Gothic Line 1944-45 – The USAAF starves out the German Army, Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

Gothic Line 1944-45 – The USAAF starves out the German Army, Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

Operation Bingo was a key part of the Allied campaign in Italy over the winter of 1944-45, and saw the USAAF repeatedly attack the Brenner Pass in an attempt to cut the German supply line into Italy.

We begin with an overview of the entire Italian campaign, from the first landings in the south to the advance up to the Gothic Line in the north,

The section on the attacker’s capabilities includes the normal material on units and aircraft, but also interesting sections on morale, the adoption of unusual tactics by some units, and the fate of any crew who were shot down.

The section on defender’s capabilities begins with a surprise for me – I was unaware that the last Luftwaffe fighter unit had left in the summer of 1944, leaving the air defence of northern Italy in the hands of the Aeronautica Nazionale Repubblicana, the air force of Mussolini’s  puppet Salo Republic. However the main danger to the attackers came from anti-aircraft guns, with almost 500 of the famous 88mm flak guns in the Brenner Pass by March 1945. We get a brief examination of how the 88mm guns were operated, with batteries of four guns controlled from a central hub and with data coming from radar or optical range finders. However we also learn that German records show it took 1,600 rounds to shoot down a single aircraft, so vast amounts of ammo were required.

Unusually for a book of this nature we also get a couple of pages on the weather, which posed an unusually serious threat to the USAAF formations. With their targets being in a mountain range the Americans had to cope with unusually extreme weather conditions over their targets, which would often be totally different to the weather at their bases on Corsica.

We reach the account of the campaign on page 41, with a look at the Gothic Line and the first attempt to break through – Operation Olive. Although this attack failed to break through into the Po Valley, by the time exhaustion and winter weather forced an end to the attack on 1 November the Allies had got close to the northern edge of the Apennines, and had actually overcome most of the fixed defences of the line. However it was clear that there would now be a prolonged pause in operations while the Allies regained their strength.

This is where the USAAF came in. The Germans couldn’t be allowed to keep moving supplies freely into Italy over the winter of 1944-45, as that would make the Allied task in the spring even harder. The key German supply route was the Brenner Pass, which carried the railway from Innsbruck to Verona. This was a double tracked railway which could carry more than enough supplies south. The American response was Operation Bingo, the use of air power to cut, or at least degrade the capacity of the pass.

We get a good explanation of the objectives of this operation, and how they were to be achieved – mainly by destroying the electrical generators along the line to force the Germans to use their limited stocks of coal, and by destroying the many bridges along the line, which would trap trains between broken bridges and make them easier targets. We then get a detailed look at the targets along the line, looking at alternative routes and German counter-measures, which included the construction of significant sections of extra railways as alternative routes, which meant that in several areas the Americans would have to cut two or even three parallel lines to block the railway. 

The last forty pages of the book cover the campaign itself. This works out as about two pages for each day of operations, so we get enough detail on each phase of operations to get a clear idea of what happened without being overwhelmed by details. We also get sections on the German point of view, looking at the impact of the bombing on travel in the pass and the resistance put up by the Italian fighter groups attempting to oppose the USAAF.

We finish with a look at the final Allied campaign of April-May 1945, which saw the Allied air forces play a major part in the defeat of the German defenders, having already weakened them during the long campaign on the Brenner.

This is a good account of this most unusual air campaign, which saw the same narrow line of targets hit repeatedly for six months, meaning that the defenders knew where the main Allied effort was going to be made.

Chapters
Introduction
Attacker’s Capabilities
Defender’s Capabilities
Campaign Objectives
The Campaign
Aftermath

Author: Thomas McKelvery Cleaver
Edition: Paperback
Pages: 96
Publisher: Osprey
Year: 2022


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