The New York Times Book of World War II, 1939-1945

by The New York Times

  The raiders, numbering more than 175, were all Liberators of the Ninth United States Air Force. The 2,000 men in their crews had been trained especially for this all-important mission and the machines were equipped with special low-altitude bomb-sights.

  300 TONS OF BOMBS DROPPED

  The planes were over their target at about 3 P.M. today. They remained not more than a minute and then were off, having dropped their great load of bombs with what, judging by first reports, seemed to have been highly satisfactory results. The pilots reported that, according to every indication, many fires and explosions had been caused. In all, some 300 tons of high-explosive bombs, mostly of the delayed-action type, were dropped. Clusters of incendiaries by the hundreds were also dropped, all from altitudes of less than 500 feet.

  Brig. Gen. U. G. Ent led the formations. His plane was among the first to return. All the aircraft had been expected about an hour earlier and there had been a period of the greatest tension. Lieut. Gen. Lewis H. Brereton, American Commander in the Middle East, was among the anxious crowd. He was the first to welcome General Ent and to hear reports from a number of officers.

  Col. Keith Cropton said “We got them completely by surprise.” Capt. Harold A. Wickland, who also took part in the recent Rome raid, said: “I saw a lot of smoke and we did some damage, but it all happened so quickly I don’t know what it was we hit.” Many others gave testimony that tended to show the general impression that widespread damage had been done.

  RUMANIANS SEEM FRIENDLY

  Particularly interesting at this time was the testimony of several of the air crews. They said that the Rumanian peasantry had shown the greatest friendliness. Rumanian girls were said to have waved “a great welcome.” A Rumanian soldier, gun on shoulder, was described as completely unconcerned.

  It was said at Ninth Air Force headquarters that months of planning and preparation had gone into this attack on Ploesti. Not only military specialists but authorities on oil refining were consulted.

  It was explained that, for several reasons, no large-scale bombing of the Ploesti refineries had been attempted before. The nature of the target makes it particularly invulnerable to attack by small formations.

  There were too few long-range heavy bombers based within striking distance of Ploesti. The distance to the target from any Allied airdromes rendered it impossible to attack with large forces of medium bombers.

  As soon as it appeared feasible to the Allied commanders to destroy Ploesti, a plan for doing so was formulated and its execution fell to General Brereton, the first commander of heavy bombers in the United States Army Air Forces to see action in this war. General Brereton supervised all phases of training and practice for the raid.

  Repeated high-level attacks on Ploesti would undoubtedly have accomplished its destruction, but such a process would have meant heavy losses to the attacking force. It would also have enabled the enemy to protect his installations.

  Oil storage tanks at the Columbia Aquila refinery in Ploesti, Rumania burning after the raid of American B-24 Liberator bombers, 1943.

  EXTREMELY VITAL TARGET

  The city of Ploesti, with its adjoining oil fields, refineries and transportation facilities, is generally conceded to be one of the most vital targets in Europe. Perhaps as much as half the entire German war machine would be halted if it were obliterated.

  In 1941 the Russians realized its importance but were unable, in two raids, to do more than a modicum of damage. In June, 1942, a small force of Ninth Air Force Liberators attacked but had little success, largely because of foul weather.

  Ploesti and its vicinity have thirteen refineries, seven of which are said to produce almost 90 per cent of all Rumania’s oil. The rest are all small and some are obsolescent. The Ploesti refineries can produce annually approximately 11,500,000 tons, but, since the German occupation, the flow of crude oil from the ground has dropped to a point at which it can supply scarcely more than half the capacity of the refineries.

  Nevertheless, it is estimated that the Ploesti area still supplies at least 35 per cent of Germany’s petroleum demands, including, besides aviation fuel, ordinary gasoline for motor transport and lubrication and Diesel oils. Including its refineries and pump stations, which encircle the city, the Ploesti area approximates nineteen square miles. Most of it is an enormous rail ganglion.

  AUGUST 4, 1943

  AXIS POSITION IN SICILY GROWS MORE PERILOUS

  Americans Sweep Past Troina—Canadians Take Regalbuto

  EIGHTH ARMY FLANK GAINS

  Catania Now Faces Multiple Drive as Ships and Planes Help Land Advance

  By MILTON BRACKER

  By Wireless to The New York Times.

  ALLIED HEADQUARTERS, NORTH AFRICA, Aug. 3—Converging inexorably on Mount Etna and northeastern Sicily, the Allied forces have battered down increasingly stubborn opposition to capture Regalbuto, Centuripe and Troina.

  While the Canadians smashed their way into Regalbuto and the British Seventy-eighth Division took Centuripe, the Americans continued eastward from the Nicosia-Mistretta road line to sweep beyond Troina, the last German bastion directly west of the inner ring around Mount Etna. With the offensive mounting in power and the bases ahead, as well as ports in Italy, undergoing constant aerial pounding, the Allies now appear to be thrusting out one steel prong north of Mount Etna, possibly by way of Randazzo, while the other cuts its way forward toward Catania.

  [Some American units are reported to be less than twenty miles from Randazzo, the British radio said, according to the Columbia Broadcasting System.]

  MULTIPLE DRIVE ON CATANIA

  The drive against Catania is a multiple offensive in itself. British Eighth Army artillery is hammering the German positions along the coast, while the captors of Regalbuto and Centuripe clearly menace the city from the rear, via Paterno. Within twenty miles of Regalbuto and fifteen miles of Centuripe, Paterno would be the last obstacle confronting the Army sweeping down on Catania from the northwest. Besides Paterno, the Allies threaten Adrano, from which Catania could be cut off or reached via Biancavilla and Belpasso.

  [The Allies were within six miles of Adrano, The United Press said.] The advance has averaged about ten miles on a broad front. The situation is bound to be uncomfortable for the reformed Hermann Goering Division and the German paratroopers around Catania. To the right of the British Seventy-eighth Division—veterans of the entry into Tunis—the Fifty-first Highland Division is forging its way ahead against opposition that includes the Twenty-sixth Italian Division—apparently the only major Italian unit still battling for Sicily—and the German Fifteenth Armored Division.

  American advances that overran Capizzi (1) and, to the southeast, Cerami and Troina (2) threatened to throw a ring around the enemy’s Mount Etna positions. These positions were further jeopardized when the Canadians broke through to Regalbuto (3) and units and units of the British Eight Army smashed forward to Catenanuova and Centruripe (4). In addition, British troops above Rammacca entered the western end of the Catania Plain (5) and kept up their pressure near the city of Catania itself (6) with heavy Eighth army artillery bombardments.

  TWO NORTHERN TOWNS TAKEN

  In the north, the Americans’ success around Troina was preceded two days ago by the capture of Capizzi and Cerami. The fall of the two towns had previously been announced, but their names were made public only today. The Americans have been progressing against the German Twenty-ninth Motorized Division.

  [The Germans were trying to establish a temporary anchor at San Fratello, The Associated Press said, but the occupation of the Troina area would make San Fratello strategically untenable.

  [Off both the north and east coasts, The Associated Press added, warships continually swept behind the enemy front to batter rear communications and troop movements.] The Axis troops face the weight of extensive Allied reinforcements brought up during the period of apparent inactivity before the opening of the great new drive on Sunday. Although the enemy resistance has
continued to stiffen as the means of escape narrows, the Germans in particular have paid a heavy toll.

  But the Allies have recently had to fight over some of the most difficult terrain imaginable. Guns and tanks have been doing their share, but basically it has been an infantry job.

  Before the announcement of the fall of Regalbuto, Centuripe and Troina, the communiqué issued here filled in the details of previous operations. The advance on the plain of Catania continued generally north and northeast from Rammacca and Raddusa. These towns formed the lower corners of an irregular oblong, with Regalbuto and Paterno at its upper ends.

  At the same time a substantial bridgehead was established north of the Dittaino River in the vicinity of a captured town that has not been identified. After a laborious advance through rocky country other British and Canadian troops gained positions overlooking Agira, west of Regalbuto, and now plainly behind the lines. [The Eighth Army has captured Catenanuova, Reuter reported.]

  PLANES COOPERATE CLOSELY

  Operating with the ground forces, Bostons, Mitchells and Baltimores of the Northwest African Air Forces concentrated on Adrano, Randazzo, Milazzo and Messina in Sicily and on Reggio Calabria in Italy. Fighters cotinued their sweeps and patrols over the island.

  In other operations, Beaufighters strafed a destroyer and three motor torpedo boats off Cagliari, Sardinia. Lightnings shot down three enemy aircraft and damaged two while assisting flying boats in an air-sea rescue.

  Naples was attacked for the second successive night. [“Block-busters” and incendiaries were dropped in railway areas, The Associated Press said.] During all these operations, seven Allied craft were lost.

  AUGUST 6, 1943

  FLAME THROWERS DECISIVE

  Account for Many Pillboxes In Final Drive on Munda

  By GEORGE JONES

  United Press Staff Correspondent.

  MUNDA AIRPORT, New Georgia Island, Aug. 3 (Delayed)—The battle for Munda airfield virtually ended today, except for mopping up, when sweat-stained American jungle troops poured onto this strategic airstrip, an objective toward which they had struggled yard by yard for thirty-five days.

  For the past three days the Japanese defenses have cracked wide open. It is believed now that they began evacuating high-ranking officers and some troops by destroyer to Kolombangara Island to the northeast several days ago, leaving a rear guard to protect the evacuation.

  These battered Japanese were instructed to “fight to the death” for their Emperor. They are still hurling a weak challenge from Kokengolo Hill extending from the airport in a northwesterly direction.

  American artillery, which has tormented the Japanese since the start of the campaign, poured hundreds of shells on this position in preparation for the final extermination of the enemy remnants.

  Other American troops moved north, attempting to cut off the would-be evacuees. Small craft last night sank a small Japanese ship in narrow Blackett Strait and damaged two barges in early stages of the Japanese flight from New Georgia.

  The writer has just visited the airport, where he surveyed the ravaged face of Munda. Americans and Japanese were exchanging mortar and rifle fire across the western edge of the airstrip. Half a dozen enemy Zeros and Mitsubishi two-motored bombers were scattered about the revetments. Souvenir hunters already had started stripping them.

  The United States forces were now inside the airport at the eastern edge and along the field on the east and south boundaries. These troops advanced 2,000 yards on Aug. 1 and 2 past battle-scarred Lambeti plantation, along the coast, while in the interior our forces were temporarily held back in their southward advance by remaining Japanese resistance.

  The Americans encountered little opposition during the last three days of the advance.

  The Japanese evidently were demoralized by the continued artillery and aerial assaults. They left huge stores of rice, damaged field pieces, clothing and blankets.

  The Americans easily took the dominating Bibilo Hill, 400 yards northeast of the airport, where it had been anticipated the Japanese would attempt to block our entrance into Munda.

  Instead, enemy remnants retreated farther westward behind Kokengolo Hill, where they proved unable to halt our coastal advance into the airport.

  TWENTY YARDS FROM THE GOAL

  Last night we were twenty yards from our goal. With mortars and one or two 77mm. dual-purpose field pieces of the type fondly called “Pistol Petes,” American artillery was instructed to shell the Japanese.

  A few minutes later smoke bombs were dropped on enemy positions. Batteries then began to lay in salvo after salvo of explosives. The barrage lasted all morning.

  Pistol Pete was silent this afternoon, his work done.

  The airport was in reasonably good shape considering the continuous shellacking it had taken since last December. It shouldn’t be long before the airport is being used by American planes.

  This correspondent has examined pillboxes in which the Japanese chose to die rather than surrender. Some were eight feet deep, reinforced with coral and divided into compartments by thick coconut logs. They dotted the hillsides and hilltops.

  Only a direct hit could destroy such defenses. Blanket artillery fire and bombings often destroyed the personnel, but the Japanese either replaced casualties or left one machine gunner in each pillbox.

  It was in the latter stages of the campaign that we found the answer: flame throwers, which poured in streams of fire and fumes through the apertures of the pillboxes from fifty feet. Flame throwers were credited with destroying thirty-three pillboxes in the past seven days.

  AUGUST 8, 1943

  Rome Seeks Open City Role; Hitler’s Demands Presented

  By DANIEL T. BRIGHAM

  By Telephone to The New York Times.

  BERNE, Switzerland, Aug. 7—The Italian Government has begun preliminary operations connected with the declaration of Rome as an open city. The Premier, Marshal Pietro Badoglio, according to travelers from Italy, is taking this measure to prevent Rome from suffering the fate of Warsaw, Rotterdam and Belgrade should Italy become a battlefield.

  In this connection the key ministries of defense—War, Navy and Air—have already been removed to other points, while the evacuation of military stores from the capital area is being speeded.

  Meanwhile, Italian-German conversations between the Foreign Ministers, Joachim von Ribbentrop for Germany and Raffaele Guariglia for Italy, in Verona, took a new turn late this afternoon when Field Marshal Gen. Wilhelm Keitel, accompanied by many technical experts, arrived by plane from Vienna with Adolf Hitler’s demands for an immediate clarification of the Italian position.

  Gen. Vittorio Ambrosio, chief of the Italian General Staff, arrived in Verona last night on the Germans’ invitation to sit in on “important discussions,” which got under way immediately.

  While these discussions were extending their scope, the government in Rome demonstrated its internal policy of “pacification” by decreeing a state of war throughout the peninsula, a measure hitherto applied only to the coastline and the Northern Provinces. Believed to be a measure with which to impress the Allies and the Axis, the new move indirectly stiffens the regulation of the martial law decree following the downfall of Benito Mussolini.

  Under a state of war decree any civilian “resisting or obstructing the public authority in the performance of its duty” is liable to the death penalty for treason. The Government, therefore, has put teeth into its threats against those who continue in their peace manifestations and strikes throughout the industrial north.

  Effective from midnight tonight the new decree comes into force exactly three days before the scheduled completion of the mobilization of all classes born between 1907 and 1922. Both of these measures, the Rome radio said, will “prevent any surprise developments from any quarter that might hinder the Government in its action of conducting the war to an honorable conclusion.”

  AUGUST 8, 1943

  HARLEM UNREST TRACED TO LONGSTANDING ILLS<
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  Basic Racial Problem Seen Sharpened By New Complaints Born of War

  By RUSSELL B. PORTER

  Last week’s riot in Harlem, with its toll of five dead, 500 injured, 500 arrested, and an estimated $85,000,000 in property damage, was a social explosion in a powder keg that has been years in the offing.

  The Harlem problem is a racial one, rooted in the Negro’s dissatisfaction with his racial status not only in Harlem but all over the country, and exhibited in his efforts, sometimes intelligent and moderate, sometimes blind and extreme, to break down the economic and social discriminations, barriers and frustrations which at times seem unbearable.

  In Harlem and other Negro districts where all told 500,000 persons live, there is no question that an ugly mood has existed for some years, especially among the younger Negroes. This condition is not peculiar to New York. As all reports make clear, it is a reflection of a nation-wide attitude—a feeling of resentment and bitterness which came to a head in the depression years and has been nourished by a variety of old and new grievances, many of them real, some fancied or exaggerated, but all being exploited by pressure groups and subversive, anti-democratic elements.

  The cleanup after the Harlem riots of 1943.

  LONG-STANDING COMPLAINTS

  The tinderbox of Harlem was started many years ago when Negro segregation and overcrowding gradually transformed much of that historic community into a slum area—a “black ghetto.” These conditions were terribly aggravated in the depression years. Negroes were among the first to lose their jobs. Poverty, misery and crime increased rapidly. Later, when New York became known all over the country for its relief system, new waves of immigrants began arriving from the South, and Harlem became more overcrowded than ever.