‘A Glorious Retreat’ The Evacuation of Sicily

The Allies initiated Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily, on the evening of 9 July 1943. The amphibious landings exceeded all expectations. Despite the Axis anticipating the assault, initial Italian resistance was lackluster, and the Allies rapidly built combat power ashore. With two field armies driving across the island, the Allies maintained air and sea superiority throughout the campaign. Italian dictator Benito Mussolini offered little support or reinforcement to Sicily before his government collapsed. Axis planners had feared an Allied landing on Calabria, the southernmost region of mainland Italy, might bottle up German and Italian forces on Sicily and that the bulk of their forces on the island would be lost.¹ 

Instead, under the leadership of Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, German and Italian troops conducted an amphibious evacuation of the highest order: Operation Lehrgang. General Hans Hube, commander of the 14th Panzer Corps, and Italian General Alfredo Guzzoni, commander of the Italian 6th Army, conducted the withdrawal of Axis forces from Sicily across the Strait of Messina to the Italian mainland. While many factors contributed to the operation’s success, Commander Gustav von Liebenstein’s reforms to the German ferry service and his leadership in naval operations proved decisive. 

While under constant pressure from Allied offensives and amphibious end runs, the Axis transported the preponderance of its forces across the strait. The Allies missed their chance at rolling up otherwise isolated defenders, and several Axis divisions slipped across the water in fighting condition—divisions the Allies would continue to fight throughout the rest of the Italian campaign, until the very end of World War II.  

The Evacuation Order

The intent of Operation Husky was to drive the Axis from Sicily, initiate the Allied invasion of Italy, and open sea lanes in the Mediterranean to Allied shipping for the first time since 1941. A combination of airborne attacks and amphibious assaults from 9 to 10 July, the Sicily landings were the largest amphibious operation of the war in terms of divisions put ashore on D-day. While mountainous terrain canalized Allied forces across two primary routes on the northern and southern coasts of the island, Lieutenant General George Patton’s 7th Army and General Bernard Montgomery’s 8th Army made steady progress north and east, advancing toward Messina. Located at the northeast end of Sicily, Messina offered the only suitable ferry routes by which to cross from Sicily to Italy. If Messina fell, so too would Sicily, along with the forces that remained on the island.

Adolf Hitler vacillated, hoping Hube and Guzzoni would miraculously rout their enemies and win back Sicily. But it was clear to Kesselring that an evacuation was necessary to save his forces and preserve them for better employment on the Italian Peninsula. Risking the Führer’s ire, Kesselring ordered Hube and Guzzoni to start the evacuation before it received Hitler’s approval. Kesselring’s audacity bought precious time that was essential to the evacuation’s success.²    

The Italian 6th Army began its evacuation on 9 August, while the 14th Panzer Corps started on 10 August. Each night, Kesselring planned to transport several thousand troops across the strait and then fall back to the next line of resistance. To do this, he established an all-German transport service to ferry troops and matériel between Sicily and Calabria and appointed as its commander a German naval officer, Commander Gustav von Liebenstein.  

The Sea Transport Leader

Just prior to the amphibious assault on Sicily, Lie-benstein was appointed as Sea Transport Leader of the Strait of Messina.³ This arrangement granted him complete command of all sea transportation moving German forces across the strait.

Liebenstein was an accomplished naval reserve officer with intimate knowledge of the problem now facing him. A torpedo-boat veteran of the World War I Battle of Jutland, he was recalled to active service in 1940. He commanded a minesweeping flotilla before assuming command of the 2nd Landing Boat Flotilla in Sicily in February 1943.⁴ During his time on Sicily, Liebenstein bore witness to the Allied bombing of the harbor areas and ferry routes used during peacetime. This forced the Germans to shift to new ferry routes, but this adaptation yielded a chaotic and disjointed command structure. The Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine, and Wehrmacht each controlled their own ferries, operated independ-ently, and generally disregarded the requirements of their sister services. Unity of command and unity of effort did not exist at the strait, and throughput of troops and matériel was poor.⁵ Liebenstein would quickly remedy these challenges. While Wehrmacht planners initially were pessimistic about the chances of a successful evacuation, Liebenstein expressed profound confidence in their odds, telling Hube he could ferry 12,500 men and their equipment each day.⁶ 

Liebenstein wasted no time using his new authority to make critical changes. He reorganized the competing flotillas into a single ferry service under his control, drastically increasing throughput. He directed the construction of more efficient docking facilities and road networks connecting to the docks. He implemented one of the first roll-on/roll-off schemes for the loading and unloading of cargo—whereas this process previously could have taken more than an hour, it now could be done in 20 minutes. Finally, he raised the number of primary German ferry routes from three to five, while also changing embarkation and landing sites on each side of the strait to confound Allied bombing. The daily capacity of throughput for men and matériel at the docks raised tenfold.⁷ 

While Liebenstein employed every vessel available to him, two types of craft stood out as essential to his flotilla of ferries. One was the Marinefährprahm (MFP), or naval ferry barge. With three diesel engines, this flat-bottomed barge could cruise at 8 knots, carry 80 to 100 tons, and accommodate up to five trucks or three tanks. The other, more innovative workhorse for the evacuation was the Siebelfähre, or Siebel ferry. This makeshift craft was comprised of two pontoons joined with steel girders, with a platform laid over the girders to form a deck. One aircraft engine was attached to each of the two pontoons, allowing it to cruise at 8 knots, carry up to 60 tons, and move up to 12 vehicles or 250 troops. Finally, to provide additional defense, Liebenstein converted some Siebel ferries into flak ships by installing two 105-mm antiaircraft guns or three 88-mm antiaircraft guns.⁸  

These changes to surface transportation across the Strait of Messina were nothing short of game-changing. Arriving in late June, the Hermann Göring Division was able to move more than 600 vehicles, 700 tons of supplies, and 3,600 men across the two-mile strait to mainland Italy in one day. Without Liebenstein’s reforms, it is unlikely the Axis would have been able to position the necessary combat power on Sicily in time to slow the Allied advance. Similar throughput supported the Axis through the rest of the Sicilian campaign, posturing it to commit to a coordinated, fighting withdrawal and then methodically retreat across the strait during Operation Lehrgang.⁹

The Commandant of the Strait

The efforts to consolidate command and control of naval forces moving across the strait were reinforced by doing the same for the ground forces on the landward sides of the evacuation. Four days after the start of Operation Husky, Kesselring appointed Colonel Ernst-Günther Baade as the Commandant of the Strait of Messina. This role was analogous to that of Liebenstein’s but included responsibility for both supply flow and the defense of forces around the strait. 

Baade was granted authority over all artillery, antiaircraft artillery, and naval units in the Villa San Giovanni and Reggio sectors of the mainland, as well as in the Messina area. In modern parlance, Baade could be compared to a joint task force commander, as he controlled Luftwaffe antiaircraft batteries, a Kriegsmarine artillery regiment, and a Wehrmacht engineer landing battalion, among others. Notably, Baade also was put in command of Liebenstein—the Sea Transport Leader reported to the Commandant of the Strait.¹⁰ This gave the operation the unity of command it previously had lacked. Baade was tireless and omnipresent, and Kesselring observed of him that “he seems to have overlooked virtually nothing and to have provided virtually everything.”¹¹

Reinforced by flak batteries assigned to him from the Luftwaffe, Baade concentrated his antiaircraft guns on both sides of the strait and assigned zones of fire to each battery, allowing them to mass fires against Allied aircraft attempting to interdict the transportation.¹² Approximately 500 guns guarded the strait, of which more than 300 were antiaircraft guns, and Allied bomber pilots described the flak over the Messina corridor as the thickest they had ever seen.¹³ The effect is best summarized by Lieutenant General Adolf Galland of the Luftwaffe’s fighter arm, who later observed:

The fact that anything at all reached the Italian mainland was solely due to the flak batteries. Their unique concentration protected the continuous ferry traffic so effectively that the hordes of Allied planes of all types could only half complete their mission from a great height.¹⁴

Allied Mistakes

The optimization of Axis force movement across the strait was the result of mutually supporting land- and sea-based lines of effort. The dual efforts of Baade and Liebenstein were the linchpin in the German evacuation. Rear Admiral Pietro Barone, the Italian commandant of the strait, did the same for the independently executed Italian withdrawal, not losing a single man.¹⁵

Yet, the Axis was not successful simply because it made the right moves. The situation was already dire, and the Allies held several advantages throughout the campaign. Unfortunately, they failed to exploit these advantages and made several mistakes, maximizing the Axis’s opportunity to slip across the strait.

Misemploying Allied Naval Forces

While evacuation routes were protected by some German minesweepers and Italian minisubmarines, the Allies significantly outmatched Axis naval combat power in Operation Husky’s area of operations. Still, there seemed to be little consideration for or commitment to an Allied naval attack into the strait. While Royal Navy destroyers occupied the southern end of the strait and a U.S. naval task force occupied the north end, neither went into action in the strait itself. Motor torpedo boats and motor gunboats made thrusts into the strait to engage the ferries, but on making contact with Axis patrols, these craft turned away, avoiding a fight.¹⁶ They had little choice—once revealed, the overwhelming fire from coastal batteries would have destroyed them. 

Unless the coastal batteries were suppressed, the Allied navies could offer little in the way of interdicting the evacuation. Allied naval forces could have accomplished this, but Admiral Andrew Browne Cunningham, commander of the British Mediterranean Fleet, elected not to do so. Rear Admiral Lyal A. Davidson, whose Task Force 88 operated off the northern coast of Sicily and whose mission was to support General Patton’s 7th Army, was not even notified that the Axis evacuation was occurring.¹⁷ 

This is at odds with the reputation of the fiery and aggressive Cunningham, who had only months prior led the aptly named Operation Retribution, preventing a German naval withdrawal from Tunisia. Initiating that operation with the signal, “Sink, burn, and destroy—let nothing pass!” he surprisingly did not take the same approach at Messina.¹⁸ At the time, Cunningham argued there was no effective method to interdict the evacuation by sea and that the naval guns on his ships would have been ineffective against the Axis batteries guarding the strait.¹⁹ But later in life, he admitted, “I wasn’t going to be caught in a trap the way we were in the Dardanelles in the last war!”²⁰ The ghost of the Dardanelles campaign, during which the British naval attempt to force the strait had ended in a staggering defeat and still haunted Cunningham, affecting his judgment. Consequently, the decided advantage held by the Allies in naval power was not exploited.

Misemploying Allied Air Forces

Neither was Allied air supremacy used to halt the Axis withdrawal. One complicating issue was the prioritization of available aircraft. Air Chief Marshal Arthur Tedder, commander of Mediterranean Air Command, was expected not only to interdict the Axis evacuation, but also to shape the oncoming invasion of the mainland. This diminished the effect he might have had against Axis ferries and ports at Messina and Calabria.²¹ Major General James Doolittle’s Northwest African Strategic Air Force also might have massed bombing operations at Messina, but, like most strategic air forces, they were tasked to destroy lines of communication on the European continent.²² 

Air Chief Marshal Sir Harry Broadhurst, who commanded the Desert Air Force during Operation Husky, offered this assessment: “My feeling at the time was that had we applied the same heavy bomber strength to both sides of the Messina Straits that we did to the enemy airfields, although we might not have prevented the escape of a sizeable number of the enemy, we could have turned their success into a disaster.”²³

In addition, the Axis observed predictable air operations from the Allies. No Allied aircraft were observed by the Axis an hour after dawn or an hour before nightfall, so the Germans maximized throughput of their ferries during these hours. Allied air operations over the strait also seemed to be infrequent during lunch hours, another habit the Germans put to their advantage.²⁴ 

Amphibious End Runs

Despite not making a serious attempt to apply naval and air power against the strait itself, the Allies did conduct several amphibious end runs intended to land forces behind the retreating Axis forces to trap them. While one of these nearly succeeded in cutting off part of the withdrawal, these operations were largely ineffective, countered by responsive German forces. The only such landing that presented a legitimate threat to the evacuation was conducted by U.S. Lieutenant Colonel Lyle Bernard’s reinforced 2nd Battalion of the 30th Infantry Regiment on the evening of 10–11 August.

Bernard landed near Brolo, was initially undetected, and took the high ground. A heated battle ensued, with Bernard supported by the naval guns of Davidson’s Task Force 88. But, after losing communications with Bernard, and having already hit his preplanned targets, Davidson could not continue to provide support for fear of killing U.S. troops. Concerned his ships could do nothing more but serve as targets for the Luftwaffe, Davidson withdrew. An aggressive German counterattack against Bernard, along with Allied airstrikes that mistook the landing force for Germans, decimated Bernard’s troops. The noose was broken, and the Germans slipped free of the trap.²⁵ Additional Allied amphibious end runs ordered by both Patton and Montgomery proved fruitless.

Aftermath

By 17 August, Operation Lehrgang was complete. Liebenstein had successfully evacuated almost all German forces across the Strait of Messina, making the most out of what could have been a disaster. Many Axis leaders attributed this as much to Allied bumbling as to Axis finesse. General Fridolin von Senger und Etterlin, who oversaw the amphibious evacuations of Corsica and Sardinia after Sicily became untenable, tactfully captured the German view of the Allied performance: “When I look at the Allied plans . . . I cannot refrain from criticism.”²⁶ 

The Allies seemed unable to capitalize on their air and naval supremacy. Airpower was not massed against vulnerable Axis naval targets. Naval task forces never pressed into the strait, largely because of the scarring memory of the Dardanelles campaign. Amphibious end runs showed promise but were too little, too late. Perhaps most confounding to the Germans was the absence of an attack on Calabria, which would have bottled up the Axis on Sicily. While this could have proved decisive for Operation Husky, that option was ruled out months before at the Casablanca Conference.²⁷

But the outcome of this campaign was not just the result of missed opportunities on the part of the Allies. Axis leadership was just as decisive. Kesselring’s foresight and willingness to order the evacuation before Hitler had approved it bought critical time. Hube and Guzzoni conducted a disciplined fighting withdrawal that stymied Patton and Montgomery’s amphibious end runs. Baade, the Commandant of the Strait, brought much needed unity of command to the forces involved in defending the strait. And the reforms of the Sea Transport Leader, von Liebenstein, might be the most important operational contribution of all. These enabled efficient ferrying operations that flowed combat power into the strait to facilitate a fighting withdrawal, and then enabled the forces to move across the strait into Calabria. The success of von Liebenstein’s evacuation provided the retreating Germans with a powerful surge in morale. Kesselring’s chief of staff, Colonel Bogislaw von Bonin, summarized the feeling of the withdrawn forces thusly:

We had more than enough retreats [during the war], but through the fault of our higher command, they almost never ended gloriously. Every German soldier on Sicily, however, who after weeks of fighting and tremendous effort, reached the mainland in the middle of August with his weapons, artillery, vehicles and other equipment, could understand what deep truth there is in the term “glorious retreat.” After five and a half weeks of battle on an island against an enemy who, in ground forces alone, had four times our numbers, who, in supplies and equipment, was still superior to us; an enemy who had absolute superiority on sea and in the air. The three German divisions, on 17 August, were again on the mainland, ready and equipped to be committed in battle.²⁸

Ultimately, this naval operation kept three Axis divisions in the campaign, and the Allies were compelled to fight them in a slow, bloody slog up the mountainous Italian Peninsula for the rest of the war—in large part because of innovative ferry operations and a disciplined cross-channel evacuation.