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(Thursday, September 9, 1943, 3:20 a.m. Central European Summer Time; during the Allied invasion of Italy, part of the Italian Campaign of World War II) — The second and main phase of the Allied invasion of Italy, Operation Avalanche, commenced today, as the U.S. Army VI Corps and the British Army X Corps stormed the beaches at the Gulf of Salerno, and encountered heavy resistance from German forces.
The Italians withdrew from the war the day before the invasion, but the Allies landed in an area defended by German troops.
The landings were carried out by the U.S. Fifth Army, under Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark. It comprised the U.S. VI Corps, the British X Corps, and the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division, a total of about nine divisions.
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Its primary objectives were to seize the port of Naples to ensure resupply, and to cut across to the east coast, trapping the Axis troops further south.
Simultaneous sea landings were made by the British 1st Airborne Division at the port of Taranto (Operation Slapstick).
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In order to draw troops away from the landing ground, Operation Baytown was mounted. This was a landing by the British Eighth Army, under General Sir Bernard Montgomery, in Calabria in the ‘toe’ of Italy, on Sept. 3, 1943.
The Salerno landings were carried out without previous naval or aerial bombardment in order to achieve surprise. Surprise was not achieved.
As the first wave of Major General Fred L. Walker’s U.S. 36th Infantry Division approached the Paestum shore at 03:30 a.m. a loudspeaker from the landing area proclaimed in English: “Come on in and give up. We have you covered.” The Allied troops attacked nonetheless.
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The Germans had established artillery and machine-gun posts and scattered tanks through the landing zones which made progress difficult, but the beach areas were captured. Around 07:00 a concerted counterattack was made by the 16th Panzer Division.
It caused heavy casualties but was beaten off. Both the British and the Americans made slow progress and still had a 10-mile (16 km) gap between them at the end of day one. They linked up by the end of day two and occupied 35–45 miles (56–72 km) of coastline to a depth of 6–7 miles (9.7–11.3 km).
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Over Sept. 12-14, 1943, the Germans organized a concerted counterattack by six divisions of motorized troops, hoping to throw the Salerno beachhead into the sea before it could link with the British Eighth Army.
Heavy casualties were inflicted, as the Allied troops were too thinly spread to be able to resist concentrated attacks.
The outermost troops were therefore withdrawn in order to reduce the perimeter. The new perimeter was held with the assistance of naval and aerial support, although the German attacks reached almost to the beaches in places.
