World War 2 In Review No. 59

By Merriam Press

Merriam Press World War 2 In Review Series. The following articles on World War II are in this issue: (1) 82nd Airborne Division in Sicily (2) American Army Lieutenant General Joseph May Swing (3) Australian Rover Light Armored Car (4) The 4th Armored Division in World War II (5) The Panthers in Paris (6) American T56 3in Gun Motor Carriage (7) American T57 3in Gun Motor Carriage (8) Germany’s Top Aces of World War II (9) German Fighter Ace Gustav Rödel (10) Messerschmitt Aircraft GmbH Data (11) Norwegian Artillery (12) Organization and Commitment of Special Cavalry Brigade ‘Model’ Near Olenino in the Rzhev Sector During the Spring and Summer of 1942 with the Mission to Fight and Advance in Any Type of Terrain (13) German Arado Ar 234 Jet Bomber (14) Coincidence: A True Wartime Episode (15) Anzio’s Most Tortured Decision: Should We Kill Our Own Troops? 338 B&W/color photos/illustrations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9780359419760

Book preview

World War 2 In Review No. 59

World War 2 In Review No. 59

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Hoosick Falls, New York

2019

First eBook Edition

Copyright © 2019 by Merriam Press

Additional material copyright of named contributors.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

The views expressed are solely those of the author.

ISBN 978-0-359-41976-0

This work was designed, produced, and published in the United States of America by the Merriam Press, 489 South Street, Hoosick Falls NY 12090.

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Mission Statement

This series presents articles and pictorials on topics covering many aspects of World War 2. In addition to new articles and pictorials on topics not previously covered, future volumes may include additional material on the subjects covered in this volume. The volumes in this series will comprise a single source for innumerable articles and tens of thousands of images of interest to anyone interested in the history and study of World War 2. While no doubt some of these images and other materials could be found online, countless hours could be spent searching thousands of web sites to find at least some of this material.

The Images

These photos are seventy-plus years old, were taken under less than ideal conditions, and some were taken by individuals who were neither professional photographers nor using professional equipment. Thus, the quality of the original image may be less than perfect. While Merriam Press tries to obtain the best quality images possible, the quality of the images in this publication will no doubt vary greatly.

This series of publications utilizes the editor’s collection of tens of thousands of photographs and other illustrative material acquired since 1968. Hundreds of sources over the years have been searched for material on every subject.

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Merriam Press welcomes any contributions of photographs

of this or any subject for future volumes in this series.

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Welcome to No. 59 of the World War 2 In Review Series

The following articles are in this issue of World War 2 In Review:

(1) 82nd Airborne Division in Sicily

(2) American Army Lieutenant General Joseph May Swing

(3) Australian Rover Light Armored Car

(4) The 4th Armored Division in World War II

(5) The Panthers in Paris

(6) American T56 3in Gun Motor Carriage

(7) American T57 3in Gun Motor Carriage

(8) Germany’s Top Aces of World War II

(9) German Fighter Ace Gustav Rödel

(10) Messerschmitt Aircraft GmbH Data

(11) Norwegian Artillery

(12) Organization and Commitment of Special Cavalry Brigade ‘Model’ Near Olenino in the Rzhev Sector During the Spring and Summer of 1942 with the Mission to Fight and Advance in Any Type of Terrain

(13) German Arado Ar 234 Jet Bomber

(14) Coincidence: A True Wartime Episode

(15) Anzio’s Most Tortured Decision: Should We Kill Our Own Troops?

with 338 B&W and color photographs, maps and illustrations.

Watch for future issues of this series with more articles on the history of World War II.

82nd Airborne Division in Sicily

by James A. Huston

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Members of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment patrol Sicily after capturing the island from Germany in early July 1943.

In a conference at Casablanca in January 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill accepted the recommendation of the United States-British Combined Chiefs of Staff that the next Allied objective in the Mediterranean after the North African campaign had been concluded should be Sicily. The target date was the period of the favorable July moon.

The objective might have been Corsica, or Sardinia, or perhaps Crete in the Eastern Mediterranean. Corsica and Sardinia were more lightly defended and might have been springboards for an invasion of Italy in the vicinity of the Po Valley—with a view to sawing off the Italian boot instead of fighting up its entire length—or for an earlier invasion of southern France. But it was none of these. It was Sicily, because the military chiefs and the national leaders concluded that this would involve less risk to the shipping needed for the assault waves and follow-on support; that the control of Sicily would be an important advantage in the security of sea lines of communication through the Mediterranean; that its airfields would be more useful in the further bombing of Italy; that it would provide a convenient jumping-off place for an invasion of the Italian mainland; and that its capture would be decisive in persuading Italy to leave the war.

Four months after the Roosevelt-Churchill conference, the 82nd Airborne Division, commanded by Major General Matthew Ridgway, arrived at Casablanca. Within a day or two, leaders of the division knew that they were scheduled to parachute into Sicily on the night of 9 July. After three days in a staging area eight miles outside Casablanca, the division set out by train, truck, and plane for Oujda and Mahrnia, site of the Fifth Army Airborne Training Center, in the northeast corner of the country near the Algerian border and close to the Mediterranean Sea.

After six weeks of sleeping on the ground in rows of pup tents and facing daily dust storms and blistering heat (and also weakened by that universal malady of army life in strange lands—dysentery), the men of the 82nd Airborne were ready to jump into battle anywhere just to escape.

Under the overall command of the British General Sir Harold R. L. G. Alexander and his 15th Army Group Headquarters, General George S. Patton’s newly organized U.S. Seventh Army with its single II Corps under Omar Bradley was to make the assault in the Gulf of Gela. At the same time, the British Eighth Army, under General Sir Bernard L. Montgomery, on the right, was to attack at the corner of the island, Cape Passero, and through the Gulf of Noto as far north as the vicinity of Syracuse.

In the U.S. zone the 45th Infantry Division, on the right, would assault a wide stretch of beach on either side of Scoglitti; the 1st Division, in the center, would hit Gela and capture the Ponto Olivo airfield, about five miles inland; and the 3rd Division, on the left, would go for the beaches and the airfield around Licata.

Not enough airlift was available for either the 82nd or the British 1st Airborne Division to be fully committed on D-Day. On the British side a glider brigade was to lead the way, in the manner of the Germans on Crete in 1941, with an assault on Ponte Grande, just south of Syracuse. For the Americans, the parachute troops would lead. For this mission Ridgway chose the 505th Regimental Combat Team, including the 456th Parachute Field Artillery Battalion, and reinforced it with the 3rd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry, all under the command of Colonel James Gavin.

The planners’ first thought was to use the paratroopers directly against the beach defenses. Later, this was changed to a mission of seizing key points—primarily in the 1st Division zone—to block the movement of enemy counterattacking or reinforcing units and to clear the way for the seaborne forces to move rapidly inland. Specifically, the paratroopers were to seize the high ground known as Piano Lupo east and northeast of Gela and to assist the 1st Division in the capture of the Ponto Olivo airfield. After a link-up with the 1st Division had been affected, General Bradley planned to attach the 3rd Battalion, 504th Infantry, to the 1st Division to help in capturing Niscemi, which was about five miles to the northeast of the Ponto Olivo airfield. The remainder of the 504th Infantry Regimental Combat Team was to assemble near Gela as a 1st Division reserve. The airborne planners hoped for a link-up with the 1st Division within a few hours, but they planned for Colonel Gavin’s units to receive an initial re-supply by air.

The defenses of Sicily were in the hands of 200,000 men of the Italian Sixth Army—rather poorly trained, organized, and equipped—and two well-trained and equipped German divisions, the 15th Panzergrenadier Division and the Hermann Göring Division, which arrived in Sicily in June. The 15th Panzergrenadier Division moved to the western part of the island while the Hermann Göring Division concentrated most of its elements at Caltagirone, about 20 miles northeast of Gela and prepared to launch a counterattack against any beach landings in the area.

Thanks to the ULTRA system, by which the Allies were privy to the German code and thus could eavesdrop on German radio communications, Alexander, Montgomery, Patton, and their staffs knew of the whereabouts of the two German divisions in Sicily. They also knew that Colonel Gavin’s soldiers were likely to encounter the Hermann Göring Division soon after landing. Yet they dared not pass this information on to the 82nd, so they thought, because some captured paratrooper might disclose the information, an action that might compromise ULTRA itself. (Surely aerial reconnaissance and photography should also have revealed the presence of those divisions, but Allied intelligence summaries, unfortunately, were silent on the matter.)

When it came down to the individual airborne infantry battalions, it may not have made any difference anyway. Known enemy dispositions might have influenced the location of their drop zones, but whatever the enemy, the order was to attack.

Meanwhile, the airborne forces continued their training. Small unit leaders studied sand-table models of the Sicilian terrain; battalions rehearsed their ground attacks on replicas of their objectives set up in the training areas; troop carrier and airborne commanders coordinated loading plans and memorized aerial photographs of the objective area.

On a June night just a month before D-Day when conditions were expected to be similar, Gavin and some other airborne leaders were able to make a night aerial reconnaissance over the route they would follow for the attack—east from Kairoun, Tunisia, over the island of Linosa to Malta and from there, after a sharp turn to the north-northwest, to Gela, Sicily. The weather that evening was perfect. Calm and peaceful, the whole Mediterranean lay bare under a bomber’s moon. The checkpoints appeared on schedule. As the flight approached Sicily, land first came into sight on the right, just as it was supposed to, and the terrain below matched the aerial photographs they had memorized—and which the pilot also carried in his cockpit. Gavin wished that this were the invasion itself, because everything seemed perfect for it.

Final preparations hastened. Ridgway chafed at the lack of fighter protection to be provided for the troop carrier columns—the fighter planes were to be off on other missions judged to be of higher priority.

Friday, 9 July, dawned calm and clear—as nearly all summer days did in Tunisia—and the airborne soldiers soon were busy checking equipment and loading planes.

High winds were springing up by late afternoon, though, as the men, wearing white bands pinned to their sleeves for identification and carrying heavy packs of equipment and weapons, climbed aboard the planes.

The sun was setting as the planes of the U.S. 52nd Troop Carrier Wing began roaring down the runways with the paratroopers of the 505th Combat Team. Only now were the men told their destination, and each was given a slip of paper with a message from Colonel Gavin:

Soldiers of the 505th Combat Team

Tonight you embark upon a mission for which our people and the free people of the world have been waiting for two years.

You will spearhead the landing of an American Force