The Pittsburgh Press (July 17, 1943)
Enemy fights fiercely on plain near Catania; British reported six miles from port; Canadian soldiers capture key communications center
Four more towns fall to the advancing U.S. and British troops in Sicily as the invasion of the Italian island enters its second week. By capturing Lentini, 15 miles south of Catania, Scordia, Grammichele and Caltagirone, the Allied forces eliminated two Axis salient. The British 8th Army was within 15 miles of Catania. Meanwhile, Allied planes blasted Axis air bases in Italy and the San Giovanni ferry terminal from Sicily (lower left map) while British-based bombers smashed at communications in northern Italy.
Allies capture 4 more towns
By Virgil Pinkley, United Press staff writer
Allied HQ, North Africa –
Allied armies, pushing ahead 10 miles to capture the communications center of Caltagirone, have seized one-fifth of 10,000-square-mile Sicily and smashed northward on the east coast against stiff resistance to the Catania plain sector.
Part of the estimated 60,000 Germans and 264,000 Italians on the island made strong stands on river banks that cross the Catania plain and provide natural defense lines.
The Algiers radio reported the British were less than six miles from Catania, key communications center.
Although the Catania plain, which was opened to the Allies after a hard battle in which Lentini was seized, was generally easier terrain, the Gornalunga, Dittaino and Simeto Rivers cut through the plain to points within 10 miles of Catania port. Gen. Sir Bernard L. Montgomery sent British armor northward from the Augusta sector.
Threaten airfields
The Allied advances, however, cut deeply into the entire network of railroad and highway communications on which the Axis must depend in the eastern part of Sicily, guarding the route to Messina and the toe of the Italian boot.
An Exchange Telegraph report said that the Allies were threatening the Axis network of airfields around Gerbini, 15 miles west of Catania, indicating that the 8th Army and the Canadians in the Militello sector were pressing across the plain at a point deep inland as well as along the coast road.
With the capture of Lentini, which had been the main enemy bottleneck guarding the plain 15 miles from Catania port, and the seizure of Caltagirone, Grammichele and Scordia, the Allies straightened out their entire front from the east coast to the hills around Agrigento on the south-central coast.
London understood that Agrigento had been captured and that heavy fighting was in progress around or on the Catania plain, which is a key to the Axis defenses in East Sicily.
Advance continued
Today’s communiqué from headquarters of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower said:
The advance continues.
French Goumiers, native troops from Morocco, are fighting in Sicily as part of the U.S. 7th Army.
The towns of Caltagirone and Grammichele were taken by the Canadians in a 10-mile advance, while Lentini and Scordia were occupied by the British. All are communications centers.
Caltagirone, some 25 miles west of Lentini, controls a network of five roads, one of which winds northwestward to the big enemy concentration point of Caltanissetta, already menaced from the southwest.
Radio Algiers reported that the Allies had cut the railway between Messina and Palermo in northern Sicily and between Messina and Catania in the northeast, presumably by aerial bombardment.
Sees quick cleanup
C. R. Cunningham, United Press correspondent with the U.S. 7th Army, said that the first week’s successes of the Allies had paved the way for a quick cleanup that may see the fall of Sicily within the next three weeks.
The 8th Army was aided by swarms of Allied fighters and bombers and the big guns of the British fleet in his successful advance through the Lentini coastal gap below Catania.
Principal opposition was provided by the new Hermann Göring 15th Panzer Division, but the weight of the Allied assault finally drove the Germans from Lentini, even as it had dislodged them from Augusta after they had reoccupied it only two days earlier.
Yanks capture many
The Americans have already captured more than 16,000 prisoners, 192,000 gallons of gasoline, more than 200,000 aerial bombs ranging from 250- to 1,000-pounders, heavy guns and a number of huge ammunition dumps, one of them at least a mile and a half long.
Ranging ahead of Gen. Montgomery’s thrust up the east coast, a flotilla of British motor gunboats on patrol in the Messina Strait, which separates Sicily from the Italian mainland, sank a Axis mosquito boat and damaged two others, Gen. Eisenhower’s communiqué said.
Adm. Sir Andrew Browne Cunningham sent a message of appreciation to the crews of landing ships and other craft and in shell repair base staff for the great part they played in the success of operations against Sicily.
Patton gives order
A dispatch from Sicily revealed that Lt. Gen. George S. Patton Jr., the American commander, in an order of the day to his troops on the eve of the invasion, said it was to be their “honor and privilege to attack and destroy” the Axis forces.
Gen. Patton said:
Many of you have in your veins German and Italian blood, but remember these ancestors of yours so loved freedom that they gave up their home countries to cross the ocean in search of liberty. The ancestor’s people we shall kill lacked courage to make such a sacrifice and continued as slaves.
Italians complain
Captured Italians complained to the Allies that the Axis command had placed them in front of minefields which protected the Germans. Supposed gaps in the minefields were not marked, they said, and it was impossible to fall back due to the danger of their own mines.
Field dispatches reported Fascist civil authorities were fleeing from towns captured or about to be captured with parish priests taking over the administration.
Bombers hit 4 Italian bases
By Reynolds Packard, United Press staff writer
Allied HQ, North Africa –
Allied Mediterranean air fleets heavily attacked four air bases on the Italian mainland after driving the dwindling Axis air forces from virtually all of their Sicilian airdromes, it was announced today.
The Vibo Valentia and Reggio Calabria Airdromes on the southwest coast of Italy, Crotone on the south coast, and Bari on the southeastern coast were pounded in day-and-night raids by two- and four-engined bombers from both Northwest African and Middle East Commands.
An Italian communiqué broadcast by the Rome radio reported raids on Naples, Italian west coast port, and Messina in northeastern Sicily as well as on Bari and Reggio Calabria, but said damage everywhere was “unimportant” and casualties “limited.”
Hit ferry terminal
Other forces attacked the ferry terminal of San Giovanni, across Messina Strait from Sicily, by day and night, hammered enemy communications throughout Sicily and shot down 13 enemy planes, including six bagged by night fighters. Seven planes were lost in all operations.
The principal attacks were apparently those against Vibo Valentia and Crotone.
The operations were coordinated with blows delivered by the Middle East Command which reported the destruction of 15 more enemy aircraft in a daylight assault by U.S. Liberators on Bari. Four were burned on the ground.
Vibo Valentia was bombed heavily Thursday night and medium bombers with fighter escort followed up with an attack in which many fires were started. Similar day-and-night blows were made against San Giovanni, one of the Axis supply points for Sicily.
Hangars set afire
At Crotone, Liberators and Halifaxes, in a night raid, set fires in the hangars and touched off other blazes that covered the field building area. Planes from both the North African and Middle East forces participated.
Other planes attacked Axis communications throughout Sicily, destroying or damaging a number of vehicles. Medium bombers raided the communications center at Randazzo.
Intruder and fighter aircraft, patrolling without a stop over land and sea, ranged as far as southern Italy to keep down any Axis effort to harass the American invasion.
German Field Marshal Baron Wolfram von Richthofen is directing the German and Italian Air Forces in the defense of Sicily, Allied headquarters announced. Authorities said he was made “Ersatz Führer” of Sicily a month ago. He formerly commanded an air fleet in Russia.
