Armoured Warfare in the Italian Campaign, 1943–1945

By Anthony Tucker-Jones

This WWII pictorial history illustrates the wide array of armored vehicles deployed by Allied and Axis powers in Italy.

The Second World War campaigns in North Africa, on the Eastern Front and in northwest Europe were dominated by armored warfare, but the battles in Italy were not. The Italian peninsula’s mountainous terrain was best suited to an infantry war. Yet from the Allied landings in Sicily in 1943 to the German surrender after the crossing of the Po in 1945, tanks, self-propelled guns and armored cars were essential elements in the operations of both sides.

Anthony Tucker-Jones’s selection of rare wartime photographs shows armor in battle at Salerno, Anzio and Monte Cassino, during the struggle for the Gustav Line, the advance on Rome and the liberation of northern Italy. These dramatic images reveal the full array of Axis and Allied armored vehicles that was deployed, including German Panzers, Panthers, and Tigers and Allied Stuarts, Chafees, Shermans and Churchills. They also vividly illustrate the Italian landscapes over which the campaign was fought and the grueling conditions endured by the men who fought in it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Sep 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9781783468980

Anthony Tucker-Jones

Anthony Tucker-Jones, a former intelligence officer, is a highly prolific writer and military historian with well over 50 books to his name. His work has also been published in an array of magazines and online. He regularly appears on television and radio commenting on current and historical military matters.

Book preview

Chapter One

The Luftwaffe’s Sicilian Panzers

Following the German and Italian defeat in Tunisia, the Allies turned their attentions to the Italian island of Sicily.The invasion of Sicily was not a foregone conclusion. Ideally, the Allies wanted to open a new front in western Europe, but at this stage simply did not have the resources in place to conduct a landing in northern France. Options on the table for the Allied planners included invasions of the Italian island of Sardinia or the French island of Corsica, with subsequent advances into northern Italy and southern France respectively. It was decided that an invasion of Sicily and an advance into southern Italy was the preferred option as it offered shorter and safer lines of communication with Allied forces in North Africa. Fighter cover could also be provided from Malta. Crucially this Sicilian ‘right hook’ alternative was intended to serve much grander goals.

Strategically, it was hoped that an attack on southern Italy would draw the Germans away from Normandy and the Eastern Front, but this led to differences of opinion among the Allies. The Americans saw the Italian campaign as a way to sap Germany’s strength from more important fronts, rather than as a major effort to defeat the Axis powers in Italy. The British, on the other hand, saw a push north through Italy and into Austria and southern Germany as a way of striking at Hitler. This was an important schism because it meant that in mid-1944, at a crucial moment in the Italian campaign, the Allied armies were drained of resources to support the fighting in France.

The Germans had two armoured formations deployed on Sicily: the Luftwaffe’s Hermann Göring Panzer Division commanded by General Paul Conrath and the 15th Panzergrenadier Division under General Eberhard Rodtfrom.These units could field a total of 159 tanks between them.They were reinforced by General Walter Fries’ 29th Panzergrenadier Division, which began to arrive in mid-July and came under General Hans-Valentin Hube’s 14th Panzer