The German flares gave sailors the first inkling of the impending attack. Aboard John Bascom, the second officer, William Rudolf, saw the flashes and alerted Captain Heitmann. John Bascom's gun crew sprang into action, joining the barrage that shore batteries were now hurling into the sky. Tracer bullets laced the air, but the anti-aircraft fire was largely ineffective.
There was no time to cut anchor cables and get underway; crews along the east jetty watched helplessly while a creeping barrage of German bombs came ever closer to their vulnerable vessels. Joseph Wheeler took a direct hit and exploded into flames; John Motley took a bomb in its No. 5 hold. John Bascom, anchored next to John Motley, was next in line for punishment.
John Bascom shuddered under a rain of bombs that hit her from stem to stern. One of the explosions lifted Captain Heitmann off his feet and slammed him against the wheelhouse door. Momentarily stunned, his hands and face bloody, Heitmann saw the body of Nicholas Elgin sprawled nearby, blood pumping from a head wound, his clothes torn off by the force of the blast.
The ship's bridge was partly destroyed, the decks were buckled and debris was everywhere. There was nothing left to do but abandon ship. Ignoring his own wounds, Heitmann ordered the crew into the single undamaged lifeboat. By now, the entire harbor was a hell on earth, where yellow-orange flames leaped into the air, producing dense columns of acrid smoke. Ships were in various stages of burning or sinking. When flames reached munitions-laden holds, some exploded. The surface of the water was covered by a viscous scum of oil and fuel, blinding and choking those unlucky enough to be in the water.
Allied shipping burning at Bari, 3 December 1943
Meanwhile, the crew of John Harvey was engaged in a heroic battle to save their ship. The vessel still was intact and had sustained no direct bomb damage. Nevertheless, she had caught fire, and the situation was doubly dangerous with the mustard gas bombs aboard. Captain Knowles, Lieutenant Beckstrom and others on board refused to leave their posts, but their heroism was ultimately in vain.
Without warning, John Harvey blew up, disappearing in a huge, mushroom-shaped fireball that hurled pieces of the ship and her cargo hundreds of feet into the air. Everyone on board was killed instantly, and all over the harbor the force of the concussion knocked men off their feet. The blast sent out multihued fingers of smoke like a Fourth of July fireworks celebration and made the harbor as bright as day.
The men aboard USS Pumper, a tanker carrying aviation fuel, were witnesses to John Harvey's last moments. Air initially rushed into the vortex of the blast, then the concussion radiated out to knock the tanker 35 degrees to port.
Meanwhile, Heitmann and his surviving crew managed to reach the tip of the east jetty, around a lighthouse that was located at its north end. He had about 50 men. Many were badly wounded, and some were so badly burned that the slightest touch brought agony. At first the lighthouse area seemed a refuge, but it soon became apparent it was more of a deathtrap. A sea of flames cut Heitmann and his men off from following the jetty's long spine into the city, where they might have been relatively safe.
While the sailors waited to be rescued, Ensign K.K. Vesole, commander of John Bascom's armed guard detachment, was having difficulty breathing. Many of the other men were gasping, but it was Vesole who noted something strange about the smoke. "I smell garlic," he said, without realizing the implications of his remark. A garlic odor was a telltale sign of mustard gas. The gas had become liberally intermixed with the oil that floated in the harbor and lurked in the smoke that permeated the area.
Mustard gas-laced oil now coated the bodies of Allied seamen as they struggled in the water, and many swallowed the noxious mixture. Even those not in the water inhaled liberal doses of gas, as did hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Italian civilians. A launch dispatched from Pumper rescued Captain Heitmann and the other John Bascom survivors from the east jetty, but their troubles were just beginning.
The German raid began at 7:30 p.m. and ended 20 minutes later. German losses were very light, and they had succeeded beyond their most sanguine expectations. Seventeen Allied ships were sunk and another eight were damaged, causing Bari to be dubbed the "second Pearl Harbor." The Americans sustained the highest losses, losing the Liberty ships John Bascom, John L. Motley, Joseph Wheeler, Samuel J. Tilden and John Harvey. The British lost four ships, the Italians three, the Norwegians three and the Poles two.
The next morning survivors woke to a scene of utter devastation. Large parts of Bari had been reduced to rubble, particularly the medieval old town. Portions of the city and the harbor were still burning, and a thick pall of black smoke hung in the sky. There were more than 1,000 military and merchant marine casualties; about 800 were admitted to local hospitals. The full extent of civilian casualties may never be known. Conservative estimates hover around 1,000, though there were probably more.
Additional Sources:
www.luftarchiv.de
www.garantialisveris.com
www.luftwaffepics.com
www.vnh.org
www.vectorsite.net
www.rsa.org.nz
www.armed-guard.com
www.450thbg.com
www.la-piazza.it
www.daveswarbirds.com
