straits of messina.

why were the germans allowed to escape across the messina straits.??
1/where was tedder?.airforces.
2/where was Cunningham?.i think he was c.i.c?.navy.
3/where was eisenhour?.he was in charge of the lot.
4/where was alexannder?15th a.g
more importantly,why did these men allow the germans to escape across the straits?.cheers.

 

Was General Clark also involved in this mess ?

One of the most perplexing questions of WW 2 ! I have studied this and never have found a conclusion to this question. How could this have happened ??!!

Not enough discussion about this monumental blunder by Allied Forces. Kesselring was on the run and we had an overwhelming advantage with air and naval power at that time. I forget how many tens of thousands of tons of equiptment and supplies were brought into mainland Italy through the Straits and all of this was brought into action against our troops. We had the Germans "funneled" at Messina and an onslaught never happened. We all know about the tragic mistakes made during the Italian front and this ranks up there with Clark allowing the German 10th army to escape while he "captured" Rome in June 1944.

Excellent post 4th Wilst !

 

In this case, Clark was not involved. The two principal parties were Patton and Montgomery. The original plan was for Montgomery to get to Messina and cut off the withdrawing Germans thus trapping them. Unfortunately, Monty faced stiffer resistance and Patton wanted to get the glory.

There was a lack of interservice coordination which allowed the Germans to withdrawn in spite of Allied sea/air superiority. The allies were not keeping an eye on the Germans while they withdrew during the night.

Yes, a mistake on the allied part which they paid later on.

 

the germans were witdrawing across messina in droves well before the 7th army,or 8th army were near messina.this balls up happened right near the top of the allied chain of command.
the allies had air superiority,i believe?.they also had large numbers of naval vessels,under an air umbrella,i believe?,so where were the big boys at,cunningham,tedder,alex and ike?.
i wonder if they even planned this german dunkirk?,christ,the germans even got tanks across,it was better than dunkirk.
where were their hq,s at?.oh dear.cheers.

 

I interviewed a former Fallshirmjäger years ago who later was up through the boot and then surrendered in norther Italy he wondered as well as his Kameraden why the Allied air forces did not strafe and blast everything right off the ocean waters, wheter at night or during the day, and yes they did many ops to the Italien coast by day.

there are several cine films via Deutsche Wochenschau and pirated onto you-tube in the past showing actual footage of German paracute truppen and their mounts slowly plodding across the straights in makeshift pontoon and landing type barges towards Italy with a few haphazard geysers from Allied bombing popping up here and there in the background with no set appearance of a co-ordinated attack(s)

 

thumbing my way through an old magazine last night,i found out over 100,000 germans got across the straits.at this time cunningham was in malta,tedder in tunis and alex was in syracuse,christ knows where ike was?.how was it possible to run a campaign to destroy these germans when the top brass were so far apart?.cheers.

 

I'd say the biggest reason was that Admiral Cunningham was unwilling to risk any larger ships in going into the Straight and closing it. He was severely adverse to allowing any larger fleet units to be damaged, possibly heavily, in closing the straight.
The Germans and Italians did have a number of shore batteries and artillery covering the straight and the Luftwaffe could interviene in the daytime.
However, given the small number of ships that the Germans and Italians were using for ferries it probably would have been worth the risk to end their operation. Done early enough it would have made for one more massive Axis disaster in terms of the number of prisoners taken.
The same can be said for the evacuation of Sardinia and Corsica. The Germans and Italians managed to withdraw their forces from these islands across about 90 miles of open ocean almost without interference. Again, the Allied naval forces were sufficent to have stopped this operation too.
I think Crete and some of the other early war naval fighting in the Med gave the Royal Navy cold feet.

 

so why did ike not order u.s ships to attack?.where was he?.cheers.

 

Huskey was a dogs breakfast.

Alex did to little to coordinate between the two armies, opting to let both have their own way. That didn't work.

The overall frame that Monty put forth was very good, but he had an affinity for insulting his allies. This would evolve into Pattons race west. (Palermo)

If Alex could have kept some disiplien over his army commanders and enforced the plan, Patton could have raced esatwards and stopped the german retreat.

Having the three services HQ on three different locations was no good either. Throw in the "bomber barons" pet projects and ideas of how the Air alone would win the war, and you have the reasons for disaster.

 

i read 6 german barges were sunk.
the navy did not have cold feet,matapan for example.and do not forget cunninghams orders when the tunisian campain was closing;sink,burn and destroy,i believe he said.
i say again,i believe the 7th and 8th armies were not near messina while 100,000 germans escaped.who was responsible for this monumental allied catastrophy?.army c/o,s are not admirals or airforce generals.
cunningham was naval c.o?what naval units were available to him?.
tedder was air c.o?,what airforces were available to him?.
ike was allied c.o?,who was his planner or planners?.cheers.

 

@ 4th wilts

if US air involvement maybe it's a good time to ask certain questions on the forums at ArmyAirForces.com ?

or was it combined RAF/US, truthfully I have not studied this enough to say one way or another

 

so,apparently it was everones fault,too many cooks.a firm decision to pass the buck by the c in c seems to have prevailed imo.i like hyperwar,its like wiki?.where was ike,he may or should have taken a firm grip of this calamity?.cheers.

 

Let me start with the German / Italian evacuation: The Germans used 13 Sebel Ferries and 7 MFP to withdraw their troops. These were covered by 16 AFP (aka F lighters, L-Boats etc... An artillery version of the MFP) and several S-Boats. The Italians had the train ferry Villa (932 tons), two small coastal steamers, and about a half dozen motor rafts similar to the Sebel Ferry. They also loaded the 2800t train ferry Cariddi with heavy artillery and equipment but were unable to move it across the straight as there was no tug available and the ship could not move under its own power. It was scuttled at Messina.


Anyway, about Allied naval intervention.
Admiral Cunningham had under his command all Allied naval forces in the Mediterrainian. This included several battleships, a couple of monitors, about a dozen light and heavy cruisers, and a large number of smaller vessels (without looking up an exact listing). The Germans and Italians had defending the straights two batteries of 17cm guns and a number of 8.8 and 9cm batteries. None of these were in fortifications but just regular field positions.

On 3 August the various top Allied commanders (Cunningham included) were apprised that the Germans and Italians were preparing to evacuate Sicily. General Alexander, overall commander of operations told both Air Marshall Tedder and Admiral Cunningham to be prepared to stop this evacuation at that time.
Tedder told Alexander that on his signal the Allied Air Forces would begin operations over the straights. Cunningham on the other hand, offered no plan whatsoever. Instead he stated that he "gave the matter careful thought" and that "there was no effective method of stopping the enemy either by air or sea."
Eventually all Cunningham did was authorize MTB and PT operations into the straight risking nothing larger at any point. Some Allied naval commanders like R. Adm Davidson commanding TF 88 covering the North shore of Sicily was never even informed that an evacuation was underway!

Considering that the Allied naval forces in the Mediterrainian were substancial to the point of overwhelming and had gun superiority over the Axis defense batteries it would have been a simple matter to silence these and then simply send a cruiser - destroyer task force into the straight and sink everything in sight, particularly given the weak forces the Axis had making the evacuation.
Instead, most Allied naval forces weren't even at sea!

 

The Messina straits are a difficult proposition to interdict and would require a combined arms effort to do it. The straits are only 3Km wide so you have to keep a close in presence to be effective as a trip across will last less than an hour. There really was no weapons system in the allied arsenal that could have easily interdicted them witthout risk.

- Light naval forces alone would be vulnerable to the armed ferries and Field artillery. Destroyers alone would be an iffy proposition as the amount of firepower the land based batteries could put up is impressive.

- Air forces faced strong AA fire from both the armed ferries and heavy shore batteries that had the range to cover most of the straits, they are also rather ineffective at night when most of the crossing took place.

- Submarines would be of little use as the Siebel ferries are difficult targets for topedoes, also the straits are not that deep so sub runs a big risk of grounding.

- Heavy forces (cruiser and up) would risk running into a defensive minefield (I can't immagine the axis not having laid some of those) and enemy subs. AFAIK there were some in the area and ASW or mineclearing operations under shore battery fire are no picnic, WW2 ASDIC will not work if you are manouvering at high speed to avoid shore fire.

- Last but not least the straits are in range of a possible sortie by the Italian Navy (that still had 6 operational BBs and a handful of cruisers including the very fast "Capitani Romani" class that had already made an appearance in the area, IMO the Allied Air Forces were overwhelming but not the navy) and some Axis air opposition is also likely.

It could be done but also possibly turn into a real disaster with just a little bad luck, had the allies lost a couple of cruisers in the Messina straits the Italian surrender may have been delayed for months!

 

There were no subs present; Italian or German. Neither had the capacity to lay mines in the straight. The shore batteries could have easily been finished by a combination of battleship or monitor fire and cruiser fire using aerial spotting. The ship's guns easily outranged the defending batteries. Even the German 17cm guns could have been hammered from positions at sea that they could not even see themselves.
The Italian navy barely had enough fuel to make it to Malta when they surrendered. Going to sea against the US and British forces available would have been like Yamato's last sorte.
Once the shore guns are suppressed a task force could have entered from either end of the straight and simply sank everything afloat whether it was in port or making a crossing with impunity using FC radar and star shell.

Among the available Allied naval vessels were:

Carriers: Illustrious, Formidable, Unicorn
Escort Carriers: Battler, Attacker, Hunter, Stalker
Battleships: Nelson, Rodney, Warspite, Valiant
Monitors: Abercrombie, Roberts
Cruisers: Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Birmingham, Boise, Savannah, Mauritius, Uganda, Orion, Delhi, Euryalus, Scyllia, Charybdis
There were also literally dozens of US and British destroyers along with a smattering of other nation's like France and Poland not to mention smaller craft.

 

I believe a couple of KGV class BBs were still in the med at the same time as well.
My sources add four batteries of naval 11' guns and two of 6' to the narrows defences, more than enough to make sending just cruisers a bad idea (though I have doubts about the 11' as Italy did not use that caliber). The Italian admiral Barone reports around 150 guns all told as peak strength. Cunningham is reported to have said "as the coastal batteries are mopped up it will be possible for surface forces to operate further in the straits", referring to the sicily side batteries, but the general idea I got from my readings is that Cunningham and Tedder passed the ball back and forth but neither was ready to risk the losses.
I will look up some Italian source to see if I can find references to submarines and minefields (I should also have a copy of Ruge's book somewhere).
BTW, like Cunningham, I believe the life expectancy of the slow naval spotter aircrafts in that environment to be measurable in minutes, what were they using at the time walrus?

 

The USN was using Curtiss SOC biplanes over Salerno and none got shot down even though the Luftwaffe actually put up quite a few fighters.

 

I have not the time to look for it, but there may be a clue in information on 'possible' Italian minefields. If I recall correctly Allied reconissance of the approaches to the straits ahd not gone well - Luftwaffe interferance - so it was not clear if a naval force could approach.

That does not excuse the overall conduct of the Sicillian campaign. Eisenhower trusted his subordinates a bit too much. While reliving Fredendall back in March had been a signal way to many thought themselves 'special' and not required to follow the commanders intent. Hence the 'wandering about' of Alexander, Tedder, Cunignham, ect... You have to wonder how some others like Brooke, Marshall, Montbatten, or Krueger would have kept everyone focused.

 

T.A.

what reference(s) are using for the amount/types of German KM transport and support ships for the escape ?

thankx

E ~