Operation Avalanche & The Battle of Salerno Exploring the Allied Invasion of Italy

By early 1943, the tides of war were starting to turn against the Axis powers.

• The British won their first decisive battle at El Alamein – keeping the vital Suez Canal shipping route and Middle East oilfields under Allied control.
• The Soviet Red Army were soon to defeat the Axis at Stalingrad – pushing a huge Wehrmacht force onto the back foot on the eastern front.
• The Americans entered the fray in the Pacific and in North Africa – laying the groundwork for an invasion of Europe.

From their bases in North Africa, the Allied forces sized up their opponents. Up until this point, German forces in particular had advanced almost unchecked, and placed vast swathes of Europe under their boot.

But the new swathes of Axis-occupied territory in the Mediterranean – stretching from Spain to Greece – offered an advantage for the Allies. Namely, that the Germans were now unsure where their enemy would strike next.

Operation Mincemeat the strange tale of Captain (Acting Major) William Martin

A few months before the Allied victory in North Africa, a uniformed British Royal Marine washed ashore on the Spanish coastline. His body was discovered by a local fisherman, who alerted the authorities.

Attached to the man’s wrist was a briefcase, containing classified correspondence between two British generals. It outlined plans for an Allied invasion of Sardinia and Corsica. According to two separate forms of identification, the deceased officer was Captain (Acting Major) William Martin.

As the Spanish were nominally neutral, they returned the body and briefcase to the Allies – but not before they made a copy of the documents and passed them to the Germans.

Before long, Hitler and his high command were poring over the plans in Berlin. They quickly diverted troops in the Mediterranean to Sardinia and Corsica to prepare for the Allied onslaught.

But there was a hitch. The Royal Marine washed up on the Spanish shore wasn’t a marine at all. In fact, he was a deceased British civilian the army had dressed up as a soldier. His ID and documents were faked, and his body had been dropped off the Spanish coast by submarine. This incredible ruse was codenamed Operation Mincemeat – and everyone from Churchill to the US General and future president Dwight D. Eisenhower were in on the act.

By the time the Germans realised their mistake, the Allies were on their way to Sicily.

Toe, heel or shin?

The Allies planned a three-pronged attack on Italy. The two southernmost offenses – Operations Baytown and Slapstick – would distract the Axis forces and draw them away from the primary landing point at Salerno.

From there, the Allies planned to cut off the Germans from the north, and push onwards towards Naples and Rome.

• Operation Avalanche was the main offensive at Salerno, led by the American General Mark Clark. It would land the bulk of the Allied troops just south of Naples at the shin of Italy, in a bay with excellent landing conditions.
• Operation Baytown would see General Bernard Montgomery’s British 8th Army land in Calabria – the toe of Italy.
• Operation Slapstick meanwhile landed more troops at the ports of Taranto and Brindisi in the south-eastern heel of Italy.

Kesselring saw the feints of Baytown and Slapstick coming and moved his troops further north, awaiting the invasion at Salerno – where battle would later be joined.

As a result, the Allies faced little resistance and captured two strategically important ports. But their objective to tie down the German forces in the south had failed comprehensively.

The real face-off would take place on the beaches of Salerno – and the Allies weren’t fully prepared for the task ahead.

“The Allies were still not experts in doing these beach landings,” says Beigel. “Some of the landings in North Africa, they just landed, and nobody was opposing them. So, they were not as well experienced in doing amphibious landings in the European theatre as they were to become later.”

Indeed, there was a crucial element of training involved in the Salerno landings. With the Normandy invasions also in the pipeline, Allied high command needed to ensure their troops were ready. They were soon to find out that beach landings weren’t as straightforward as they hoped.

How the forces lined-up

A mixed US-British 5th Army spearheaded the assault at the Battle of Salerno.

• British forces would land to the north, tackling the port itself, while the Americans would largely land in the south of the gulf.
• A group of 55,000 soldiers would create the first wave, while 115,000 more would follow up. They were transported by 700 ships.

Communication would be essential – but poor, mismatched technology meant that the two Allied forces struggled to keep contact with each other:

“We’ve got to remember that the radios that were being used in World War Two in a lot of cases were a joke,” says Beigel. “They did not work well. They were big and bulky, so a World War Two radio that a guy on the ground might have would be as long as your arm. A very long, bulky thing that was very temperamental”.

On a basic level, the Americans were inexperienced too. Their soldiers were new to the war, and their army, navy and air forces were not well trained in working together.

Beigel notes how “many of their Generals were still newcomers and the lots of the troops were 18- and 19-year-olds. So, there's that definite learning curve that the Americans had to do once they hit the beach.”

The progress was so poor, Churchill would later remark: “I had hoped we were hurling a wildcat onto the shore, but all we got was a stranded whale.”

The defenders, on the other hand, fielded just 35,000 troops. However, these were two of the fiercest German divisions – the 16th Panzers and the Hermann Göring Division. Their elite, ideologically zealous troops had spent almost a decade being trained and indoctrinated. In fact, Kesselring boasted how one such soldier was worth three of the Allies.