Operation Shingle
( Battle of Anzio)
Background
At the end of 1943, following the Allied invasion of Italy, Allied forces were bogged down at the Gustav Line, a defensive line across Italy south of the strategic objective of Rome. The terrain of central Italy had proved ideally suited to defense, and Field Marshal Albert Kesselring took full advantage. Several Allied proposals were made to break the stalemate, but Winston Churchill's idea for "Operation Shingle" was initially looked upon with disdain by General George Marshall, who was more concerned with planning a massive Normandy invasion than listening to Churchill's ideas about amphibious operations. Only after Churchill made a personal plea was the idea accepted by Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin, who welcomed any major Allied offensive that would take pressure off the Eastern Front. A major attack in the south by the U.S. Fifth Army, commanded by Lieutenant-General Mark W. Clark, would draw Germany's depleted forces away from the area around Rome and from the hills between Rome and the coast. This would make possible a surprise landing by Fifth Army's U.S. VI Corps under the command of Maj. Gen. John P. Lucas in the Anzio/Nettuno area, and a rapid advance into the Alban Hills to cut German communications and "threaten the rear of the German XIV Panzer Corps" under General Fridolin von Senger und Etterlin.
Plan
Planners argued that if Kesselring (in charge of German forces in Italy) pulled troops out of the Gustav Line to defend against the Allied assault, then Allied forces would be able to break through the line; if Kesselring did not pull troops out of the Gustav Line, then Operation Shingle would threaten to capture Rome and cut off the German units defending the Gustav Line. Should Germany have adequate reinforcements available to defend both Rome and the Gustav Line, the Allies felt that the operation would nevertheless be useful in engaging forces which could otherwise be committed on another front. The operation was officially canceled on 18 December, 1943. However, it was later reselected.
General Clark did not feel he had the numbers on the southern front to exploit any breakthrough. His plan therefore was relying on the southern offensive drawing Kesselring's reserves in and providing the Anzio force the opportunity to break inland quickly. This would also reflect the orders he had received from Alexander to "...carry out an assault landing on the beaches in the vicinity of Rome with the object of cutting the enemy lines of communication and threatening the rear of the German XIV Corps [on the Gustav Line]." However, his written orders to Lucas did not really reflect this. Initially Lucas had received orders to "1. Seize and secure a beachhead in the vicinity of Anzio 2. Advance and secure Colli Laziali [the Alban Hills] 3. Be prepared to advance on Rome". However, Clark's final orders stated "...2. Advance on Colli Laziali" giving Lucas considerable flexibility as to the timing of any advance on the Alban Hills. It is likely that the caution displayed by both Clark and Lucas was to some extent a product of Clark's experiences at the tough battle for the Salerno beach head and Lucas' natural caution stemming from his lack of experience in battle.
Neither Clark nor Lucas had full confidence in either their superiors or the operational plan. Along with most of the Fifth Army staff they felt that Shingle was properly a two corps or even a full army task. A few days prior to the attack, Lucas wrote in his diary, "They will end up putting me ashore with inadequate forces and get me in a serious jam...Then, who will get the blame?" and "[The operation] has a strong odour of Gallipoli and apparently the same amateur was still on the coach's bench." The "amateur" can only have referred to Winston Churchill, architect of the disastrous Gallipoli landings of World War I and personal advocate of Shingle.
Availability of naval forces
One of the problems with the plan was the availability of landing ships. The American commanders in particular were determined that nothing should delay the Normandy invasion and the supporting landings in southern France. Operation Shingle would require the use of landing ships necessary for these operations. Initially Shingle was to release these assets by January 15. However, this being deemed problematic, President Roosevelt granted permission for the craft to remain until February 5.
Only enough tank landing ships (LSTs) to land a single division were initially available to Shingle. Later, at Churchill's personal insistence, enough were made available to land two divisions. Allied intelligence thought that five or six German divisions were in the area, although U.S. 5th Army intelligence severely underestimated the German 10th Army's fighting capacity at the time, believing many of their units would be worn out after the defensive battles fought since September.
Initial Landings
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The landings began on January 22, 1944.
Although resistance had been expected, as seen at Salerno during 1943, the initial landings were essentially unopposed, with the exception of desultory Luftwaffe strafing runs.
By midnight, 36,000 soldiers and 3,200 vehicles had landed on the beaches. Thirteen Allied troops were killed, and 97 wounded; about 200 Germans had been taken as POWs.[7] The 1st Division penetrated 2 miles (3 km) inland, the Rangers captured Anzio's port, the 509th PIB captured Nettuno, and the 3rd Division penetrated 3 miles (5 km) inland.
In the first days of operations, the command of the Italian resistance movement had a meeting with the Allied General Headquarters: it offered to guide the Allied Force in the Alban Hills territory, but the Allied Command refused the proposal. |
After the landings
It is clear that Lucas's superiors expected some kind of offensive action from him. The point of the landing was to turn the German defences on the Winter Line taking advantage of their exposed rear and hopefully panicking them into retreating northwards past Rome. However, Lucas instead poured more men and materiel into his tiny bridgehead, and strengthened his defences.
Winston Churchill was clearly displeased with this action. "I had hoped we were hurling a wildcat into the shore, but all we got was a stranded whale," he said.
Lucas's decision remains a controversial one. Noted military historian John Keegan wrote, "Had Lucas risked rushing at Rome the first day, his spearheads would probably have arrived, though they would have soon been crushed. Nevertheless he might have 'staked out claims well inland.'" However, Lucas did not have confidence in the strategic planning of the operation. Also, he could certainly argue that his interpretation of his orders from Gen. Clark was not an unreasonable one. With two divisions landed, and facing two or three times that many Germans, it would not have been unreasonable for Lucas to consider the beachhead insecure. But according to Keegan, Lucas's actions "achieved the worst of both worlds, exposing his forces to risk without imposing any on the enemy."
Response of Axis forces
Kesselring was informed of the landings at 03:00 on January 22. Although the landings came as a surprise, Kesselring had made contingency plans to deal with possible landings at all the likely locations. All the plans relied on his divisions each having previously organised a motorised rapid reaction unit (Kampfgruppe) which could move speedily to meet the threat and buy time for the rest of the defenses to get in place.At 05:00 he ordered the Kampfgruppe of 4th Parachute Division and the Hermann Göring Division to defend the roads leading from Anzio to the Alban Hills via Campoleone and Cisterna whilst his plans expected some 20,000 defending troops to have arrived by the end of the first day. In addition, he requested that OKW send reinforcements, and in response to this they ordered the equivalent of more than three divisions from France, Yugoslavia, and Germany whilst at the same time releasing to Kesselring a further three divisions in Italy which had been under OKW's direct command. Later that morning, he ordered Generaloberst Eberhard von Mackensen (Fourteenth Army) and Gen. von Vietinghoff (Tenth Army - Gustav Line) to send him additional reinforcements.
The German units in the immediate vicinity had in fact been dispatched to reinforce the Gustav Line only a few days earlier. All available reserves from the southern front or on their way to it were rushed toward Anzio; these included the 3rd Panzer Grenadier and 71st Infantry Divisions, and the bulk of the Luftwaffe's Hermann Göring Panzer Division. Kesselring initially considered that a successful defence could not be made if the Allies launched a major attack on January 23 or January 24. However, by the end of January 22, the lack of aggressive action convinced him that a defence could be made. Nevertheless, few additional defenders arrived on January 23 although the arrival on the evening of January 22 of General Alfred Schlemm and his 1st Parachute Corps headquarters brought greater organisation and purpose to the German defensive preparations. By January 24, however, the Germans had over 40,000 troops in prepared defensive positions.
Three days after the landings, the beachhead was surrounded by a defence line consisting of three divisions: The 4th Parachute Division to the west, the 3rd Panzer Grenadier Division to the center in front of Alban Hills, the Hermann Göring Panzer Division to the east.
The Wehrmacht's 14th Army, commanded by Gen. von Mackensen, assumed control of the defence on January 25. Elements of eight German divisions were employed in the defence line around the beachhead, and five more divisions were on their way to the Anzio area. Kesselring ordered an attack on the beachhead for January 28, though it was postponed to February 1. |
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Allied offensive
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Further troop movements including the arrival of U.S. 45th Infantry Division and U.S. 1st Armored Division, brought Allied forces total on the beachhead to 69,000 men, 508 guns and 208 tanks by January 29, whilst the total defending Germans had risen to 71,500. Lucas initiated a two-pronged attack on January 30. While one force was to cut Highway 7 at Cisterna before moving east into the Alban Hills, a second was to advance northeast up the Via Anziate towards Campoleone. In heavy fighting British 1st Division made ground but failed to take Campoleone and ended the battle in an exposed salient stretching up the Via Anzinate. On the right, two Ranger battalions made a daring covert advance towards Cisterna in advance of the main assault, but when daylight arrived they were engaged and cut off. Of the 767 men in the 1st and 3rd Ranger Battalions, 6 returned to the Allied lines and 743 were captured. The attack of the 3rd Division captured ground up to three miles deep on a seven-mile wide front, but failed to break through or capture Cisterna. |
German counterattacks
By early February German forces in Fourteenth Army numbered some 100,000 troops organised into two Army Corps, the 1st Parachute Corps under Schlemm and the LXXVI Panzer Corps under Lieutenant-General Traugott Herr. Allied forces by this time totalled 76,400 (including the recently arrived British 56th Infantry Division)After a making exploratory probes on the Campoleone salient on the afternoon of February 3 the German forces launched a full counterattack at 23.00 in order to reduce the salient and "iron out" the front line.. Von Mackensen had planned for the salient to be ground away rather than employing a rapid, focused thrust to cut it off. Some hours after the attack started the coherence of the front line had been completely shattered, and the fighting for the salient had given way to small unit actions, swaying back and forth through the gullies. In the morning of the 4 February the situation was becoming more serious, the Irish Guards only had one cohesive company left and on the opposite side of the salient, the companies of the 6th Gordon Highlanders were beginning to crumble. However, even though the base of the salient was nearly broken, Lucas was able to bolster 1st Infantry Division's defenses with one of the newly-arrived brigades from 56th Division, allowing the withdrawal into reserve of 3rd Infantry Brigade from the nose of the salient where it had become vulnerable to being pinched out. From 5 February to 7 February both sides employed heavy artillery concentrations and bombers to disrupt the other side. At 21.00 on 7 February the Germans renewed their attack. Once more the fighting was fierce and it was during this period that Major William Sidney of the Grenadier Guards won the Victoria Cross. Slowly the Allies were forced to give ground and by February 10 they had been pushed out of the salient.Lucas ordered attacks on 11 February to regain the lost ground but the Germans, forewarned by a radio intercept, repelled the Allies' poorly coordinated attack.
On February 16 the Germans launched a new offensive (Operation Fischfang) down the line of the Via Anziate. By February 18, after desperate fighting, the Allies' Final Beachhead Line (prepared defenses more or less on the line of the original beachhead) was under attack. However, a counterattack using VI Corps' reserves halted the German advance, and Fischfang petered out with both sides exhausted. During Fischfang the Germans had sustained 5,400 casualties, the Allies 3,500. Both had suffered 20,000 casualties each since the first landings. Also on February 18 while returning to Anzio the HMS Penelope light cruiser was struck by two torpedoes and sunk with a loss of 417 men. Despite the exhausted state of the troops, Hitler insisted that 14th Army should continue to attack. Consequently a further assault was mounted on February 29, this time on LXXVI Panzer Corps' front around Cisterna. This push achieved little except to generate a further 2,500 casualties for the 14th Army.
Lucas replaced
Churchill had continued to bridle at Lucas' perceived passivity. He had written on 10 February to Alexander encouraging him to exert his authority and Alexander had visited the beachhead on 14 February to tell Lucas he wished for a breakout as soon as the tactical situation allowed. After his visit Alexander wrote to the CIGS, Alan Brooke, saying:
I am disappointed with VI Corps Headquarters. They are negative and lacking in the necessary drive and enthusiasm to get things done. They appeared to have become depressed by events
Lucas wrote in his diary on 15 February:
I am afraid that the top side is not completely satisfied with my work...They are naturally disappointed that I failed to chase the Hun out of Italy but there was no military reason why I should have been able to do so. In fact there is no military reason for "Shingle".
On 16 February at a high level conference hosted by Alexander and attended by Clark and Wilson, commander AFHQ it was decided to appoint two deputies under Lucas, Lucian Truscott and the British Major-General Vyvyan Evelegh. On 22 February Clark replaced Lucas with Truscott, appointing Lucas deputy commander 5th Army until such time as a suitable job could be found for him back in the United States.
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