Operation Corkscrew

Operation Corkscrew

Part of: Second World War , Italian campaign

British soldiers during Operation Corkscrew on Pantelleria

date	May 18 to June 11, 1943
place	Pantelleria , Italy
output	Occupation of Pantelleria by the Allies

Parties to the conflict
Italy German Empire	United Kingdom United States South African Union
Commander
Gino Pavesi	Walter E. Clutterbuck Carl A. Spaatz Rhoderick McGrigor
Troop strength
11,200 Italians 72 Germans 91 guns	12,000 soldiers 1,300 aircraft 5 light cruisers 8 destroyers 3 torpedo boats
losses
41 dead 109 wounded over 11,000 prisoners 74 aircraft	14 planes

Operation Corkscrew refers to the Allied invasion of the Italian island of Pantelleria (located between Sicily and Tunisia ) on June 11, 1943 during World War II . Already at the end of 1940 there were plans to take the island (Operation Workshop), but these were discarded because the air forces of the Axis Powers held the air control in this region.

Strategic situation

The island only moved into the focus of the Allies again after the Axis troops surrendered in Tunisia in May 1943 : the installation of a radar system and the construction of an airfield on the island were viewed as a serious threat to the planned invasion of Sicily . In addition, there was at that time the possibility of a preparatory bombing against the reinforced defenses of the island.

Defenses

The island, referred to as the Italian Gibraltar by the Italian propaganda, had already been developed as a military base before the Second World War. The first military structures were hastily erected at the beginning of the Abyssinian War , which had led to tension with the United Kingdom and France , including the 54 km long coastal road. Some open-air coastal batteries , visible from afar, were intended to deter ships from the island. The actual project for the fortress-like expansion of Pantelleria was not started until 1936. The construction of a war port for large warships with a pier over 800 meters long was soon stopped after the pier under construction was washed away from the sea after a few hundred meters and the stones used as building material blocked the port basin. The construction of underground submarine bases did not progress much further than the project phase. The construction of cavernous gun emplacements for large-caliber coastal guns on the island's largest mountain, the over 800 m high Montagna Grande , also remained on paper . The plan was to build two gun batteries with 320 mm or 305 mm naval guns , manufactured by Ansaldo and Armstrong , and two other batteries with 203 mm guns. In the end, the island's main artillery armament consisted almost exclusively of small-caliber guns. Nevertheless, the propaganda of the fascist regime turned the island into a fortress, something even the British believed in.

The island's airfield, on the other hand, had been well developed and was already fully functional when the war began. Next to an airfield, a 300 m long, 26 m wide and 16 m high two-story hangar with a 2 m thick reinforced concrete ceiling was built by the well-known civil engineer Pier Luigi Nervi . The building was also covered with a layer of earth and stones several meters thick, so that it formed a kind of small hill. It offered space for 60 fighter planes and six torpedo bombers of the type Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 , whereby the fighter planes could be brought to the upper floor with goods lifts. When the Allied attacks began, the Macchi MC.202 hangar housed the 153rd Fighter Squadron of the Regia Aeronautica as well as some Fiat CR.42 biplanes used as night fighters , which were moved to various airfields in Sicily on May 21, 1943. Only four macchi remained on Pantelleria, about whose whereabouts there are different statements. Depending on the source, the four aircraft were either put out of action in the Allied bomber raids or were also moved to Sicily in early June 1943.

In addition to the hangar, a radio station, an electrical center and a field hospital were also installed underground. There were also underground fuel stores as well as a mill and bakery each housed in a cavern. Two other underground gasoline and diesel depots were located near the port. A total of 21 batteries had been set up in open field positions on the island; the majority were equipped with 74-mm cannons, which could also be used for anti-aircraft defense. A total of 96 guns were available, including some 152 mm coastal guns. The majority of the batteries were built in the northern part of the island around the port and the airfield. The respective ammunition depots were protected in caverns. Furthermore, at all possible landing points, there were bunkers made of reinforced concrete, which were armed with automatic or armor-piercing weapons.

The island's crew, soldiers mainly from the Regia Marina and the Regia Aeronautica, was a little over 11,000 men. Part of it provided the conscript population of Pantelleria, who served in the 9th Legion of the Maritime Artillery Militia (it. 9ª Legione Milizia marittima di artiglieria abbreviated MILMART ) with base Pantelleria. The German Air Force has also been operating a Freya radio measuring device on the island since 1942 , which was later supplemented with a Würzburg model for night hunting. 72 members of the X. Air Corps were stationed on Pantelleria for the operation .

There were no shelters available for the civilian population remaining on the island who had refused to leave the island, around 12,000 people. After the first Allied air raids, which took place before Operation Corkscrew, the population fled to the south side of the island.

procedure

Allied air raid during Operation Corkscrew, left the port of Pantelleria

On May 18, 1943, the Allies began attacking the island daily from the air after bombing Pantelleria on May 8 and 11, 1943. Under the command of US General James Harold Doolittle , machines of the Northwest African Strategic Air Force flew day and night attacks, the intensity of which was increased more and more towards the supposed D-Day . The US Air Force bombed the specified targets with heavy bombers of the B-17 and B-24 types and with the medium-weight B-25 bombers of the 12th and 9th US Air Fleet during the day, while the Royal Air Force bombed Halifax at night , Wellington , Boston and Baltimore Pantelleria flew to. A total of around 1000 bombers were used during Operation Corkscrew, including some machines from the South African Air Force . In addition, several hundred fighters and fighter-bomber used that their bets against Pantelleria of came Malta flew out, including from African Americans composite 99th Pursuit Squadron of the USAF ready for their first fighter pilot deployment came at all about Pantelleria.

Up to the invasion 6,000 tons of bombs had been dropped, of which over 4,700 tons in the last five days alone. From the beginning of June until the surrender of the Italian troops, 154 bombing raids were carried out. The number of enemy flights rose from 200 daily at the start of the operation to over 1500 on the day before the invasion. The Axis air forces countered this between May 8 and June 11, almost 1200 enemy flights, two thirds of which were flown by the Air Force. During the entire operation, the Allies lost 15 and the Axis 47 machines.

The British invasion fleet began firing at Pantelleria on June 8, after British ships had attacked the island between May 31 and June 5. The June 8 attack was also attended by General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Admiral Andrew Cunningham , Commander in Chief of the British Mediterranean Fleet on HMS Aurora . Two handover offers from the Allies went unanswered. On the night of June 10-11, 1943, the actual landing operation was initiated, with which the British 1st Infantry Division was entrusted under the command of Major General WE Clutterbuck . Two morning air raids against the Allied landing forces gathered in front of the island were unsuccessful. In the barrage of the British naval units of the 15th Cruiser Squadron and American bomber attacks, the landing craft started to land in the late morning. Even before they reached the island, the Italian defenders, under the command of Admiral Gino Pavesi, laid a white cross on the airfield, which the Allies did not see in the smoke of the explosions. Only an Italian radio message made it clear to the Allies, at least, while some Italian coastal batteries continued to fire until the news of the surrender finally reached them too. When the British forces landed on the island, the Italian garrison surrendered on June 11, 1943 at 11 a.m.

Consequences and consequences

The port and town of Pantelleria under fire from the Royal Navy

The Italian defenders had to mourn only 41 dead and 109 wounded despite the massive air strikes that lasted almost four weeks and the shelling by the British Navy. The last German soldiers from the radio measuring station had already left the island at the end of May after one of the two radio measuring devices was destroyed in an Allied air raid on May 21 and the second device was then dismantled two days later and transported to Sicily. Six civilians were killed and six injured. Two investigative commissions appointed later came to the conclusion that a large part of the defense installations had survived the almost four-week attacks by the Allies unscathed. A group of people around Solly Zuckerman was entrusted with the analysis of the bombing raids . This came to the conclusion that bomb attacks on fortified positions had only a limited effect, and that the destruction of infrastructures such as communication facilities, fire control stations, traffic routes and utilities had a much more negative impact on the defenders of Pantelleria. Despite well-filled water cisterns, there were problems with the water supply because the pumping systems were destroyed or failed and drinking water, but also provisions, could not be transported to the individual positions due to the destroyed traffic routes and frequent air attacks. The air supply by Italian and German planes, which could be maintained until shortly before the island was taken, did not provide any effective remedy either.

The psychological stress caused by the almost uninterrupted bombing from the air and the bombardment from the sea, which made sleep almost impossible, contributed significantly to the task of the defenders. The knowledge that Solly Zuckermann's group drew from Operation Corkscrew was used by the Allies during the war for further warfare, in particular for strategic air warfare.

The fall of Pantelleria came as a shock to Italy. Not only because of the first occupation of Italian territory by the Allies, but also because the island, stylized by propaganda as an impregnable Italian bastion in the Mediterranean, could be taken relatively easily and without major losses for the attacking Allies. While the fascist regime tried to publicly portray the taking of the island as a result of the lack of provisions, Pavesi was accused of cowardice within the regime, as he had not even given the order to demolish the military installations that had already been mined, and so the Allies had them Hands had fallen. As a result, Pavesi, who had been awarded the Military Order of Savoy shortly before Mussolini was surrendered, was sentenced to death in absentia by an RSI military court in 1944 .

The next day, June 12, 1943, the Italian garrisons of the islands of Linosa and Lampedusa, about 160 km southeast of Pantelleria, fell into the hands of the Allies. This cleared the way for the invasion of Sicily a month later.

Web links

• Detailed English description of the operation
• Further English description

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Winston Churchill : Desert Victory . In: Their Finest Hour . Houghton Mifflin Company, 1949, ISBN 0395410568 , p. 552.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Lo sbarco alleato a Pantelleria in un'inchiesta di Tommaso Besozzi. In: reportagesicilia.blogspot.com. Retrieved November 14, 2019 (Italian). 
3. ^ Carlo Alfredo Clerici: Le fortezze della perla nera. In visita alle difese costiere di Pantelleria. In: Uniformi & armi: la prima rivista italiana di militaria. No. 77 August 1997 Albertelli, Parma 1997. p. 44
4. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Seconda guerra mondiale: la resa di Pantelleria. In: liberauniversitatitomarronetrapani.it. Retrieved November 14, 2019 (Italian). 
5. ↑ ^{a b} : Gregory Alegi meridional Le operazioni in Tunisia e nell'Italia. In: Commissione Italiana di Storia Militare (ed.): L'Italia in guerra: Il quarto anno - 1943. Ministero della Difesa, Rome 2016 pp. 71–72
6. ^ Carlo Alfredo Clerici: Le fortezze della perla nera. In visita alle difese costiere di Pantelleria. In: Uniformi & armi: la prima rivista italiana di militaria. No. 77 August 1997 Albertelli, Parma 1997. p. 45
7. ↑ Gregory Alegi meridional Le operazioni in Tunisia e nell'Italia. In: Commissione Italiana di Storia Militare (ed.): L'Italia in guerra: Il quarto anno - 1943. Ministero della Difesa, Rome 2016 p. 71
8. ↑ ^{a b} Mario Genco: Guerra in Sicilia (1940-1943). In: Intransformazione: Rivista di Storia delle Idee Volume 6 No. 1 2017. Università di Palermo, Palermo 2017 p. 21
9. ↑ Gregory Alegi meridional Le operazioni in Tunisia e nell'Italia. In: Commissione Italiana di Storia Militare (ed.): L'Italia in guerra: Il quarto anno - 1943. Ministero della Difesa, Rome 2016 pp. 70–71
10. ^ Maria Gabriella Pasqualini: I bombardamenti sulle città italiane. In: Commissione Italiana di Storia Militare (ed.): L'Italia in guerra: Il quarto anno - 1943. Ministero della Difesa, Rome 2016 pp. 261–262
11. ^ Operation Corkscrew - Invasion of Pantelleria, June 11, 1943. In: historyofwar.org. Retrieved November 13, 2019 . 
12. ^ Mario Genco: Guerra in Sicilia (1940-1943). In: Intransformazione: Rivista di Storia delle Idee Volume 6 No. 1 2017. Università di Palermo, Palermo 2017 p. 20