Losing direction, missing check points, the pilots approached Sicily from all points of the compass. Those in the rear found it particularly 117 difficult to remain on course. Groups began to loosen, and planes began to straggle. Dim night formation lights, salt spray from the tossing sea hitting the windshields, high winds estimated at thirty miles an hour, and, more important, insufficient practice in night flying in the unfamiliar V of V’s pattern, broke up the aerial columns. The result: a small band of less than 100 British airborne troops was making its way toward the objective, the Ponte Grande south of Syracuse, about the time the British Eighth Army was making its amphibious landings.Īs for the Americans who had departed North Africa as the sun was setting, the pilots found that the quarter moon gave little light. Of these, only 54 gliders landed in Sicily, 12 on or near the correct landing zones. Exactly how many gliders were turned loose in the proper area is impossible to say perhaps about 115 carrying more than 1,200 men.
Some pilots released their gliders prematurely, others headed back to North Africa. The designated zigzag course threw more pilots off course, and confusion set in. The lead aircraft turned north, then northeast from Cape Passero, seeking the glider release point off the east coast of Sicily south of Syracuse. A fifth plane had accidentally released its glider over the water a sixth glider had broken loose from its aircraft–both gliders dropped into the sea. Two others returned after sighting Sicily because they could not orient themselves to the ground. Two pilots who had lost their way over the sea had turned back to North Africa. Despite the troubles, 90 percent of the air craft made landfall at Cape Passero, the check point at the south-eastern tip of Sicily, though formations by then were badly mixed. Some squadrons were blown well to the east of the prescribed route, others in the rear overran forward squadrons. In the face of high winds, formations loosened as pilots fought to keep on course. The gale that was shaking up the seaborne troops began to affect the air columns. Though the sun was setting as the planes neared Malta, the signal beacon on the island was plainly visible to all but a few aircraft at the end of the column.
The British contingent made rendezvous over the Kuriate Islands and headed for Malta, the force already diminished by seven planes and gliders that had failed to clear the North African coast. 52d Troop Carrier Wing filled with American paratroopers of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regimental Combat Team and the attached 3d Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry, were airborne. 51st Troop Carrier Wing at 1842 began rising into the evening skies, towing 144 Waco and Horsa gliders. The British airborne operation got under way first as 109 American C-4 is and 35 British Albermarles of the U.S.
Heavily laden with individual equipment and arms, with white bands pinned to their sleeves for identification, the troops clambered into the planes and gliders that would take them to Sicily. It will be also a way to commemorate and salute those who sacrificed their lives for our freedom.THE PONTE DIRILLO CROSSING SITE, seized by paratroopers on D-day.Īt various airfields in North Africa during the afternoon of 9 July, British and American airborne troops, under a glaring sun, made the final preparations for the operation scheduled to initiate the invasion of Sicily.1 While crews ran checks on the transport aircraft, the soldiers loaded gliders, rolled and placed equipment bundles in para-racks, made last-minute inspections, and received final briefings. While the casemates were just armored emplacements for cannons and machine guns, the bunkers were a building complex which, sometimes underground, could include one or more casemates.įrom the Ponte Dirillo to the site of Castelluccio in Gela, from Butera to Desusino, surrounded by a hilly landscape which approaches the Mediterranean Sea through soft sand dunes, our private guided tour will allow you to visit those sites which made this far corner of Sicily the scene of one of the most significant episodes of WWII. The aim was to form a front in Europe, occupy Fascist Italy, and then concentrate the forces against Nazi Germany.Īlong the Route SS 115, from Vittoria to Agrigento, it’s still possible to go back over the main events of that invasion and to visit some of the casemates and bunkers built by the Italian army to repel any invasion from the sea. The allied landings in Sicily during World War II, internally codenamed “Operation Husky”, took place along the southern shores of the island between the 9th and the 10th of July 1943.
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