Gela, Sicily 1400 May 13 1943
HMS Roberts fired again. A pair of guns designed to smash battleship armor like it was wrapping paper sent out one ton projectiles. Several hundred yards behind the monitor, USS Savannah and USS Philadelphia were shrouded in gun smoke. The past twelve minutes, all thirty six-inch guns had been firing a shell every ten seconds at a target no larger than two old battleships wandering through the waves at Jutland. Given that the targets were not moving and the spotter aircraft had yet to be shot down, the shells were landing just on the far side of the river bank.
Nine miles inland and twelve miles from the gunline, the lieutenant held himself on his elbows. At least this was friendly fire. It would not matter if one of the shells went short. Physics were indifferent to nationality but almost everything that was being fired was landing a few hundred yards to almost a mile in front of his position.
He had eighty men on this side of the river and thirty five men on the landing zone side of the bridge covering his rear. The paratroopers had seized the crossing during ferocious fighting just after dawn as the flanking attack dislodged and disorientated the Italian defenders. Two of the light tanks were disabled by satchel charges that were placed by unseen sneakers. It was their destruction that alerted the defenders to their danger.
Since then, the Germans and Italians had probed and pushed at the thin crust of light infantrymen. Five bazookas and a single captured anti-tank gun had claimed a trio of tanks. The first two probes had been defeated at the cost of twenty casualties. And then a full panzer grenadier regiment had assembled for an attack. The counter-attacking force would have easily blown thrown the thin screen of paratroopers and stuck themselves like a stiletto between a rib cage in an unopposed run at the beaches until the Navy spotter plane saw the dozens of tanks and even more numerous half tracks dressing their lines in the olive and lemon groves outside of the village.
Zeus’s thunderbolts had begun to descend from Olympus twenty minutes ago. Every man who had a smoke grenade popped it and the Navy spotter saw the American position and kept the shells moving back and forth like a metronome, some danger close but most far enough away. The lieutenant looked up and peered through the settling dust; part of a fertile field looked like a Detroit street in February, potholed and pox scarred.
Back at the sea, both of the American light cruisers ceased firing. Ninety shells per ship per minute for twenty minutes was a bombardment that would have caused any Army cannon humper to swoon with lust. Each ship was worth almost the entire artillery group that a corps commander could call upon. To the sailors aboard the cruisers, this was not even a full fledged demonstration of their firepower. It was not a night action with destroyers slashing in for a misericord stab with gun crews straining to get another shell in addition to the twelve already fired in the past minute into the breach and out of the barrel. The secondary battery of five inch guns had barked during the bombardment at lesser targets closer to shore, but again, it was only intermittent instead of the steady stream of shells during a mass torpedo attack against the fleet.
17,000 feet over the now silent cruisers, four Corsairs weaved back and forth three thousand feet above a dozen Dauntlesses. Each of the dive bombers carried a single thousand pound general purpose bomb. All airpower that was available over the Gela beaches was converging to a narrow spit of farm land just nine miles inland. The Marine captain who led the fighters had a new kill marking painted on his beast’s flank. His eyes continually moved back and forth. The German fighters were fierce and fast. There was nothing in sight and the radar controller had not given him a warning either.
The dive bombers crossed the coast and within minutes, they tipped over and planted their eggs in a small vineyard, ruining the vintage and a company of storm troopers. Two were trailing smoke as every machine gun that the German regiment had been aimed upwards at them. The fighter pilot circled the battlefield. A squadron of Havocs came in fast, low and level followed by a flight of Mitchells. By the time a squadron of Avengers from USS Independence added their bomb load to the maelstrom below, the radio sparked with life. All twelve Dauntlesses had landed safely. Eleven would be in the air by nightfall.
The heavy Grumman bombers pulled out of their glide bombing runs when the radio squawked. Another raid was coming in from the mainland. Ranger’s Corsairs had the primary CAP but the four Corsairs from Wasp and a half dozen Hellcats from Princeton along with a squadron of RAF Spitfires were available to reinforce the standing patrol. He wiggled his wings, adjusted the fuel mixture and pointed his nose up even as his rudder brought him and his section further to the east. The fight was on.
Miles beneath him, the lieutenant could barely hear. Over fifty bombers had taken over from the naval bombardment. The Mitchells had bombed the wrong village. The Havocs and the navy placed their bombs close and tight. Now he had a moment of less chaos than typical and he scanned his fighting positions. His men were good at first glance. He began to crawl through the rubble and behind the debris so he could talk to the nineteen year-olds whose lives were being held in hock for time. A word, a hand on the shoulder, a cigarette, a moment was what he could give them. Even before he reached the next fox hole, USS Savannah and USS Philadelphia resumed their bombardment at a far more relaxed pace of only three rounds per gun per minute; enough to keep the enemy regiment from advancing but not enough to burn through their entire magazines during the course of a long lunch.
Even as the bombardment resumed, HMS Belfast and a pair of destroyers left Force A to reinforce the American gun line as the American cruisers would be running low on ammunition soon.