We sailed for Italy from Oran in Algeria on 6 September 1943. Since we were not allowed to keep diaries (they could fall into enemy hands if we were captured), I can only refresh my mind from reading naval histories and patching it up with what I saw and what others I talked to saw and heard.
A few days before the landings we learned that the Bay of Salerno was mined, and this made it necessary to sweep the mines before the transports could enter the bay. This, in turn, meant that the transports had to lower their landing boats several miles out at sea, in some cases as far as eight or ten miles. The main gunfire support area was a rectangular block just to seaward from the mouth of the Sele River, and the minesweepers had to clear it as well before the cruisers and destroyers could give support to the troops ashore.
It was rumored that U.S. Vice Admiral H. Kent Hewitt, the overall Navy commander at the scene, had offered several rocket ships to Lieutenant General Mark Clark (commander of the Fifth Army) to clear the beaches before the landings were made, but Clark had declined because he still hoped he could make the landings and catch the enemy by surprise. As a result, the first combat teams to land were met with very heavy resistance, and some were wiped out completely by the German machine-gun nests and the heavy artillery barrages coming down from the hills above.
The Mayo (DD-422) had no public address system at that time, and our news came from rumors or from our radios. We had Navy-installed AM radios and could get stations directly without having to go through the official communication department, but most of the time we got Arab-style music, which made us nauseous with its moans and groans. As a result, we relied on rumor emanating from the radio shack. We did not know, but had guessed, that we were headed for the Italian coast somewhere between Rome and the toe of Italy, and some had looked at maps and could see the only place that had much going for it as a landing area was Salerno Bay.
We were on a course that would carry us to the north of Sicily from Oran, and soon we could hear the Italian radio stations. It was all excitement. On 8 September so many rumors were around that we were wondering if the war in Italy was going to end. Mussolini was out, and Marshal Pietro Badoglio was in, and there were rumors that the Italians might withdraw from the war and join the Allied powers. At 1830 that evening, General Dwight D. Eisenhower came on the air from Sicily and announced that the Italians were surrendering and would get out of the war. This relaxed everyone. As someone else said, “we are headed for Italy, and the Italians have surrendered! The war is over!” Oh that it could have been so, but it was not. As one of our admirals said, the fact that the Italians had surrendered meant that they would not have to fight us when we landed because we were no longer enemies—but the Germans still were there. They had sent more than 100 bombers to Tunisia to attack the ships assembling there and had sunk quite a few of them. They were not out of the war by a long shot.
The Mayo was assigned to the invasion force screen for antisubmarine duty. Our position was several miles from the beach directly west from Paestum; we were to keep any submarines and E-boats (the German equivalent of PT-boats) out of the coastal area. It was our responsibility to see that no ships of any type were torpedoed from the sea. We had the same mission as the destroyer Maddox (DD-622), which was bombed by German dive-bombers on 10 July during the landings at Gela on Sicily; she sank in two minutes and lost 200 men killed or missing. We were determined that this would not happen to us, and we on the Mayo and the other ships on screen duty kept an alert lookout for both torpedoes and dive-bombers.
The troops began landing in the early dawn of 9 September, and we could hear the roar from German artillery and the fire from the U.S. forces that managed to get ashore. This noise kept going for seven days, until the Germans finally were forced to retreat through the valleys beyond Ponte Sele. Luckily, our minesweepers had cleared the way through the minefields by midmorning, and the cruisers and destroyers on fire-support duty had managed to make their might felt. They shot up tanks and a tobacco factory (where the enemy had taken refuge), and any type of target they were assigned by fire-control spotters.
By the second day, it was reported that part of the 36th Infantry Division had reached a point several miles inland, and it was in good shape. But this was about the time we got word that one of our fellow destroyers on screen duty, the Rowan (DD-405), had been hit by a torpedo the night before, presumably by an E-boat, because there had been no submarine contacts. The torpedo had hit her magazine, and she sank in less than a minute; 202 out of her crew of 273 went down with her. The Rowan had been escorting a convoy back to Oran. When a tragedy such as this happens so close to home it makes your spine tingle, and you understand what it means when they say you are expendable.
The sound of firing from the beach was incessant. I listened for a letup or change from the constant noise, but it kept going, night and day. At night we did not notice quite so much because of the raids by the Luftwaffe. The German bombers were from the big fields around Bari, to the northeast on the Adriatic coast of Italy, or southern France. They would fly to the west, far out to sea, and then come in low over the invasion force. We could hear the droning of their engines as they passed overhead, but we did not fire at them because they did not know where we were—and we did not want to invite them to attack. We were about seven or eight miles from the beach area, and we could see when the bombers got to the landing zone because the 1.1-inch and 40-mm guns would open up with a barrage of defensive flak. The cruisers had 40-mm mounts with four barrels each; I could see the salvos going up four lines at a time. They streaked across the night sky like a fireman directing a hose spraying water on a fire.
During the daytime, the German planes (mostly fighter-bombers) made quick diving raids on the beachheads and scooted away. On the third day, the Germans used one of their new radio-guided glide bombs on the cruiser Savannah (CL-42), which had been pounding German positions steadily with her 6-inch guns. The Germans had developed a rocket-assisted bomb with radio-controlled fins on its tail that allowed it to be directed visually from the plane that dropped it. A large plane, flying above the range of antiaircraft guns at 18,000 feet or so, dropped one over the beachhead and directed it toward the cruiser. The bomb hit the top of the Savannah’s No. 3 turret and penetrated all the way through to the lower handling room, where it exploded. The detonation killed everyone in the turret and blew a hole in the bottom of the ship.
Because of her watertight integrity, however, the Savannah did not sink. She did eventually lose power and had to be towed to Malta, where she received temporary repairs to get her back to the States. As the tug Hopi (ATF-71) towed the Savannah through the ships in the area, a command ship nearby sounded attention on the bugle over her public address system, and all hands took time out from the war to pay respects by rendering hand salutes to the valiant cruiser and her fallen crewmen. A total of 197 men were killed.
This shook us up so badly that the next day we peered intently into the high heavens above and sometimes saw things that were not there. Some bright-eyed lookout saw something moving directly above the gun-director platform (above the navigation bridge) past the mainmast and the radar antennas. Everybody began looking, then the gun crews took it up and soon some were pointing it out to others; it was moving around in circles and elliptical patterns. It was directly overhead, so our 5-inch guns could not elevate high enough to let us look at it through our high-powered telescopes. We finally decided that our guns were not powerful enough to reach it: it was identified as one of the visible planets, reflecting sunlight just at the right time and in the right place to make us think that a German Dornier bomber was about to launch a glide bomb on somebody below. Someone even explained that the elliptical movements it appeared to be making were in fact optical illusions, because we were seeing the mainmast moving in this pattern and not the planet. We went back to looking for more earthly enemies.
We could not get refueled at sea from regular Navy oilers; all we had at Salerno were foreign-flag tankers anchored near the beach. When our fuel got low, we had to go alongside a tanker, throw over our mooring lines, and take the fuel hose and begin filling our fuel tanks—praying all the time that we would not be dive-bombed in the process. The tankers had 20-mm guns and were a hard, crusty bunch. Most of the ones we saw were manned by civilian crews. When an enemy plane flew over, the crewmen rushed to their guns, pulled the firing levers, and let go with their 20-mm guns, never even looking up to see what kind of plane it was. Peacetime Navy regulation never would have allowed a ship to fuel and fire guns simultaneously. So we loaded our fuel and got out in record time, back to the “safety” of the firing line.
Late one afternoon, a red alert was sounded for high-flying planes that could have been carrying glide bombs, and the Mayo and several other destroyers were called in to lay smoke to protect the cruisers. We jumped up to 25 knots in a hurry and began belching smoke from a diesel smoke maker on the stern, near the depth-charge racks. The smoke drifted all over the place, and the ships closer to the beach began firing at low-flying planes that may have been on strafing runs. The cruiser Philadelphia (CL-41) was straddled by several near misses, but we never knew if they were regular or glide bombs. We also learned later that the Royal Navy ships were catching hell from the same things. The reason the Germans were using their technical ingenuity to employ expensive weapons to take out the Navy ships was abundantly clear: our guns were destroying their chances to push the Allied armies off the beachhead. To counter this, U.S. and British electronic technicians and engineers already were in the Mediterranean installing glider-bomb countermeasures on ships. They first were used at Anzio the following January.
We heard rumors from the beach that General Clark was contemplating withdrawing his army from the beachhead south of the Sele and relanding it north of the river. This was 14 September, and we had been stopped and pushed back from the heights that the Army had obtained in the first couple of days. We let out a soulful groan, because to us this meant our troops were in trouble somehow, and we were out there on screen duty and wanted to shell a few tanks ourselves. We did not know it, but our time on the firing line was approaching fast.
The next morning, on 15 September, the gunner’s mates and I had just completed our daily morning checks to be sure we had everything ready, tested, and inspected in case we had to shoot that day. This was routine, and we did it every day. My main job in battle was to keep the guns firing and to be at the beck and call of the gunnery officer, who was in the gun director above the bridge. This is when we got the order to proceed to the fire support area and report when we were ready to shoot.
Before the day was finished we fired more than 1,200 rounds of 5-inch projectiles, or more than 300 rounds for each of our four guns. Our targets mainly were German Tiger tanks, which were advancing down the banks of the Sele and trying to reach its mouth in an attempt to separate the Allied armies from one another. They failed in their mission. In fact, the very next day, the German commander in southern Italy, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, issued a withdrawal order to his forces—opening the road to Naples.
We found out some things later that we did not know on the 15th. One was that from the mouth of the Sele it is about three or four miles to its confluence with the Calore, which branches off to the northeast. Another was that just the day before, Kesselring had recalled his forces in Calabria engaged with the British Eighth Army advancing from Sicily; this added at least another Panzer division to Kesselring’s forces at Salerno. At least one other Panzer division also was being rushed southward from areas north of Naples. And finally, the previous German attack on the salient between the Sele and the Calore had been stopped because a bridge was out, having been burned in the initial rout of the Germans in the first two days after the landings.
Because of these circumstances, the German armored offensive we became engaged in stopping was fought on the plain just north of the Sele in an area that was a distance of about 12,000 yards. The men who did the actual firing of the guns, including all of the deck division personnel, the gunner’s mates, and myself, as well as the ammo handlers down below from the powder magazines all the way up to the guns—in fact everybody on the ship—had no idea where we were shooting. Now and then a word or two would trickle down from the director control station such as, “the Germans stopped like a bunch of cowboys on the screen chasing Indians, when they suddenly saw more Indians than they had horses.” This was boastful enlisted-man talk, and usually it was between two telephone talkers, when one or the other asked what was happening.
We got our first call from a spotting team, fired a four-gun salvo, and waited until it burst on the target. A range and deflection change was made, and we fired another salvo. Then suddenly came the command: “Rapid fire!” These were our very first shots at a real enemy—one that deserved every bit of it, too. The cease-fire klaxon blared as the tenth salvo in rapid fire went out, and we stopped with all guns unloaded.
Sometimes the spotter ashore would say, “Good, right on, they turned and fled.” Sometimes they would be quiet, and sometimes they could get a little excited, too. This range was nearly perfect for the easiest loading of the guns, because they were elevated at a good angle. The ship must have been about 5,000 yards from the beach, and the targets another 5,000 or so yards. The actual range was determined from the distance on the grid between our position and the target’s position. We could not see the targets we were firing at; they were behind the hills from us.
After we had fired three or four times, the guns began to get hot—and then they got hotter. We had to open all the doors and ventilation ports on the gun enclosures. Our No. 4 gun had been an open mount, exposed to the elements, when one of our navy yard visits saw them put a metal shrapnel shield around it. It still did not have a top, other than a fine canvas cover held in place by a few arc-shaped pipes. This was good, except that Salerno in September can be miserably hot, and after a few firing engagements we got permission to remove the canvas. It was good for the crew, because they were able to see the battle scene and get fresh air, too. As the day wore on, the heat from firing the guns and the distribution of ammunition began to take on a more serious aspect. Everyone was getting used to the routine, and no dive-bombers or glide bombs had threatened us.
The forward magazine had an ammunition capacity only about half as much as the large after powder magazine. As the day progressed, and it became apparent we were going to have to shoot at many more tanks, we began to carry ammunition from the big magazine to the smaller one near the bow. This was a problem in labor, but borrowing men from the antiaircraft gun crews solved it. The job was not quite as bad as it seemed, because the ammo had to be carried only to the handling room of each 5-inch gun, and not all the way down into the magazines.
Sometime about 1100 or 1200, the tremendous amounts of heat generated in the gun barrels began to take their toll on the equipment, and it was not the type of mechanical trouble that could be repaired easily. First, the hydraulic rammers began to slow up as the tremendous heat spread to everything on or in the gun mount, and the leather gaskets began to swell from the heat. I loosened the packing glands, which helped for a while. Then we began to notice that the paint on the gun barrels had begun to blister all along their lengths because of the tremendous heat involved. We had been firing for some three or four hours off and on, and had fired, by that time, maybe 150 rounds per gun. This meant we had answered as many as 14 or 15 requests from the spotters for gun support. The Tiger tanks kept coming, however, and the spotter, at one time, said a half dozen or so were making tracks through the river plain. When the salvos began to fall at four-second intervals, the Panzers all turned as if at a corner and tried to speed away from the gunfire, but not all of them made it. We did not have any choice about continuing to fire even though we could have burned up all our equipment in the process.
We had canvas boots on each gun barrel to keep seawater and other elements from entering the gun mount and deteriorating the equipment. At one rest period, the gun crews and I looked at the canvas and found that it was charring. We began pulling the burnt pieces away from the barrels and throwing them overboard so they would not be a fire hazard and to let the captured heat escape from under the canvas. At the end of one barrage, the gunnery officer called for cease-fire just as the guns were loading, and three of the guns managed to fire their projectiles—but mount No. 5 was caught with a round in the chamber and no target to hit. I was afraid the projectile might explode in the gun barrel and kill or injure the crew. I ordered the gun captain, who also was wearing the headphones at the moment, to notify the gunnery officer that we needed to fire the gun immediately lest the projectile explode from the excessive heat of the barrel. We got immediate attention. The bridge called for a radar-clear bearing where no ships were located, and we trained the gun away from the land and fired the round.
At around 1730 we became aware again that life outside our destroyer and our gun mounts still existed. We looked afar and saw the Philadelphia firing at a low-flying aircraft, and several destroyers were out where we had been before, in the screen and making smoke.
We were told that as soon as we could get the ammo containers off our decks we would have to head for Bizerte in Tunisia to replenish our supply of ammunition. We still had several hundred rounds left, but much of these consisted of the proximity-fuzed shells that could be used only against aircraft, star shells, phosphorous shells, armor-piercing shells, and about 200 of the projectiles we had been firing that day.
While all hands were busy using fire axes on the brass cartridge cases and the stressed-aluminum cartridge stowage containers and throwing them over the side (there were more than 2,400 pieces, covering everything, and we discovered quickly that the brass cases could be made to sink without cutting them with axes), the gunner’s mates and I were busy checking over the guns for the trip to Bizerte. They may have been hot and they may have been dirty, but they were ours, and they were all the protection we would have for a while. In the meantime, the strikers were busy with paint scalers clearing all the paint from the barrels of the 5-inch guns. We let the guns cool down slowly, and at first dawn we starting cleaning the bores with soapy water, running the bore gauges, oiling the bores, and lubricating each of the mounts.
After the smoke cleared at Salerno, we were proud to be elevated to the company of the gunfire support ships. We had the privilege at the Anzio landing on 22 January 1944 of initiating the gunfire at that beachhead. We were riding in our Cinderella coach, which soon was turned back into a pumpkin, because the Mayo would be severely damaged. But that is a story for another time.
The Battle for Salerno: 9–16 September 1943
The invasion of Sicily on 10 July 1943 signaled the death’s knell for Benito Mussolini’s Fascist rule in Italy. With Allied armies advancing swiftly from their landing beaches near Syracuse and bombing raids over Rome spreading destruction on the Italian homeland for the first time in the war, Il Duce’s regime collapsed two weeks later, on 25 July. A provisional government, under Marshal Pietro Badoglio, took over, but tentatively remained loyal to Germany.
The Allied Combined Chiefs of Staff in spring 1943 had been divided over whether to invade Italy or even Sicily. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had long advocated launching a second front through Italy to attack Germany from the south; U.S. planners, especially Lieutenant General Dwight Eisenhower, advocated conserving Allied forces until a more decisive campaign could be launched in France. A consensus on invasion emerged once the success of the Sicilian operation and the subsequent weakening of the Italian government offered the possibility of knocking Italy out of the war.
The campaign began in earnest with the British Eighth Army’s assault across the Strait of Messina from Sicily to Calabria on the tip of the Italian “boot” on 3 September. Five days later, the Italian government announced an armistice with the Allies.
On 9 September, the invasion of Salerno commenced. Operation Avalanche was spearheaded by four divisions plus reserves of the Fifth Army under U.S. Army Lieutenant General Mark Clark. The two landing areas were some eight miles apart, with the Sele River in between. The Southern Attack Force (under the command of U.S. Navy Rear Admiral John L. Hall), landed the U.S. VI Corps, made up of the 36th and 45th Infantry Divisions. The Northern Attack Force (commanded by Royal Navy Commodore G. N. Oliver), carried the British X Corps, consisting of the 46th and 56th Infantry Divisions.