Alongside the bombing, the persistent threat of invasion hung over the island for three years. Even as late as October 1942, the Italian Air Force concluded that despite every effort to neutralize the island by bombing, including the ‘concrete results’ of the heavy Blitz in spring 1942, the only solution to maintaining traffic with the Italian forces in North Africa was ‘the territorial occupation of the island’.104 The British authorities remained alive to this threat well into 1943 and regarded it as more damaging to morale than the air attacks. In early 1942 the War Office in London tried to persuade the British commanders in Malta to adopt a ruthless scorched-earth policy in the event of invasion, with plans to destroy all materials, equipment, oil, coal and port facilities. The Maltese troop commander refused, since it was tantamount to admitting defeat. The Maltese Defence Committee concluded in June 1942, ‘100% “Scorched Earth” NOT possible’ because the civilian population still had to be fed and supplied; their morale was likely to plummet if they witnessed ‘wanton destruction’.105 Anti-invasion preparations were extensive. Under the codewords ‘Volcano’ (attack imminent) and ‘Cyclone’ (general attack started), the British authorities planned to repel as rapidly as possible any Italian or German attempt to occupy the island. The air-raid shelters doubled up as shelters for the invasion, when the entire population not needed for defence purposes would be placed underground. The signal for invasion was a continuous blast on the air-raid siren.106 No invasion came and the siege was lifted with the arrival of a convoy from Alexandria on 20 November 1942. In February 1943 censorship was eased (though mention of air raids was only allowed four months after they had occurred). In November 1943 the blackout restrictions were relaxed.107 The failed Axis offensive cost the islanders 1,486 dead and around 4,000 injured, as well as the massive destruction of the urban and port areas of the island, but it confirmed again that sustained and heavy bombing, in the face of even modest military defences and an organized civil defence programme, had clear strategic limits.
‘GREAT DELAY TO THE TRAINS’: ALLIED BOMBING 1940–43
The possibility that Italy might take advantage of the Allies’ war with Germany to open up a new theatre in the Mediterranean was evident long before Mussolini finally seized the opportunity of imminent French collapse to join his Axis partner. The prospect presented the RAF with additional bombing opportunities to consider if, or when, bombing targets in enemy cities was permitted. In the last week of April the commander of British air forces in France, Air Marshal Arthur Barrett, wrote to the Air Ministry suggesting that bomber forces could operate from bases in southern France against industrial cities in northern Italy.108 After the War Cabinet on 1 June 1940 had considered ways to cope with Italian belligerency, Barrett was instructed to begin planning the supply and maintenance of British bombers on southern French bases. In case of war, Italy was to be attacked ‘without warning’.109 By the time Italy declared war on 10 June, ‘Haddock Force’, as it was known, had operational bases, fuel and supplies on two southern French airfields. On 11 June a dozen Wellington bombers arrived, but the French military authorities were now opposed to any bombing of Italy that might provoke retaliation against French cities, and parked lorries on the runway to prevent takeoff. Only after days of inter-Allied argument did a force of eight aircraft set off on the night of 15–16 June to bomb the port of Genoa, but only one found it; the following night six out of nine managed to locate and bomb Milan. Then the order came to evacuate following the French surrender and the 950 men of Haddock Force left on ships from Marseille on 18 June, leaving all their stores and equipment behind.110 Only on the eve of the armistice between France and Italy did French aircraft attack Italian targets in Sicily on 23 and 24 June, killing 45 people in a gesture of pointless defiance.111
The decision to begin bombing Italy – a campaign that continued uninterrupted in one form or another for five years – brought none of the anxieties over legality or retaliation that had governed the decision to begin bombing Germany four weeks earlier, in mid-May. From the outset it was assumed that Italian morale under Fascism was likely to be a more brittle target than German society under Hitler. Bombing could hence be justified by the expectation of rapid and significant political consequences rather than slow economic attrition. The first raids on northern Italy carried out by Bomber Command from British bases in June and August 1940 – three in all involving only 17 aircraft – were reported to have had ‘a “stunning” effect on Italian morale’.112 Intelligence fed to the RAF leadership suggested that Italy was ‘the heel of Achilles’ in the Axis war effort, short of resources and with a population unhappy about having to fight Mussolini’s war.113 Since Italy was difficult to reach from British bases or from bases in Egypt with existing aircraft, heavy bombing was not yet an option. But since Italy was regarded as politically fragile, a leaflet war was mounted to try to persuade the population to give up the fight. Leaflets could be dropped by small numbers of aircraft operating out of Maltese bases or occasionally in long-distance drops from Britain. One of the first leaflets drafted on Malta in November 1940 called for an Italian uprising: ‘On hearing the great signal all of you on to the Square – armed with whatever you can lay your hands on, hoes, pickaxes, shotguns, even sticks.’ The text called on Italians to create a civilized and democratic Italy and to be ready for the call (in block capitals) to ‘COUNTER-REVOLUTION’.114 Much of the campaign linked the call for Italian political resistance with the threat of bombing. A leaflet printed in January 1941 asked Italians to choose, ‘Mussolini or bombs?’, and 100,000 copies were flown from Luqa airfield to cities in southern Italy. In April 1941 a new leaflet under the headline ‘ROME IS IN DANGER’ threatened to bomb the Italian capital if Mussolini ordered the bombing of Athens or Cairo.115
Nothing came of the political initiative and the bombing was in reality small-scale and intermittent, a ‘small switch’, as Portal put it, rather than ‘a big stick’.116 Throughout 1940 and 1941 there were 24 small raids by Bomber Command (only four of them in 1941) and 95 raids from Malta, most of them by handfuls of Wellington bombers, seldom more than 10 at a time, on their way to bases in the Middle East.117 In November 1940, for example, six Wellingtons attacked Naples, where they reported a poor blackout, no searchlights or enemy aircraft and inaccurate anti-aircraft fire. A raid on Taranto by 10 Wellingtons on 13–14 November could be carried out from 5,000 feet because there were once again no searchlights, aircraft or barrage balloons, and inaccurate gunfire. The blackout was poor in all areas and trains could be seen running between towns fully lit.118 There were points in 1941 at which intensified bombing of Italy was considered, but the priority in the Mediterranean was to prevent Axis victory in North Africa and to keep the sea lanes open, and this absorbed all the RAF effort in the theatre. In October 1941 the Foreign Office suggested that at the right moment, when Italian morale was judged to be cracking, a heavy bomb attack might prove to be ‘a knock-out blow’, but Portal insisted that the war in Libya took priority.119 The Foreign Office suggested again in January 1942 a surprise raid on Kesselring’s headquarters at Frascati, near Rome, but the Air Ministry again demurred in favour of military targets in North Africa.120 In the first nine months of 1942 there was only one Bomber Command raid on Italy, in April against Savona on the Ligurian coast, and 34 small raids from Malta against airbases and ports, despite the heavy Axis bombing of the island. For most of the period from late 1940 to the late autumn of 1942 much of Italy was spared anything more than damaging nuisance raids.121
This situation changed suddenly and dramatically for the Italian population in late October 1942 when the war in North Africa turned in the Allies’ favour at El Alamein, followed by the invasion of north-west Africa in November. Imminent Italian defeat encouraged the view, as Churchill put it in early December, that ‘the heat should be turned on Italy’.122 Portal assured him that Italy would become ‘Bombing Target No. 1’, absorbing the same tonnage of bombs against the main ports and industrial cities as Germany.123
Bomber Command was ordered to begin area bombing of northern Italian cities as the weather deteriorated over Germany. In the last two months of 1942 six area raids were made on Genoa, seven raids on Turin and one daylight raid against Milan. There was negligible resistance to the daytime raid by 88 Lancasters and bombs could be released over Milan from as low as 2,500 feet, though the post-raid report indicated that there had been too few incendiaries dropped to cause the kind of fire damage common in area attacks on Germany. Indeed detailed research by the RE8 department for the Air Ministry showed that Italian architecture was less prone to either lateral or vertical fire damage than German because of the extensive use of stone and marble, the solid stone flooring, the thickness and mass of the walls, and the wide courtyards and streets. RE8 recommended dropping high explosive on modern multi-storey apartment blocks, which were more vulnerable than traditional pre-nineteenth century construction, and where a lucky strike in the enclosed courtyard would maximize the blast effect of a bomb.124 The Air Ministry nevertheless remained confident that incendiary damage in Italian cities would still be greater than damage from high explosive, as long as firebombs were dropped accurately enough on the most congested city-centre areas, Zones 1 and 2A, and included a proportion of explosive incendiaries to discourage the firefighters.125
The onset of the air offensive in October 1942 revealed the extent to which the Italian armed forces, the Fascist Party and the civil defence organization were unprepared for the effective protection, either active or passive, of the civilian population, and of the economic and industrial resources sustaining Italy’s war effort. The Italian Air Force had devoted little effort to constructing a network of air defences to match the system in Britain or Germany. After three years of war the chief of the air staff, Rino Fougier, was forced to admit that Italy was ‘in practice without effective defence’.126 Most fighter aircraft had been used in support of the ground armies, while a night-fighter capability scarcely existed despite the fact that most raids until 1943 were by night. By September 1942 Italian night-fighters had flown only 380 hours on operations compared with 158,100 hours for day-fighters.127 Searchlights, anti-aircraft batteries and radar were available in limited quantities, but were not integrated into a national system of communication to cope with identifying and challenging incoming aircraft (even the daylight raid on Milan had prompted the air-raid alarm only after the bombs were already falling). Italian air defences relied heavily on light 20-mm guns, which could not reach high-flying bombers; the plans for 300 batteries of 90-mm guns were never met.128 Fighters were supposed to provide protection during the day, when there were few, if any, raids, while anti-aircraft fire was supposed to defend at night, but neither operated at local level under a coordinated command, since anti-aircraft artillery was a branch of the army.129 There were severe shortages of aviation fuel and of modern aircraft while air-to-ground radio communication had still not been introduced by the end of 1942. Reports from fighter units in the south, now facing daylight raids by American air forces, showed that in many cases scrambled fighters arrived too late to intercept bombers, or in other cases lacked the speed to catch them. One squadron in January 1943 was compelled to send aircraft out just one or two at a time; another group was forced to operate six different types of fighter, some biplanes, some monoplanes, one of them German and eight of them French, with all the problems of coordination and maintenance likely to arise from a hybrid unit.130
Following the first major raids in late 1942, an effort was made to find a way of disposing the limited defensive resources to maximize their effectiveness. It was decided that the German system should be carefully investigated to see whether lessons could be drawn for the Italian air defence system; in June 1943 Josef Kammhuber, commander of the German air defences, came to Italy to discuss how to set up a collaborative air defence structure using Italian and German units and radar. By the summer only one Italian radar station had been completed, while the rest required between six weeks and two months before they would be available.131 Some Italian pilots were sent for night-fighter training in Germany, but on their return found it difficult to cope with the very different conditions on an Italian airbase.132 The organization of an integrated and unified air defence system had still not been agreed when the Mussolini regime collapsed in July. As Italy’s military capability evidently declined from late 1942, so German forces stationed in the peninsula came to rely more on their own anti-air defences. By 1943, 300 German anti-aircraft batteries had been transferred to Italy but German forces refused to allow Italian troops to man them, as had been agreed. By June 1943 the German Air Force had night-fighter bases and radar installed along Italy’s coastline in 33 ‘boxes’, imitating the Kammhuber Line in Germany; two months later there were also 10 German night-fighter units protecting Turin, Milan, Genoa and other north Italian cities as far as Brescia and Venice.133 This situation could produce its own friction. In Milan in February 1943, German anti-aircraft guns opened up on four Italian fighters, forcing them to abandon their operation. When the local Italian commander complained, the German anti-aircraft unit told him that as far as they were concerned Italian fighter pilots flew at their own risk.134
Italian air force leaders had counted from at least 1941 onwards on German assistance in supplying aircraft, aero-engines and advanced machine tools for the Italian aviation industry, but supply never matched requirements. A total of 706 German aircraft were delivered to Italian units over the whole course of the war, some 448 in the period when Italy was an Axis ally. The figure was a fraction of German output, and was divided between 15 different types, of varying quality. Some 300 were Me109s, but most of these were supplied in 1943 and 1944 to the new National Republican Air Force; there were 155 Ju87 ‘Stuka’ dive-bombers, but the rest were small packets of aircraft for airborne operations or bombing. The Italian Air Force was supplied with only 14 night-fighters for the campaign against night-bombing.135 Italy also relied on German supplies of radar equipment. In the course of 1942, 5 Freya and 10 Würzburg sets were made available, a fraction of what was needed. When a new air observation system was organized in the summer of 1943, the Italian Difesa Contraerea Territoriale (DiCaT), which had hitherto employed an observer corps based on acoustic devices, was supposed to operate a system of radar ‘boxes’ alongside German radar, but it had to wait for the slow supply of equipment from the German Telefunken manufacturer in order to be able to protect even the major target areas of Milan, Naples, Rome, Turin and Genoa.136 German reluctance to supply more was based on a number of considerations. When the Italian Air Force asked for machinery to help them modernize the aircraft industry in the summer of 1941, the German Air Ministry replied that supplies were placed in three categories: essential equipment for German industry; essential machinery for industry in occupied Europe working directly to German orders or for neutrals supplying vital raw materials; and inessential orders, including Italian. The German side took the view that if they helped Italy, they would be assisting a potential competitor when regular commercial activity restarted after the war.137
The failure of Italian air defence was matched by the poor state of preparation of civil defence and the welfare and rescue services on which it relied. By a law of 5 March 1934 the provincial prefects, representing the state rather than the Fascist Party, were to assume responsibility for all local civil defence measures. Comprehensive instructions on all aspects of civil defence, including evacuation, shelters, anti-gas preparations and firefighting, were first issued in 1938 by the War Ministry.138 In 1939, to avoid confusion between military and civil responsibilities, the War Ministry confirmed that the prefects rather than the local commanders of Italy’s military zones had to organize the protection of the population under the Ministry of the Interior, but instructions continued to be sent from the War Ministry department, Protezione Antiaerea, on into the war, creating regular arguments over jurisdiction between the two ministries. Each local prefecture had a Provincial Inspectorate for Anti-Air Protec
tion to oversee civil defence measures, but action in the 1930s was slow and piecemeal. For one thing, the funds available were severely limited, around one-tenth of the sums allocated to active air defence.139 Given these limitations, the state had to decide on an order of priority. It was assumed that major industrial and military targets should be protected, but in case of total war it might be necessary to protect ‘all the centres of population, based on a scale of the number of inhabitants’.140 Since there was neither the money nor the materials and equipment to provide universal civil defence, resources were concentrated in the most likely target areas. Gas masks, for example, were produced in 1939 for only 2 million out of a population of 45 million, the majority allocated to Rome, Milan, Turin, Genoa and Naples, the rest to just 11 other cities. The shelter programme had scarcely begun in 1939, with places in public shelters for just 72,000 people and in domestic shelters for a further 190,000.141 Not until the day war was declared, 10 June 1940, did the War Ministry send out to prefects a list of cities ranked in order of priority for civil defence activity, including the blackout. Category ‘P’ included 28 major ports and industrial centres, where civil defence measures were to be introduced ‘with maximum intensity and speed’; category ‘M’ covered 23 smaller cities where civil defence provisions could be introduced ‘with a slower rhythm and lesser intensity’; category ‘S’ left 41 cities (some of which, like Grosseto, were to be almost completely destroyed by bombing) where the authorities were free to carry out measures if they wanted to, ‘within the limits of possibility’.142
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