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Posted on 07/10/2003 12:00:38 AM PDT by SAMWolf
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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On the night of 9-10 July 1943, an Allied armada of 2,590 vessels launched one of the largest combined operations of World War II— the invasion of Sicily. Over the next thirty-eight days, half a million Allied soldiers, sailors, and airmen grappled with their German and Italian counterparts for control of this rocky outwork of Hitler's "Fortress Europe." When the struggle was over, Sicily became the first piece of the Axis homeland to fall to Allied forces during World War II. More important, it served as both a base for the invasion of Italy and as a training ground for many of the officers and enlisted men who eleven months later landed on the beaches of Normandy.  3d Infantry Division troops move along a cliffside road destroyed by the Germans at Cape Calava. (National Archives) Preparations for Operation HUSKY, the code name for the invasion of Sicily, began immediately after the Casablanca Conference. With the invasion scheduled for 10 July, there was little time to lose. In drawing up the invasion plans, three factors dominated Allied thinking—the island's topography, the location of Axis air bases, and the amount of resistance that could be expected. Slightly larger than the state of Vermont, Sicily's 10,000 square miles of rough, highly defensible terrain is cut in a roughly triangular shape. Beginning with low hills in the south and west, the land becomes more mountainous to the north and east, ultimately culminating in the island's most prominent feature, the 10,000foot-high volcano Mount Etna. The port of Messina in the island's northeastern corner is the primary transit point between Sicily and the Italian mainland. It was the key strategic objective for the campaign, for without Messina, Axis forces would be cut off from supply and reinforcement. Unfortunately, the country around Messina was extremely rugged and the beaches narrow. Moreover, the city was heavily fortified and beyond the range at which the Allies' Africa-based fighters could provide effective air cover. Consequently, Allied planners ruled it out as an initial objective. The widest and most accessible beaches for amphibious operations lie along the island's southeastern and western shores. By happy coincidence, Sicily's other major ports—Palermo, Catania, Augusta, and Syracuse—are also clustered in the northwestern and southeastern corners of the island, as were the majority of the island's thirty major airfields. Both the ports and the airfields were major considerations in the minds of the invasion planners. The Army needed the ports for logistical reasons, while the air and naval commanders wanted the airfields captured as early as possible to help protect the invasion fleet from aerial attack.  The confluence of favorable beaches, ports, and airfields in the northwestern and southeastern corners of the island initially led Allied planners to propose landings in both areas. They ultimately rejected this idea, however, because the two landing forces would be unable to provide mutual support. General Montgomery was particularly adamant about the need to concentrate Allied forces to meet what he anticipated would be fierce Axis resistance. German troops had fought tenaciously in Tunisia, and Montgomery feared that Italian soldiers would resist with equal stubbornness now that they would be fighting on home soil. Eisenhower accepted Montgomery's argument and chose the more cautious approach of concentrating Allied forces at only one location, Sicily's southeastern shore. The final plan called for over seven divisions to wade ashore along a 100-mile front in southeastern Sicily, while elements of two airborne divisions landed behind Axis lines. The British Eighth Army would land four divisions, an independent brigade, and a commando force along a forty-mile front stretching from the Pachino Peninsula north along the Gulf of Noto to a point just south of the port of Syracuse. A glider landing would assist the amphibious troops in capturing Syracuse. To the west, Patton's Seventh Army would land three divisions over an even wider front in the Gulf of Gela. The assault would be supported by parachutists from the 505th Parachute Infantry Regimental Combat Team and the 3d Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry.  Patton at Messina, Life 1943/8/17 Once ashore, the Eighth Army would thrust northward, capturing in succession Augusta, Catania, and the airfield complex at Gerbini before making the final push on Messina. The Seventh Army's initial objectives were several airfields between Licata and Comiso, after which it would advance to a position approximately twenty miles inland designated the Yellow Line. From the Yellow Line the Seventh Army would control the high ground that ringed the American beaches and protect the western flank of the Eighth Army's beachhead. Once this had been secured, the Seventh Army was to push slightly forward to a second position, termed the Blue Line, from which it would control the road network that emanated from Piazza Armerina. The invasion got off to a rough start during the night of 9-10 July 1943. As the Allied armada steamed toward the island a fierce, forty-mile-per-hour gale, dubbed the "Mussolini wind" by seasick G.I.s, whipped up the seas, seriously endangering some of the smaller craft. The situation in the air was even worse. Buffeted by the winds and confused by an overly complex flight plan, the inexperienced pilots ferrying Allied airborne forces became disoriented in the darkness and strayed from their courses. Of the 144 gliders bearing British paratroops to landing zones outside of Syracuse, only 12 landed on target, while 69 crashed into the sea and the rest dispersed over a wide area. In the American sector, Colonel Gavin's 3,400 paratroopers were even more widely scattered. Gavin himself landed twenty-five miles southeast of his intended drop zone. The wide dispersion of paratroopers seriously jeopardized Seventh Army's invasion plan by weakening the buffer these men were supposed to form in front of the 1st Division's beachhead. Nevertheless, the men of the 82d Airborne went right to work wherever chance landed them. Operating in small, isolated groups, the paratroopers created considerable confusion in Axis rear areas, attacking patrols and cutting communication lines.  The airborne forces had begun landing about 2330 on 9 July, and by midnight General Guzzoni was fully apprised of their presence. He was not surprised. Axis air reconnaissance had spotted Allied convoys moving toward Sicily earlier that day, and Guzzoni had ordered a full alert at 2200 on the 9th. Based upon the reported airborne drops, Guzzoni correctly surmised that the Allies intended to come ashore in the southeast, and he issued orders to that effect at 0145 on 10 July, nearly an hour before the first assault wave hit the beach. Nevertheless, the dispirited and ill-equipped Italian coastal units hardly put up a fight. Opposition in the Eighth Army's sector was negligible. By the end of the first day the British were firmly ashore and well on their way toward Augusta, having walked into Syracuse virtually unopposed. Resistance was not much stronger in the American zone, and the Seventh Army had little trouble moving ashore despite sporadic air and artillery attacks. The only serious fighting occurred in the American center, where Axis mobile forces tried to throw the Americans back into the sea before they had a chance to become firmly established. Fortunately for the Americans, the attacks were poorly coordinated. At Gela, the 1st and 4th Ranger Battalions, assisted by the 1st Battalion of the 39th Engineer Combat Regiment, the 1st Battalion of the 531st Engineer Shore Regiment, mortar fire from the 83d Chemical Battalion, and naval gunfire, repulsed two Italian attacks, one by a battalion of infantry and the other by a column of thirteen tanks. Nine or ten of the latter managed to penetrate the town before the Rangers drove them off in a confused melee. Meanwhile, at the vital Piano Lupo crossroads, those few paratroopers who had been fortunate enough to land near their objective repulsed a column of about twenty Italian tanks with the help of naval gunfire and the advancing infantrymen of the 16th Regimental Combat Team. Shortly thereafter they rebuffed a more serious attack made by ninety German Mark III and IV medium tanks, two armored artillery battalions, an armored reconnaissance battalion, and an engineer battalion from the Hermann Goering Division. Naval gunfire played a crucial role in stopping this German thrust. The worst event of the day occurred when seventeen German Tiger I heavy tanks, an armored artillery battalion, and two battalions of motorized infantry from the Hermann Goering Division overran the 1st Battalion, 180th Infantry (45th Division), after a stiff fight, capturing its commander and many of its men.  While Rangers, paratroopers, and infantrymen repelled Axis counterattacks, an even more serious struggle was being waged against mother nature. Although 10 July dawned bright and sunny, the rough seas of the previous night had disorganized several units. The worst case was that of the 45th Division's 180th Regiment, which had been scattered over a ten-mile front. Nor did the beaches prove to be as favorable as anticipated. Soft sand, shifting sandbars, and difficult exits created congestion on the beaches that was further aggravated by enemy air and artillery barrages. By midmorning, between 150 and 200 landing craft were stranded on the shoreline. Nevertheless, American service troops performed herculean feats to keep the men in the front lines supplied and supported. During the first three days the U.S. Army and Navy moved 66,285 personnel, 17,766 deadweight tons of cargo, and 7,396 vehicles over Sicily's southern shores. An entirely new generation of landing craft and ships—LSTs, LCTs, LCIs, and LCVPs—greatly facilitated the logistical effort. Even more remarkable was the innovative DUKW amphibious truck that could move directly from offshore supply ships to inland depots. By the end of the first day, the Seventh Army had established a beachhead two to four miles deep and fifty miles wide. In the process it had captured over 4,000 prisoners at the cost of 58 killed, 199 wounded, and 700 missing. But the situation was still perilous. Axis counterattacks had created a dangerous bulge in the center of the American line, the very point where the bulk of the 505th Parachute Regiment should have been if its drop had been accurate. July 11, the second day of the invasion, was the Seventh Army's most perilous day in Sicily. Early that morning, General Guzzoni renewed his attack against the shallow center of the American line—Piano Lupo, Gela, and the beaches beyond. Guzzoni committed the better part of two divisions in the attack, the Hermann Goering Division and the Italian Livorno Division. He backed them up with heavy air attacks by Italian and German planes based in Italy. Congestion on the beaches hampered Bradley's efforts to send tanks forward, so that the defending infantrymen had nothing but artillery and naval gunfire to support them. Cooks, clerks, and Navy shore personnel were pressed into service to help the 1st and 45th Division infantrymen, Rangers, and paratroopers repel the Axis attacks. The fighting was fierce. A few German tanks broke into Gela, while two panzer battalions closed to within two thousand yards of the vulnerable beaches before being repulsed by ground and naval gunfire. Several miles southeast of Gela, Colonel Gavin and an impromptu assembly of paratroopers and 45th Division soldiers effectively thwarted another German column consisting of 700 infantry, a battalion of self-propelled artillery, and a company of Tiger tanks at Biazzo Ridge. By day's end, the Seventh Army had suffered over 2,300 casualties, the Army's greatest oneday loss during the campaign. But as darkness descended, the Americans still held, and in some areas had actually expanded, their narrow foothold on the island.  A bunker covers the beach near Sant'Agata. (National Archives) After a day of heavy fighting, Patton decided to reinforce his battle-weary center with over 2,000 additional paratroopers from his reserves in North Africa. He ordered that the 1st and 2d Battalions, 504th Paratroop Regiment, the 376th Parachute Field Artillery Battalion, and a company from the 307th Airborne Engineer Battalion be dropped near Gela on the night of 11 July. German aircraft had been active over the American sector all day, and consequently senior Army and Navy officers went to great lengths to inform everyone of the impending nighttime paratroop drop lest overanxious gunners fire on the friendly aircraft. Nevertheless, when the transport planes arrived over the beaches in the wake of a German air raid, nervous antiaircraft gunners ashore and afloat opened fire with devastating effect. Allied antiaircraft guns shot down 23 and damaged 37 of the 144 American transport planes. The paratroop force suffered approximately 10 percent casualties and was badly disorganized. Later investigation would reveal that not everyone had been informed of the drop despite the Seventh Army's best efforts. Over the next two days the Seventh Army gradually pushed its way out of the coastal plain and into the hills ringing the American beachhead. Fighting between the 1st Division and the Hermann Goering Division was occasionally stiff, but General Allen moved his men relentlessly forward through Niscemi and on toward the Yellow Line. On the right, Middleton's 45th Division likewise made good progress toward Highway 124, while to the left Truscott's 3d Division infantrymen, supported by 2d Armored Division tanks, moved beyond their initial Yellow Line objectives. The British matched American progress, and by the 13th they had advanced as far as Vizzini in the west and Augusta in the east. Resistance in the British zone was stiffening, however, due to difficult terrain and the arrival from France of elements of Germany's elite 1st Parachute Division.  81-mm. mortars support Patton's drive on Palermo. (National Archives) As the Eighth Army's drive toward Catania and Gerbini bogged down in heavy fighting, Montgomery persuaded Alexander to shift the boundary line between the American Seventh and British Eighth Armies west, thereby permitting him to advance on a broader front into central Sicily and sidestep the main centers of Axis resistance. The boundary change, which Alexander communicated to Patton just before midnight on 13 July, stripped Highway 124 away from Seventh Army and assigned it instead to the Eighth Army. Under the new instructions, a portion of the Eighth Army would advance up Highway 124 to Enna, the key road junction in central Sicily, before turning northeast toward Messina. In essence, Alexander was interposing British forces between the Americans and the Germans, allowing the Eighth Army to monopolize the primary approaches to Messina and giving it complete responsibility for the Allied main effort. With its original line of advance blocked, Seventh Army was thus relegated to protecting the Eighth Army's flank and rear from possible attack by Axis forces in western Sicily—a distinctly secondary mission.
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Patton's first move was to coax Alexander into sanctioning a "reconnaissance" toward the town of Agrigento, several miles west of the 3d Division's current front line. That authorization was all General Truscott needed to seize the city on 15 July. With Agrigento in hand, Patton was in a position to drive into northwestern Sicily, and on the 17th he traveled to Alexander's headquarters to argue for just such a course. Patton wanted to cut loose from the Eighth Army and launch his own, independent drive on Palermo while simultaneously sending Bradley's II Corps north to cut the island in two. Alexander reluctantly agreed, but later had second thoughts and sent Patton a revised set of orders instructing him to strike due north to protect Montgomery's flank rather than west. Seventh Army headquarters ignored Alexander's message claiming that it had been "garbled" in transmission, and by the time Alexander's instructions could be "clarified," Patton was already at Palermo's gates.
The Seventh Army met little opposition during its sweep through western Sicily. Guzzoni had recalled the 15th Panzer Grenadier Division to central Sicily soon after the invasion, and the only troops left in the western portion of the island were Italians who, for the most part, showed little inclination to fight. While General Bradley's II Corps pushed north to cut the island in two east of Palermo, Patton organized the 2d Armored, 82d Airborne, and 3d Infantry Divisions into a provisional corps under Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Keyes and sent it on a 100-mile dash to the Sicilian capital. Palermo fell in only seventy-two hours, and by 24 July the Seventh Army had taken control of the entire western half of the island, capturing 53,000 dispirited Italian soldiers and 400 vehicles at the loss of 272 men.
Palermo's capitulation also coincided with the beginning of a new phase of the campaign. On 23 July Alexander ordered Patton to turn eastward toward Messina. Montgomery's drive had bogged down at Catania, and it was now apparent that the Eighth Army was not going to be able to capture Messina on its own. Alexander, therefore, redrew the army boundaries once again, authorizing Patton to approach Messina from the west while Montgomery continued to push from the south.
The drive on Messina would not resemble Patton's quick, cavalry-like raid on Palermo. The city was protected by the most rugged terrain in Sicily, the Caronie Mountains and Mount Etna's towering eminence. In addition, the Germans had constructed a series of strongpoints, called the Etna Line, that ran from the vicinity of Catania on the east coast, around the southern base of Mount Etna, north to San Fratello on the island's northern shore. Here, in Sicily's rugged northeast corner, the Axis had decided to make its stand. But it was to be only a temporary stand, for while General Guzzoni still talked of defending Sicily to the end, Berlin had decided to withdraw gradually from the island. Guzzoni, his authority weakened by the disintegration of most of his Italian units, was not in a position to disagree. From this point forward General Hans Hube, commander of the newly formed German XIV Panzer Corps, and not Guzzoni, exercised real control over Axis forces in Sicily.
General Hube planned to withdraw slowly to the Etna Line where he would make a determined stand while simultaneously undertaking preliminary evacuation measures. Final evacuation would occur in phases, with each withdrawal matched by a progressive retreat to increasingly shorter defensive lines until all Axis troops had been ferried across the Strait of Messina to Italy. To accomplish this task, Hube had the remnants of several Italian formations plus four German divisions—the 1st Parachute, the Hermann Goering Panzer, the 15th Panzer Grenadier, and the newly arrived 29th Panzer Grenadier Division.
It was Highway 113 that held Patton's interest, for it was his most direct route to Messina. Stung by the belief that Generals Alexander and Montgomery belittled the American Army, Patton was obsessed with the idea of reaching Messina before the British. "This is a horse race in which the prestige of the US Army is at stake," he wrote General Middleton. "We must take Messina before the British. Please use your best efforts to facilitate the success of our race."
Meanwhile, the 1st Infantry Division pushed its way eastward against stiffening German opposition, capturing Nicosia on the 28th before moving on to Troina. Patton planned to take the exhausted 1st Division out of the line once Troina fell. The mountain village, however, would prove to be the unit's toughest battle, as well as one of the most difficult fights of the entire Sicily Campaign. Troina constituted one of the main anchors of the Etna Line and was defended by the 15th Panzer Grenadier Division and elements of the Italian Aosta Division. The Axis forces were deeply entrenched in hills that both dominated the approaches to the town and were difficult to outflank. The barren landscape, almost devoid of cover, made advancing American soldiers easy targets for Axis gunners.
While the 1st Infantry Division battled for possession of Troina, General Truscott's 3d Division faced equally stiff opposition at San Fratello, the northern terminus of the Etna Line. Here the 29th Panzer Grenadier Division had entrenched itself on a ridge overlooking the coastal highway. Truscott made repeated attempts to crack the San Fratello position beginning on 3 August, but failed to gain much ground. The strength of the German position prompted him to try and outflank it by an amphibious end run. On the night of 7-8 August, while the 3d Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment, and 3d Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, seized a key hill along the San Fratello Line, Lt. Col. Lyle Bernard led the 2d Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, reinforced by two batteries from the 58th Armored Field Artillery Battalion, a platoon of medium tanks, and a platoon of combat engineers, in an amphibious landing at Sant'Agata, a few miles behind San Fratello. The amphibious assault force achieved complete surprise and quickly blocked the coastal highway. Unfortunately, the Germans had selected that night to withdraw from San Fratello, and most of their troops had already retired past Bernard's position by the time the Americans arrived. Nevertheless, the 3d Infantry Division's combined land and sea offensive bagged over 1,000 prisoners.
Allied pressure at Troina, San Fratello, and in the British sector had broken the Etna Line, but there would be no lightning exploitation of the victory. Taking maximum advantage of the constricting terrain and armed with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of mines, General Hube withdrew his XIV Panzer Corps in orderly phases toward Messina.
Time was now running out for the Allies. On 11 August, the day Patton launched the Brolo operation, General Hube began the full-scale evacuation of Sicily. Despite heroic feats by U.S. Army engineers in clearing minefields and repairing blown bridges, the Seventh Army was never quite able to catch the withdrawing Axis forces. A last amphibious end run by a regiment of the 45th Division on 16 August failed when the troops landed behind American, and not German, lines. By then the game was over. On the morning of 17 August, elements of the 3d Infantry Division's 7th Infantry Regiment entered Messina, just hours after the last Axis troops had boarded ship for Italy. The enemy had escaped, but the Seventh Army quickly brought reinforcements into the port, in the words of 3d Division assistant commander Brig. Gen. William Eagles, "to see that the British did not capture the city from us after we had taken it." Shortly after Patton accepted the city's surrender, a column of British vehicles slowly wound its way through Messina's crooked streets. Spotting General Patton, the commander of the British column walked over and offered his hand in congratulations. Patton had won his race.
www.capnasty.org/issues/7/13/1239
history.acusd.edu
www.history.navy.mil
In the spring of 1943, with the African Campaign coming to a successful conclusion, the Allies began to consider the invasion of Hitler's "Fortress Europe." The most obvious target to start the invasion was Sicily, which was not only in a strategic location that would act as a springboard for the rest of Europe, but it would've allowed for the elimination of the Luftwaffe, a danger to allied shipping in the Mediterranean Sea. There were problems: to start, the Germans were well aware of the importance of Sicily to the Allies as the logical place to start an invasion. Add to that the mountainous landscape of the island, a joy to defend but impossible to attack. And lastly, the invasion (Operation Husky) would require such a build-up of armaments that it would be next to impossible to go undetected by the Germans. For Operation Husky to succeed and not turn into a blood bath for the Allies, the German High Command had to be fooled. On April 30, a fisherman off of the coast of Spain picked up the body of a British Royal Marines courier, Major William Martin. Attached to his wrist was a briefcase, which contained personal correspondence and documents related to the impending Allied invasion of Sardinia. Spain immediately notified the Abwehr (German intelligence). After this discovery, Hitler promptly moved two Panzer divisions and an additional Waffen SS brigade to Sardinia to prepare for this Allied invasion. Major William Martin of the British Royal Marines had been dead long before he had even hit the water, much less served in the armed forces. Major Martin was a decoy devised by Sir Archibald Cholmondley (with the appropriate name Operation Mincemeat) and put in action by Lieutenant Commander Ewen Montagu of Naval Intelligence. Major Martin had to appear as though he had drowned, probably after his plane crashed off the coast of Spain. This necessitated finding a corpse whose lungs were already full of fluid, so that any doctors who examined the body would accept that he had been at sea for some time. A 34-year-old man was found, recently departed after ingesting rat poison and developing pneumonia. He'd have to appear that he had been dead for a while before falling to enemy hands so that the effects of the seawater would disguise the obvious decomposition. Intelligence secretaries wrote love letters to Major Martin, one of them even including a photo of herself in a swimsuit to pass for the Major's girlfriend, Pam. Sir Cholmondley carried the letters in his wallet for several weeks to give them an authentic worn look. Martin's persona was further enhanced by adding overdue bills, an angry letter from his bank manager, a letter from his father, tickets, keys. All the sort of things that a real person would happen to carry, along with the documents that told of the Allies' plans of invasion. When Operation Husky finally took place, the Allies found so little resistance from the enemy in Sicily that the Germans had to retreat all the way to Messina. The invasion was a complete success thanks to the mission carried out by a dead man. -- Leandro Asnaghi-Nicastro |
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Today's classic ship, USS Columbus (CA-74)
Baltimore class heavy cruiser
Displacement: 13,600 t.
Length: 674’11”
Beam: 70’10”
Draft: 26’5”
Speed: 32.6 k.
Complement: 1,902
Armament(as built): 9 8”; 12 5”; 48 40mm; 24 20mm; 4 Aircraft
The USS COLUMBUS (CA-74) was launched 30 November 1944 by Bethlehem Steel Co., Quincy, Mass.; sponsored by Mrs. E. G. Meyers; and commissioned 8 June 1945, Captain A. Hobbs in command.
Joining the Pacific Fleet, COLUMBUS reached Tsingtao China, 13 January 1946 for occupation duty. On 1 April, she helped to sink 24 Japanese submarines, prizes of war, and next day sailed for San Pedro, Calif. For the remainder of the year, she operated in west coast waters, then made a second Far Eastern cruise from 15 January to 12 June 1947.
After west coast operations and an overhaul at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, COLUMBUS cleared Bremerton 12 April 1948 to join the Atlantic Fleet, arriving at Norfolk, Va., 19 May. COLUMBUS made two cruises as flagship of Commander-in-Chief, Naval Forces, Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean, from 13 September 1948 to 15 December 1949 and from 12 June 1950 to 5 October 1951, and one as flagship of Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic, during parts of NATO Operation "Mainbrace" from 25 August to 29 September 1952. She cruised in the Mediterranean from October 1952 through January 1953, serving part of that time as flagship of the 6th Fleet. Now flagship of Cruiser Division 6, she returned to the Mediterranean from September 1954 to January 1955. Between deployments, COLUMBUS received necessary overhauls and carried out training operations along the east coast and in the Caribbean.
Reassigned to the Pacific Fleet, COLUMBUS cleared Boston 8 November 1955 for Long Beach, Calif., where she arrived 2 December. Just a month later, on 5 January 1956, she sailed for Yokosuka, Japan, and operated with the 7th Fleet until she returned to Long Beach 8 July. COLUMBUS made two more cruises to the Far East in 1957 and 1958. During the late summer of 1958, her presence was a reminder of American strength and interest as she patrolled the Taiwan Straits during the crisis brought on by the renewed shelling of the offshore islands by the Chinese Communists. On 8 May 1959, COLUMBUS went out of commission at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard to begin her conversion to a guided missile cruiser, and she was reclassified CG-12, 30 September 1959.
Columbus underwent a massive conversion to a guided missile cruiser (CG-12) between May 1959 and late 1962. This work, carried out at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard at Bremerton, Washington, involved removing all her guns and original upper decks structure, plus much of her interior, and erecting a new, very high superstructure to carry an extensive array of radar antennas and other electronics. Launchers and magazines for long-range Talos missiles were installed fore and aft, while a smaller launcher for Tartar missiles was fitted on each side, and a launcher for ASROC anti-submarine rockets was located amidships. Two open 5-inch/38 guns were added later at the insistence of President Kennedy after he witnessed a Terrier missile (from another ship) fail to down an aerial target drone. The ship's appearance, and capabilities, were thus completely altered.
Columbus, now a member of the three-ship 13,700-ton Albany class, was recommissioned as CG-12 on 1 December 1962. She conducted extensive trials and training operations for more than a year, and in August 1964 deployed to the Western Pacific for a cruise that ended in February 1965, just prior to the full-scale U.S. entry into the Vietnam war. However, Columbus was to play no further role in that conflict. She transferred to the Atlantic Fleet in January 1966 and in October of that year began her first deployment to the Mediterranean Sea.
Following the end of that Sixth Fleet tour early in 1967 Columbus operated in the Caribbean and off the U.S. East Coast. She operated again in the Mediterranean in January to July 1968, December 1968 to May 1969, October 1969 to March 1970, and August 1970 to February 1971. The 1970-71 cruise included service during the Jordanian crisis. The cruiser received a major shipyard overhaul during much of the rest of 1971, then made another MedTour during May-October 1972, a time of expanding Soviet Navy activity in the area. Columbus conducted her final Sixth Fleet deployment between November 1973 and May 1974. That summer she began inactivation preparations. The ship was decommissioned 31 January 1975. Stricken from the Naval Vessel Register 9 August 1976, Columbus was sold for scrapping in August 1977.
No more Big Guns. Sigh...
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Although U.S. military leaders had not initially planned to use Sicily as a springboard for an invasion of Italy, the impact of the operation on the tottering Fascist regime begged exploitation, and the Allies quickly followed up their victory by invading Italy in September 1943.
Most of the reading I've done on this subject seems to indicate that the U.S. planners never thought highly of invading Italy in the first place. Churchill's "soft underbelly" argument was blown to pieces after Allied troops had gotten ashore in Italy proper.
However, the British were exceptionally good at getting their way in joint discussions with the Americans, led by General Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff (later Lord Alanbrooke).
As an example, the Allied invasion of Southern France (codenamed "Anvil" by the British) was named "Dragoon" by the Americans because they didn't care for that idea either. They thought both invasions would divert resources and manpower from the main cross-Channel effort.
As always .. tremendous reading!
It's really hot and humid here in Southwest Oklahoma.
How's everything going with you?:-D
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