documentaries, the word ‘rogue’ has become firmly attached, rightly or wrongly, to both Paddy Mayne and his men. When used in this way, the word cleverly combines both the sense of ‘maverick’ and ‘lovable rogue’.
So did Paddy Mayne ‘go rogue’ in Sicily? His orders appear to have given him wide latitude, so disobeying them would seem hard to do. They read:
“On completion of your task your Sqn will either:- (a) Rejoin ULSTER MONARCH [the SRS’ mother ship] direct. For this purpose you will make arrangements to summon the craft to the Beach or other embarkation points selected by you, or (b) Move WESTWARDS to join 5 Div, who will be moving NORTHWARDS from Beach 44 towards SYRACUSE. The method to be adopted is left to your discretion on the spot; the object being to get your Sqn on board ULSTER MONARCH as soon as possible, and re-organised for further seaborne operations. If, during your withdrawal, you make contact with other hostile Batteries or defended localities you will, if the task, in your judgement, is within the power of your Sqn, destroy them.”
Other units were warned where they might come across the SRS, to avoid friendly-fire incidents. After destroying the guns on the cape, the SRS were expected to head towards the nearest flat beach, which was in the armpit of the Maddalena Peninsula, near an area called Terrauzza [story]. This was also the nearest place where a road exited the Peninsula. From there the SRS could either re-embark for the HMS Ulster Monarch, or they could head due west towards the main highway. Here they would encounter the main force heading north to capture Syracuse.
But the SRS never got as far as the beach at Terrauzza. At first it seemed as if Mayne had indeed decided to go back to the ship, and HMS Ulster Monarch sent a signal at 07:40 to Corps HQ which read: “SRS moving by craft to UM”.
This implied the SRS were on board landing craft and already on their way back, but in fact they got no closer to the beach than Masseria Damerio, a farm which they had seized at the start of the operation [story]. It now served as the rallying point for regrouping after the fight at Lamba Doria [story].
The SRS after-action report, probably written by Paddy Mayne himself, explained what happened next:
“The main task being successfully achieved the Squadron assembled at Farm DAMERIO and Major R.B.Mayne, D.S.O decided to push North-westwards and attack C.D. [coast defence] Battery which had opened fire on us.”
Well, that is what one version of the report said. The official version in the copy of the War Diary in the National Archives is significantly different. It reads:
“The main task being successfully achieved the Sqdn assembled at Farm “DAMERIO” and Major R.B.Mayne, D.S.O decided to then pushed North-Westwards and attack C.D. Bty 165267 which had opened fire on our shipping.”
Mention of Mayne as the maker of the decision, along with his full title, is so heavily redacted in this version that it is unreadable. And the reason given for taking this decision is no longer that he objected to being fired on, but that he feared for the safety of the invasion ships. This, after all, was why the SRS had landed here in the first place.
Fascist ‘Blackshirt’ artillery militia (Milmart) manning their 102/35 gun in battery AS 493. Source: Ufficio Storico Marina Militare
Why is this version different? Did Mayne perhaps feel that by not heading west he had exceeded his orders? After all, these stipulated that his top priority was to return to the ship soon, and ordered him to head due west if he did not re-embark on the beach. Did he think emphasising that it was his decision might be seen as too egotistical? Or did he want to play down any impression that he had gone rogue just for the sake of a good fight, something which he famously adored?
As to whether the second battery fired at the SRS, or the shipping, or both, there are conflicting reports. At least two accounts by SRS men say the battery fired only on ships, but an Italian report mentions the battery firing on approaching enemy troops, although it’s not clear which. The second battery was known as AS 493 by the Italians, with the ‘AS’ identifying it as one of many batteries in the Augusta and Syracuse Fortified Zone.
The SRS report continued:
“Left Farm DAMERIO at about 0600 hrs and proceeding towards new objective mopped up several bunches of enemy snipers and defended Farms.”
Casa Mallia. Note the turret.
There is a photograph of the SRS at one of these farms, Casa Mallia, which sits close to the high point of the ridge. The photograph shows the men taking a break. One man is having a wash with a basin of water and a towel supplied by a young Italian woman. Two men are still wearing their blow-up life-belts, as if a sea journey was still an imminent possibility. A PIAT anti-tank weapon is propped against a wall. A pile of discarded Italian helmets and rifles implies the farm was garrisoned when the SRS arrived.
The house had a small turret on its roof. This gave wonderful views over the peninsula, and it was possible to see battery AS 493 a mile away, especially its large rangefinder tower. Mayne ordered the SRS mortars to bombard the battery while 1 and 2 Troops advanced to capture it and put it out of action.
The SRS report continues:
“Pushing forwards 3” Mortars engaged C. D. Rangefinder and Gun positions.”
”Blackshirt’ Fascist artillery militia in the rangefinder tower of AS 493. Source: Ufficio Storico Marina Militare
Sgt Shaw of the SRS poses in front of the rangefinder tower, wearing an Italian officer’s cap. Source: Davis
AS 493 was a dual-purpose battery, with both an anti-aircraft and an anti-ship role. The battery’s rangefinder was a large stereoscopic device for measuring the exact distance to a target such as a ship. It was mounted in what looked like a turret on top of a pyramid, to give it maximum height and view. Usually in Italian batteries there was a bunker-like room below the range-finder, which was the fire control centre, from where instructions went to the guns.
The SRS mortar detachment was commanded by Captain Alex Muirhead. He kept detailed notes of its fire missions that morning. His mortars had already done sterling work in the taking of the Lamba Doria battery, opening the attack by firing 60 HE (high explosive) shells and 12 smoke shells. Muirhead recorded that he had learned lessons from this first action:
“Hits on buildings & gun area by H.E. causing casualties & confusion. Smoke [shells] caught 2 cordite dumps. Smoke invaluable as incendiaries [on] houses or grassland. H.E on hitting tile roof penetrates before exploding.”
Muirhead now repeated a similar mix of shell types in a series of fire missions against AS 493. The first was fired at a range of 1700 yards, from near Casa Mallia. “Bursts in the target area” were seen. The team then moved forward 250 yards, to a position in front of the farm, and fired again. This time there was “one hit on Range Finder tower”.
Finally the SRS mortar men went forward almost as far as AS 493 itself, and cheekily fired on it from an improbably point-blank range of 250 yards. It seems they set up behind a house close to the battery’s perimeter, with Muirhead noting:
“Possible to fire at this range if no wind or behind house. Hits in gun pits”.
We have several accounts by Italian gunners in AS 493. One of them, an officer, noted the effectiveness of the SRS mortar fire. The officer had earlier led a patrol towards Lamba Doria, which he discovered had been overrun. He wrote:
“I immediately turned back, and re-entering the battery I phoned Group South HQ and told them everything. Until then they had been completely in the dark about the true situation. Together with my commander we prepared the battery for close-quarters defence. I descended into the fire control centre and prepared maps and waited for orders and coordinates for the battery to fire on land. But that did not happen, as the commander spotted a formation of fighters and started AA fire. I advised him to stop the pointless AA fire and prepare to fire on land. A little later I spotted significant Allied landing forces […] Then the commander suddenly began fire on these forces with the only two guns which could bear: No. 4 and No. 5. The salvos were effective, but shortly afterwards the gun pit of No. 5 gun took a direct hit from a mortar bomb. Another fell near the fire control centre. Some men were wounded, and others killed. We began firing with an 8mm machinegun, but soon this position also took a direct hit.”
The SRS report on this attack concluded:
“Nos. 1 and 2 Troop attacked and after meeting with strong opposition No. 2 Troop captured the Gun position numbering: 5 A.A. Guns 75 to 80mm 1 Large Rangefinder. 4 4” Mortars. Several M.Gs and L.M.Gs.”
SRS men and sailors from Ulster Monarch examine a gun in the Emanuele Russo battery five days after the battle [story]. Source: Davis
The guns were in fact 102/35 (102mm) anti-aircraft guns. The claim that 4-inch mortars were captured is odd. Gun batteries did not tend to have a complement of mortars, and certainly not such big ones. There was a platoon of 3-inch (81mm) mortars of the Italian 385th Coastal Battalion somewhere on the Maddalena Peninsula. Perhaps it was in the precincts of the battery, or adjacent to it, and this is what the SAS found.
The capture of AS 493 fully vindicated Mayne’s decision to head north rather than west, but more was yet to come. Up ahead were two more batteries guarding the entrance to Syracuse’s harbour.
One was another anti-ship battery like Lamba Doria, this one called Emanuele Russo. The SRS report describes how the battery was captured by just a handful of troopers:
“No. 1 Troop went forward and one section captured gun position 156287 […] Prisoners Battery commander and personnel.”
British troops man one of the captured 76mm guns in AS 309. In the background, Allied shipping fills Syracuse’s harbour. Source: NARA
The other, and last, battery was numbered AS 309. It consisted of six 76mm dual-purpose guns. It was dealt with by Muirhead’s mortars alone. He wrote that the results of firing 22 bombs at it were:
“Cordite dump on fire. Hits on guns or barracks[.] H.Q. evacuate[d]”
Muirhead’s mortar men were the unsung heroes of the clearing of the Maddalena Peninsula. They carried the heavy mortar tubes and base plates, and scores of rounds of heavy ammunition, for miles in scorching sun and intense heat. They then fired with verve and accuracy, and to telling effect.
After the last two batteries had been dealt with, Mayne finally led his men westwards. They spent the night at a farm called Luogo Ulivo. It was only a thousand yards from the highway where the SRS had been expected to join the main force on the first day. Instead they did this the next morning, the 11th, nearly a day late. This had no detrimental effect on the possible further operations mentioned in Mayne’s instructions, as apparently no such operations were required on the 11th. It was not until the next day, in the afternoon of the 12th, that the SRS set sail again in Ulster Monarch on an operation, this time to capture the port of Augusta [story].
Whether Mayne obeyed or disobeyed his orders, or merely slightly bent them, nobody was complaining. Acting on his initiative had paid handsome dividends. Whether he had gone rogue or not, however, it seems he could not resist being roguish. He completed his report with a prank.
Reporting on the overnight stay at Luogo Ulivo, Mayne wrote that at the farm his men had captured
“50 Gallini and normal complement.”
As Mayne no doubt fervently hoped, this was reworked by the CO of all the special forces, who put this in his official report:
“On the next day the S.R.S. captured 50 more prisoners which were sent back with those captured previously under escort of the 5th Div.”
Mayne was no respecter of senior officers, and this was a trick that worked spectacularly well. For “Gallini” were not in fact some species of Italian soldiery, but hens, and the normal complement of hens is, of course, eggs.
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Thanks to the Muirhead family for permission to use a photo from Alex Muirhead’s album and to quote from his archives.
Thanks to Paul Davis for permission to use photos from Peter Davis’ album. Peter Davis’ book “SAS Men in the Making” can be bought from the publisher here.
The pilots in Glider 110 landed their Waco in the centre of LZ 1, then went on to fight to the finish for the Ponte Grande bridge.
Glider 110 lies broken-backed after landing in Sicily. In the background a Waco caught in a searchlight banks steeply in an attempt to escape. Drawing by glider pilot Victor Miller.
Glider: Waco CG-4A number 110, serial no. 73603 (or 73683). Glider carrying:6 pounder anti-tank gun and crew of H Company, 1st Battalion of the Border Regiment, 1st Air Landing Brigade. Troops’ objective: Anti-tank defence of the outskirts of Syracuse.
Manifest
1 sjt 2 men 1 – 6-pdr
According to glider pilot Boucher-Giles the gun crew included:
Sgt Hodge. A corporal he identified only by the name ‘Paddy’.
Glider 110 was one of four H Company gliders (109, 110, 117, 118) that each carried a 6 pounder anti-tank gun. The guns were too heavy to manhandle far, so another four gliders (114, 113, 121, 122) carried specially adapted jeeps (known at the time as “Blitz Buggies”) to tow the guns. The Waco glider, unlike the Horsa glider, was not big enough to carry both a gun and its jeep. Of the eight gliders, two had to abort shortly after take-off, and another three came down in the sea off Sicily. Two which carried guns landed in Sicily, as did one glider which carried a jeep, but it landed many miles away. The result was that none of the eight H Company gliders fulfilled its purpose. The idea that the jeeps would easily find their guns in the dark, in countryside full of trees and stone walls, when the gliders were likely to be so widely scattered, proved to be one of the most over-optimistic parts of the plan for Operation Ladbroke.
Tug Pilot’s Report
Tug: Albemarle Mk I [photo], letter K, number P1389, 296 Squadron, 38 Wing RAF. Takeoff: 1942 hrs 9 July 1943, Airstrip F, Goubrine No. 1, Tunisia. Priority 16. Tug return: 0055 hrs (16.5 mins early) 10 July 1943.
Pilot: Sqn/Ldr L C Bartram, with P/O C A C H Foster & P/O J G Walters
“Glider released at 1400 ft. 1000 yds off coast on release line. Glider landed approx 300 yds N. LZ 1. Glider broke on landing but one passenger injured when gun broke loose, otherwise O.K. Glider caught in searchlight after release but S/L lost glider after approx. 800 ft.”
First Glider Pilot Boucher-Giles later reported:
“I learned afterwards that our tug had followed us in to protect us, and had shot out the searchlight.”
If this is correct, it seems odd that the tug pilot did not mention it.
Glider Pilot’s Report
Two sketches in glider pilot Victor Miller's notebook. The left
sketch showing a Waco in the air on tow is captioned "Sousse
7:15pm BEFORE". The right sketch showing his smashed Waco on the
ground is captioned "Syracusa 10:15pm AFTER". Compared to his
other drawing of his landed glider (top), the damage seems
exaggerated, but Miller was clearly making a point.
First Glider Pilot: Lt Boucher-Giles, Arthur Francis Second Glider Pilot: Sgt Miller, Victor
“A first-rate tow and good navigation, but inter-comm. went u/s. Glider released at 2240 hrs at 1400 ft. approximately 1200 yards off coast and made successful landing on L.Z. One man injured in landing by gun load breaking loose.”
“Glider Pilot’s suggestions:- Intercomm. u/s suggests intercom in glider be lashed at convenient point. Consider 6 pounder gun and 3 men too heavy a load. Strong points not strong enough in bumpy weather. Suggest Sutton harness for 1st and 2nd. pilots.”
Probable landing spot
The landing may have been successful and almost exactly in the centre of an LZ, but it was the wrong LZ. Glider 110 landed in LZ 1, when it was supposed to have landed in LZ 2.
Ten years later Boucher-Giles wrote an account of his part in Operation Ladbroke in an article for The Eagle, the magazine of the Glider Pilot Regiment Association. It explains how he came to end up on the wrong LZ:
“I looked out of the port cockpit window and the sight that met my eyes from the L.Z. 2,000 ft. beneath and in front of us seemed far from healthy. At least three gliders were on fire on the ground and burning fiercely, while the criss-cross of many tracer bullets indicated a battle going on below us. To use an R.A.F. expression which is, for all I know, still current in the service, there seemed no future in all this, so we simply took off the lift spoilers again and glided on over the L.Z. to land in a field about a mile further on, as we thought, in safety. But a searchlight got us at 1,200 ft., plus a small amount of light flak, so that after the excitement of weaving to escape it, and the dazzling light of the searchlight, we had to make a quick and, I fear, rather heavy landing. We came to rest with a heavy crump in a cloud of dust.”
Later examination of the glider showed:
“Landed on smooth sod field at terrific speed causing the floor to almost completely disintegrate. Stopped 120 feet from where it first contacted ground. There were two deep holes where the wheels first made contact. It was apparent that the pilot was travelling at a terrific speed and did not level off sufficiently for landing.”
The author of a second report was somewhat more scathing:
“Perfect field […] absolutely no reason for extent of damage but improper landing.”
The Second Pilot, Victor Miller, has left us a full account in his book, ‘Nothing Is Impossible‘. It explains how the landing came to be so hard. After handing over control of the glider over to Boucher-Giles (BG), Miller watched the instruments and called out the readings:
“I chanted the airspeed of 100 mph and a height of 600 feet through the dull roar that filled the cockpit. I had to lean right forward to take the readings, for the figures on the altimeter were very indistinct. Still, we sailed on down through the night to our landing zone, undisturbed now by flak or searchlights. Again I shouted out the figures to BG, 100 mph, 400 feet. […] Dead ahead appeared a faint white outline that indicated an open space. On each side and on the far end, dark masses indicated trees, and these we would have to avoid at all costs […] I knew at 100 mph we were gliding a little fast by about 10 mph, but undoubtedly BG was trying to get down on the dim white spot. Once more I called out a reading of 100 mph, 200 feet. It was the last thing I remembered for a while, for the next second there came an exploding crash.”
Miller was knocked out when his head hit the dashboard, which is presumably why Boucher-Giles suggested fitting Sutton Harnesses instead of the standard Waco seat belt. Both pilots’ night-vision was ruined by the searchlight, causing Boucher-Giles to rely too much on the instrument readings, while simultaneously making it hard for Miller to read them, even when peering closely at them. Unfortunately the altimeter was reading too high. There were several reports that night of altimeters misleading pilots into hitting the ground while still descending rapidly, as happened here.
The hard landing was compounded by the heavy anti-tank gun breaking free and apparently smashing through the floor, also injuring the gun crew’s sergeant.
Boucher-Giles may have thought poorly of his own performance, but those in authority obviously disagreed with him. He was one of only three glider pilots to be awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for Operation Ladbroke.
The entry in Victor Miller’s logbook for Operation Ladbroke (operations merited red ink). Miller logged three hours of flying, which means he did most of the flying from North Africa to Sicily. Having the Second Pilot do this kept the First Pilot fresh for the landing.
Defence of the Ponte Grande
We are unusually spoiled when it comes to accounts of Glider 110. We have Boucher-Giles’ 1953 account in The Eagle, and versions of it in later books. We also have Miller’s very full account in his book ‘Nothing is Impossible’. Few other Operation Ladbroke gliders are as richly documented with detailed first-person accounts.
Glider 110 came under fire immediately after landing, but the firing soon stopped. One of the gun crew was left behind to look after the injured sergeant, while the other (‘Paddy’) accompanied the pilots. They worked their way cautiously northwards, moving from field to field. They hid behind a wall while the RAF raided Syracuse, dropping flares that turned the night to day. They met a group of glider troops, some wounded. These men had no officer, so Boucher-Giles took command. More stragglers joined as they moved on.
They found the bridge in airborne hands, with the demolition charges neutralised. Boucher-Giles estimated that eventually there were 65 glider men defending the bridge under the command of Lt Col Walch (although Walch’s estimate was 87). They spread out to defend all four quadrants, but there were not enough of them, and they had almost no heavy weapons and limited ammunition.
Casualties began to mount as they came under attack by a large number of Italian troops supported by mortars and a field gun. Boucher-Giles described the increasingly desperate plight of the defenders:
“A shell burst in the water in the midst of a group of Staffords and caused a sight I try to forget. Sniper bullets were finding their mark, and so were the constant mortar-bombs. The trouble was that soon the casualties were too great to allow us to guard every possible approach to the bridge, and the enemy began to enfilade us. […]
[Our men] were all magnificent. Sixteen glider pilots and some four or five others joined me on the south bank of the southernmost canal, Lts. BARCLAY, DALE and HALSALL, S/Sgts. MILLER, CAWOOD […] and BARNSDALL [Barnwell], others whose names escape me, and right to the last, the redoubtable “PADDY” […]
We held on for the best part of an hour after the remnants of the party on the northern bank had been all killed, wounded or taken.
A sniper knocked a tin of tea out of my hand. The second-in-command [Major Beazley] swam the canal to us, to be greeted by a burst of machine-gun fire which killed him and one of my best sergeants [S/Sgt Wikner], and favoured me with two bullets in my pack, a flick across the cheek by another bullet, and a direct hit on my rifle.
Half of us were in the canal now, for better cover just under the bank, and we toppled over one or two bolder spirits when they broke cover at last to throw hand grenades at us.
Then we took cover in a dry ditch and fought till the ammunition ran out. We still accounted for any Italian who came too near, but there was by now more than one machine gun enfilading us, the nearest some 40 yds. away.”
Boucher-Giles was concussed by an exploding grenade before he and the remaining men surrendered. They were led away, but turned the tables on their Italian captors when they encountered a patrol from the Northants Regiment. In their absence the bridge was captured by men of the Royal Scots Fusiliers.
Miller meanwhile had been ordered before the surrender to go to a position on the ridge overlooking the bridge. Here, in the ruins of an ancient Greek Temple to Zeus, he and the men with him were surrounded, and he was wounded in the thigh by a grenade. Miller leaned out from cover to wave a white towel in surrender, when he saw an Italian rifleman fire point-blank at his head. The shot only grazed Miller but, terror-stricken, he was convinced he was about to be killed. He stumbled away, pursued by a flurry of shots, until he was felled by another grenade and taken prisoner. He was taken to an Italian hospital in Syracuse. British troops entered Syracuse that night and completed the occupation of the town in the morning, taking over the hospital.
Miller was then taken by ship to a British hospital in Tripoli in Libya. Here he at first found it impossible to sleep, as the nightmare memories of his nearly dying welled up in the darkness, and convulsed him with sweat and trembling.
Operation Ladbroke was Miller’s first time in action. He went on to fly gliders into combat again both at Arnhem and across the Rhine, but it was Sicily that dispelled any illusions he had about war. Before the attack on the Walsall strongpoint, he said he had felt a “peculiar attraction” to the idea. However, “once sampled,” he wrote dryly, “I found there was nothing attractive at all about attacking an enemy pillbox.”
The epic stand at the Ponte Grande by the men of 1st Air Landing Brigade may have finally resulted in victory, but it came at a great cost, even to those who survived.
Victor Miller’s Glider Pilot Wings
Victor Miller’s book, ‘Nothing is Impossible’, can be bought from the publisher [here].
With thanks to Chris Miller for permission to quote from ‘Nothing is Impossible’, and to use his father’s portrait and sketches.
Thanks also to Pen & Sword Books for supplying the opening image.
Excerpts from Boucher-Giles’ account by kind permission of the editor of The Eagle, the magazine of the Glider Pilot Regiment Association.
A version of Boucher-Giles’ account can be found in George Chatterton’s book ‘The Wings of Pegasus‘ (1962).
Victor Miller’s sketches show us something no photograph can – what it felt like to be in the front seat in a massed glider assault.
A glider pilot’s eye view of the descent into danger. Horsa gliders crowd down into LZ Z at Wolfheze near Arnhem on 17 September 1944, the opening day of Operation Market Garden.
Glider pilot Staff Sergeant Victor Miller fought in and survived three of the great glider assaults of World War 2: Sicily, Arnhem and the Rhine. He kept a diary throughout, which formed the basis for his book, “Nothing Is Impossible“. He also sketched the scenes he saw, and the experiences he lived through.
In a way that no photograph possibly could, his drawings capture the essence of an assault landing by glider: the crowded air above the LZs, the venomous flak, the hapless crashes, the breathtaking power of massed gliders packed with troops descending to the attack.
The sketches here are selected from the second edition of his book.
Left: The day after Operation Market Garden began, Miller sketched this Hamilcar glider, number 317, named “Olive”, on the heath at the south end of LZ Z.
Right: Horsa gliders bringing reinforcements for Arnhem during Operation Market descend into a maelstrom of flak, wheeling in an attempt to identify their LZs.
Left: A Horsa glider near Arnhem looks broken-backed, but in fact the tail has been removed deliberately to extract its cargo, probably a jeep and an anti-tank gun.
Right: Another view of Horsa gliders bringing reinforcements for Arnhem. As some gliders land, others still on tow can be seen approaching in a sky pockmarked with flak bursts.
Left: French coast ahead. Stirling bombers tow Horsa gliders across the English Channel, headed towards the Rhine and Operation Varsity, 23 March 1945.
Right: A smashed Horsa on German soil during Operation Varsity. Other Horsas plunge on full flaps towards the ground through a blizzard of flak.
The second edition of “Nothing is Impossible” can be bought from the publisher Pen & Sword Books [here].
The men of Glider 50 found themselves surrounded by Italian positions until they were rescued by the SAS troopers of the Special Raiding Squadron (SRS).
Men of the SAS Special Raiding Squadron (SRS) pose in front of Waco Glider 50 a few days after Operation Ladbroke, during a swimming expedition to the Maddalena Peninsula. The man in the middle is holding a towel. Source: Muirhead
Glider: CG-4A Waco 50, serial 277213. Glider carrying: 11 Subsection, 3 Section, 9th Field Company Royal Engineers. Troops’ objectives: To support the 2 South Staffords at the gun battery Mosquito or the Ponte Grande & Putney bridges (for a guide to the objectives, see [here])
Cpl. Lake H. L/Cpl. Shelton C.H. Spr. Lawson A. Spr. Young E. Spr. Owens W. Spr. Baker S. Spr. Bugden H. Spr. Hannabuss I. Spr. May G.H. Spr. Johnstone J. Spr. Bamford V. Spr. Seymour C.
The engineers in Glider 50 had been assigned to work closely with the 2 South Staffords, to support them in capturing and neutralising their objectives.
Glider Pilot’s Report
The cliffs of the Maddalena Peninsula south of Punta Tavola, near where Glider 50 barely scraped in to land on top of them, close to the edge. The car (right) gives a sense of scale.
“Glider experienced trouble from slipstream from formation ahead. Intercom went u/s after 1 hrs flying. Flak was experienced from coastal batteries. Glider released at 2230 hrs, at 1800 ft, approx 2000 yds off shore and made successful landing on L.Z., but broke undercarriage.”
Green marks Glider 50’s landing spot, not far from several Italian gun batteries
First Pilot: Sgt Vickers Second Pilot: Sgt Sutton
The GP’s report is wrong in describing a successful landing on the LZ. In fact Glider 50 landed on the other side of the Maddalena Peninsula, 2.5 miles away from its target LZ 1.
Like some other gliders [story], Glider 50 barely made it onto the top of the cliffs. Perhaps the pilot had to make an emergency climb to avoid smashing into the cliffs, resulting in a stall onto the rocky ground. A later examination showed evidence of a heavy landing, resulting in the glider’s tubular steel frame buckling, which was very unusual:
“Passed through barbed wire on landing. Rear part of fuselage bent up on underside just back of cargo compartment. Wings washed off but inside in perfect condition. The damage to the fuselage has obviously been done by rocks.”
Tug Pilot’s Report
Tug: C-47, 41-18471, 28 Squadron, 60 Troop Carrier Group, 51 Troop Carrier Wing USAAF. Second aircraft in element 6. Takeoff: Between 18:48 and 19:15 hrs, from Airstrip B, El Djem No. 1 [map], Tunisia.
Pilot: 1st Lt Chartier, John C. Co-Pilot: 1st Lt Cavan, David B. Rad Opr: Sgt Sherman, Nelson
“Hit rel? Yes Time of release 2235 Altitude 1800 Vary from course? No
5 degrees to right on first leg. S/L’s and flak around city.”
A further report coupled Gliders 50 and 51 together:
“Their route was about the same as others. There was a fire on the tip of a point. Released gliders at 2000 feet at 2234 hours and climbed to 6000 feet on return.”
The Action
Cpl Lake, the senior passenger in Glider 50, gave this report to Capt Holmes, his CO, who landed in Glider 46 [story]:
“This glider landed far to the east of L.Z. only making the coast by 20 yards. It landed between two coastal pillboxes, about 300 yards apart. However, both these positions only fired a few shots at the glider and then ceased fire; so Cpl. Lake unloaded his handcart but had not dragged it 50 yards, when he was again fired on, this time more heavily. He decided to leave the handcart and hid it beneath a wall. During the night they endeavoured to go west but were unable to find a clear way through.”
Looking south from Punta Tavola near where Glider 50 landed. The ruins in the foreground are what is left of a small stone building that British intelligence identified as a pillbox. Although not a standard (circular, concrete) pillbox, it is almost certainly the source of the machine gun fire that Lake identified as coming from the north.
With a pillbox to the south, a machine gun post to the north, and the sea to the east, only west was left as an exit route. However going west would have brought the men of Glider 50 up against the barbed wire surrounding Italian gun battery AS 493. The gunners would have been on full alert, and at times in full action against Allied aircraft, for example during the bombing of Syracuse [story]. They later shelled Allied shipping.
Holmes’ account continued:
“Consequently when dawn came they lay up until they saw some Commandos with whom they joined up. This party then joined up with some Borders and Brigadier Hicks. The latter ordered Cpl. Lake to destroy some enemy weapons in a cave, which he did. The whole party then moved west, spent the night near the main N – S road to Syracuse and finally marched to ‘Walsall’ on Sunday morning where they rejoined the section. I saw the place where this Glider landed and I consider Cpl. Lake did a pretty good job to get his handcart out of the glider at all.”
The ‘commandos’ were in fact men of the SAS Special Raiding Squadron (SRS), who by this time had taken battery AS 493. In addition to some 285 SRS troopers, their party now included scores of Italian prisoners and many rescued glider men. The latter included Brig Hicks, the CO of all the glider troops, who had landed in the sea in Glider 2, piloted by Lt Col Chatterton, CO of the glider pilots. If Lake and his men stayed with this huge cavalcade of diverse humanity, then they spent the night with the SRS at a farm called Luogo Ulivo, about 1 km from the main highway, SS 115. Once on the road, it was a weary trudge in intense heat to rejoin their units in Syracuse.
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With thanks to the Muirhead family for permission to use a photo from Alex Muirhead’s album.
Glider 107 landed near an Italian garrison who shot at it the instant it landed, and then patrolled for survivors.
Glider 107 with its wing ripped off. The offending tree branches are evident in and near the wreckage. Source: US National Archives
Glider: Waco CG-4A number 107, name “Rocket”, serial no. 277177. Glider carrying: Half of 10 Platoon, A Company, 1st Battalion of the Border Regiment. Troops’ objective:Outskirts of Syracuse.
Manifest
1 Offr 15 ORs
Out of 13 gliders carrying men of A Company, only two landed in Sicily. Glider 107 was one. The other was Glider 95, which carried men attached to Company HQ. We do not have a list of names of the Border troops in Glider 107, but Pvt Hartshorn later remembered three besides himself:
Lt Reese, R M A Pvt Hartshorn, Andrew Pvt Clark Pvt Sykes
“Good tow. Intercomn went u/s half way over. Glider released on correct run in at 2240 hrs at 1600 ft approx 400 yds from coast and landed successfully in field next to L.Z.”
James Carr
First Glider Pilot: S/Sgt Carr, James Second Glider Pilot: S/Sgt Matthews
Carr was killed, so presumably the report was furnished by Matthews.
It’s not exactly correct in implying the landing was close to the LZ. In fact Glider 107 landed WSW of its target LZ 2 [map], about one kilometer from the LZ’s closest point and two from its centre. However it was certainly good enough, and far better than many, being not far from LZ 1 and a direct route northwards towards the troops’ objectives.
An examination after the battle revealed:
“Landed in middle of good sod surfaced field, knocked down telephone pole and power lines running across field. Left wing struck telephone pole knocking off one-half the wing. Lower portion of nose damaged from high speed landing.”
Carr came from the village of Clydach, near Swansea in Wales. A letter in the archives of the Army Flying Museum, apparently from another Clydach man, recounts what happened to him:
“I met two sergeants of Army Airborne Corps [glider pilots]. They were friends of the boy Carr from Sunny Bank. You know he was posted “missing” in the Sicily affair. They told me that he had been killed. He had landed his Glider successfully and, meeting small-arms fire, had made a successful get-away to a hide-out.
He then returned to his Glider and was shot while doing so. His co-pilot named Matthews ran to his aid but found that Carr was already dead. The two sergeants said that they had lost a good comrade and were sorry about it. Apparently Carr was an extremely popular member of his squadron; he excelled in both football and cricket, and above that, was an extremely capable Glider-pilot. I am so sorry to have heard of his death. […]
Perhaps you would like to pass on this information. However sad it is, I am sure his parents – he was their only boy – would like to know that he did his part and did it well.
The praises from his two companions were quite spontaneous, and although it was sad hearing their story, it made me feel very proud to think that a Clydach lad had carried out his job exceedingly well, for he landed his plane and all his comrades without casualty. He is buried near Syracuse. I am sorry this airgraph contains such a sad story.”
Tug Pilot’s Report
Tug: Albemarle Mk I [photo], letter G, number P1434, 296 Squadron, 38 Wing RAF. Takeoff: 1938 hrs (on time) 9 July 1943, Airstrip F, Goubrine No. 1, Tunisia. Priority 17. Tug return: 0100 hrs (10 mins early) 10 July 1943.
Green marks Glider 107’s landing spot
Pilot: F/O D J Boyer, with F/O F T Croker, Sgt J W Hansen & Sgt H Lawson
Time of release: 2249 hrs
The brief report in 38 Wing’s “Summary of Interrogation Reports” is identical to the Air Landing Brigade’s (see above).
The Action
Glider 107 landed close to an Italian HQ in a farm called Casa Gallo [map]. The glider may also have been fired on from a nearby Italian strongpoint centred on another farm, called Masseria Palma. The glider came under fire as soon as it landed. Some 50 years later Hartshorn recalled:
“[We were] fired on as we crashed. Seven of us got away and we did not meet any of the Allies until Sun [the 11th] at about 4-00 pm [when] we met up with the SAS. Up till then we had only seen Italians.”
Glider 107 after its encounters with trees and wires. Source: US National Archives
If Hartshorn’s memory is correct, then he and his fellow Borderers might have encountered the SAS SRS near a farm called Luogo Ulivo, where the SAS men had spent the night of the 10/11th. However it was not much more than 1000 yards north of where the glider landed, which would mean it took the Border men nearly two days to go about a kilometer, which seems unlikely.
Hartshorn’s use of the phrase “got away”, i.e. “escaped”, echoes the phrase “made a get-away to a hide-out” in the letter about Carr (see above). Perhaps Italian gunfire and Italian patrols kept the glider men pinned for quite a time. An Italian account emphasises this.
Casa Gallo was garrisoned by men of the 3rd Company of the Italian 385th Coastal Battalion. One of its officers was Lt Maurizio Rossi. He later recalled:
“About 21:30 on the 9th some 100 British gliders with about 2000 paratroopers landed in 3 Company’s sector. We were immediately put on alert and engaged in combat all night & part of following morning. […] After a careful sweep, we captured about 120 British [glider] troops, who were sent to Battalion HQ. After a relative calm until noon, we were attacked by a British seaborne battalion. We fought for an hour until we were overcome by their greater numbers. […] I was captured along with my CO Capt Lucchesi and about 40 men of 3 Company.”
Casa Gallo was captured on the 10th by the leading troops of 2 Royal Scots Fusiliers (RSF). A signal sent immediately afterwards reported:
“Military HQ at GALLO 127249 and in woods to WEST. Three crashed GLIDERS with wounded at same spot. Send ambulance for […] wounded via road 111242 -X rds 115241 to LA VILLA 116241.”
Carr’s grave in Syracuse
The route spelled out in the message had only recently been captured after fighting at both of the latter places and elsewhere along it, with some RSF casualties. These were presumably dealt with first. Plus vehicle unloading back at the beaches had been held up, so it is unlikely that any ambulances arrived any time soon. As a result, farm carts were usually the first form of ambulance.
With thanks to the Army Flying Museum for permission to use Carr’s photograph, and to quote from the letter about his death.
Glider 46 landed in a hornets’ nest of Italian defences. For good measure it kicked the nest first by trying to land on the roof of a pillbox.
Glider 46. What looks like a track is in fact the main coast road, and it leads to a strongpoint not far behind. Source: NARA
Glider: CG-4A Waco 46, serial 246587. Glider carrying: 9 Subsection, 3 Section, 9th Field Company Royal Engineers. Troops’ objectives: To support the 2 South Staffords at the gun battery Mosquito or the Ponte Grande & Putney bridges (for a guide to the objectives, see [here]).
Capt Holmes, J H Cpl Pink, H L/Cpl Raggett, L Spr Thomson, W Spr Cook, J Spr Moss, M Spr Todd, N Spr Pedan, J Pte Churcher, R C Spr Hillman, J Spr Sibley, J Spr Henderson, J
Holmes was second in command of 9 FCRE, and deputy to its CO Major Beazley. He was in charge of the engineers that had been allotted to support the 2 South Staffords in capturing and neutralising their objectives. A second detachment was allocated to the men of 1 Border.
First Glider Pilot: Sgt Dyer Second Glider Pilot: Sgt Maddocks
“Very good tow, fairly constant speed, too close formation to release pt. Over MALTA tow plane crossed rope of leading combination. Glider released at 2235 hrs, at 2,000 ft, approx 2,000 yds off coast and made successful landing 3-400 yds short of correct L.Z. Undercarriage damaged.”
Glider 46’s shattered nose shows the impact of its pillbox strike. Source: NARA
In terms of position, Glider 46 did indeed make a good landing not far from the edge of LZ 1 [map].
However a later examination revealed that the glider had hit an Italian pillbox as it landed. The chances of that happening must have been infinitesimally small, given the size of the area around the LZs and the comparative rarity of pillboxes:
“Landed parallel to stone wall and struck top of pill box that protruded from wall. Landing gear washed off on pill box and under portion of nose slightly damaged. Wing struts slightly bent from landing gear.”
Green marks 46’s landing spot
It’s not clear from photographic evidence exactly where this pillbox was. Glider 46 ended up just over 100 yards north of the barbed wire entanglements protecting a major Italian strongpoint based around the farm Masseria Palma [map]. Intelligence maps showed a pillbox not far behind the wire. A Waco’s landing flight was long and shallow, so perhaps Glider 46 hit the top of that pillbox and coasted on to a skidding landing nearly 200 yards away.
Tug Pilot’s Report
Tug: C-47, 41-38705, Nose (Sqn) No. 78, 28 Squadron, 60 Troop Carrier Group, 51 Troop Carrier Wing USAAF. second aircraft in element 5. Takeoff: Between 18:48 and 19:15 hrs, from Airstrip B, El Djem No. 1 [map], Tunisia.
Pilot: 1st Lt Moore, Homer L Co-pilot: 1st Lt Snyder, Robert H Air Engr: S/Sgt Blanton, James Rad Oper: Pfc Semovic, George (NMI)
“Hit Rel Point?: Yes Time of Release: 2234 Altitude: 1850 Vary from Course: No
Winds caused correction. Searchlights and AAA fire on point de Milocca. Could not get identification for homing. Scattered clouds along route.”
Action
The war diary of 9 FCRE reported:
“Company H.Q. consisted of Major B.S. Beazley R.E. and driver who travelled with the 2nd S/Staffords under whose command was Captain J.N. Holmes R.E. and No. 3 Section [in Glider 46]. Their role included the destruction of a coastal battery [Mosquito], dismantling charges in [Waterloo and Putney bridges] and establishing a water point for the Brigade as an extreme shortage of water was expected. […]
The landing about 2330 hours did not go according to plan. Gliders were very dispersed only three of the Company’s eight arriving anywhere near their Landing Zone. The result was that instead of the ensuing battle being a co-ordinated Brigade effort, it turned into innumerable small fights, the Commanders of the Glider Loads attempting to reach their Company objectives. The only Sapper to reach his objective in time to be effective was the O.C. [Major Beazley]. He reached the [Ponte Grande] bridge six hours after landing and removed the charges.
The remainder fought by themselves and with the infantry making for the road bridge which was reached by most Sapper Gliders loads on the evening of the 10th., when they were relieved by the 8th. Army. “
Capt Holmes, senior officer in Glider 46, left a more detailed account:
‘This glider landed about 1000 yards S of the centre of the L.Z. It came under fire from two M.Gs straight away, and consequently, attempts to unload the hand-cart were stopped.”
A pillbox in the Masseria Palma strongpoint. Today it’s in a garden, still beside the road.
Glider 46 had unfortunately landed in the middle of a hornet’s nest of several Italian defence posts. Not just landed in it, but kicked it first by striking a pillbox. That pillbox was behind it. Another pillbox also forming part of the Masseria Palma strongpoint was less than 350 yards to its right [photo][map], while an Italian garrison held the farm at Casa Gallo [map], some 300 yards to its left.
Holmes continued:
“The S/S [subsection] moved north towards the concentration area. It again came under rather erratic fire, and it was decided to lie up and keep a watch for some of our own men. No one had appeared by dawn so we again went north for the coasts, but struck an enemy patrol. I decided to disengage, but in doing so the rifle and Bren groups became separated. However, the two separated parties continued towards “Waterloo” [the Ponte Grande bridge], lying up for considerable periods due to enemy activity. One party with myself finally joined up with Lt. O’Callaghan and his men, and arrived at “Waterloo” at 1700 hrs. The other party came in by itself at 2000 hrs to “Walsall”.’
Holmes’ arrival at the Ponte Grande was slightly more exciting than he gives himself credit for. Lt O’Callaghan, another 9 FCRE officer, has the story. He had landed with a platoon of South Staffords in Horsa glider 135. After several fights they reached the area of Walsall [map], south of the Ponte Grande. O’Callaghan wrote:
“Capt Foot of the South Staffs [Glider 5] and 10 S/Section [9 FCRE Glider X] joined us here. After a rest of about an hour we decided that the bridge must be in enemy hands and decided to re-take it. As we were moving up to the bridge I met Capt. Holmes and a few Sappers from 9/S/Section who joined in the party. We had almost reached the bridge when a number of Bren Carriers of the 8th. Army moved on to the bridge and captured it.”
If correct, this means that Foot’s party must have finally numbered about 60 glider troops, a sizeable force by Operation Ladbroke standards, and almost as many as had held the bridge for most of the day against the Italians.
The C-47 towing Glider 8 had an easy run in Operation Ladbroke. For its captain and his crew, it was the calm before the storm.
Glider 8 embedded in a stone wall next to the farm Massseria Damerio near Cape Murro di Porco. Source: Davis
Glider: CG-4A Waco 8, serial no. 73602. Glider carrying: Part of D Company HQ, 2nd Battalion South Staffordshire Regiment. Troops’ objective: Gun battery Mosquito (for a guide to the objectives, see [here])
First Glider Pilot: S/Sgt Dawkins Second Glider Pilot: Sgt Kelly
“Statement by Passenger Exceptionally bumpy flight. Glider Pilot released at 2215 hrs about 1000 yds off shore height unknown. Pilot did not know his location. Glider landed on MADDALENA Peninsula where it hit a wall on landing. Both pilots broken legs.”
Oddly, no further mention is made of the injured glider pilots in other accounts of Glider 8. A later examination report shows severe damage to the aircraft’s front:
“Nose thru wall, landing gear, struts and right wing out, Fabric torn badly, nose crushed, framework bent slow landing.”
Green marks Glider 8’s landing spot
Tug Pilot’s Report
Tug: C-47, serial no. 42-68714, Sqn (Nose) No. 8, 10 TCS, 60 TCG, 51 TCW, Troop Carrier Command USAAF. Takeoff: c. 18:54 from Airstrip A, El Djem Base, Tunisia. Priority 6, 4th in element 2.
Pilot: 1st Lt Runzel, Raymond A. Co-Pilot: 2nd Lt Malone, Robert C., Jr Air Eng: T/Sgt Green?, William (NMI) Rad Oper: Sgt Sheridan, Peter (NMI)
Hit rel point?: Yes. Time of release: 2211 Altitude: 1600 Vary from course: No
Light flak firing over LZ. 2 S/L on cape.
Runzel wrote a fuller account of his flight shortly after his return to base:
“At the approximate hour of 1845 on the night of July 9, 1943, we departed as per schedule on our first combat glider mission […] We reached our objective around 2012 hours, with the glider releasing at 1700 ft., the correct position and distance from shore.
Only points of interest on route were two hospital ships passed about an hour out and the numerous planes approaching and leaving Malta airdrome. The planes and island were brilliantly lighted.
Upon entering the drop area we sighted an unlit aircraft approaching us at exactly 180 degrees from our course. It proved to be another glider, and was just off our left wing as our glider released. Both gliders then turned shorewards and all was well.
As the glider was releasing we observed several guns firing off the point apparently towards the landing area. Then a searchlight seemed to appear, a large explosion simultaneously, then all was clear.
We then dropped our tow rope, made the exit turn and proceeded on our return course. After the turn, Lt. Colonel Bagby, who was a passenger in our plane, reported numerous explosions, searchlights and more intense gun-fire. Another flight was spotted coming in directly right of and under our right wing. We climbed to 6,000 ft. Upon rounding Malta we let down to 2,500 ft., our prescribed course home. Malta was covered with searchlights (apparently fixed) on our return. For nearly an hour prior to reaching the North African coast we ran into light cumulus clouds and a slight haze. About the fourth plane to land, we were on the ground at 0020 hours.
The crew wishes to report a successful and enjoyable trip.”
Bagby was yet another very senior officer who was getting a whiff of action by accompanying his men as an observer (for other examples, see [here] and [here]). Bagby was in fact Chief of Staff and second in command of the whole TCC in North Africa.
Runzel’s account may seem at times a little callous, given how many gliders were released to fall into the sea [story], where hundreds of airborne troops drowned [story]. If it sounds as if the flight for Bagby and his men was just a jaunt, it might be because Runzel’s account may have been prepared by request for possible use in a press release. Press releases were usually relentlessly upbeat, and often presented the war as an adventure or a game.
Certainly there was nothing flippant about Runzel’s performance three days later in Operation Fustian, when he was wingman to 1st Lt Lee Carr (who had towed Glider 4 in Operation Ladbroke). In Fustian Runzel stuck by Carr through a storm of AA fire and violent evasive manoeuvres. Undeterred, they went round again for another pass.
It was the last time Carr saw Runzel’s plane. Carr crashed into the sea, but survived. Runzel was shot down, but he, his co-pilot R C Malone, and the rest of his crew all died.
Carr wrote a letter to Malone’s sister, at her request, explaining what happened. His description of the pre-flight time could apply almost as much to Ladbroke as to Fustian. It paints a picture of young men at war who were no different to the many glider troops who felt so let down by them, and who demonized them. Carr wrote:
“I did not have the intimate relationship with R.C. [Malone] enjoyed by Judge and Ray Runzel. Frankly I was a twenty two year old second Lt., a loner, almost an idealist. […] My meetings with R.C. were either in the tent […] when we were detail-planning missions or doing a wrap up on return (over a can of beer), or on the flight line. We were all in the same flight at that time and to me R.C. was always a bit shy with a perpetual small smile lighting his countenance. I was an outsider, didn’t even know about Charlene (choke). My closest moment with him was after the formal briefing on the afternoon of the 13th when the four of us huddled together to analyze the incredibly uninformative briefing we had just witnessed, and to play the game of what if – what will we do, if – etc. […] With little time between the briefing under an olive tree and scheduled take off, we huddled, as I said, studied the map and locations of the drop zones and each reaffirmed that we had to make a successful attack, that we would go in no matter what.”
Action
The Staffords’ battalion war diary does not tell us much about the men in Glider 8:
“Capt Wright with the remainder of Coy H.Q. landed on the SE tip of the Maddalena Peninsula, were engaged in a few minor skirmishes and joined with seaborne forces reaching the Bn on the 11th.”
It is not explained why the men took until the 11th to reach the rest of the Staffords. By comparison, the men of Glider 6 under Lt Welch landed not far away from Glider 8, and they reached the Ponte Grande bridge early on the 10th in time to play a significant part in its defence [story]. Perhaps, as a mainly non-combatant part of a headquarters unit, Wright’s party did not have the firepower and fighting clout that Welch’s Brigade HQ Defence Platoon did. Perhaps they tried to pull the handcart the whole way along Sicily’s appalling back roads.
Men of the SAS SRS cluster round Glider 8 at Masseria Damerio, which was their first regrouping point after they destroyed the Lamba Doria gun battery at Cape Murro di Porco. It’s unclear what’s happening. An Italian farmer (left) holds what appears to be a coil of thick rope. Several troopers are looking down at something. Perhaps they are trying to help the injured glider pilots. Source: Davis
We may not know much about what happened to the Staffords in Glider 8, but for once we have a decent account from an Italian witness, even if he was only four years old at the time. Giovanni Nobile lived with his family in Masseria Damerio. Years later his memories of that night remained vivid. He recalled that two green gliders landed near the farm, one near the irrigation water tank, the other about 500 yards away. The occupants made off into the night. Giovanni’s father went to notify the garrison of the nearby ‘Lamba Doria’ gun battery, who sent some men to fetch the family and their farm hands.
They led them to a nearby wooden chapel “for safety, before the inferno began”. During the bombing of Syracuse [story] a stick of 24 bombs fell close to the chapel, so they were moved to some caves. In the morning they returned to the farm, finding British soldiers there. Some were airborne troops whose gliders had landed in the sea, who were given clothes at the farm. One of the farm workers spoke English, and the Nobiles persuaded the British to leave them their cows, apart from one which was requisitioned. By way of thanks they offered them some milk, but the British made them drink first. “Better safe than sorry”, they said.
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Thanks to Paul Davis for permission to use photos from his father’s album. Peter Davis’ book “SAS Men in the Making” can be bought from the publisher here.
Thanks also to Lorenzo Bovi for permission to paraphrase Giovanni Nobile’s story from “Sicilia.WW2 Foto Inedite 5”. The book can be bought from the author: lobox@libero.it.
Glider 52a landed close to its LZ, descending out of a firestorm of searchlights and anti-aircraft fire.
Glider 52a after crashing through two stone walls and hitting some trees. Source: NARA
Glider: CG-4A Waco 52a, serial 42-73623. Glider carrying: Half of a platoon of E Company, 2nd Battalion South Staffordshire Regiment. Troops’ objective: Walsall strongpoint [photo][map].
Manifest
13 ORs E Coy, weight 2600 lbs
Sgt Caulkin, J L/Sgt Cutforth, E Cpl Owen, J L/Cpl Fort, E Pte Parrish, L Pte Fitzpatrick, J L/Cpl Barber, C Pte Dixon, E Pte Tansley, C Pte Mycroft, H Pte James, J Pte Jordon, L Pte Hall, R
First Glider Pilot: Sgt Barnwell, Jack Second Glider Pilot: F/O Parks, Russell D
Green marks 52a’s landing spot
Parks was an American glider pilot, one of some two dozen who volunteered to fly in Operation Ladbroke. In a photograph taken some time after the operation, he can be seen wearing British Glider Pilot Regiment wings on his right chest. These were awarded to all the Americans who took part.
The debriefing summary was given by one of the troops in the glider. This was normally only done if both the glider pilots were dead or unavailable. Since both men were uninjured and apparently joined the other GPs in Syracuse after the battle, this is unusual:
“Statement by passenger: Fairly good flight, slightly bumping. Glider landed 2.5 miles from Bilston, S.W. of L.Z. Met light A.A. fire on landing – 15 yrds after landing glider hit wall. Two hospital cases.”
In terms of position, Glider 52a made a good landing, very close to its target LZ 1, and south-east of it. It was not so lucky when it came to some of the many obstacles that litter the Sicilian landscape:
“Landed fast and came to rest across road after having passed through two low limestone walls. Lower part of nose and floor suffered considerable damage. Right wing washed forward, after having struck trees close to wing root knocking down tree.”
Many years later, 52a’s pilot Sgt Barnwell told his story to Andy Andrews (a GP in Glider 10 that night), for his book ‘So You Wanted to Fly, Eh?’. Barnwell said that the tug turned away from land when Italian AA began firing, which Barnwell assumed was cowardice. He said the tug pilot ordered him over the intercom to release, when he was too far out to sea to reach land. Barnwell refused, and threatened the tug pilot with a court-martial if he did not turn back. Barnwell said that the tug pilot then:
“took the glider back, still climbing until they were at 5,000 feet over Syracuse harbour which was about a thousand times more dangerous than the place he had run away from with all the shit in creation being thrown up at them.”
A Horsa glider descends after crossing through AA fire over Syracuse harbour
Syracuse harbour was indeed a dangerous place, being ringed on three sides with numerous heavy and light AA guns. At least two Horsa gliders were shot down attempting to cross the harbour. Deliberately flying through this flak when there was no need, when other routes were available, does not seem to be the actions of a cowardly man.
The actions of the tug pilots that night rankled with many British GPs for decades afterwards, and horrendous failings were imputed to them that in many cases could instead be attributed to inexperience, lack of training, bad luck, or doing what they had been ordered to do [story].
This anger and prejudice was understandable, given how many gliders ended up in the sea, drowning hundreds of men [story]. However it could lead to presumptions of guilt where there was in fact an alternative interpretation of events (see tug pilot’s report below).
Tug Pilot’s Report
Tug: C-47, 42-23473, Nose (Sqn) No. 82, 28 Squadron, 60 Troop Carrier Group, 51 Troop Carrier Wing USAAF. Third aircraft in element 7. Takeoff: Between 18:48 and 19:15 hrs, from Airstrip B, El Djem No. 1 [map], Tunisia.
Pilot: Capt McCormick, Kenneth J Co-Pilot: 2nd Lt Smith, Herbert Z Navigator: 2nd Lt Rasmussen, Ingo A Air Engr: T/Sgt Nelson, Donovon W Rad Oper: Sgt Robinson, Harold A
“Hit Rel Point?: No Time of Release: 2245 Altitude: 2500 Vary from Course: Yes
Saw some firing as he approached coast. Went to up 2500 feet and glider cut loose. Also started to get search lights.
Released glider in Syracuse bay and and immediately South of Castello Maniace about 300 yards east of Punto di Callerine [Caderini]. Early Arrival and too far out, Swung around peninsula della Maddelena to assure safe glider release. S/L and light AA on peninsula. Heavy AA west of Augusta.”
Sicilians walk along the road blocked by 52a. Source: NARA
Needless to say, the tug pilot’s report puts a different perspective on the glider pilot’s indignant and at times exaggerated version of events (see above). Whichever version of events you believe, both agree that McCormick braved the firestorm and released Glider 52a where it could easily reach its LZ, a significant achievement that night.
Action
The battalion war diary reported:
“‘E’ Coy commanded by Maj J.A. Neilson was a composite Coy formed from H Coy and the Recce Pl; they were carried in 7 WACOs and had as their objective a strong point about a mile south of the bridge [Walsall] […] Sgt Caulkin’s glider [52a] crashed, Sgt Caulkin was injured and his crew rejoined the main body of the Bn [battalion] next day.”
The top half of the lighthouse tower of strongpoint Walsall seen from the sea. Machine guns mounted in the tower proved an obstacle to the men trying to reach the Ponte Grande bridge from LZs 1 & 2
This is thin, to say the least, as well as unclear. Assuming the next day to be the 10th (the landing had occurred on the night of the 9th), and assuming that the “main body” means the Staffords men holding the Ponte Grande bridge, this could mean that most of Caulkin’s men reached the bridge and took part in its defence. Perhaps, like many others who eventually reached the bridge, they first took part in the failed attack on strongpoint Walsall, which was, after all, their objective. The war diary does not tell us.
The way it reads almost implies that 52a’s men joined the main body after the action was all over. This tended to happen with gliders that landed a long way away, but in terms of distance 52a landed as good as bang on target.
US GP F/O Russell Parks. Source: NWWIIGPA
Maybe some conclusions can be drawn from the actions of the glider pilots. Years later another of the American glider pilots, Samuel Fine (GP in Glider 13), provided an account to author Milton Dank for his book, ‘The Glider Gang’. Fine said he met Parks as they both headed towards the bridge. However Fine is quoted as saying that he and Parks bypassed Walsall to go on to the bridge, but also, contradictorily, that Parks became separated from him, staying behind to take part in the attack on Walsall, and not reaching the bridge.
Back in England, Samuel Fine poses in the driving seat of a Waco for a press release about his actions in Sicily. Source: NARA
Perhaps the balance is tipped by other GPs. Andrews says in his book that both Barnwell and Parks reached the bridge. Lt Boucher-Giles (GP in Glider 110), who took command of the GPs at the bridge, also said (in ‘The Eagle’ magazine) that Barnwell was at the bridge. However he called him ‘Barnsdall’, and admitted he could not remember the names of several other GPs who were there with him. If either Barnwell or Parks reached the bridge, it is not unreasonable to assume the Staffords in 52a also reached it, and took part in the fighting both there and en route. If so, it is odd that the war diary does not credit them for this, given that less than 10% of the glider men reached the bridge, which makes it quite an achievement.
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Photograph of Russell Parks by kind permission of NWWIIGPA, the US glider pilots’ association.
Quotation from Andy Andrews’ book “So you Wanted to Fly, Eh?” (out of print) by kind permission of Ian Andrews.
Unlike most of the glider troops in Operation Ladbroke, the men in Glider 29 reached their objective and attacked it.
Glider 29 hopped over trees and an irrigation channel and flopped into a tomato crop. Source: NARA
Glider: CG-4A Waco 29, serial 277232. Glider carrying: Half of 12 Platoon of B Company, 2 South Staffords. Troops’ objective: Bilston strongpoint.
Manifest
16 ORs B Coy. Weight 3200 lbs.
Sgt Bradley, E Cpl Thompson, A Cpl Vachen, J L/C Jones, G Pvt Bache, W Pvt Burdett, G Pvt Fielding, B Pvt Harris, F Pvt Head, J Pvt Powell 876, E Pvt Powell 939, E Pvt Skidmore, J Pvt Spittle, R Pvt Swinburn, R Pvt Toms, E Pvt Williams, E
Unlike Horsas, Wacos could not carry a whole platoon, so the platoons were split into two. One, like Glider 29, carried half the platoon under an NCO, while the other glider carried the platoon’s officer, 11 ORs (other ranks) and a handcart.
Wacos normally had places for 13 men besides the glider pilots. They were seated on 4 plywood benches and a jump seat at the rear. The shortage of tug planes led to an extra 3 men being crammed in. This was achieved by seating 2 men where the 2 benches on each side joined, with a third man on a second jump seat.
First Pilot: Sgt Wilson, Tom Second Pilot: Sgt Pitcock
“After rather a bumpy tow and intercomn going u/s, glider released at 2226 hrs at 2200 ft four miles off coast. Glider landed on land approx 300 yds to right of correct landing lane.”
Green marks the spot where Glider 29 landed
Glider 29 missed LZ 1, but not by much, landing between LZ 1 and LZ 2 [map].
The mention of a landing lane highlights one of the night’s greatest planning absurdities. The gliders were expected to land in lanes, one behind each other, nose to tail. Given that only 5 out of 142 actually landed intact in the LZs at all, this was clearly impossible. Even by daylight in ideal conditions it would probably have been impossible.
Landing in lanes – Wacos in training in the USA. Source: NARA
The prescribed landing lane for Glider 29 was the right hand one, out of 4 lanes. If the pilot was correct about being 300 yards to the right, then Lane 4 was the east edge of LZ 1, running south to north. This means pilots were expected to make a low level right turn to align themselves for landing. In a dark night full of other descending gliders, this would have added complication and risk. Perhaps the pilot was wrong, and Lane 4 was the north edge, and he landed left of, and short of it.
The glider was examined after the battle, and it was evident the glider had stalled in the air and pancaked hard:
“This glider landed in a small tomato patch bordered by a 3 foot stone wall fence and 30 feet trees. It stalled onto the ground from considerable altitude, causing left struts to buckle and right aileron to break from its hinges. Eight troops went through their plywood seats. Indications are that it was an extremely safe landing and no one was hurt. Stopped 20 feet from where it first contacted ground, or approximately one-half fuselage length. Indications are that it encountered rifle fire while in flight.”
Other reports mention that the glider had also hit power lines and that the bottom of the nose was “gone”.
Glider 29 in a colourised B&W photo
The glider presumably stalled because the pilot saw the white of the concrete irrigation channel (not a wall) gleaming in the light of the quarter moon, and also the dark of the trees, and decided to rise over them. This cost him whatever was left of his speed, and the glider fell straight down. It seems remarkable that 8 men should have burst through their seats and not been injured by splintering plywood.
A note on camouflage: the cover of Mike Peters’ excellent book about Operations Ladbroke and Fustian, “Glider Pilots in Sicily”, shows a colourised photo of a Waco painted in two colours, green and brown. The glider is none other than Glider 29 itself. There are no colour photos of the Ladbroke Wacos, but even in black and white different colours almost always show as different tones of gray. There is no evidence for a two-tone paint scheme on Waco gliders in Sicily, which were probably painted a single colour green.
Tom Wilson’s log book entry for Operation Ladbroke, plus a photo of some his glider pilot memorabilia, can be seen [here].
Tug Pilot’s Report
Tug: C-47, 42-23473, 11 Squadron, 60 Troop Carrier Group, 51 Troop Carrier Wing USAAF. Lead aircraft in element 1. Takeoff: Between 18:48 and 19:15 hrs, from Airstrip B, El Djem No. 1 [map], Tunisia.
Pilot: Capt Davis, Emmet P (the CO of 11 TCS) Copilot: 1st Lt Carraway, James Radio Operator: T/Sgt Hunter, Marion
“4 to 5 SLs [searchlights] in landing vicinity. Light guns on coast green and red tracers, Syracuse was being bombed. Hit Rel Point?: Yes Time of Release: 2226 Altitude: 1800 Vary from Course: No
Davis flew in at 200 feet over the water going up to 1800 feet where he released the glider at 2225 hours. Could observe his glider for a while after release and the glider seemed to be doing alright. Did not see convoy.”
The mention of a convoy refers to Allied invasion shipping, which was approaching the south-east shores of Sicily even as the glider streams flew up the coast towards Syracuse. The ships bristled with anti-aircraft guns and the slow-flying tugs were low in the sky. If the ships had opened fire, it would have been a massacre. Luckily, careful routing and insistent advance warning ensured that no airborne forces aircraft were lost to friendly fire that night. It was a different story on subsequent nights, in Operations Fustian and Husky 2, when many aircraft were shot down by their own side.
The Action
One of Bilston’s pillboxes on Highway 115, cut in half by road widening.
After landing almost exactly where they were supposed to, it must have been fairly easy for Sgt Bradley and his men to follow the much-studied route to their objective, the strongpoint Bilston (for a guide to the Italian defences and their codenames, see [here]). Bilston was a formidable position. It straddled the main highway to Syracuse and also the railway, which ran close by at this point. It consisted of a tobruk (an open-topped concrete MG emplacement) and 5 pillboxes, some big enough to hold anti-tank guns. It was surrounded by dense barbed wire [map]. Bilston proved a tough nut to crack.
The battalion war diary tells the story:
“‘B’ Coy commanded by Maj R. H. Cain were carried in 10 WACO gliders, 7 of which landed, their objective being a strong point 2 miles South of Ponte Grande (Waterloo). The 2i/c Capt Foot with half of No.12 Pl under Sgt Bradley and some of the Border Regt organised an attack on their Coy objective (Bilston) but failed, the position being very strongly held; the party became separated but next morning the position was again attacked by Capt Foot with half of No.11 Pl and some R.E. he had encountered, but again the defence was too strong. The party then made North [&] launched an unsuccessful attack on E Coy’s objective [Walsall] and eventually reached Ponte Grande.
Lieut Goodman: Lieut Goodman with half No.11 Pl crash landed and making for his Coy objective captured 2 pill boxes. Lieut Goodman was wounded.”
Glider 29 in a field of bamboo cane trellises designed for tomatoes to climb. Src: NARA
B Company was luckier than many other units in having more than half of its gliders reach land. Nevertheless it seems from the war diary that not all the men headed towards their objective. Of the 7 gliders which reached land, the men of only 3 are mentioned as attacking Bilston (Foot, Bradley and possibly Goodman). Of the others, no explanation is offered as to why their men did not.
The war diary is unclear in other ways. It says the men of Glider 29 under Sgt Bradley took part in the first attack on Bilston led by Lt Foot, but not if they were still with Foot for his second attack. The implication of saying they “became separated” is that they were not. We are not told why not, nor what Bradley’s men did next. Did they attack Bilston on their own? Or perhaps, like most other glider troops that night, they headed north past Walsall to the Ponte Grande. As for Lt Goodman, it is not clear from the phrasing if he captured two pillboxes in Bilston, or in fact elsewhere while on the way to Bilston. And if it was his half of 11 Platoon that joined Foot for the second attack, why not say so?
Pvt Powell’s grave
As for casualties among the men of Glider 29, we do not know how many may have been wounded, but at least two were killed, perhaps at Bilston. They were Privates Skidmore and Powell 939, who are both buried in Syracuse war cemetery.
Mike Peter’s book “Glider Pilots in Sicily” can be bought from the publisher Pen & Sword [here]
Glider Z only flew in Operation Ladbroke because a senior officer wangled an extra tug plane. More than one commentator thought he had no business being there.
Glider Z with its tail in a cactus hedge
Glider: CG4-A Waco Z, serial no. 277185. Glider carrying: Senior airborne officer and staff, plus 10 men of Simforce, 2 South Staffords. Troops’ objective: The Ponte Grande bridge.
Manifest
From 2 South Staffords, 1 Air Landing Brigade (1 ALB), 1 Airborne Division (1 AD):
Plus Lt Col A G Walch and from two to five of his staff.
One of the NOs was Private F J Back of 181 Field Ambulance.
Glider Z was a last minute addition to the glider force in Operation Ladbroke, the opening attack in Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily in 1943. It was included because Lt Col A G Walch wanted to take part.
Walch was one of the founding fathers of the British airborne forces, along with Maj Gen Frederick Browning. Both men had been involved in setting up 1 Airborne Division (1 AD), but neither of them was technically a part of the division any longer. Browning had been appointed to be the primary adviser on airborne matters to Gen Eisenhower, the Allied Commander in Chief. Browning had taken Walch with him as his Chief of Staff.
This meant of course that Walch had tremendous clout when it came to getting what he wanted. In this case he decided he wanted to fly with the men of 1 ALB and witness the fighting at first hand. He classed himself as an ‘spectator’, which in theory meant he would not be part of the chain of command in the battle. We do not know how many aides or others of his staff he took with him, but it would have been from two to five, depending on whether extra seats had been added to the glider.
C/S Frank Bluff in 1943
Whichever number it was, we know that it left ten seats free for fighting troops. These were allocated to men in a scratch force of Staffords under Lt Simonds, which was christened Simforce. It was not part of the standard Staffords rifle companies, and was styled as a Battalion Reserve. Simforce was spread across two other gliders besides Z: gliders 53a and 54a. Both landed in the sea, leaving Reynolds’ detachment as the only representatives of Simforce to take part in the fighting.
The tug plane that towed Glider Z was Browning’s own personal C-47. Not that Browning totally lost out on the excitement. While his borrowed C-47 was towing Walch to Sicily in Glider Z, Browning himself was also in the air over the battlefield. He was a passenger in a Beaufighter night fighter flying over the LZs and DZs, also, like Walch, an ‘observer’.
Like many senior officers, Browning and Walch did not want to miss the action. Some other senior officers thought that men at their level should not be risking themselves at the front. More than one (including Browning himself) commented that Walch in particular “had no business being there”.
First Glider Pilot: Staff Sergeant Turnbull, R Second Glider Pilot: Staff Sergeant Coulson
“Good but bumpy tow, intercomn went u/s on take-off. Glider released at 2300 hrs at 2000 ft over PUNTA DI MILOCCA and landed in cactus hedge about one mile N. of L.Z. No casualties.”
The GP did himself a disservice by saying he missed the LZ by a mile. In fact Glider Z made one of the best landings of the night, actually landing intact within the boundaries of its target LZ, LZ 1 [map]. This was a feat achieved by only four other gliders, according to aerial photographs. Out of a planned 144 gliders, this puts Glider Z in an elite group of just 3.5%.
It was also an unusual landing in that Glider Z came in from the west. If it really was released at 2000′ directly over Milocca Point, then it had plenty of height in hand, and presumably flew further inland and turned.
With a 35 mph wind behind it, the landing must have been a fast one. The glider clipped some electricity cables with the top of its tail, pulling down the posts, and then ploughed through a hedge of prickly pear cactuses. It was examined later, after the battle:
“Struck power lines and landed through cactus hedge. Top of rudder and vertical fin apparently damaged through contact with power line while flying under them. Under portion of nose smashed by cactus hedge. Right landing gear and struts damaged.”
Glider Z took down some power lines just prior to crashing through a cactus hedge, damaging its tail fin (right). In the left background is Torre di Milocca, an old farm fortified against sea raiders in the days of the Barbary pirates.
Walch wrote:
“The flight in the gliders really was uncomfortable. Conditions were very bumpy indeed and the noise of the wind buffeting the thin fabric sides made shouting necessary even when talking to one’s neighbour; the gliders bounced and jerked at the end of the tow-rope and nearly everyone was very sick indeed. The physical strain on the glider pilots was considerable and they could not relax for one moment.
The glider pilots chose to land on a wall inside the Italian defensive position at 118246 at about 2245 hrs; the impact was sharp but the only casualty was a broken arm caused by a loose rifle flying down the aisle of the glider. The Italians in trenches within yards of the glider were surprised and took no action.”
Photographs show that Walch was mistaken about landing inside the strongpoint at 118246, which consisted of pillboxes and was surrounded by dense barbed wire. It later put up a fight against attacking seaborne troops. Of course the real reason why Walch and his staff were not molested was that they actually landed further north in LZ 1, which did not have Italian trenches in it.
Tug Pilots’ Report
Tug: C-47, “Boy’s Boys”, serial no. 41-38695, HQ Sqn Troop Carrier Command USAAF. Takeoff: c. 18:54 from Airstrip A, El Djem Base, Tunisia. Priority 29, element of one.
Pilot: Capt Beck, Joe A Copilot: 2 Lt Thatcher?, Neville Navigator: 2 Lt Denny, George P Engineer: S/Sgt Smith, Gordon B Radio Operator: Sgt Starkowski?, Theodore A
“5 SL [searchlights] on peninsula, light & heavy AA on coast. Hit Rel Point?: Yes Time of Release: 2257 Altitude: 2200 Vary from Course: No”
The time of release clashes with Walch, who says the glider landed at 22:25.
Joe Beck was an experienced pilot, who had helped train airborne troops at the Central Landing Establishment at Ringway in England. He had then dropped paratroopers during Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa in November 1942, during which he was shot down by four Vichy French fighters. He survived and joined the HQ Squadron of Troop Carrier Command (TCC) at Algiers in early 1943. Here he ferried senior Allied officers, including Maj Gen Hopkinson, CO of 1 AD. While doing this he met Maj Gen ‘Boy’ Browning, who was the chief Airborne Adviser at Allied Forces HQ (AFHQ). Browning adopted Beck, his crew and his C-47 as his own personal transport aircraft. It was in honour of this selection that the name of the plane became “Boy’s Boys”.
George Denny, Beck’s navigator, was also well-connected. He was the nephew of W Tudor Gardiner, the Assistant Chief of Staff of 51 Wing TCC, which provided most of the tug planes for Operation Ladbroke.
“Boy’s Boys” was tacked onto the rear of 60 Troop Carrier Group, and unlike the other tugs, which flew in formations of four, sharing a single navigator, it was scheduled to fly alone, which must have eased matters considerably.
Both Beck and Denny left accounts of their role in Operation Ladbroke in Charles Young’s book about the TCC, ‘Into the Valley’.
Walch wrote:
“The tug pilots, determined to release so that the glider had every chance, spent a long time flying about inland checking their position.”
Oddly, neither Denny nor Beck mention this.
The Way to Waterloo
Glider Z’s nose was smashed by the cactus hedge
After landing and presumably wondering for a while where they were, the men prepared to move on to the Ponte Grande bridge (codenamed Waterloo) [map]. Walch chose a circuitous route, to avoid Italian strongpoints. Being his own man, and not under 1 ALB orders, he was wise to choose the round-about route he did, as he and his men arrived at the bridge without casualties.
Many years later, the Imperial War Museum’s production company recorded an interview with Jack Reynolds, the senior officer of Simforce in Glider Z (you can listen to it [here]). Reynolds said that he argued with Walch about which way to go, as he was under orders to take a different route. Walch was greatly senior to Reynolds, but officially only an observer, so Reynolds ignored him, and took his men the way he wanted to. They were not as lucky as Walch’s party. According to Reynold’s citation for the award of an MC for his part in Operation Ladbroke:
“He led his party throughout the night to Waterloo Bridge encountering stiff opposition on the way during which six of his nine men became casualties. On the way he collected several stragglers, forming them into an organised group, eventually assisting in the defence of the Bridge, during which two more of his men were killed and another missing.”
Pvt Back, one of the nursing orderlies, was killed by machine gun fire shortly after the landing, and is buried in Syracuse Cemetery, as is L/Cpl Insley (although recorded as a Private). None of the other named men in Glider Z are buried there, so perhaps the other four casualties (of the six mentioned) were only wounded.
Meanwhile Walch found the night puzzlingly quiet and empty. Where were the hundreds of airborne troops that should have been fighting nearby? Unknown to Walch, most of them were either miles away, or had landed in the sea. Setting off with his ‘very “amateur” party’, he skirted the gun battery Mosquito (for an explanation of the Italian defences and their codenames, see [here]). They then met a group of about 30 glider troops on a back road and joined them. Still trying to avoid the enemy, they eventually arrived near strongpoint Walsall at 04:40.
At the Ponte Grande
In his report Walch speaks of himself in the third person:
Lt Col Walch decided to take his party straight on to the bridge without tackling the Italian post now firing at them from 123285 [strongpoint Walsall]. They arrived at the Ponte Grande at about 0500 hrs without trouble, although fire from enemy MGs at 134282 [battery Gnat] was falling just short while they were crossing the open ground just to the south.
Lt Col Walch now found himself to be the senior officer at the bridge and so took command. […] At 0630hrs Lts Deucher and Reynolds with a mixed party of about 23 ORs arrived at the bridge, to increase the total airborne strength there to about 7 officers and 80 ORs […]
At 0800 hrs the bridge and forward positions came under heavy and accurate mortar fire from the west and north […] Within the next hour all the defending troops were withdrawn into positions on the canal; Lt Welch and 2 sections [including Reynolds] were on the east side of the bridge and the remainder of the force on the west. Until 1200 hrs the LMGs kept the enemy at a distance while the remainder of the party rested […]
By 1445 hrs all the outlying defence posts were wiped out and half-an-hour later the remaining unwounded defenders were cornered at the point where the canal joins the sea. There was no cover whatsoever, only a few rounds of ammunition left, and at 1530 hrs most of the force was overrun by the Italians […] Only three quarters of an hour later, at 1615 hrs, 2 RSF of 17 Infantry Brigade arrived, recaptured the bridge still intact, and were joined by Lt Welch and his party of 7.
In the meantime, Lt Col Walch and the rest of his force [including Reynolds], as prisoners, were marched west for about 45 minutes, picking up other airborne prisoners on the way, until a patrol of 17 Infantry Brigade came in sight. They then escaped from their captors, obtained permission from Brigadier G W Tarleton commanding 17 Brigade to return to the Ponte Grande and by 2100 hrs had again taken over its defence – armed with captured Italian weapons.
Walch may have had no business being there, but perhaps it was just as well he was. Not one of the division, brigade or battalion HQ detachments had arrived. This made Walch and his staff a kind of default divisional HQ, even though there was not much for such an HQ to do. Nevertheless, perhaps he felt obliged to take command. And although some may have later carped at his presence, none of them criticised his performance.
The pilots of Glider 124 staked everything on reaching land. A few inches of height either way meant the difference between life and death.
A smashed Waco glider floats off Sicily’s rocky shore following Operation Ladbroke
Glider: Waco 124, serial no. 277233. Glider carrying: Half of 14 Platoon, B Company, 1st Battalion of the Border Regiment. Troops’ objective: Outskirts of Syracuse.
Manifest
1 sjt 8 men 2 men R coy 1 Sig Bn HQ 1 Handcart
Sjt Gorbell, Howard Pvt Boardman, E Pvt Caldwell, Douglas Henry Pvt Collins, Ronald Pvt Fitzpatrick, Nicholas Pvt Fraser, Gordon Anderson Pvt Sanderson, G Pvt Simmons, Frederick Pvt Tomlinson, John William Pvt West, Lionel Arthur Cpl Willoughby, Joe Pvt Wood, William
Glider pilots:
First pilot: Staff Sergeant Iron, Hedley James Second pilot: Sergeant Nelson, Geoffrey Edward
The four rifle companies (A to D) were topped up for the duration of Operation Ladbroke with men from R (Reserve) Company (formerly T Company, the Training Company). In this case only 2 men from R company were on board. They were Wood and Simmons.
The signaller, West, was from Battalion HQ, and not known to the men of 14 Platoon:
“Just as we were leaving, someone asked if we had any room & a signaller was pushed into the glider as we had one empty seat”
All three of these last-minute additions died.
B Company was spread across 13 gliders. Only 3 of the 13 gliders landed at all in Sicily. Most landed in the sea [story].
Apart from the gliders carrying B Company’s platoons (11 to 14), others carried mortar teams and Company HQ. Half the platoon gliders carried handcarts, which were pulled by two men. These carried heavy equipment, such as radios. They also carried other essentials such as extra ammunition, as the ability to hold out when surrounded behind enemy lines was a key requirement of airborne warfare.
Tug Pilot’s Report
Tug: Albemarle [photo], letter Z, number P1525, 296 Squadron, 38 Wing RAF. Takeoff: 2002 hrs (8 mins late), Airstrip F, Goubrine No. 1, Tunisia. Priority 14. Tug return: 0240 hrs (1 hour 21.5 mins late).
Pilot: Sqn/Ldr D I McMonnies, with Sgt C N Greenhead, F/S K Blackhurst, W/O J Smith
The debriefing summary by 296 Squadron RAF reads:
“Tug pilot reported release was late but believed to be at correct height and position. (Statement by passenger): Glider hit cliff and fell back into sea. Severe crash into sea. 3 wounded, 9 missing, believed drowned.”
The time the glider was released was recorded as 23:52, well over an hour late.
Statements from passengers were usually only gathered when both glider pilots were dead.
In this case it seems the passenger was wrong, as, based on other information (see below), it appears that the glider came to rest on the rocks below the cliffs, and the ten ‘missing’ men died in the crash, not from drowning.
McMonnies was an extremely experienced pilot, having been one of the first pilots to work with airborne forces, at the Central Landing School in June 1940. No explanation is given as to why the glider release was so late. RAF crews were used to night operations and each had an experienced navigator. Yet McMonnies’ navigator would have to have gone seriously astray to account for such a delay. As things turned out, McMonnies was not just late but also in the wrong position, as the glider crashed over 6 miles away from its intended LZ (LZ 2). As for the height of the release, it’s possible it was technically correct, but in the end it wasn’t enough, by the slimmest of margins.
The Crash
Sergeant Gorbell was the senior NCO in 14 Platoon. He later described what happened:
“On the night of 9th July 1943 I was the Senior passenger of the above Glider, engaged in the operation of the invasion of Sicily. On approaching the coast of Syracuse, which was our releasing area, we met a considerable amount of ACK ACK fire. We were released just as we approached the cliffs, I had given orders for bayonets to be fixed, when I noticed the nose of the Glider down, to come into the landing lane, which could be seen below, the only other thing I remember was hearing Pte. Boardman who was one of my platoon shouting is anyone alive, he helped to pull me out from under the Handcart under which I was pinned. On inspecting the Glider I discovered it had crashed head on into the face of a Cliff.
I personally inspected the crew of my Glider, all personnel as mentioned were Dead.
The men were last seen as follows: The Glider in which we were travelling was embedded into the ground, the bodies of the first four men was inside the ground, the remainder of the crew were all heaped on top of each other, except three of us which were separated from the remainder by a spare ammunition cart, which I think we owe our lives to. We were lying for thirteen hours before being picked up during which time there wasn’t a sound from any of the remainder. I personally inspected them three times during daylight. I assumed they were beyond aid. “
After hitting the top of the cliff, Glider 124 fell the entire height of the cliff onto the rocks below. Besides Gorbell and Boardman, the only other survivor was Sanderson. All three men were wounded. Eleven men, including the glider pilots, died in the crash. Given the circumstances, it’s a wonder that anybody survived.
Glider 124 hit a cliff just south-west of Capo Negro, which lay in the junction between How and Jig invasion sectors.
It’s possible the glider pilot could not see the cliffs in the dark. Even if he could see them, he may have felt that he could reach land, as he did not turn away and land in the sea instead. He would have to have done this in enough time to complete the turn and level up before splashing down. Once he was past that point, he was committed. He may have tried to climb at the last minute, without enough speed to clear the top.
Typically the first pilot flew the glider while the second pilot called out the height, which he read from the altimeter. Unfortunately many altimeters that night were giving readings 100 to 300 feet higher than the glider’s actual height. This may have happened here, and tipped the pilot’s decision to try to land. He almost made it, as the glider hit the top of the cliff only a few feet below the top. But that small margin was fatal.
The pilots and their passengers were unlucky. Other gliders in the same predicament were luckier. The pilot of Glider 105 only saw the cliff in front of him when a searchlight switched on and revealed it. He swung the glider up and it stalled onto the cliff’s edge. Glider 10, piloted by Staff Sergeant Andy Andrews, also touched down on the top of a cliff, narrowly escaping crashing into it. The men in Glider 10 went on to be heroes of the day, storming an Italian gun battery on their own initiative. Andrews went on to become a senior figure in the Glider Pilot Regiment, and a key player in the glider assault on Pegasus Bridge, which spearheaded D-Day in Normandy less than a year later [story].
There are a couple of anomalies in Gorbell’s account. He says he ordered his men to fix bayonets, but doing this before the glider rolled to a stop was specifically forbidden in 1 Border’s orders for the night, in case men were injured by bayonets in a rough landing. Also, Gorbell mentions seeing a landing lane. The fields behind Capo Negro, where the glider crashed, were narrow and arrayed perpendicular to the coast, so they indeed may have looked like landing lanes in the moonlight. And yes, the gliders were expected to land in adjacent lanes. Absurdly, given that only a handful reached the LZs at all, they were supposed to end up nose to tail in orderly lines. But there were no lanes marked on the actual LZ. Perhaps lanes had been marked during rehearsals, and Gorbell somehow expected to see the same in Sicily.
Glider 124 crashed in a bay adjacent to the west side of Capo Negro, near Avola [map].
Aftermath
D J Lewis was a Canadian sailor who served with a flotilla of landing craft off the How and Jig beaches in the British sector of the invasion. He took a photograph of Glider 124 pancaked at the bottom of the cliff. Many years later he wrote that the experience remained ‘uncomfortably vivid’, in particular the ‘dreadful smell’ emanating from the dead bodies in the glider. In the clear waters offshore he recalled seeing dead glider troops from other ditched gliders floating ‘like mermen’ in the depths. He described how they eventually floated to the surface and were then towed ashore for burial. Lewis’ account and his photograph appear in the book ‘St. Nazaire to Singapore: The Canadian Amphibious War 1941-1945’, on page 181. You can see it online [here].
Ten bodies from Glider 124 were collected and buried by 32 Brick (a ‘brick’ was the name for a Beach Group, comprising a Beach Master and a detachment of men whose job it was to control the landings on their beach). They reported that the bodies were unidentified. This meant the men in the glider could only be listed as missing, especially as there was also a discrepancy in numbers. As was usual with missing men, an investigation was launched, in case any of them had survived the crash, and was a prisoner of war, or was lying in a hospital somewhere, seriously injured.
It’s a truism that it’s easier to be touched by the story of a single death than by statistics of many deaths, or by lists of many dead, even though in theory the greater number represents the greater tragedy. British investigations into the missing tend to be moving by focusing on individuals. Both Gorbell and Sanderson were interviewed in hospitals in England. It is easy to imagine them in their hospital beds, remembering their platoon mates for the benefit of the ‘searcher’ (as they were called). One of the missing was “small, very boyish looking, mousey coloured hair”. Another was “an inveterate pipe smoker” from Lancashire. Another was “5ft 9ins, very boyish, fresh complexion, blue eyes”. More poignantly, in the words of one searcher’s report:
“With regard to Tomlinson 3598428, Informant has a book for Mrs Tomlinson on the flyleaf of which the dead man had written a letter to his wife. He would like Mrs Tomlinson’s address.”
The missing men were never found alive, of course, and they are listed on the Cassino Memorial to the missing of the Italian campaign. Nor were their bodies ever identified. If the bodies were found, then they would probably have been transferred to the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery at Syracuse. Here they would now lie under anonymous tombstones, unknown to us, but, in Kipling’s resonant phrase, ‘known unto God’.
.
A clearer copy of D J Lewis’ account and photograph can be found on Gord Harrison’s Canadian Combined Operations website [here].
Airborne assaults were vital to the invasion of Sicily, and the troops wanted shock and awe in the bombing of Syracuse. But the air forces kept them in doubt until the last minute.
St Peter looks at bomb damage in Syracuse’s cathedral square. This was probably the result of an Allied raid well before Operation Ladbroke, or by Axis bombers afterwards. A naval barrage balloon, intended to deter such attacks, floats above Allied shipping in the harbour.
The plan for the bombing of Syracuse in support of the glider landings of Operation Ladbroke was delayed until the last minute, despite the overall plan being nearly six months old. The idea of starting the whole invasion of Sicily by first dropping airborne troops had been around since January. The specific plan to land gliders near Syracuse had been in hand since May. Yet as late as 9 July 1943, the day of Operation Ladbroke itself, Lt Col Goldsmith, the staff officer in charge of operations for the British 1st Airborne Division (1 AD), still did not know what air support his men might get.
Goldsmith had first visited 205 Bomb Group RAF on the 3rd of July, only a week from D-Day, the 10th of July. As the man responsible for 1 AD’s operations, he was very concerned at the lack of information so late in the day, especially given that specific target requests had been submitted by 1 AD to AFHQ (Allied Forces HQ, the supreme headquarters) on 23 May, nearly seven weeks before. 205 Group comprised several squadrons of Wellington medium bombers [photo], and it had been earmarked by AFHQ to provide bomber support for 1 AD. The squadrons were based at airfields around Kairouan in Tunisia, only some 40 miles west of 1 AD’s HQ near M’Saken (modern Masakin) [map].
It was an easy drive from M’Saken across the flat semi-desert [photo], which was just as well, as Goldsmith had to make the journey several times. His visit on 3 July, when he met Group Captain Simpson, SASO of 205 Group, was abortive. Simpson was “most cooperative and helpful”, but he had received no instructions from his bosses at Northwest African Strategic Air Force (NASAF). In fact, the “Group had heard nothing of their bombing role”. Unsurprisingly, “little progress … was made”.
On the 5th NASAF issued a directive listing diversionary targets, including Syracuse, so Goldsmith went back on the 7th. However Simpson had still not received specific instructions, but he promised to come with his Wing Commanders to a conference next day at 1 AD’s HQ in M’Saken.
The conference on the 8th was “most satisfactory”, but Simpson had once again still not received any instructions from higher authority. When Goldsmith, perhaps by now feeling a little desperate, went back on the day of the invasion itself, the 9th, there was news. Simpson had been promoted to Air Commodore and AOC. More to the point, he had also finally received specific instructions.
Goldsmith complained that even then there was a perception that the Syracuse mission was a diversion, designed to deceive and distract the Italians from the invasion, when in fact, for the glider operation, the mission had a very specific tactical purpose. He wrote:
“There was still no suggestion that this task had any connection with ground operations, nor was [this] information given [to 205] Group by N.A.S.A.F. at any later time.”
The Tail Wagging the Dog?
Goldsmith may not have known it, but Simpson had in fact gone to bat for 1 AD. Well after midnight on the 9th, at 1:32am, he sent a signal to NASAF telling his superiors what he intended, as opposed to waiting to be told:
“As a result of conference [with] Divisional Headquarters of [1 AD] there is no confusion [over] our immediate commitments, and any last minute alterations must be notified to us by [1 AD HQ]. The plan as arranged between [1 AD HQ] and ourselves is clear cut and any alteration will jeopardize complete Army plan.”
Simpson was effectively saying that the entire invasion of Sicily was in jeopardy if NASAF did not do what 1 AD asked. This flow of orders from 205 to NASAF was unusual, as orders of course usually flowed only one way, the other way, from NASAF to 205. Perhaps this cheeky signal was a reflection of not only the urgency, but also of the fact that it was Simpson’s first day in charge.
Simpson got a reply rated “EMERGENCY”, the highest priority, at 11:17am, 10 hours after his signal. It came not from some anonymous staff officer, but directly from NASAF’s head man, American Major General Doolittle. He was none other than the world-famous hero of the first bombing raid on Tokyo in 1942, an epic endeavour launched from an aircraft carrier far out in the Pacific.
Doolittle’s signal denied Simpson’s suggestion that 205 Group should launch a “maximum effort” (all available aircraft) on behalf of 1 AD. Instead he ordered the bombing of four additional towns, leaving fewer planes for the bombing of Syracuse. To be fair, this requirement had come at the last minute from lofty heights, from no less than the Army commander of the entire invasion, British General (later Field Marshal) Alexander.
Doolittle was restrained and only slightly snarky about Simpson’s cheeky message:
“These instructions do not agree with your existing arrangements with [1 AD]. Keep in mind fact that Wellingtons [are] required for other purposes than support and diversion for airborne troops. You should conform to above target instructions in addition to any arrangements made with [1 AD].”
If he saw this signal, Goldsmith might have flinched at the word “diversion”, even though it accompanied the word “support”. In fact, Doolittle was correct. 205 Group was providing both close support and diversions. The bombing of Syracuse was intended to directly support the advance of the glider troops. A second raid, timed to coincide with the glider landings, was planned against the distant city of Catania. It was designed to divert Italian attention from Syracuse. Whether the Syracuse raid was called “support” or a “diversion”, however, made no difference. The bombing plan for the city was the same.
Air Superiority
Goldsmith’s negative feelings about NASAF were symptomatic of Army distrust of the air forces across the board, especially the air forces’ refusal to commit. To many Army men (who had long believed that the airmen should be under Army control), it seemed like deliberate recalcitrance. It was not just 1 AD that had trouble getting the air forces to commit to giving support. It happened to commanders at the highest level, leading to complaints even from the admirals and the generals in charge of entire task forces.
In fact, the reason for the air forces’ lack of commitment made a lot of sense. Their top priority was to win air superiority over the Axis air forces defending Sicily, i.e. to so outnumber them that they could not operate effectively. This would be done by destroying their planes and smashing their bases, not by attacking ground targets that the Army wanted to be attacked. A single bomber could sink an Allied troopship carrying thousands of men. Enemy aircraft could attack troops, destroy bridges and smash docks, preventing the expansion and vital reinforcement of the initially tenuous bridgehead. It seemed better to banish enemy planes from the skies, rather than to pick at piecemeal targets on the ground.
The Army commanders, of course, wanted aircraft to support their ground operations directly. This would ideally take two forms. Firstly, by attacking targets in front of their troops. This was called ‘close air support’. Secondly, by preventing enemy reinforcements from reaching the battle. This was called ‘interdiction’. The air forces were adamant, however. There would be no close air support during the opening phase of the invasion, and they refused to commit to Army-specified interdiction missions while the outcome of the air superiority battle remained in doubt.
The air forces’ policy may have made sense, but it was very badly handled. Lists of targets that the Army wanted bombed were submitted to air forces HQ, but the requests were repeatedly rejected for no apparent reason. The Army felt the air forces were being evasive, vague and obstructive. One senior Army officer reported:
“The Air Plan, when it ultimately arrived, was described by an American General as ‘the most masterful piece of uninformative prevarication, totally unrelated to the Naval and Military [i.e. Army] Joint Plan, which could possibly have been published’. As regards targets for D Day bombing, these had not been even provisionally published by the time the Military Commanders finally embarked [for Sicily, on the 4th] (I have been given to understand that they were still being discussed); and the military forces were not informed at any time what bombing support, if any, could be expected.”
The Evolution of the Plans
In the end, it all worked out. The Allies did achieve significant (even if not total) air superiority by D-Day. It was enough to ensure that the Allies lost only a fraction of the number of ships they were expecting to lose. So the Army got some of its requests for interdiction air attacks. In particular, even though at the last minute, 1 AD got its requested bombing raid on Syracuse. Its purpose was to directly support the plans of the glider troops. The main aim of these plans was to facilitate the rapid capture of the port of Syracuse. The British needed the city’s magnificent harbour, so they could land supplies and reinforcements rapidly enough to stave off the inevitable enemy counter-attacks. The airborne plans were divided into three phases.
In Phase 1, upon landing by glider by night, the 2nd battalion of the South Staffordshire Regiment was to capture the Ponte Grande bridge near Syracuse, and then hold it open for seaborne forces coming up from landing beaches further south. The battalion also had to eliminate various Italian defences between the beaches and the bridge. Then, in Phase 2, the Staffords’ sister battalion, 1 Border, would cross the Ponte Grande and capture the western edge of Syracuse. In Phase 3, if things went well, the Border troops would advance before dawn to the isthmus where the island of old Syracuse (called Ortigia) was joined to the new town by a bridge (codenamed “Solent”). This would give the British control of the all-important docks, and would bottle up the Italian garrison of Ortigia, preventing counter-attacks.
205 Group was involved in supporting all these phases. The Group comprised nine squadrons of Wellington night bombers (37, 40, 70, 104, 142, 150, all British, and 420, 424, 425 Canadian) [photo]. These squadrons were grouped into four Wings (231, 236, 330, 331). Despite being formally organised this way, the Group acted as a whole, with the squadrons being subdivided so they could each participate in any of the operations. For example, small parts of seven squadrons attacked Catania.
The bombers supported Phase 1 by helping to ensure that all the gliders arrived undetected and unattacked. They did this in several ways. One way was by jamming enemy radar. Some Wellingtons were equipped with jamming equipment called Mandrel. These aircraft were to cruise all night 20 miles off the coast of Sicily to prevent the enemy radar stations from detecting the approach of the towing planes with their gliders. This task was considered a high enough priority for the air force supremo himself, Air Chief Marshall Tedder, to get involved. He visited 205 Group on the afternoon of the operation, and directly altered the timings for the Mandrel missions.
Another way the Wellingtons helped was by bombing distant Catania at the same time as the real glider landings were taking place near Syracuse, to “keep enemy RDF [radar] occupied during close approach of tugs and gliders”.
Small groups of Wellington bombers were also sent to bomb various small towns at roughly the same time. Their targets were Caltagirone, Caltanissetta, Canicatti and Palazzolo. Allied intelligence had identified the towns as places where Italian or German mobile forces were waiting to be deployed as rapid counter-attack forces in the case of invasion. These were the last-minute interdiction targets requested by General Alexander, but they also had a diversionary effect.
It was not just 205 Group that had aircraft supporting the glider troops that night. Hurricane fighters flew in the intruder role, seeking out Italian searchlights, to destroy them before they could pinion the gliders in their beams. Also, dummy paratroopers were dropped near Catania by Boston medium bombers of the Tactical Air Force. This, timed to coincide with the bombing of Catania by 205 Group, was designed to make the enemy think Catania was an airborne objective, to distract from Syracuse.
But the piece de resistance of 205 Group’s assistance for 1 AD, the mission employing most of its bombers, and the one that so concerned Goldsmith, was the raid planned in support of Phases 2 and 3, the capture of the town of Syracuse by the men of 1 Border.
The Boss
This raid was actively promoted by the commander of 1 AD, General Hopkinson. It was probably his own idea, but even if not, it certainly mattered to him enormously. Early in the genesis of the Operation Ladbroke plan, on 21 May, Hopkinson wrote to General Browning, the Allies’ airborne supremo at AFHQ. He described how he wanted what would today be called a “shock and awe” attack:
“I regard the intensive air bombing of LADBROKE [Syracuse] on night D – 1/D [9/10 July] as of first importance. There will arise here an opportunity of capturing the port by surprise at the outset – an opportunity which will never recur. The military force available is small. It can have little hope of a complete success unless the air bombardment is of such intensity that effective resistance by the enemy is very greatly reduced.”
Hopkinson was probably wedded to this plan for other reasons as well. There was his pride in his men, especially his glider troops, whom he had personally previously commanded. He was also dedicated to the cause of airborne forces. Not everybody believed that the potential achievements of airborne (and especially glider) forces were worth the cost of training, maintaining and deploying them. It would be a stupendous coup for the airborne cause if the glider force could capture the port of Syracuse single-handed.
A month later, on 20 June, Hopkinson issued 1 AD’s plan for Operation Husky, the entire invasion of Sicily, of which Operation Ladbroke was part. The copy of the plan in the archives includes a slip of paper that was apparently pinned to it as a late addition. It outlines the planned air support, including the bombing of Syracuse. In it, Hopkinson justifies the bombing in terms of saving the lives of his men:
“The bombing of LADBROKE is given the highest importance by Airborne Div Comdr [Hopkinson] as giving an opportunity of securing the port with the minimum cost.”
The plan of 1 Air Landing Brigade (1 ALB), which comprised the glider battalions, explained that the bombing would “neutralise any enemy holding the objective”. The word “neutralise” here is more than a euphemism for “destroy”. It also covers stunning, disrupting, demoralising and isolating the Italians so that they would be incapable of an effective defence.
This, rather than primarily the destruction of the enemy, was Hopkinson’s intention. He hoped the reduced resistance of the Italians following the bombing would allow his forces to occupy the new town right up to “Solent”, the bridge with the old town (Ortigia). He gave orders that Ortigia was not to be attacked. This may be because Ortigia was full of cultural treasures, such as churches and archaeological sites, which the Allies tried wherever possible to preserve. But the main reason seems to have been that it was easier and less expensive (not to mention more humane) to isolate and cut off the garrison, than it was to attack them:
“Every encouragement will be given to any inclination on the part of the garrison to surrender.”
Speed was of the essence. The glider troops had to advance immediately after the bombing, before the Italians had time to recover. It was known that the Italian Napoli Division had its depot barracks in Ortigia, and it was feared that as many as four of its battalions might be there. Four Italian battalions, even if two of them were only training battalions, could overwhelm the single glider battalion. If the British could disrupt any Italian troops in the new town, and then bottle up the rest in the old town on the other side of the Ortigia bridge, it would be better than trying to fight them. The plan of 1 Border, the glider battalion that had the job of taking Syracuse, explained:
“Concentrated bombing should cause such havoc as to enable us to establish a footing in the town before many of the enemy can cross the bridge to the mainland and put organised resistance in the houses.”
In order to achieve the rapid advance to Syracuse, the Border men would have to wait perilously close to the bombing, so that they were poised to move into the town as soon as the bombing stopped, while the Italians were still stunned. But it was known that night bombers sometimes missed their targets by miles. Professor Solly Zuckerman was a British scientist advising AFHQ on the bombing of Sicily. In a report in March 1943 he pointed out to the planners that average (not maximum) bombing errors, even in daylight, were “practically never less than 500 yards and are generally nearer 1000 yards”.
Despite this, the Border men were to wait along the Pisimotta Canal, just south-west of Syracuse (the pink line on Map 1). At its eastern end, the canal was only 600 yards from the Syracuse seaplane base (codenamed “Calshot”), which was to be bombed. Clearly there was a significant risk that British bombs could decimate the waiting British troops.
Target Area
Map 1. Red line = the bomb line. Pink line = glider troops. Blue rectangle = overall target area.
The area to be hit was first described in Hopkinson’s 20 June airborne plan for Operation Husky. It specified a 400 x 1200 yard rectangle (in blue on Maps 1 and 2). This stretched from the Ortigia bridge at the eastern end of Syracuse new town, to the seaplane base and the main railway station (codenamed “Bulford”) at its western end.
By the time that last-minute orders were issued to the bomber squadrons, this large rectangle had evolved. It now consisted of two spot targets, the seaplane base and the main railway station with its marshalling yards. It still included an area target, but this was now much smaller. It was a very precise 370 yards wide corridor running diagonally across the eastern end of the new town, described by the RAF as “the isthmus”. It appeared as a cross-hatched shaded area on a map issued to the bomber crews (in beige on Map 2). The legend on the map read:
“BOMBS TO BE DROPPED ONLY IN SHADED AREA. THE AREA TO BE ATTACKED IS THE ISTHMUS … NO PART OF THE MAINLAND IS TO BE ATTACKED.”
Map 2. The new town of Syracuse in 1943. Beige area = the isthmus corridor. Blue rectangle = the original overall target area
The map also showed the master “bomb line” (the red line on Map 1) that divided friendly forces from enemy areas. It was standard practice that no bombs should ever be dropped on the wrong side of a bomb line. On this occasion, however, the bomb line ran right next to a primary target, the seaplane base. This was risky, given the proximity of friendly troops.
The shaded 370 yards wide corridor on the map was angled so that sticks of bombs falling in a line along it would avoid the western part of Syracuse, the first part of the town that the Border soldiers would occupy in Phase 2. Bombing along the line of the corridor would also avoid bombs dropping on the northern residential suburb of Santa Lucia, which Hopkinson had also ordered should not be attacked.
Another advantage of the narrow corridor, compared to, say, a blanket bombing of both the whole of the new town and also Ortigia, was that it greatly reduced the target area. According to Professor Zuckerman, the ratio of bomb tonnage per square mile of target was the key factor in effectively disrupting the enemy. Shrinking the target area without reducing the number of bombers greatly increased this tons per square mile ratio.
Zuckerman suggested a minimum of 500 tons per square mile. He was thinking specifically of concrete defences which were hard to hit, but whose defenders could be demoralised and otherwise prevented from fighting. He added:
“It is conceivable that even so high a concentration would fail to deal decisively with some targets. For this reason […] as many bomber aircraft as can possibly be spared for an operation should always be used. One can very easily err by using too little; the maximum possible may not yet be enough.”
Zuckerman’s theories were tested in early June, when the island of Pantelleria, south-west of Sicily, was blasted in preparation for it being invaded by the Allies. Bombers dropped 1000 tons per square mile on the defences, double the suggested minimum. The result was dramatic – on the day of the invasion, the Italian garrison surrendered without firing a shot.
It is not known if Zuckerman influenced the weight of the bombing attack against the Syracuse isthmus a month later. He had been assigned to work directly with the top brass, including Tedder, who, as we have seen, took a personal interest in minute details of the night’s operations. So it seems possible.
If, however, Zuckerman’s work had nothing to do with the numbers, then they are strangely coincidental. The planners allocated 55 Wellingtons carrying standard GP (general purpose) bombs to hit the isthmus. This many bombers were capable of carrying 110 tons of bombs. The area of the isthmus corridor was about one tenth of a square mile. This gives a ratio of 1100 tons of bombs per square mile.
This was 10% higher than the double dosage that the Allies had dropped on Pantelleria, which had led to its surrender without a fight. It’s almost as if this many planes were allocated to the isthmus precisely because that number gave the Pantelleria ratio plus 10% contingency. Then four more bombers each carrying a giant bomb were thrown into the mix for good measure. The remaining bombers were divided up among the other five targets, with each getting only a small fraction of the number set aside for Syracuse, as if no more could be spared from the shock-and-awe operation.
Spot Targets
The two spot targets in Syracuse were also not part of the shock-and-awe onslaught on the isthmus.
One was the seaplane base. In peacetime this was Syracuse’s airport, frequented by huge flying boats carrying wealthy passengers in the first heyday of air travel. Now it was a multiple threat to the Allies. The greatest was the Italian seaplanes anchored in the harbour, which could be used both in the reconnaissance role and in the attack role, as torpedo bombers. Also, their air force crews were capable of armed resistance on the ground, and the base was surrounded by light anti-aircraft guns.
The other spot target was the marshalling yards and the main railway station codenamed “Bulford”. Disabling the tracks and switching gear here would prevent their use by Axis reinforcements, or by the armoured and armed trains known to be in the area. The Allies wanted the railways for themselves, so it may seem counterintuitive to bomb them. But they also knew that railways were comparatively easy to fix, with everything needed for repair usually close at hand. It would however take time, time the Italians would not have.
Confusingly, there were two other railway stations in Syracuse. One of them, the Maritime Station, was by the quayside of the docks (“Stazione Marittima” on Map 2). The docks were also full of railway sidings that could be mistaken for marshalling yards. In an apparent oversight, the Maritime Station was marked “RAILWAY STATION” on the target map given to the bomber crews. The correct target, the main station, Bulford, was not marked at all. This was corrected by hand using coloured chinagraph pencils on the copy of the map at 205 Group. It is not known if this correction was made on the maps that were sent out to the wings. We know that in at least one case it was not.
205 Group orders specified that the two spot targets were to be attacked with 500 pound bombs [photo], fused for a time delay of a fraction of a second. The tiny delay allowed the bombs to penetrate slightly before exploding, making the resulting explosion much more destructive of buildings and infrastructure.
By comparison, the orders specified that the isthmus corridor should be hit with of 250 pound bombs, fused to explode instantly. Falling among buildings, these smaller bombs (up to 1000 of them) would saturate the area and fill the air with flying rubble. Four “blockbuster” bombs were also to be dropped on the isthmus. Each weighed 4000 pounds and generated an enormous blast. Apart from the damage they caused, these monster bombs [photo] were very much “shock and awe” weapons.
One potential spot target also appeared on the target maps, but precisely so that the bomber crews knew that they must NOT attack it. This was an AA gun battery codenamed “Gnat”, which was almost on the bomb line. It was due to be captured by the glider pilots, so obviously any attack by the Wellingtons risked killing their own men. The glider pilots would have been amused to read in the 205 Group orders that Gnat was to be avoided because it was “the perquisite of ‘the cloak and dagger men'”. The phrase smacks of SOE agents, or SAS saboteurs, or commando raiders, whereas in fact the glider pilots, when assembled for combat, constituted a battalion of highly trained infantry.
Taking No Chances
To avoid hitting Gnat, the bombers needed to be able to see it. And one spot target, the seaplane base, was so close to the waiting troops that it needed precision bombing. The area target, the narrow 370 yards wide corridor in the isthmus, also demanded unusually great accuracy in bombing.
For this reason the 205 Group orders specified that no less than eight Wellingtons (10% of the Syracuse force) should be assigned to be “illuminators”. This meant that they would continually drop flares above Syracuse until 5 minutes before the end of the raid. The 5 minute gap allowed total darkness to return before the Border men rose from their positions along the canal and advanced on the city.
A Wellington without bombs was capable of carrying 50 flares, giving a possible total of 400 flares for the mission. Each flare burned with a 750,000 candlepower brilliance. Across the 35 minutes of their use during the raid, 400 flares represented a notional average of one flare every five seconds, an astonishing number. Scores of them would be alight at the same time, as each one lasted for up to 4 minutes. The orders commented:
“The success of this most important mission depends in a large measure on accurate illumination.”
The whole invasion of Sicily was deemed to depend on the rapid capture of a port, Syracuse. The capture of Syracuse depended on the glider troops. The glider troops were depending on the bombers. And the bombers were depending on the flare droppers. The planners were taking no chances with the number of flares.
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This article is Part 1 of a two-part series. Part 2, “The Raid”, will appear in due course.
The story of a submerged Wellington wreck from this raid appears [here].
Information about the Vickers Wellington medium bomber:
For over 75 years the fate of a lost Wellington bomber remained a mystery. Detective work on land and in the sea has confirmed its fate and that of its crew.
Divers dwarfed by one of the Wellington bomber’s propellers.
In September 2017 a friend of mine sent me a link to a piece in The Times newspaper. The article said that the wreckage of an RAF Wellington bomber had been discovered on the seabed near Syracuse in Sicily. It was found by Fabio Portella of the Capo Murro Diving Center, who is an expert on the wrecks of these waters, having already found three other WW2 aircraft in the depths.
I was immediately intrigued by the Wellington discovery, as the part played by a crashing bomber in the story of Operation Ladbroke has been one of its enduring mysteries.
George Chatterton’s “The Wings of Pegasus” was one of the first books I studied for my research into Operation Ladbroke, the glider assault on Syracuse on 9 July 1943. The glider attack under cover of darkness was the opening move of Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily. Chatterton was the CO of the Glider Pilot Regiment at that time, and his book was the first full-length, first-person account of the operation.
His views on the operation have been the subject of several of my articles, some of which challenge them (see here and here). It is of course the job of a historian to treat all sources with caution, not least because witnesses usually contradict each other. One of the stories that Chatterton tells piqued my curiosity, but also some wariness. It concerns a bomber crashing into the sea near him.
Chatterton flew in Operation Ladbroke as a glider pilot at the head of his men, in one of the first gliders to be released. Like so many others [story], Chatterton’s glider landed in the water. In his case it fell close to the cliffs of Cape Murro di Porco south of Syracuse [map]. He and the men with him decided to swim for the shore only about 100 yards away, where they:
“took refuge a few yards from the sea. Suddenly there was an ear-splitting explosion, bombs dropped all round us, and an aircraft hit the sea with a tremendous crash, just where we had been swimming. The whole sea caught fire.”
Using a memorable image, he describes how the flames, which lapped the shore, reminded him of brandy set alight on a Christmas pudding. He was presumably looking at spilled aviation fuel spreading on the surface and burning blue.
Among several questions which his story of landing in the sea raises, some relate to the ambiguity of these words. Did the bombs explode? If not, how did he know they were bombs? If they did explode, why does he mention only one explosion? If they did not, then what did explode? Was it the aircraft hitting the sea? As for the “just” of “just where”, does it mean “exactly where”, or does it also imply “just a moment ago”?
Some of these questions are answered by an earlier account in “Lion With Blue Wings” by Ronald Seth, who extensively interviewed Chatterton. He describes how no sooner had the men clambered ashore than there was :
“a colossal explosion above them. Looking up, they saw a Wellington aircraft on fire from nose to stern. It fell like a stone […] Only a moment before they had been swimming in that now fiercely raging sea.”
It is explicit that the plane exploded in the air, and that it fell where the men had been swimming shortly before. However there is no mention of bombs.
Now a home for sea creatures – a wheel from the Wellington bomber.
Archives
As my research progressed, I often wondered about that bomber. On one of my occasional visits to the National Archives (NA) in London, I decided to investigate. My starting point was a clue in the book “Assalto a Tre Ponti” (“Assault on Three Bridges”) by the Sicilian historian Tullio Marcon. In it he quotes from a Wellington pilot in 142 Squadron RAF, who described bombing Syracuse that night.
So my first task in the NA was to find the ORB (Operations Record Book) for 142 Squadron. To my dismay, it was only available on microfilm. Like most (all?) researchers, I dislike working with microfilm. The images are negatives and the photography is often bad. The films are fiddly to focus and line up. It is impossible to jump forwards or backwards easily, or to browse rapidly, as you can with paper. The screens tend to be too bright in the centre and too dark at the edges, a particular problem if you try to photograph them. Printing the images on photocopiers rarely works well, is slow and, in quantity, is expensive. Given the bad image quality, the fact that many ORBs were recorded in 1940s handwriting compounds the problems.
I persevered with this and other mircrofilmed air force records, but then came upon some that had been photographed so badly that they were literally impossible to use. These records belonged to a collection coded AIR 51. Tragically (for a historical researcher at least), the original documents had been thrown away before they got to the NA [story]. The information had been lost forever. Copies of some of the documents must exist in other collections, but as a coherent set available in one place, that’s it. Gone.
I don’t often get to the NA, and every hour there is precious, so I decided to give up on the bombing angle. Emotionally I was dispirited and repelled by the microfilm, while rationally I was impelled to mine more profitable seams. There were still thousands of paper documents waiting to be scoured, in which I stood a greater chance of striking archival gold quickly, and with less pain.
One such strike was my later discovery of a war diary that showed where the SAS Special Raiding Squadron (SRS) landed on Cape Murro di Porco [story], up to that point another mystery. The SRS had been sent to the cape to destroy an Italian gun battery that posed a severe risk to the ships of the invasion.
This SRS mystery was related to the mystery bomber because Chatterton described how the SRS landed right where he and his men were huddled on the shore, which was of course where he said the bomber hit the sea. Incidentally, it was probably the battery’s AA guns that shot down Chatterton’s glider, and then also persuaded his group to swim ashore by firing at them in the water.
Some time later I was contacted by Ian Buchan. Ian is the son of glider pilot Lt William Buchan, who was First Pilot of Waco glider 57 in Operation Ladbroke. His glider came down in the sea off the cliffs of Cape Murro di Porco, not far from Chatterton’s. Ian kindly sent me copies of his father’s diary and logbook, which inspired me to write a “Glider Story” about glider 57.
As I gathered research about glider 57, I found numerous accounts by airborne and SRS soldiers who mention seeing a bomber at the cliffs of the cape [example]. I speculated in the article that the underwater Wellington wreck found by Fabio Portella was the same aircraft that these witnesses saw. I posted the article and left it at that.
Impetus
A diver inspects the remains of one of the Wellington bomber’s Hercules engines.
Then last year I was contacted by Nicola Giusti, who works closely with Fabio. He had seen my speculation in the glider 57 piece, and he wondered if I had any information about the squadron the Wellington might have belonged to. This contact by Nicola was the impetus that made me look again at my long-shelved mystery bomber project. In the time since I had last delved into the air force sources, two things had happened that now made the research speed along.
First, the encyclopaedic “History of the Mediterranean Air War 1940-1945, Volume 4”, covering 1943, had been published. This steps through both the Allied and Axis air operations day by day, describing actions and listing claims and losses. This made it extremely simple to see which Wellingtons had been lost that night. It also gave the list of squadrons that made up 205 Bomber Group RAF, which was responsible for bombing in support of the glider troops of Operation Ladbroke [story].
Second, I discovered that the ORBs for 142 Squadron and the other Wellington squadrons of 205 Group had been digitised from the microfilm. To my astonishment and delight, they were available for download from the NA website for a small fee. No more microfilm! And no need to trek to London to sit in the archives to review the documents under pressure of time.
I downloaded several PDFs and passed relevant details on to Nicola, who in return sent me a document and other information that enabled us to confirm the identity of the wreck. Some of the witness statements of course contradict each other, but several confirm Chatterton’s story. The existence of the wreck in exactly the expected place is the final clincher.
A remaining question about Chatterton’s account is of that of the bombs which he says fell with the plane, without saying if they exploded or not. Other witnesses describe bombs falling, but some say they saw bomb explosions on the cape, while others imply they landed harmlessly in the water. The stricken bomber in fact carried no bombs, but only flares. It seems these (apparently described by one witness as “starry bombs”) were jettisoned or fell from the plane as it fell. Any bombs exploding on the cape must have come from a different aircraft.
A few witnesses also saw two parachutes, which were presumably crew members from the plane. If so, it seems the men must have drowned after being carried out to sea by the north-westerly gale, ending up in the bay like many glider troops, but without the benefit of a floating glider to cling to.
Doubts about many points will probably always remain, but the most important mystery, the identity of the missing crew, has been solved. In my experience, relatives of those killed in WW2 mainly want to know two things: details of what they did, and where they lie. Furnished with this information, they can visit, reflect, pay respects, lay a wreath, and finally say goodbye.
Most of the crew of HE 756 pose in the North African desert. From right to left: Ken Lucas, Len Ball, Jack Lammin, Jack Bowers, Jack Williams, Charles ‘Flash’ Tweedle. Source: Ric Lucas
. IN MEMORIAM
From the RAF Operations Record Book of 37 Squadron, 231 Wing, 205 Bomber Group:
Wellington Mk 10, number HE 756, callsign not recorded.
“Aircraft took off for operations, but failed to return.”
Crew:
Sgt Ball, W L, Captain
F/Sgt Tweedle, C M, 2nd Pilot [Royal Canadian Air Force]
Sgt Lammin, J D, Navigator
Flt Sgt Lucas, K T R, W/Op [Royal Australian Air Force]
Sgt Williams, J, 2nd W/Op
Sgt Kerr, T, Rear Gunner
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For the full story of the bombing of Syracuse during Operation Ladbroke, see [here].
While men of the SAS SRS assaulted a deadly gun battery, glider troops drowned in Operation Ladbroke. Returning later, the SRS remembered both the excitement and the horror.
There is a well-known photograph of SAS troopers of Major Paddy Mayne’s Special Raiding Squadron (SRS), which shows them clustered around the turret of a heavy gun in an Italian gun battery. The scene has been said to show the SRS at the guns at Cape Murro di Porco, during the SRS attack on the battery in the small hours of D-Day in Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily [story]. The battery, called Lamba Doria by the Italians, was strategically sited on the cape at the tip of the Maddalena Peninsula south of Syracuse. Here it had a direct line of sight to the anchorages of the invasion beaches, and its guns could wreak havoc among Allied troopships and landing craft.
In fact the SRS in the photo are on a swimming expedition five days after D-Day. And the battery is a different one, called Emanuele Russo, which guarded the entrance to Syracuse’s harbour at the north end of the peninsula, three miles from Lamba Doria in the south [map]. The man with his back to the camera carries a towel folded under his arm, and there are several sailors in the shot. They are members of the crew of the SRS’s mother ship, the Ulster Monarch, which was anchored in the adjacent harbour of Syracuse.
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Ulster Monarch’s log for 15 July recorded:
“1540 Parties from S.R.S, [and] ships company landed for route march.”
It’s not clear why the expedition was called a “route march”, when it was clearly a tourist jaunt to the see the sites of the SRS’s recent combats. The SRS war diary was less euphemistic:
“1500 Sqdn proceeds ashore to look over Cape Murro De Porco.”
There seems to be a misunderstanding here. SRS writers mistakenly tended to call the whole of the Maddalena Peninsula by the name of the headland at its southern tip, i.e. the cape. Photographs from that day show the SRS in various places in the north end of the peninsula near Syracuse, but there is no evidence they got all the way down to Lamba Doria at the cape. This naming confusion may be one reason why the photograph taken at Emanuele Russo has been mistakenly captioned as being taken at the cape.
Derrick Harrison was a lieutenant in charge of a section of 2 Troop of the SRS. In his book “These Men are Dangerous”, he wrote of the outing:
“We swarmed over Capo Murro di Porco where we had charged in with rifles and tommy-guns so few days before. Reminiscences were endless.”
Lt Peter Davis was, like Harrison, a section leader in 2 Troop. In his book “SAS Men in the Making”, he described feeling the same sensations:
“It was decided to take us over that day to Murro di Porco and let us wander over the peninsula individually, and have a look at all the familiar landmarks. […] It seemed strange to walk quietly beneath that blazing sun over an area where only a few days before, we had been tensed with excitement, and in which we had been suspicious of every building and every patch of cover. “
Coastal erosion at Emanuele Russo has tumbled a giant concrete gun base, perhaps the one shown in the original photo.
In addition to the sense of excitement and relief that the landscape was no longer a threat, there was also the ecstatic release of swimming, perhaps in the blue bay beside the Emanuele Russo battery. Harrison recounted how diving into the cool waters from a landing craft made him, momentarily at least, forget about the war.
Not Just Swimming
Original caption: “Bathing party at Suez”. SRS men in LCAs head off on a swimming expedition, with their troopship, the Ulster Monarch, in the background. Source: Davis
It seems everybody in the SRS could swim. Records in the SRS war diary show that swimming was on the Operation Husky training schedule every single day, along with the inevitable PT (physical training), which every man in the forces was familiar with. Unlike the SRS, however, PT in the rest of the Army did not usually include swimming.
Peter Davis (in unpublished parts of his manuscript) described how it was more than simply a case of physical fitness:
“Following the usual custom of the [SAS] Regiment we managed to a certain extent to combine business with pleasure throughout this training. Each afternoon, over the ship’s loudspeakers blared the order, ‘S.R.S, prepare to embark’, upon which we would leap out of bed, throw down our cards, drinks or whatever it was and grab our swimming kit.”
After practising embarking in their landing craft:
“The navy would then take us to some chosen point on the coast where we would do our landing and then be fallen out for a swim. The boats would take us off again and we would follow the same procedure once more at some other point on the shore, until it was time to return to the ship. “
Davis described the effect of this training on the morale of the squadron:
“The long endurance marches, the P.T., the assault courses and the regular swimming and sport had developed in them a pride in their bodies, a feeling of superiority over other men, which they were anxious to put to good account.”
Beside the Seaside
Swimming was in fact so good for morale that Eighth Army rest camps for battle-weary troops were set up for preference on the Mediterranean shore. The airborne soldiers of Operation Ladbroke, the glider assault on Syracuse that coincided with the SRS assault on Lamba Doria, went on just such a recuperation break to Hammamet in Tunisia after their ordeal.
Hammamet, still a beach resort to this day, was also chosen by the high and mighty. After the defeat of the Afrika Korps in North Africa, Air Marshall Arthur Coningham, commander of the Tactical Air Force during Operation Husky, requisitioned a luxury villa in Hammamet. Celebrity visitors included Vivien Leigh (then the world-famous star of the blockbuster movie “Gone with the Wind”), Winston Churchill and King George VI himself, who “enjoyed the bathing”.
General Montgomery, commander of the British Army in Sicily, took a villa at Taormina at the end of the campaign in Sicily. Swimming there daily at 6:30pm sharp helped him unwind so much that he declared it “glorious”.
Swimming may have seemed heavenly, but it was not without its hazards and annoyances. Glider pilot Staff Sergeant ‘Andy’ Andrews recalled swimming in Tunisia while waiting to attack Sicily. The airborne division’s camps were near M’Saken, which was only some 10 miles from the beaches at Sousse [map]. Andrews ruefully and wryly recalled that after swimming:
“Even though we had cooled off in the sea, I can remember feeling very, very hot as the hot Scirroco wind blew over the top of the driver’s cabin as we returned, and I felt rather like a dried fig.”
Very, very hot was almost an understatement for those torrid days in early July. There were airfields all around Kairouan [map], some 40 miles or so from M’Saken, and the RAF recorded temperatures of 114⁰ Fahrenheit (47⁰ Centigrade) in the shade. During the middle of the day it became impossible to work on maintaining gliders and aircraft, whose interiors reached a staggering 142⁰F (62⁰C).
Oppressive heat, with its risk of dehydration and heat stroke, was just one problem. Soldiers waiting in invasion ships at Suez found swimming in the harbour left them covered with oil. During an invasion rehearsal held in the Gulf of Aqaba, attended by the SRS and the main amphibious assault troops, armed guards were posted to protect swimmers against sharks and barracuda. Many men were cut by sharp coral.
Private Wilf Oldham, a Bren gunner in 1 Border Regiment, a glider-borne battalion, remembered the daily swimming trips to Sousse:
“You had to be very careful because there was a type of jellyfish, and if it rubbed up side of you, you got a very bad rash. But it was amazing to me, I’d only once seen the sea at Blackpool as a lad, and it was amazing to see how clear the seas were. “
Joy
Despite the inconveniences, it was the amazing aspects of swimming in the Mediterranean that men remembered most. Alexander Clifford was one of the best WW2 war correspondents, and a gifted writer. But despite his gifts, he claimed in his book “Three Against Rommel” that swimming daily in the Med near Alamein (shortly before the climactic battle of that name) left him struggling for words:
“The sheer physical pleasure of those bathes passes all description.”
Nevertheless he spent a paragraph describing the pleasures, including the childish joy that just being in the sea brought on, which saw him and his fellow correspondents playing “like naked children”.
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Coincidentally, General Montgomery’s villa in Taormina in Sicily (with its glorious bathing) faced a villa there that had been taken over by Clifford and other correspondents. Clifford described it as an idyll before the storm of invading mainland Italy.
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All men it seems, regardless of rank, regressed to their childhoods on the beach. During the Casablanca Conference, where Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Franklin Roosevelt made the momentous decision to invade Sicily, admirals and generals were seen building sand-castles in breaks between the gruelling conference sessions. (There’s a metaphor in there itching to get out …)
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The Imperial War Museum has a sound recording by another war correspondent about the invasion of Sicily [info]. It was apparently broadcast by the BBC on 15 July, the same day that the SRS took their sight-seeing trip to the gun batteries near Syracuse. Perhaps the SRS listened to it on board the Ulster Monarch before their afternoon expedition. In the broadcast Commander Anthony Kimmins describes at length the sight of thousands of Allied troops, including of course admirals and generals, disporting naked and laughing in the sea on the eve of the invasion.
For the benefit of the listeners at home in the UK, he explicitly linked this to the fighting spirit of their men. The families at home were doubtless cheered by this, and by the news of the invasion’s early successes, but not everyone who saw such sights was so sanguine.
Horror
Squadron Leader Peter Davis of 296 Squadron was the pilot of an Albemarle tug plane that was due to tow a glider to Sicily. He recorded in his diary his fears for the glider pilots (and thereby also their airborne soldier passengers) who had to land in Sicily:
“They are going to land without lights of any kind, in a half moon […] It requires the most skilful pilot to do it in a full moonlight. And this on top of a distant release with little margin. I am very pessimistic. […] Went swimming at the beach near Les Palmes, hundreds of ‘airbornes’ there. Watched their brown bodies and wondered how many would be smashed up in the thing described above.”
His foreboding was well placed, but not, as it turned out, because of landings on the soil of Sicily in (more correctly) a quarter moon. Some GPs and airlanding troops were indeed “smashed up” when gliders hit trees or stone walls, but surprisingly few. Many more, however, died as a result of what Davis called the “distant release”. He was referring to the fact that the gliders were due to be released over the sea, to keep the towing planes away from Italian anti-aircraft fire [story]. For several reasons, but primarily because it was almost impossible in the dark to tell how far they were from the shore, many gliders were were released at distances beyond their flying range [story]. The coast was simply too far. The gliders landed in the sea and hundreds of men drowned [story].
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Pvt Wilf Oldham
Wilf Oldham, the 1 Border Bren gunner, was one of those whose glider ditched in the sea off Sicily. He described the helplessness and terror of those hours. After his glider splashed down, it began filling rapidly with water. To his horror, he could not open the door to escape. Another man smashed it open with his rifle butt and climbed out. He was never seen again. The others got out, but their trial was only just beginning. Wilf remembers the horror:
“We had three or four men who couldn’t swim. One has to try and imagine how dreadful it was for these non-swimmers, a rough sea, strong wind and a high swell facing us all. […] Clinging to the wings and blowing up the lifebelts was all we could do. […] I don’t know if you’d call it a life belt. Nearest thing I could tell you, it was like a big sausage, you blew it up, and it sat across you and under your arms, and you tied it. It might have just about kept your head over water, but these men, as I said, couldn’t swim. It must have been, well it must have been hell in the water for them, because they must have been terrified. Over a period of time, we lost about another three men.”
These men had exhausted themselves clinging to the sharp-edged spars of the wings, which added to their misery by cutting their hands. While the rest of the men let each wave of the swell lift them off the wing, and then swam back once it passed, the non-swimmers clung on against the power of the sea, presumably submerged each time, with their lifebelts also trying to lift them off the wing, until they could hang on no longer.
Oldham remembered that there had been no effort beforehand to absolutely ensure that every man could swim, despite the fact it was known their gliders would be towed over miles of sea:
“About September 1942, all the battalion went to Ilfracombe, for three weeks special training. There was a big battle school there, and perhaps they’d had Sicily in mind, but one order was that when we came back, every man had to be able to swim. So before breakfast we were taken to the local baths, which they’d taken over. I could swim, I was a decent swimmer, but there were people that at the end of three weeks still couldn’t swim.”
Five days after D-Day in the waters off Syracuse, Harrison of the SRS may have briefly forgotten the war while swimming, but it was not for long. In the landing craft returning to Ulster Monarch after the expedition, he saw a body floating in the harbour. It was stripped to its underwear, just as many airborne men had done to help them survive the sea. It reminded him that only a few days before these waters, now calm, then gale-whipped, had drowned so many glider troops.
There were much worse things than such sights for the SRS men. On D-Day, as their landing craft carried them to assault the battery at the cape, they had passed glider troops clinging to downed gliders and calling piteously for help. Some boats stopped, but most did not. The SRS men had to ignore the glider men, because if they failed in their mission, then thousands of lives, not dozens, were at stake. On their return journey to Ulster Monarch, the empty landing craft stopped to rescue the ditched men.
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Wilf Oldham was one of them.
Captain Alex Muirhead was CO of the SRS mortars that night, and he remembered the ignored appeals of those men for the rest of his life. His son said that his father “used to hear their cries in the night as he tried to sleep, and this became a recurring nightmare to him in his final years.”
Long after D-Day, once the depleted ranks of 1 Border had gathered again back at their camp in Tunisia, this disaster bore some fruit. Orders were issued:
“All ranks will be taught to swim.”
Instead of merely splashing and paddling during the daily visits to the beach, non-swimmers now had to submit to the tender mercies of a Company Sergeant-Major for tuition. A weekly count of those still unable to swim was demanded. It is not recorded when, or if, it got to zero. It was too late for those who died in Sicily, but this training may have saved lives over a year later, when those same men had to swim in the River Rhine to escape the destruction of 1 Airborne Division at Arnhem, in another airborne fiasco, at another place “too far”.
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Thanks to Paul Davis for permission to quote from Peter Davis’ book and to use photos from his album. “SAS Men in the Making” can be bought from the publisher here.
Many thanks also to Wilf Oldham, the Muirhead family, the editor of the Eagle magazine and the Army Flying Museum.
Wilf Oldham risked being swept away crossing the River Rhine, as British troops escaped the destruction of 1 Airborne Division at Arnhem. It was not his first airborne fiasco, nor his first ordeal by water. First came Sicily.
UPDATE - Wilf died on 27 November 2021, aged 101. He was a warm, wonderful and enormously generous man, a true gentleman. He will be sorely missed by everybody who knew him.
A Waco glider floating in the sea off the coast of the Maddalena Peninsula south of Syracuse in Sicily. Wilf’s glider fell into this bay.
Private Wilf Oldham was a Bren gunner in 12 Platoon, B Company, 1st Battalion The Border Regiment, 1 Air Landing Brigade, 1st Airborne Division. The Border soldiers’ job in Operation Ladbroke was to land by glider south of Syracuse in Sicily, then to move into the outskirts of the city. They were to hold it while strong seaborne forces of General Montgomery’s 8th Army raced up from landing beaches to capture the port. The port’s docks were needed to land reinforcements and supplies quickly, to secure the beachhead from counterattack.
Wilf telling his story, with a memorial to fallen airborne comrades beside him.
It has been my great privilege and pleasure to have met Wilf, and to have corresponded with him about his part in Operation Ladbroke. What follows is a composite version of his story, as told by Wilf himself. I have selected passages from interviews and letters and merged them.
I was born in the City of Salford, on the 28th of August 1920. I was one of 7 children, and when I was a babe in arms unemployment was a lot worse than it is today. There were no handouts or nothing, and after a few months, when I was probably 6 months old, my father got a job at Bury, he was in the hotel trade. We lived in a 2-up and 2-down, very slum houses, no electric, one room light by gas, no hot water.
When I was 4 years old, I started school at the Bury Ragged School. I went there until I was 11 years old, when I went to a secondary school. I left school at 14. After a few months of being out of work, I got a job at a bleach works.
When war broke out I was 19 years old. I would shortly be called up into the forces, and I didn’t want to be in the Navy, I didn’t fancy being a sailor. So I went to the recruiting office at Walton, and volunteered for the armed forces. They asked me which, and I said I’d like to go in the Army. I passed the medical, but when I saw the doctor I only weighed 8 stone. He had a look at me. I was stood there in my altogether, and he said “Well, I’ve seen more meat on a rabbit. But don’t worry, you’ll put weight on when you get regular food and out in the fresh air”.
UK Training
I went to the East Lancashire Regiment, which was an infantry training regiment, at Choirsgate Camp. I’m not sure whether it had been a Pontins or a Butlins. And you did your basic training there, three months. It was mostly foot drill. Although the Germans were ready for a landing, the British Army, true to tradition, didn’t worry about the rifle. You’d be able to march on the Germans, kick ‘em to death when they land.
Me and a fellow called Jack Hill volunteered for airborne forces. While waiting, more often than not, your request was thrown in the waste bin, but this time it went to the right sources. Me and Jacky had to see the adjutant. He said, “You’ve both volunteered for airborne forces. Well you know there are two branches: parachute troops and gliderborne troops. You’re going to Dorchester tomorrow for an interview, for the gliderborne troops.”
So we went to Dorchester the next day, me and Jack, and we were asked why we wanted to do this, but like everybody else we told a fib or two. It was a shilling a day extra for gliderborne troops, which was probably the deciding factor. Of course a shilling in today’s money is only 5 pence, but a shilling in those days was quite a good rise.
So when we’d been interviewed he said, “Right, your interview is over, report back to your unit and you’ll get word if you’re accepted”. Maybe a month after, the acceptance came through. So we got the train to Andover in Hampshire, and there we were met by an officer and transport, and taken to a big army camp called Barton Stacey.
And there it was, I can always remember, it was early evening. We were given a meal, and two tower billets, and they said, “Starting tomorrow you’re now a member of First Battalion, the Borders, T Company”. T stood for training. You did five weeks intensive training. At the end of the five weeks you were either RTU (returned to unit), or you were accepted. The biggest worry of all the men was being sent back. Nobody wanted to be sent back.
We now discovered how fit or unfit we really were. At the end of five weeks you were capable of doing a 25 mile march, a 10 mile run, with all your equipment. You were really ready to take on the world at the end of that 5 weeks.
The airborne forces, when I joined them, had no shoulder flashes, and they had no red berets. One tale is that General Browning’s wife, Daphne Du Maurier, suggested that we had a red beret. Well, history books now say that wasn’t true. It’s always called a red beret, but the colour is maroon. Once you’d got your flashes and red beret, it didn’t matter how cold it was, under no circumstances did you go out with an overcoat. You wanted everybody to see you were an airborne solider.
Then, about September 1942, all the battalion went to Ilfracombe, for three weeks special training. There was a big battle school there, and perhaps they’d had Sicily in mind, but one order was that when we came back, every man had to be able to swim. So before breakfast we were taken to the local baths, which they’d taken over. I could swim, I was a decent swimmer, but there were people that at the end of three weeks still couldn’t swim.
Algeria
In early 1943 it was decided that 1 Airborne Division would take part in the invasion of Sicily. The invasion was to be launched from North Africa, where the war in the desert was coming to a successful conclusion.
I think it was about the beginning of May 1943, we had three or four days leave. When we came back, we knew we were going somewhere, but we didn’t know where. It was about a fortnight later, when we got our instructions. We had to cut all of our airborne signs off, we had to take our red berets off, because it was a movement under secrecy. We were taken by train to Liverpool, and there we boarded a troop ship. We sailed from Liverpool, and we headed to pick the convoy up around Scotland somewhere. Then it was probably a 10 day sailing, to Oran, in North Africa.
There were that many troops on that boat, that each meal had to have 5 sittings, so by the time the last people had their breakfast, it was nearly time for the midday meal. We had quite an uneventful journey. You’d always got the chance that enemy aircraft or U-Boats could attack the convoys, and we did hear explosions, which the sailors told us were depth charges going off. They probably suspected that in the vicinity there could be U-boats.
We saw the lights of Oran, all lit up, not like it was in England with the blackout, and it was late at night when we landed. American transport took us about three miles outside of Oran, on the side of a hill, and it was just a matter of posting guards, and getting down on the ground and sleeping.
From then it was a lot of getting acclimatized, because it was late May, and the temperatures were reaching about 35-40 degrees Centigrade. So it was early reveille straight from word go, and you did a foot drill with your KD [khaki drill] shorts on, your ammunition boots and socks, but no shirt or vest. It started off at 15 minutes and it was increased, until after a few weeks, it didn’t affect you. I never got browned, I just went a deep red as most fair-haired people. Those days I had ginger hair, and I was known as “Ginger” Oldham.
Then we did battalion exercises, brigade exercises and division exercises. For some weeks we were doing flights in North Africa. In the air, it was very unpleasant. Because of the hot air and air pockets, you’d drop, there was a lot of that.
Tunisia
In late June, the whole of 1 Airborne Division moved from its training grounds in Algeria to Tunisia, to be close to Sicily. The troops of 1 Air Landing Brigade made the long journey in their gliders.
Then we got word that we were moving to a place near Sousse in Tunisia. A lot of gliders, tugged by American planes, flew over the Atlas mountains. At the time, that was the longest exercise ever done by gliders. It was probably mid-afternoon when we cast off and landed safely on these air strips.
We got out of the glider, and we’d just sat down on the ground, to be given further orders. And I happened to look up in the air, watching gliders still coming in, and what appeared to be the tail of a Waco fell off. This glider seemed to bodily separate, and all the men in the glider fell out. It was a dreadful sight to see these men falling out of the sky at a terrific speed and crash to the ground. They all lost their lives. This tragic incident still lives in my mind, I can see it as if it was only happening to me now.
People say to me, “You see an accident like that, did it not make you bothered about going up in a glider again?” Maybe it did, I’m not sure now, but it was part of your life, you’d volunteered for this business.
By now we were all very brown and trained up to a high point, and ready for what lay in store for the glider battalions. In early July each platoon was briefed for Operation Ladbroke. We were told exactly what our objectives would be, shown maps etc. The only thing that remained a secret was the exact location. We were guessing – Sicily, Italy, the Greek Islands?
Sicily
I believe it was the day of 8th July when we were told that our objective and destination was Sicily. At last we were to be an invasion force, this something we had trained bloody hard for was to become real. Of course all men were confined to stay in the olive groves which had been our home for weeks near the holy city of Kairouan.
July 9th 1943: Early afternoon our platoon officer Lieutenant Arthur Royall, whom all 12 Platoon considered one of the best battalion officers, and platoon sergeant Sergeant Victor De Muynck paraded 12 Platoon, inspected each soldier and his equipment and weapons (I was a light machine gunner with a Bren), and made sure grenades and ammo were all in good order. We were marched to an army truck convoy and the battalion was transported to a desert airstrip. There the Dakota tug planes were lined up.
Around I think 1630 we had sandwiches and tea, and after an hour, maybe longer, the USA tug pilots came to speak to us. They said they would get us there, but if for some reason we had to ditch in the sea, the tug plane would drop us two dinghies and radio our position to air sea rescue Malta. I can even today hear this pilot saying these words.
Our pilots for the glider arrived. A further check of equipment made sure everybody had a blow-up lifebelt. This was a shape on the sausage style with tapes to tie under the armpits and around the shoulders.
Once we were all seated in the correct seats, the plane engines burst into life, and we taxied along with the props sending clouds of dusty sand in their wake. Shortly we were airborne and on our way to Sicily.
I think it was about 1800 – 1900 hours when we took off. The idea was to fly very low to avoid radar. By then a strong wind had started to blow. The Wacos were mostly tubular steel and doped canvas, with plywood floors, and they were very noisy. One had to almost shout to the next person to be heard.
Our route took us the long way, heading eventually towards Malta, where fighter planes were to give us protection. This was to be near enough to a four hour flight, the last hour or so would be in darkness, yet with some light from a quarter moon. The flight was a very rough one, for by now the wind had increased strongly and most of our journey was very, very unpleasant. Many men were sick and couldn’t wait for us to cast off and get down on firm ground. Once we were, I should think, between Malta and Sicily, the order was given “Equipment on, minutes to cast off”.
Approaching land we were fired on by ack-ack. This shook the glider. We could see the outline of land, at last we were here, then suddenly we were back over the sea. The order came from the pilot, “Equipment off, we’re about to crash into the drink”. By this time it was much quieter as the glider prepared to make an emergency landing in the sea. I at the time thought it would be near or just on the edge of the shore. Gliding down is a speed of between 80 – 100 mph, could the pilot get us down safely?
Horror
Suddenly an almighty crash, we had crashed into the sea and within a second or two we were all at least waist-deep in sea water. I was nearest the door but I believe it’s owing to the pressure of the sea it was impossible to open the door. Private Hurley found his rifle and smashed a hole in the canvas glider covering, this caused another rush of water which knocked me over. I was out of the glider and in the open sea, quickly followed by other men.
The glider had settled in the water and we scrambled on the wings. A quick count, sadly there was no sign of Private Hurley, he must have been washed away and must have been drowned. Clinging to the wings and blowing up the lifebelts was all we could do. We had three or four men who couldn’t swim. One has to try and imagine how dreadful it was for these non-swimmers, a rough sea, strong wind and a high swell facing us all. No sign of the tug plane or the rubber dinghies. We estimated we were at least three miles from the coast, and I knew that it was impossible for any of us to swim that far.
The heavy swell I spoke of could be seen like a huge wave coming towards us, swamping us all, but after some time it was better to let this swell wash us away and then swim back to the glider. The non-swimmers were too frightened to do this, and their strength must have been ebbing with each battering. It was 2200 hours when we crashed, we knew that about dawn the seaborne forces would storm the beaches, hopefully we would be spotted and rescued. But how many hours was it to be?
This buffeting went on and on. By now I had discarded my army boots, and all I was now wearing was my underpants and my KD [khaki drill] shorts. In the early hours we started to have men hit by the swell washed away in the dark, never to be seen again. The wings, although very low in the water, were just about floating and suddenly we spotted the outline of part of the invasion fleet. It must have been just before dawn. By now we had been in the drink about seven hours.
Rescue & Return
Then we could see a small landing craft heading towards us, manned by I think two or three men. They settled near us, pulled and helped us aboard, all of us by this time were exhausted and couldn’t have lasted much longer. The boat then took us to the mother ship, and once aboard the medical staff took us to the sick bay, gave us a hot drink, and told us to get into bed to try to get warm.
Later I was provided with a pair of socks, shoes and a shirt, and I went on deck. The AA guns were employed throughout the day keeping German planes at bay. I watched troops landing on the shore. One group of men were hit by a bomb from a plane and I could see bodies wounded and dead lying on the beach, and I could hear artillery fire and machine guns blazing away.
Later that day we were informed that the ship that evening would join a convoy sailing for Malta, and we would be taken ashore to await further instructions. I think it was Valletta harbour we went ashore, transported by army trucks to an army camp near Hamrun. Five days there, then back to Valletta, sailed for North Africa. Our battalion truck picked us up and drove us back to the same olive groves where we had originally set off from. We were interviewed, properly clothed, and we could see how many had gone missing.
Over the next few weeks survivors rejoined us, it depending where they were picked up from, where that particular convoy sailed for, some Malta, some straight back to North Africa. After the last survivors rejoined us the battalion was well down in strength. Besides drownings we also had men killed fighting on Sicily.
It was many, many years before the public were told of this disaster. The War Office I believe were on the point of disbanding glider battalions. What was the very first action by gliderborne troops could have been the last. General Hopkinson I have read fought tooth and nail to keep his troops for further glider invasions. He had great faith in this form of warfare. This was allowed, but sadly this most gallant of soldiers lost his life in Italy.
Maybe I have made errors in my story, after 70 years maybe persons would ask themselves how can a man remember this event, but I believe that it’s a part of my life that will live for me forever.
The cliffs below the gun battery at Cape Murro di Porco are daunting. Did Major Paddy Mayne’s SAS Special Raiding Squadron really climb them to attack and destroy the guns? Recently discovered documents shed new light.
The cliffs of Cape Murro di Porco south of the gun battery. The raised ridge of rock (visible above the cliff tops in the centre of the photo) held one of the guns. The house near the cliff edge gives a sense of the height of the cliffs here. The cliffs are extensively undercut in this section. Harrison says his men climbed ashore near here.
The southern coast of the Maddalena Peninsula south of Syracuse in Sicily is rocky along its entire length [map]. At its western end, near an area called Terrauzza, there is a flat rocky beach [story], suitable for landing from the sea. At its eastern end, however, near a headland called Cape Murro di Porco, the cliffs look unclimbable. They are sheer, 15 to 20 meters tall and often undercut.
SAS men of the Special Raiding Squadron in Palestine practising for Sicily by scaling steep bluffs with the aid of ropes. These bluffs are clearly not the vertical rock faces usually conjured up by the word “cliffs”. Source: Davis
Between the cape and the distant beach at Terrauzza, the vertical cliffs alternate with sections where the rocks are at water level, or close to it. In these places the rocky ground then ascends in stepped layers or steep bluffs towards the spine of the peninsula.
Today, the ruins of a WW2 gun battery still lie among the rocky outcrops above the cliffs near the cape. The battery [map] is called Lamba Doria, after an Italian naval hero. It is only some 200 to 300 meters from the cliff edge. It is here that the cliffs look most unclimbable. Yet people tend to assume that the men of Britain’s elite SAS Special Raiding Squadron (SRS) climbed these cliffs in the darkness of 9/10 July 1943 to attack and destroy the guns. But did they really? There was a more accessible place, a gap in the vertical cliffs, not far away. Surely, the planners of the operation would have chosen the easier landing.
These Men Are Dangerous
The presumption that the whole of the SRS heroically climbed almost unclimbable cliffs at night in Sicily probably arises from one of the first books to tell the tale. In 1957, a mere dozen years after the end of the war, “These Men Are Dangerous” by Derrick Harrison was published. Harrison had been the Lieutenant in charge of C Section of 2 Troop of the SRS in Sicily. The book is an invaluable record, and a good read. However, as was fashionable at the time (and indeed probably preferred by publishers), it is written in parts in the style of an action novel. One of those parts concerns climbing the cliffs.
The cliff climb Harrison describes is fraught, the language overwrought: “We had been edging our way along a ledge of rock for some minutes when … the ledge was not there any more. I remember thinking only that I must try another way. I could see nothing. It was as if someone else were guiding my hands and feet.” This dramatic style would make the story perfect for weekly serialisation, in this case complete with, literally, a cliff-hanger. “How long that climb took I do not know. It could have been ten minutes or ten years.”
The lack of specifics is brilliant, as it leaves the reader free to imagine the most horrific of cliff faces. No mention is made of ropes or ladders, although the men were heavily loaded with weapons and ammunition. A year later in Normandy, American Rangers assaulting the 30m vertical cliffs at Pointe du Hoc used ropes on grapnel hooks launched by rockets, as well as fireman’s ladders. So how vertical can Harrison’s cliffs have been? No mention is made of overhangs or undercuts, which rules out much of the worst of the cliffs at the cape.
Harrison says his job was to escort the SAS engineers who were supposed to destroy the guns, and make sure they reached the battery safely. One of those engineers was Sgt Bill Deakins. He wrote an account of his time with the SAS in his book, “The Lame One”, published in 2001, nearly 60 years after the invasion of Sicily. The title of the book refers to a problem that Deakins had with his spine after being hit by a truck. The problem was not enough to disqualify him from the SAS, although he was excused parachute training. Perhaps his condition would have also excused him from climbing vertical cliffs.
Deakins’ own account of Sicily says the men landed on a strip “strewn with large boulders and rocks”, under “quite a low cliff”. They then moved forwards in order to scale it, finding it “not much of an obstacle” and a “seemingly easy” climb. This is plausible, and presumably if Deakins had climbed a vertical cliff he would have remembered it, despite the passage of so many years. Clearly, Deakins’ account undermines Harrison’s account, if Deakins was with him.
Not So Formidable Cliffs?
There are other accounts of the cliffs not being formidable. Lt Johnny Wiseman, of 1 Troop, makes nothing of them, saying only “we had the cliffs to climb, we got up the cliffs” (although in another version of his story he mentions in an equally passing manner that scaling ladders were used). Gavin Mortimer, in his book (see below), quotes two men from 3 Troop saying the cliffs were “easy” (though that may apply to a different part of the cliffs, as 3 Troop’s objective was different from 2 Troop’s). Stewart McClean, in his book (see below), says Private Jack Nixon of 3 Troop reported no climbing at all, as there were steps cut into the rock by the Italians.
More tellingly, Mortimer quotes Bob McDougall, who he says was in Harrison’s section. Once ashore, a mate of McDougall’s apparently encouraged him to follow him along the shore, where they found “a path that led from the beach to the top”. Officers did not usually approve of their men wandering off on their own, but if this is in fact correct, and there was a path nearby, why would Harrison have then led the rest of his men up a vertical cliff ?
Harrison says that at first he assumed that his landing spot was the correct one, only later discovering that he was in the wrong place. Lt Peter Davis, like Harrison a section leader in 2 Troop, says much the same, although he differs regarding the severity of the cliffs. In his book “SAS Men in the Making”, written shortly after the war, but not published until 2015, Davis records:
“After assembling on the beach we made towards the cliffs which rose up just ahead. Not that there were really any cliffs, as such, for except for a sharp climb out of the boats of about 5 feet, the shore rose gradually ahead of us in a series of rocky steps and boulders, so the ropes were found to be unnecessary and we were able to reach the top without any undue exertion.”
Further on he explains he later realised he was in the wrong place for the assault:
“We must have touched down half a mile further to the east than planned, with the result that we must now be immediately below the battery […] we had inadvertently landed on the spot which we unanimously agreed from our study of the photos, would be most likely the centre of the danger area.”
1 and 2 Troops of the SRS may have landed here, south-west of the battery. On the right the rocks come down to water level. In the centre-left, low cliffs rise from the sea, heading towards the tall cliffs in the distance. On the left can be seen the low, stepped-up cliffs and bluffs that lead inland.
This area below the battery is roughly where a map in Harrison’s book shows he landed, although on the eastern edge of it. Davis’s account confirms that this area was indeed not the planned landing area, which he says was in fact about half a mile further west. So where did Davis and his men come ashore, and where exactly should they have come ashore? Two recently discovered documents have the answers.
New Documents
The first document, a British war diary, records two 6-figure map references for actual landing spots. War diaries are not infallible, but, even if correct, these give us locations 100 metres wide, no more, no less, and so are unlikely to map exactly onto the width of the actual positions. We are told that 1 and 2 Troops, the assault troops, landed south-west of the battery, while the mortar troop and 3 Troop landed about half a mile further west, in the area Davis says was the correct one.
Orange line – the planned landing beaches. Red dot – the planned firing position for the SRS mortars. Blue dot – where Harrison says he landed. Yellow dots – actual landing spots indicated by map references.
No mention is made of a rogue landing craft (i.e. Harrison’s) landing just south-east of the battery. Further east still, the men of a ditched glider had swum ashore and were sheltering in the cliffs [story]. They made no mention of seeing or encountering the SAS, so it seems Harrison’s claimed landing spot indeed remains the furthest east.
The fact that Harrison’s men and Davis’ men did not encounter each other while landing does not necessarily mean that they landed in very different places. Harrison’s boat may have landed in roughly the same place, but later, because it had stopped to rescue some glider men from the sea, while Davis’ boat had not.
The other document is an aerial photograph of Cape Murro di Porco and the coast to the west of it. It was apparently used in the planning process, as it has score marks in its surface showing where tracing paper was placed on it and then inscribed with arrows. Apart from showing the planned landing spots, it reveals the spread of the units along the intended landing area, and shows their roles in the attack.
3 Troop was the most westerly, and an arrow shows it heading north to block the road and seize a farm called Masseria Damerio. Next on 3 Troop’s right (i.e. east), the mortar troop was supposed to land and take up positions not far inland, at the crest of the ridge. Next came 2 Troop, with an arrow showing it was to circle the battery and take up positions to attack it from the north. Finally, 1 Troop was to head straight for the battery, to attack it from the west, starting with a farm adjacent to the battery’s barracks buildings.
On the night, the mistaken landings south of the battery by 2 Troop, as described by Harrison and Davis, put them in danger not just from the fire of the Italian defenders, but also from their own side. According to the plan, 1 Troop was expecting 2 Troop to be on its left, to the north, with only Italians on its right, to the south. Harrison, who had landed in the south, describes making a huge detour to get back on track. Davis says he waited for some time to hear from his CO, and to join up with the other two sections in 2 Troop, before giving up and heading straight for the battery. Both men describe confusion, and coming under fire from British guns.
Harrison’s and Davis’ accounts, as so often with eye-witness testimony, do not tally. Harrison describes the three sections of 2 Troop eventually joining up, before attacking the guns. Davis, on the other hand, says that they did not succeed in finding each other. He adds that 1 Troop was supposed to secure the battery buildings (which tallies with the aerial photo), while 2 Troop was supposed to take the guns, but, in the confusion, 1 Troop also attacked the guns.
Planned and Actual
The idea of landing half a mile west of the battery was probably based on several considerations. The cliffs there were lower, or further inland. The area was sheltered from the battery’s guns. It was far enough away for the battery’s sentries not to hear anything. There was space to assemble and regroup if the landings were chaotic. It allowed the only road leading to the battery to be cut before the assault went in. This would prevent Italian reinforcements attacking the SAS in the rear while they faced the battery’s defenders. As things turned out, however, although 1 and 2 Troops mistakenly landed much closer to the battery, the mistake made no difference to the result.
The area just east of the planned landing zone. This view has been picked because it has fewer houses than the area of the landing zone, allowing the stepped-back cliffs to be seen. The SRS mortars were to be set up on the top of the ridge. Just to the right of centre, two small figures can be seen at water level, showing that it would have been possible for the SRS to disembark on a shore like this. There were of course no houses at all on this stretch of coast in 1943.
The map references indicate that 3 Troop and the mortar troop landed in roughly the correct place. We have some corroborating evidence for this. Captain Alex Muirhead was CO of the SRS’s mortars. He recorded in a notebook the number of rounds that his mortars fired, and at what ranges. He noted that the opening salvos against the battery were fired at a range of 750 to 800 yards, which tallies with the plan.
So we can be fairly confident that about half of the SRS landed south of Masseria Damerio, as intended. (The view in this link, looking east from high ground, shows the planned beaches below on the right. At the top of the ridge on the left, the roof of a small building shows roughly where the SAS mortars were to be positioned.)
We can also be fairly confident that the rest of the SRS mistakenly landed south-west of the battery, where the rocky shore comes gradually down to sea level, and the cliffs recede inland in steps.
As to whether Harrison’s men climbed vertical cliffs without ropes, it’s unclear. He does not exactly say that they did, although it’s easy for a reader to infer it. He admitted to having a fear of heights, which would exaggerate the risks for him. And if you lose your grip while climbing a steep bluff, you can tumble to your death as surely as from a vertical cliff. It seems very unlikely that he led his men up a vertical cliff – but who knows? Just because a story is dramatic and glamorously heroic, it does not necessarily mean it is not true.
Other stories and photographs of the cliffs of Cape Murro di Porco can be found here and here.
Thanks to Paul Davis for permission to quote from Peter Davis’ book and to use a photo from his album.
Thanks also to the Muirhead family for allowing me to see Alex Muirhead’s documents and photographs.
Books:
Peter Davis, “SAS Men in the Making” can be bought from the publisher here.
Gavin Mortimer, “Stirling’s Men” can be bought from the publisher here.
Stewart McClean, “SAS – The History of the Special Raiding Squadron – Paddy’s Men”, can be bought via the publisher here.
D I Harrison’s “These Men are Dangerous” and W A Deakins’ “The Lame One” both seem to be out of print.
