Burning Isle

A U.S. airman, back again from Sicily with his medium bomber, relaxed at a dusty North African airdrome and sought words for the things he had seen.

"You get the impression," he said, "that the whole of Sicily is slowly burning up."

American, British, Canadian and South African airmen in Fortresses, Liberators, Wellingtons, Marauders, Mustangs, Spitfires and Warhawks created that impression. From North Africa, from Pantelleria, from Malta, Egypt and Libya, they flew over Sicily and Mother Italy, revealing to the enemy and to the world a perfected pattern of the new warfare.

In this warfare, bombs from planes, shells from ships and shells from artillery batteries often found the same targets. In this warfare, air power was one element in the larger, total power of air forces, navies and armies. Yet, in this warfare, air power was free--free to be used as airmen willed and designed it. First in Spain, then in the early campaigns of World War II, the Germans had made an imperfect start in this warfare. Now, over Sicily and Italy, it was waged from the air with a might, diversity and cohesion which the Germans never approached.

The Far Targets. The system was developed in the African desert, and perfected in Libya and Tunisia, by the men who now directed its first use against Axis Europe.

These commanders and forces had only one duty: to strike where their blows would forward the invasion.

Naples, the Italian port and arms center 190 miles north of Sicily, was such a target, because from Naples flowed much Axis traffic to Sicily. Last week Fortresses and Wellingtons from Doolittle's command laid a belt of flame across Naples' docks, torpedo factory, arsenal and railway yards. In one series of attacks the Wellingtons struck by night, the Fortresses by day. In another and greater raid, ripped the heart of Naples.

From the separate but coordinated Middle East Air Command, Liberators crossed the Mediterranean and struck Naples, the airdromes of Foggia and the ferry terminal at Reggio Calabria, where supplies are shunted across the Strait of Messina to Sicily. To give the Italians more trouble, the Liberators set a forest ablaze with incendiary bombs. Middle Eastern Liberators also attacked the island itself, joining Fortresses and medium bombers from western Africa in a 24-hour raid on Messina, the Sicilian terminus of the ferry run. Night-bombing Wellingtons, and heavy, medium and fighter-bombers by day, kindled and rekindled the fires of Palermo, also an important port of entry for Axis supplies and reinforcements.

The twin-engined Beaufighters of Hugh Lloyd's coastal force hunted over the Tyrrhenian Sea between Sicily and Sardinia. In 24 hours they destroyed 20,000 tons of small shipping with torpedoes and bombs.

The Near Targets. In the flexible Allied air command, the Doolittle and Coningham forces often meshed for common operations. Thus a target of both was the railway system which threads Sicily's mountains and connects its ports, enabling the Axis to shift its reserve forces quickly.

The bombs on Messina and Palermo crippled that system. Coningham's medium bombers, light bombers and fighter-bombers struck its inner vitals--at Enna, Leonforte and Caltagirone, at the tunnels which pierce the Sicilian hills and offer rare opportunities to block the rail lines. By week's end the R.A.F. reported that the main line along the east coast from Messina to Catania had been blocked, the north Coastal railway from Palermo to Messina cut in one place, the winding line from Palermo across Sicily to Syracuse "destroyed."

Pilots in low-flying A36 fighter-bombers, Lightnings, Warhawks and Spitfires sweated in the Mediterranean heat, ranging the dusty roads for troop convoys, tanks and artillery. Soon it seemed to them that they could find only the ruins of earlier attacks. ("Targets are becoming scarcer by the hour.") But there would be "targets of opportunity" until the last Axis force had surrendered.

The Air Line. As Allied troops seized Sicilian airdromes, Allied fighters moved in to be nearer the enemy. Bombers would follow later. The fighters had to have gasoline, ammunition and repairs as soon as they began to fly from the captured fields; at first the materials and men to keep the fighters flying had to be brought in by air. One of the most dangerous, most important and least noticed phases of combined warfare was this job of air supply. Said one of the younger pilots who did the job: "Here we go again. We move into the combat zone so damn fast that we feel like fighter pilots. The Jerries take off, then we land, then our fighters land and we gas them up. Why, sometimes we damn near gas the Jerries up."

The Enemy. The skies of Sicily and the Mediterranean belonged to the Allies, but this fact did not mean that the enemy was absent or impotent. In the first days German fighters and bombers repeatedly attacked the ships offshore and the beachheads jammed with men and supplies (see p. 28). In the air Allied losses were low, and so was the bag of enemy planes: the Axis fighters avoided combat with Allied fighters when they could. But enemy ack-ack on Sicily was often concentrated and dangerous. Allied air supremacy was won and maintained by a gallantry all the more impressive because it was routine.

Two examples:

> The B-26 (Marauder) called Hell's Belle was on the run to its target when a burst of flak struck the plane. The bombardier was hit. A staff sergeant, serving both as radio operator and waist gunner, had his right leg nearly severed. The pilot shouted to the bombardier to forget the bombs, but he leaned over, dripping blood on his bombsight. and let them go. An Me-109 approached. The wounded sergeant dragged himself to his gun, shot down the Messerschmitt, then picked up a camera and photographed the crash. Two other gunners gave him a shot of morphine, put a tourniquet on his leg, nursed him safely back to base.

> Flak caught another B-26 over the same target, killed the pilot. His body fell forward and threw the ship out of control. The copilot, Flight Officer Stanley B. Farley Jr., lifted the pilot off the controls and pulled the plane out of a spin. The gunners were all wounded, but they crawled forward and dragged the pilot's body out of Farley's way. He had never landed a B26, a plane so "hot" on landing that many experienced pilots do not like to fly it. But Farley brought his B-26 in gently, drifting it in just fast enough to keep it from stalling. Afterward he said: "We all walked away, all that could walk after that flak. I guess that's all we could ask."

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