11:30 P.M., July 9
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USS Ancon (AGC-4) at anchor, 11 June 1943,
during preparations for the invasion of Sicily.
US Navy photo # NH 99148 |
“H” hour, the hour of hours, is almost here. It is now 11:30 P.M., and the attack is scheduled to begin at 2:45 A.M.
When we passed Malta––unconquerable Malta––toward the middle of the afternoon, and later came to Gozo, we knew our next island was Sicily. We are near Sicily now, still moving towards it in the darkness. It will not be long before we reach our anchorage off Scoglitti on Sicily’s southern shore.
Already we have had our hints of “D” day’s approach. Throughout the afternoon the gray sky has been filled from time to time by coveys of Spitfires. Several convoys have come within sight on the lunging waters. Six aircraft, said to be hostile, were reported twelve miles away from us in the late twilight. Then, just about an hour ago, fires and flares were seen ahead, and distant guns were heard. It is toward these guns and fires that we are steering. The enemy is there. Even the extra slab of ice cream on the pie after tonight’s steak dinner was a pleasant way of our being told that something extra was soon to be expected of us.
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USS Ancon (AGC-4) surface plotting area,
probably the Navy Operations Room adjacent to
or part of the Joint Operations Room, 3 July 1943
shortly before the invasion of Sicily.
Note plotting crew with charts on multiple tables,
sound powered phones, communications gear in cabinets at left,
speaking tubes on bulkhead at right,
and aircraft status board on bulkhead at rear.
US National Archives photo # 80-G-215068,
a US Navy photo now in the collections of the
US National Archives. |
Let the cynical laugh, but we have seen something of a miracle tonight. All afternoon our hearts have grown the heavier with the increasing heaviness of the sea. Things have looked bad for us––very bad––these past eight hours or so. By some ugly mischance the first storm we have had in the Atlantic or the Mediterranean overtook us this afternoon when, having traveled so far, we were at last so near. By 2:30 P.M. the Mediterranean was being swept by a 30-knot wind. As the waves rose under sullen skies, they subjected the little PC boats now with us to a terrible beating. The destroyers were surf-bathing uncomfortably. Even the largest transports were wobbling. One by one, three of their barrage balloons were blown away from them, as easily as a child’s balloon slips through his fingers in the park. By 5 o’clock the gale had increased until, as darkness came on, the waves swelled into more and more sizable mountains. The PC boats were by then egg-shelling their way, not so much through as on the heavy seas. The prospect of trying to send landing craft into the beaches against such odds was disturbing, to put it mildly.
Many of us remembered the Spanish Armada’s fate. We did not want to remember it, but we did. Nature has undone that formidable Spanish Task Force, dashed its galleons to pieces on the rocks, and scattered them, when in full and proud array it had reached England’s shores. We were a far larger armada. Would we be the victim of the same misfortune?
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Status board in the Joint Operations Room, USS Ancon (AGC-4),
3 July 1943. This board shows the disposition of Task Force 85
ships shortly before the invasion of Sicily.
US National Archives photo # 80-G-215080,
a US Navy photo now in the collections of the US National Archives. |
The weather reports were encouraging. “The sea will calm before midnight,” Lieutenant Commander John Cory had said from the beginning and kept on saying, even when the seas at hand grew rougher.
Then suddenly, a little while ago, the miracle of which I spoke occurred. No matter where you may be stationed, you must have felt it. The wind died down almost as abruptly as it had started. Look over the sides now in the faint light left by a storm-clouded quarter moon, which is nearing the horizon, and you will find the Mediterranean still choppy, still tossed by a heavy surf, but, compared to what it was only a short time back, as quiet as if God had put his hand on it. This ought to be the best of good omens.
Some transport planes, carrying our paratroops, were reported off to starboard shortly before I stumbled down from the bridge to find a place for this microphone on the floor of a darkened passage off the Chart Room. Although I could not see the planes, I heard the roar of their motors, full of power, full of defiance.
Midnight, July 9
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Joint Operations Room, USS Ancon (AGC-4), 3 July 1943
shortly before the invasion of Sicily. Command personnel
are manning the stations on the raised platform at the left. The two
horizontal plots may be the air plot table (foreground) and local
plot table (background). The task force disposition status board is
on a bulkhead at the left rear. A radio transmitting keyboard is in
use in the foreground. Note the extensive use of sound powered
phones. Chalked on the vertical status board at right is the statement
"Again we have been asked to do the impossible. Let's do it as usual."
US National Archives photo # 80-G-215083, a US
Navy photo now in the collections of the US National Archives. |
Perhaps you can hear it. The distant gunfire of which I spoke last time has greatly increased. The fires are still burning on the beaches ahead. If anything, they are brighter, because we have been pushing quietly into our anchorage. They cast a glow into the sky the way a city does at night. They are not easy to make out as yet. One of the fires looks as if it were a bit inland. In shape it is rectangular enough to be the outlines of a lighted airfield, which of course it is not.
These fires mean that our planes have been busy. So do the inquisitive enemy searchlights which have been sweeping the sky from the beaches to the west.
Scoglitti, our objective, must be about five miles away from us in the darkness just now. Our convoy is reaching its destination safely and without confusion.
If our first sight of Sicily has consisted of fires burning in the night on a land we cannot see, there is a reason for this. According to plans, the Northwest African Air Force was scheduled to conduct an air offensive throughout the whole Mediterranean area prior to our coming. By these heavy air attacks the Allies have sought to compel Axis air forces to withdraw from fighter range of the desired beaches in Sicily in order to maintain their own cities, industries, armies, and air bases.
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Lieutenant General Omar N. Bradley, U.S. Army, on the navigation
bridge of USS Ancon (AGC-4), en route to the invasion of
Sicily, 7 July 1943. With him is CAPT. Timothy Wellings, USN.
US National Archives photo # 80-G-86325, a US Navy
photo now in the collections of the US National Archives. |
Before daylight this morning a heavy bombing attack is scheduled to be mad on all Sicilian airfields, and for the balance of the day a fighter group of approximately thirty-six planes is supposed to be maintained over each of Sicily’s three main airfield centers. American fighter squadrons will be based on Malta and other near-by islands. Those paratroopers we heard heading inland will have been dropped with others during the night in the area of the Task Force to our west. The guns we hear at first will not necessarily mean that the Italians and the Germans have spotted us. Most probably they will be anti-aircraft guns, called into action by our paratroopers and our transport planes.
12:45 A.M., July 10
That crunchy, bumpy noise you may have heard five minutes ago was our anchor on the way down. It’s blacker than coal up here. Our ships are still slipping into position. They are gathering like conspirators. We can’t see them, but we can feel them, the way in a dark room you know someone else has entered, is creeping past you, or is standing next to you.
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Rear Admiral Alan G. Kirk, USN on the bridge
of his flagship, USS Ancon (AGC-4),
during the invasion of Sicily in July 1943.
US National Archives photo # 80-G-302134,
a US Navy photo now in the collections of the
US National Archives. |
A searchlight from time to time cuts the sky above the beaches. A few tracer bullets are being batted out, like hot baseballs, by the enemy’s shore batteries. The sound of ack-ack can be heard inland.
Don’t be alarmed by the submarine just off our port side. It’s one of ours. I hear the sight of it cost a soldier his dinner. He had wondered out on deck to get some air and see the show in which he will soon take part. Tonight’s second slab of ice cream and the see-sawing of the Mediterranean had not been getting along too well. The soldier was holding his head in his hands when, to his horror, one of his eyes rolled open to discover the periscope, the conning tower, and finally the whale’s back of a submarine loom out of the tar-colored waves beside him. “Jesus Christ! he is reported to have said, at the same time that he said good-by to the ice cream and raced below.
Everything else is under control.
1:30 A.M., July 10
A great wave of planes––our planes––has swept over us. They were our transports coming out. Although only a few of them could be seen, all of them could be felt and heard. They mean that our 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers have been landed and are already at work.
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Vice Admiral H. Kent Hewitt, USN (left), Commander
Western Naval Task Force (Task Force 80) with his Chief of Staff
and Aide, Rear Admiral Spencer S. Lewis, USN, on board USS Ancon
(AGC-4), flagship for the Salerno Landings in September 1943.
Note the binoculars worn by both men.
US Navy photo # NH 99213, from the collections of the
US Naval Historical Center. |
The darkness up here has grown. It’s hard to make out the person next to you on the Admiral’s bridge, unless in passing he just happens to be silhouetted against one of those fires still burning on the beaches.
The small boats should be in the water by now. One of ours has returned with Captain Mitchell, from some errand in the night. From transport after transport these small crafts are being lowered. They must be filled with anxious men; the small boat men who are the point and glory of this Force.
Shortly before I came down, another wave of probably fifty of our transport planes has roared above us, heading out from Sicily, their mission completed, their paratroopers landed in the blackness of an unknown land.
Before the thunder of their motors could be heard, a lull appeared to have settled on the shores ahead. Then came the first faint drone of the approach, and some tracer bullets rose skyward, no doubt to greet them.
2:40 A.M., July 10
We are within five minutes of what should have been the time for “H” hour. But “H” hour has been delayed until 3:45 at the request of the Commander of Transports, Blame the choppy seas for this, and difficulties they have caused in getting the small boats out. So take time off to get your second wind.
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Vice Admiral H. Kent Hewitt, USN (right), who commanded
American naval forces during the invasions of Morocco,
Sicily, and Salerno, on the deck of his flagship,
USS Ancon (AGC-4), with war correspondent Quentin Reynolds.
US Navy photo now in the collections of the
US National Archives. |
Don’t think that things have not been happening above, in spite of this delay. Do you remember those enemy searchlights which I have mentioned several times? Well, they have given us some uneasy moments. There’s a hell of a lot of difference between our searchlights when they are looking for the enemy, and enemy searchlights when they are looking for us.
As far as I can make out, there have been three of these searchlights sweeping from the shore. When we were stealing in, and even after we reached our anchorage, they swept only the sky. They kept raking it back and forth, back and forth, sticking up like nervous white fingers in the darkness. They were after our planes then, and didn’t seem to know we were here.
Even when they followed the transport planes out, these searchlights swung far above us––which was precisely what we kept hoping they would do. One of these beacons, however, carried its search toward the horizon until its lowered light hovered over our ships to port. Then it blinked and went out, apparently not having spotted anything of interest.
This made us breathe the easier.
But only for a while. Because in a few minutes those searchlights were in motion again. The same one that had blinked before, woke up in alarm. When it came on, it was aiming straight above it at the sky, which was still all right with us. Then it began circling its light out to sea, lower and lower each time, until it started skimming the waves. In its sweep it landed on one of our ships lying at an angle. It paused there for an awful time before starting its move again. Then it swung slowly past the other vessels ahead, seeming to halt for the same awful time on each one of them, icing them with light or showing them up as silhouettes, as neat and black as you will ever find on any Ship Identification cards.
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The staff of Vice Admiral Henry Kent Hewitt USN, aboard his flagship
USS Ancon (AGC-4), in the Mediterranean in 1943 and 1944.
Jim Moses' father C.W. Moses, USN was staff gunnery officer on
VADM. Hewitt's staff. |
The beacon finally reached us. Our turn came just the way it used to in school. Waiting for it wasn’t pleasant. The light cut closer and closer until it was full upon us, blinding us when we looked straight at it. It wasn’t hard, then, to make out the faces on the Admiral’s Bridge. It would have been hard not to make them out. The faces of the men up there looked the way an actor’s face does without makeup under a spotlight. You know that sallow look? Even the ship’s gray was lighter than the sun at midday had ever made it.
I thought they had found us. I couldn’t see how they had missed us.
“Can they see us?” I asked Captain Wellings, our Gunnery Officer.
“No. We can see them all right,” he smiled, but I don’t think they can see us on a night like this. Anyway we are out of their range of vision.”
This was good news. It still is.
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USS Ancon (AGC-4) at anchor, 11 September, 1943, in
Salerno Bay, Italy. Note unidentified Italian submarine alongside. |
With such targets as these three enemy beacons screaming for attention, our gunners must be going crazy. But so far they have managed to hold on to their itchy fingers and keep the secret of our being here––if it still is a secret.
Those guns, those deep-throated , distant guns you may hear, don’t belong to us. They are British and come from the east coast. From the sound of them the show must be on there. And on in a big way.
3:15 A.M., July 10
The searchlights are still at it. When I got back to the bridge, it looked for a moment as if a gunner on a near-by ship had blown one of them out. Since we are said to be outside their seeing range, the moment this gunner let go wasn’t an entirely happy one. His wanting to fire was human enough. There was the beacon ahead, begging for attention. And there was the gunner eager to oblige. It would have been as simple as that if, by releasing his tracers, he had not given away the secret of our being here.
As these tracer bullets arched through the sky, some words––almost as hot––shot out on the bridge.
For a few minutes the light went out. Then another of the three beacons came on, sweeping the ships in earnest. It was followed by the third. Before long the first light blazed out, now on again, now off again, like a lightning bug. The gunner had missed his mark. He has been answered by tracer bullets coming out from the shore.
At 3:10 there was a big explosion on the beach ahead. For a fearful moment it blew the darkness away as if it were smoke, putting fire in its place.
Since I made my last report, the huge British guns have continued booming to the east. The sky has become fairly active. Some red and white tracers have been chasing one another inland, following a high, arched course. Three enemy parachute flares dropped from a plane or planes coming in from west of Scoglitti, have been hung off our starboard bow.
The orchestra is warming up. The stage is set. The curtain is scheduled to go up in a few minutes now.
4:15 A.M., July 10
The Fourth of July was never like this! These are the biggest fireworks I’ve ever seen. Our guns have really been speaking up, and it looks like they are much more than just big talkers. The sky is as bright as a summer parasol with the sunlight streaming through it.
The darkness is fighting a losing battle. Light is everywhere. Never for long. Always changing. Always in the swiftest motion. Then the night seeps back, only to be driven away again. Overhead it’s all dots and dashes that you can see, quivering as they race to rise and fall; dots and dashes, and streamers of heat, and rockets overtaking rockets.
Lights and noise. The noises are as different as the lights. There’s the frog like glump of flak as it thuds through the water after a brief splash. There’s the staccato stitching of the 20- and 40-millimeters. There’s a sigh, a whine, and a whistle coming from something––I don’t know what.
There are big guns, little guns, medium-sized guns––all of them fluent, and all of them demanding to be heard from, whether they are on the ships around us, in the Task Force ahead, with the enemy on shore, or the British to the east. The big guns bellow in a full, damp, dull tone. They sound the way a goldfish bowl might sound if––water and all––it exploded in your tummy.
Under this flaming cover the small landing boats have been pushing into shore. Bright as the sky is, the sea is still so dark that I have been able to see the Viking outlines of only a few of our new boats. But once in a while, in the din, the sputter of their motors has been heard.
Our big guns appear to have got two of those prying searchlights. They have been snuffed out for quite a while. It was a cruiser, I think, that scored a bull’s-eye on one of them. The beacon scarcely had time to wink. Then it was done for.
4:45 A.M., July 10
Those planes are enemy planes. Although there don’t seem to be many of them, there are enough. So far as I can make out, they came toward us in the uppermost darkness, under which all the lights are sandwiched. During the last half hour they have been hurtling back and forth, heard but not seen, and not leaving us unseen.
They headed for our beaches, dropping flares over them. Then they turned wheel for us, particularly for our cruisers, still dropping flares. The flares have been both to port and starboard. One of them has hung right over our Force like an old-fashioned light over a dining room table.
They are strange things, these German flares; disturbing but completely undisturbed. All the other lights are twitchy, nervous, explosive, darting. But these flares have a fearsome serenity. The parachutes supporting them do more than rest on the air. They doze there, as calm and unmoving as if they were beyond the law of gravity.
The other lights are momentary. These appear to be eternal. The others kindle the air around them with sparks, and then dash on or out. These just hang like fixtures. They are bright enough to cast shadows on the bridge, which up until now has been dark, except for that stab by the beacon.
They burn singly, these flares. Without warning a street lamp comes on, far up in the sky, blinding enough to be burning a whole city’s current, and the sea below lights up the way Broadway used to look. This street lamp stays on for what seems an eternity, almost without moving. When it at last goes off and you begin to breathe again, another street lamp––the twin of its parent––bursts into light some yards below the first. If anything it is brighter than its predecessor, because it is nearer. Then the same thing happens again and again, and this necklace of lights gradually extends itself, showing its stones one by one, until the final pendant dangles just above you.
The Germans can’t be accused of leaving us in the dark. But so far they have only shed light. We have done our bit, too. Our tracers are arching on these flares from all sides. And a big fire is burning on a hill to starboard.
5:15 A.M., July 10
Good news. Word has just been received that initial landings have been accomplished on all of our beaches, and that, in general, slight opposition has been met with from the ground forces of the enemy.
This means that the little boats from all our transports have pushed in, wave by wave, to their designated landing places and that our troops have established themselves on shore. For the details we shall have to wait. What matters is that the Sicilian invasion is by now a fact.
The sky is still noon-bright up here in splotches. There have been more flares. More enemy planes, too. One of these has falconed down towards the Spelvin, its motors angry, as if to dive-bomb us. It was a rumble, a roar, a rumble again––and a bad moment. As a matter of fact, being anchored here in the light––waiting––has given us a lot of bad moments; though, thank God, so far only to think about.
6 A.M., July 10
