by Dan Hampton
Palermo fell to the Allies on July 22, 1943, and it was here that Ken got a short break when Bob Hope and the Gypsies arrived with the USO. “He was a real gentleman,” Chilstrom fondly remembers. “He hung around after the show, talking and ad-libbing. I sat next to him at dinner and for an hour could forget the war.” Hope respected all the fighting men, but especially pilots. “One of the aviators here took me for a plane ride this afternoon,” Hope was fond of recounting. “I wasn’t frightened, but at two thousand feet one of my goose pimples bailed out.” TIME magazine agreed and wrote of the legendary entertainer:
Like most legends, it represents measurable qualities in a kind of mystical blend. Hope was funny, treating hordes of soldiers to roars of laughter. He was friendly—ate with servicemen, drank with them, read their doggerel, listened to their songs. He was indefatigable, running himself ragged with five, six, seven shows a day. He was figurative—the straight link with home, the radio voice that for years had filled the living room and that in foreign parts called up its image. Hence boys whom Hope might entertain for an hour awaited him for weeks.
But it could not last, so Ken was back at war the next day and Sicily was far from a certain victory. Most of the island’s defenders, including the 15th Panzergrenadiers and the Hermann Göring Division, fell back and dug in with their backs to Messina, the only port left open to them. This defensive pocket, called the Etna Line, was also the area where most Axis fighter opposition was encountered as it was very close to Luftwaffe bases in southern Italy.
Then on July 25, 1943, a major fracture appeared in the Axis wall. Mussolini, officially the prime minister of Italy, received a “no confidence” vote by his own Grand Fascist Council and was ordered to resign by King Victor Emmanuel III. Defeated and despondent, Il Duce was promptly arrested and would spend the next six weeks being shuttled around Italy to prevent his rescue by the Germans. “We hoped this would make the fight for Sicily a bit easier,” Ken remembered, “but it seemed to have no effect on what we were doing.” This was certainly true regarding the German military. In fact, the situation became more dangerous as many Italian units melted away into the local area, which left the Germans isolated and desperately vicious.
In the midst of this, Operation Tidal Wave, a massive B-24 strike launched from Benghazi in North Africa, aimed to cripple output from the Romanian refineries clustered around Ploies,ti. Though not operating at full capacity, these facilities provided at least 30 percent of the Reich’s oil and were extremely valuable targets. One hundred sixty-two B-24 Liberators from five bombardment groups made it into Romania on August 1, 1943.* Hit hard, production was indeed crippled—for a few weeks. The damage was quickly repaired and output actually increased, yet the costly Allied raid unequivocally exposed Germany’s Achilles’ heel and proved without question that even the best-defended targets in the Reich were vulnerable.* It also graphically revealed the absolute necessity of a long-range fighter to protect the bombers.
All through July Ken Chilstrom and his squadron hammered at Sicily’s defenders. Montgomery’s British Eighth Army was still battling the Hermann Göring Division along the coast road near Catania, but by the end of the month Patton was in Santo Stefano approaching the Etna Line from the west through the Sicilian Apennines. The Germans knew they could not hold on and Field Marshal Albert Kesselring had already decided on a fighting withdrawal, in carefully orchestrated stages, across the Strait of Messina to Calabria on the Italian mainland.
Chilstrom and the rest of the fighter-bombers could do nothing about it. At its narrowest point, the strait was less than two miles across to the Via San Giovanni, and with hundreds of anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) guns on both sides it was one of the most heavily defended areas of Europe, certainly in the Mediterranean, because the Germans knew it was their only way out of Sicily. “We lost some folks there,” Ken remembered. “One friend of mine, Harry Castleman, went down somewhere around there. A British Walrus [Air-Sea Rescue] found his raft but no Harry. We thought he was just gone, like so many guys who go down over water. Turns out”—he smiled—“Harry couldn’t get to his raft so he swam ashore. He ended up in a convent and hid out from the Germans until we landed in Italy. Two months after he went down he strolled into the squadron! He looked great. Guess the nuns took good care of him.”
The Calabrian side of the strait bristled with coastal artillery, including two 170 mm batteries, and the latent threat of the Italian navy was always present. Impressively, the Germans managed to evacuate about 8,000 men per night using carefully controlled routes and ferry crossings. In the end, through a clever shifting of troops, minefields, and obstacles, 100,000 Axis troops, including the two panzergrenadier divisions and the Hermann Göring Division, got clean away. They took with them 14,000 vehicles, 47 tanks, and nearly 100 heavy guns that would now face the Allies in Italy.
Sicily had fallen, and with it Mussolini, at the cost of nearly 23,000 American, British, and Canadian soldiers killed, wounded, or missing. German losses stood at 27,940, while over 150,000 Italians were captured, were killed, or went missing. With the capture of Sicily the strategic situation changed drastically. The Mediterranean became untenable for the Axis, and sea lanes from Gibraltar to Cairo were now open to transport Allied men and matériel anywhere across North Africa, up to Greece, and east into the Levant. Vital supplies could also reach the Soviet Union through the Dardanelles and Black Sea.
The loss definitely hastened Mussolini’s fall and Field Marshal Pietro Badoglio became prime minister of a country caught on the proverbial anvil: a German advance from the north, and an imminent Allied invasion from the south. Ken Chilstrom got a few days of rest, but the situation was extremely fluid, especially after the Italians concluded a separate peace in early September with the Armistice of Cassibile. That same day, elements of the British XIII Corps under Montgomery crossed the Strait of Messina and landed in Calabria—Axis Europe had been invaded.
Bob Hoover, now part of the 4th Fighter Squadron, was flying Spitfires out of Palermo, shooting up transports and German warships operating from the French coast. Two days later Chilstrom and the 27th Group moved up to the Barcelona Landing Ground in Milazzo Harbor, a few miles southwest of Messina. The Italians attempted to gain favorable conditions under the armistice but were in no position to bargain. When the treaty was announced on September 8, 1943, the Germans predictably reacted harshly and moved to rapidly occupy the rest of Italy. The Italian air force effectively ceased to exist and was of no consequence to the Allies, but the Regia Marina, the Royal Navy, was another matter. As a protocol of the armistice the Allies had insisted the fleet not be scuttled or handed over to the Germans, who were moving to quickly seize the main ports of Genoa, Taranto, and La Spezia.*
What happened next arguably ushered in the age of precision-guided munitions. Admiral Carlo Bergamini slipped out of Genoa aboard the battleship Roma at 2:30 A.M. on September 9, after telling the Germans he was going to attack the Allied landing sites near Salerno. In company with the battleships Vittorio Veneto, Italia, and a dozen escorts, he initially headed for Sardinia before finding the port of La Maddelena had just been seized by the Germans. Heading for Malta, the fleet was caught transiting the Strait of Bonifacio between Corsica and Sardinia and attacked by eleven twin-engined Do 217 bombers out of Marseilles.*
The Germans used the Fritz X, a 3,450-pound bomb guided by radio control link, to attack the battleship. This was a manual control to line-of-sight (MCLOS) system so the Dornier’s bombardier relied on flares mounted on the bomb’s tail assembly to keep sight. He would then use a Kehl transmitter to transmit guidance signals to a Strasbourg receiver, and through this the pitch-and-roll spoilers on the tail were activated to guide the bomb to impact. Designed as an antiship weapon, the Fritz was made to be dropped between 18,000 and 20,000 feet. Its 705-pound warhead could penetrate up to twenty-eight inches of steel plate, though warship deck armor was much thinner. The bombers began attacking about 1530 as the fleet approached
Asinara Island but were too high for the anti-aircraft guns to reach. Roma was struck and survivors later noted that the bombs appeared to follow the ship as it maneuvered. By 1552, drifting and afire, the battleship was hit again, but this time the massive bomb penetrated the forward engine room and from there into the magazine. The resulting explosion killed Admiral Bergamini as well as the ship’s captain; twenty minutes later the 46,000-ton warship broke in two, capsized, and sank with 1,253 of her 1,849 man crew.
The same day the Roma went down, the Allies invaded mainland Italy at Salerno, twenty-five miles south of Naples. Ken Chilstrom and the 27th Fighter-Bomber Group were once again in the thick of things.* Operation Avalanche was intended to cut off Axis forces south of Naples and, by seizing that port, ensure a solid, deepwater base for resupply and future operations. The British Eighth Army was to drive north from Calabria, mopping up resistance along the way, then link up with the U.S. Fifth Corps at Salerno. The combined force would then advance north toward Rome.
It was a bad plan.
First, based on flawed assumptions from the German evacuation of Sicily, the Allies assumed the Germans would not fight for Italy but retreat north. It was also not recognized that the Germans regarded Italy as a buffer against the southern Reich, and they intended to bleed the Allies every step of the way. Second, supplies and reinforcements for the Italian campaign were a lower priority due to the buildup in England for the impending Allied invasion of France. Last, in a silly attempt to achieve surprise, there was again no pre-assault bombardment ordered for Avalanche. The Germans obviously expected an invasion and had multiple divisions in the landing area, including those that had escaped from Sicily.
The 16th Panzer Division was commanded by Rudolph Sieckenius, a veteran of France and Russia, who formed four mobile battle groups to oppose the landing. Allied air cover, including Ken Chilstrom, had a tough time against the panzers because they deployed in small units of five to seven tanks, and only concentrated air support and heavy naval gunfire from the cruisers Philadelphia and Savannah halted the counterattack. “It was touch and go from the beginning, very confusing . . . and no one was certain of the situation from hour to hour.” Chilstrom was adamant about the resolve, however. “We weren’t going to let the Germans push our guys back into the sea,” yet they very nearly did. Taking advantage of the unfavorable terrain on the Salerno plains, the Germans attacked through the open, unoccupied gap between the Sele and Calore rivers, and came within a mile of the beaches on the morning of September 9. “As sure as God lives the Germans will attack down that river,” Patton wrote from Sicily, and he was quite correct.
Counterattacks continued for the next two days as the Germans threw at least six divisions, under strength but veteran, into the battle. On September 13, two panzer divisions and the 29th Panzergrenadiers nearly made it to the beaches, but they temporarily halted on the Calore River because the bridge was destroyed. It was here that American field artillery zeroed in, an intense concentration of 155 mm and 105 mm howitzers that literally stopped the panzers in their tracks. By the end of the next day, under continuous air cover, most of the U.S. 45th Infantry Division was ashore at Paestum, on the southern end of the Gulf of Salerno, and the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division was crossing from Sicily.
The Germans were now relearning a lesson they’d been taught at El Alamein by the British, at Stalingrad by the Red Army, and now at Salerno by the Americans—if their initial counterattack was not successful, then there likely would not be a chance for another. The open ground exploited by the panzers now became a kill zone as 500 American medium and heavy bombers blasted the Sele-Calore corridor. The USS Philadelphia and Boise got close inshore near the mouth of the river and opened fire at point-blank range on anything that moved. Farther offshore, the Royal Navy battleships HMS Valiant and Warspite pounded the inland areas with their sixteen-inch guns. Overhead, Apaches and other fighter-bombers hit bridges, roads, and anything German they could find.
Regrouping one final time, the Hermann Göring Division and 26th Panzer attacked the Salerno beachhead on September 16 and were stopped cold. Two days later Ken Chilstrom and the 27th Fighter-Bomber Group moved 150 miles north from Milazzo to Capaccio Airfield just outside Paestum. From here the 523rd and other squadrons ranged along the coast, bombing and strafing as the Germans pulled back to the north. Operation Avalanche was successful in that the Allies were ashore in strength and could not be dislodged, yet it failed because Naples was not captured; the Allies now faced a long, bitter advance up the peninsula, and the Germans were in no way vanquished from Italy.
In fact, during the fighting around Salerno, Mussolini was rescued from the Gran Sasso area of Abruzzo in central Italy. Waffen SS commandos and regular paratroopers under the command of Major Otto Harald-Mors snatched the former dictator from the Campo Imperatore ski resort and he was eventually installed as head of northern Italy’s Salò Republic, though he was never more than a figurehead and the Germans remained firmly in control.* Yet a protracted war of attrition as the Allies prepared to invade France was something the Third Reich could ill afford, and that is exactly what they had. Both sides also had a recalcitrant, unpredictable, and generally hostile Italian population to control.
Chilstrom would move again in early November 1943 to Guado Air Base near Bellizzi, and it was here that he would finish out his tour in Italy. Nothing, no school or training program, can hone flying skills like combat; through the crucible of 1943 Ken had acquired a veteran’s judgment and experience that would serve him well for the rest of his career. He developed controlled aggressiveness; that vital, hard-won and unteachable attribute that distinctly marks a successful combat fighter pilot. He’d killed tanks and scores of vehicles; dropped bridges; and shot up the German and Italian armies—but air combat was scarce. The Italians were out of the picture, not that they had challenged Allied fighters much, and most of the Germans were still on the Eastern Front or defending France.
Finally, on his seventy-third mission, Ken was in a position to add an enemy plane or two to his list. While leading a flight of four Apaches into a valley west of Rome he spotted three Junkers floatplanes on a lake.* “I called ‘power back’ to the rest of my flight. We’ve got to let ’em get up so we can shoot them down.” Weaving back and forth just over the ridgeline, the four fighters waited, but the Germans never took off. “I think they saw us and decided they’d live longer if they stayed on the water. We finally ran out of gas and had to shoot them up where they floated. I got the first one.” He still smiles at that memory.
Other memories were not so good.
On another mission Chilstrom led a flight of eight Apaches into a valley east of Mount Maiella in the rugged Chieti region to hit some gun emplacements. He did everything right: a medium-altitude reconnaissance, and an attack with the sun behind him in the eyes of anyone looking up from the valley. Suddenly he caught glimpse of a blue flare. “The Germans had learned.” He shook his head slowly. “They would send up a flare like that as a warning whenever A-36s were around . . . but we were already in the valley. Before we could get the hell out, five Apaches went down in less than a minute. The coolant lines and radiator of the A-36 were particularly vulnerable to ground fire and once they were damaged the fighter would not last long.” The other three tried to get away from that valley but had to bail out . . . they were all captured. “The Germans, at least these Germans, were very considerate about alerting us to who became prisoners of war.”
Allied victories in North Africa, an invasion of Italy, and a disastrous campaign in Russia were clear warnings to those in the Reich who could still read the writing on the wall. Even if Hitler refused to accept the strategic situation, there were others who did. As the Allied bombing campaign was beginning to take hold and the Wehrmacht in Italy was inexorably pushed northward, German technical advances offered a solution for an increasingly desperate military situation. Short of a negotiated peace, which was highly unlikely, Germany’s wonder weapons and sup
erior technology seemed the only way out.
Five
Wonder
Adolf Busemann and Alexander Lippisch were worried men.
As with many academics, they had far-reaching collaborative interests that transcended national borders, and contacts in a wide variety of countries. Until World War II, that is. For several years the conflict had forced them to work in a vacuum without the benefit of scientific cross-fertilization that often occurs in academia, but, as long as Germany was winning, the situation was tolerable. Yet that had all changed by 1943 and both men, leading aerodynamicists, had cause for concern—especially with the Russians closing in from the east. The demand for expertise was so dire that the German government recalled scientists, engineers, and technicians from combat duty. Ordered back into research and development, which they should never have left, over 4,000 rocket specialists alone returned to Peenemünde, Oberammergau, and other top-secret facilities.
Lippisch, a Bavarian by birth, had served as an aerial observer with the Imperial German Air Service from 1915 to 1918, and after the Great War worked for the Zeppelin Company. Eventually completing a doctorate in engineering from the University of Heidelberg, Lippisch was an advocate of supersonic flight while much of the world believed it to be fantastical nonsense. Through experimentation and wind tunnel tests, he became convinced that with sufficient power a delta wing design (basically variations on a triangle) would permit flight faster than sound. His colleague, fellow engineer Adolf Busemann, was similarly convinced that such speeds were attainable, but he advocated a different method. Busemann, born in Lübeck along Germany’s northern coast, had been part of a gilded development team that included such legends as Theodore von Kármán and Ludwig Prandtl, and his specialty was airflow; specifically supersonic airflow.
Not particularly a new field, supersonic flow had been researched for years to improve the efficiency of steam turbine engines. “I worked as an engineer and had learned in college, of course, about steam turbines and things like that,” Busemann reflected during a 1979 interview. “They were already invented. Therefore, we wanted to see how to make them most efficient—how to get the most energy out, put the least into a reversed flow, and reduce energy losses.