The Pittsburgh Press (July 24, 1943)
60,000 prisoners taken by Allies; Catania shelled again
By Virgil Pinkley, United Press staff writer
It’s all over but the mop-up in western Sicily as the U.S. 7th Army captured Marsala, port on the tip of western Sicily. Allied troops drove eastward along the northern coast of the island, with San Stefano reported captured. The Axis was expected to make its stand in the region around Messina.
Allied HQ, North Africa –
The U.S. 7th Army has captured Marsala, Sicily’s westernmost port, and Allied forces are swiftly squeezing the Axis into the northeastern tip of the island after boosting the grand total of prisoners to 60,000, it was announced today as the campaign entered its third week.
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s communiqué reported:
A rapidly diminishing portion of the island is all that remains to the Axis.
British warships shelled the German troops holding off the British at Catania.
The fall of Catania may be “expected at any time,” Prime Minister W. L. Mackenzie King of Canada told the House of Commons in Ottawa today in his weekly review of the Allied activities in Sicily.
Trapani’s doom sealed
The seizure of Marsala sealed the doom of Trapani, big west coast port 15 miles to the north and the only remaining enemy base of importance in western Sicily. Trapani has a good harbor and controls a network of airfields.
Axis broadcasts have already reported the evacuation of Trapani.
All that remained for the 7th Army in western Sicily was a mopping-up operation. Italian troops were surrendering by the thousands and in some places, whole divisions laid down their arms.
U.S. troops alone have captured 40,000 prisoners and the cleanup in the west may net them another 50,000.
Much equipment taken
Marsala, a commercial town of 30,000, fell to the American spearhead that slashed around the southwest corner of Sicily from the airfield town of Castelvetrano and its capture netted the Americans vast quantities of equipment and thousands of prisoners.
A special Allied announcement said that all airfields in Sicily had now been captured or neutralized with enemy air resistance now “ineffective.”
Allied torpedo bombers joined in the parade of successes, sinking one enemy merchant ship, heaving damaging two others and leaving a destroyer in flames.
Torpedo boats damaged
Two Allied destroyers, one of them Greek, damaged three German torpedo boats Tuesday night, two of them severely.
Ten supply barges were destroyed by Allied bombers.
U.S. Flying Fortresses paced a day and night of intensive raids on southern Italy and Sicily with an attack on the Leverano Airdrome on the heel of the Italian boot, where they shot down 12 of 20-30 intercepting Axis aircraft.
British military observers in London said that military operations in western Sicily could be considered at an end and indicated that an all-out assault on Axis positions in eastern Sicily was imminent.
Bloody fighting rages
British warships steamed up the east coast of Sicily and turned their big guns on German troops holding off Gen. Sir Bernard L. Montgomery’s British 8th Army on the approaches to Catania, Sicily’s second largest port, where the bloodiest fighting of the entire campaign was underway.
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s communiqué spoke of fierce resistance below Catania.
The Americans, occupying Marsala, captured large numbers of prisoners and huge quantities of enemy equipment, the communiqué said.
The 7th Army was rapidly engulfing all that section of Sicily cut off by the capture of the north coast port of Palermo and was fanning out toward Catania, on the northeast, and Messina in Sicily’s “Coffin Corner,” where the Axis is expected to make its last stand.
Allied bombers attacked railroad communications at Salerno, south of Naples, and hit Aquino Airdrome, north of Naples. The Pratica di Mare Airfield was hammered by RAF Wellingtons and U.S. Warhawks attacked targets on the island of Ustica, about 50 miles north of Sicily.
Many Axis aircraft were destroyed on the ground and Allied planes also knocked out enemy vehicles and hit enemy concentrations and communications lines in Sicily.
The Flying Fortress attack on Leverano was the most easterly point bombed by planes from North Africa. Only moderate opposition was encountered throughout the day. U.S. Lightnings raiding the Crotone Airfield said they saw only two enemy fighters – and they were far away.
An Italian communiqué said that Allied planes had attacked Bologna, in northern Italy, for probably the first time.
Chases survivors
One U.S. armored spearhead pounded eastward along the northern coastal road from Palermo in pursuit of Axis survivors.
A Swiss broadcast said that Allied forces have reached San Stefano on the north coast, halfway between Palermo and Messina.
With the city organized resistance around Catania in the east, the Allied invasion campaign went into its third week far ahead of schedule. U.S., British, Canadian and French troops already controlled more than four-fifths of the island, including most of its ports and airfields.
Many cut off
An estimated 30,000-50,000 Italians were cut off in western Sicily by the lightning American advance across the waist of the island into the north coast port of Palermo, its capital and largest city. Field reports said the Italians were surrendering in wholesale lots, yielding city after city and village after village without more than token resistance, and often not even that.
Radio Algiers said that Italian Gen. Giuseppe Molinero was captured in Palermo.
The Sicilian campaign appeared to be shaping up for its final round along roughly the same lines as that in Tunisia with the British assaulting Catania, as they stormed the Tunisian east coast port of Tunis and the Americans advancing toward the northeastern port of Messina, 58 miles north-northeast of Catania, as they captured the North Tunisian port of Bizerte.
Inch forward
A delayed front dispatch from Ned Russell, United Press correspondent representing the combined U.S. press with the British 8th Army, said that Gen. Sir Bernard L. Montgomery’s men were inching toward Catania a few hundred yards at a time against fierce German opposition.
The battle raging along the Catania front, which stretches 60 miles inland, was described as at times more violent than that which led to the capture of Tunisia’s Mareth Line. The British were advancing across open fields fully exposed to gunfire from German forces strongly entrenched on rising ground to the north.