Sunday, July 11, 1923. Allied Success, and Disaster, in Sicily. Massacres in Poland.

Patton, in a famous pose, on the ground in Gela, Sicily on this day in 1943.

The Allies captured the Sicilian port cities of Syracuse (Siracusa), Licata, Gela, Pachino, Avola, Noto, Pozzallo, Scoglitti, Ispica and Rosolini.

US Navy gunners opened up on US transport aircraft carrying paratroopers at Gela that evening, resulting in the deaths of over 300 of them in the worst friendly fire incident in the war to date.   The Luftwaffe had earlier attempted a nighttime raid on the ships much earlier in the day, making the gunners nervous.  The disaster commenced when a single ship's gunner opened up on passing C-47s and C-53s.

The USS Boise crossing the bow of the USS LSST-325 while firing on German armored forces near Gela,  July 11, 1943.

The Navy, however, also saved the day at Gela on this day by stopping an armored counterattack with ship to shore fire.  And Patton came ashore at the same city that day.  Both events are depicted in movies, with the first in The Big Red One, and the second in Patton.

Red Cross field director James P. Show would perform acts of heroism on this day which would result in the Silver Star.  His citation would read:

The President of the United States of America takes pleasure in presenting the Silver Star to Mr. James P. Shaw a United States Civilian, for gallantry in action while serving as Field Director, American Red Cross, attached to the *** Infantry, in action on 11 July 1943, near Licata, Sicily. On that date, an enemy dive bomber scored a direct hit on a landing craft which had almost reached its position for debarkation. Mr. Shaw, who was already ashore, immediately left his position of comparative security, waded back into the rough water and assisted many men to safety. He continued to assist until the last man had been brought to shore and the wounded cared for. All of these acts were performed at the risk of his life because of attacking enemy airplanes, the explosion of ammunition on the damaged craft, and the turbulent and treacherous water. The gallantry of Mr. Shaw on this occasion is a distinct credit to himself and the American Red Cross.

The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the military arm of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalist OUN-B branch, attacked 99 Polish settlements in Wołyń Province of Poland.  Attacks were carried out in what became known as the Vohynian Bloody Sunday on Kisielin, Poryck, Chrynów, Zabłoćce, and Krymn.  Attacks coincided with local attendance at Mass.

The massacre campaign was part of a OUN-B effort, which is sometimes called the Volyn (Wołyń) Tragedy, to clear Poles from the territory east of the Bug River, and dated back to the difficulties that existed in drawing a border between Poland, Ukraine and Belarus following World War One.  The OUN itself was split into OUN-B and OUN-M.  The OUN itself dated back to 1929 when it formed and absorbed other Ukrainian independence movements.  It was a right wing organization which picked up elements of fascism early on, and the Nazism later.  OUN-M was named for one of the OUN's founders, Andriy Melnyk, who declared Ukraine independent after the German invasion of the country during World War Two. OUN-B, named for Stepan Bandera, was much more radical and indeed the two organizations fought each other.  OUN-B came to dominate.

A far right organization in general, and in the case of OUN-B radically so, the organization picked up much of the extreme far right attitudes of the day, including being racist, deeply nationalist, and anti-clerical (indeed Melnyk's personal conservatism and Catholicism made Melnyk at odds with the views of his own organization).  OUN-B principally attacked Poles during the war and was allied to the Germans until the Germans began to collapse, at which time it eschewed its fascist ideology and took on a pro-democracy one.  The UPA would fight against the Soviets and Poles after the conclusion of the Second World War.

The genocidal effort against the Poles was bizarre in a way in that not only was it horrifically violent, but it ultimately served the interests of the Soviet Union in creating an ethnic line of demarcation which was west of the Bug.  While the majority of victims were Poles, some Ukrainian civilians who opposed the actions or who were not of the same brand of nationalist as the UPA.  Several hundred Jews, Russians, Czech and Georgians who were part of Polish families or who sheltered Poles were murdered.  Total Polish victim numbers are hard to determine, but they were ultimately between 50,000 to 100,000, mostly killed during July and August 1943.

Melnyk would escape to the West after the war and died in Luxembourg at age 73, in 1964.  Bandera was assassinated by the KGB in Munich in 1959.  He was 50 years old.

Saturday, July 10, 1943. Seaborne landings on Sicily. Battle at Enogai.

Early morning view on July 10, 1943.  U.S. Navy photograph.

The main landing force started disembarking in Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily.

Weather conditions were poor, featuring high winds, which served to cause the Axis forces, under Italian command, to assume that landings could not be conducted, which would be the first of two such bad assumptions on the same basis Axis forces would make in Europe during the war in regard to an amphibious landings.  Landings commenced at 02:45 on 26 beaches spread out over a distnace of a stunning 105 miles, making the landings the largest of World War Two in terms of both the sizeof the landing zone and the number of Allied divisions landed on D-Day.  The landing Allied troops, consisting of British, Canadian and American soldiers, generally encountered weak resistance, althought there were some Italian exceptions.

51st Highland Division unloading stores from tank landing craft on Operation Husky D-Day

By any rational measure, the massive operation meant that the Western Allies had returned to the European continent after having been pushed out of Greece in June 1941.  The operation also demonstrated the ability of the Western Allies to conduct very large-scale amphibious and airborne operations, although imperfectly.

The battle would also bring into increased prominence, and not always in a good way, the names of a vareity of Allied commanders who would dominate the news from the ETO for the remainder of the war.

Husky was under the overall command of Gen. Eisenhower, but operational command of hte invasion force was under British command.  Often lost to American understanding, at this stage of the war the British Commonwealth forces in Europe were larger and more experienced than American ones. 

The two-day Battle of Enogai took place on New Guinea between US Marines and Japanese solders. A Marine Corps victory would result on the second day, which featured Marines turning captured Japanese automatic weapons on Japanese forces, something that was somewhat unusual for US forces to do.

Dead Japanese machine gun crew at Enogai.

Friday, July 9, 1943. Operation Husky commences.

Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily, commenced with airborne landings by British and American airborne and glider troops.  The American forces were blown strongly off course by high winds which scattered them so badly that by July 14 half of the U.S. paratroopers still had failed to reach their rallying points.  British airborne forces likewise were badly scattered.  Ironically, the very widespread landings created Axis confusion and their professionalism allowed them to mount scattered but effective attacks.

British glider borne troops of the 1st Battalion, Border Regiment, 9 July 1943, just prior to take off. Folding bicycle in the foreground.  Note the shorts these men, experienced in desert combat, are wearing, even though they are completely unsuitable for it.

With the commencement of the Invasion of Sicily, the Western Allies had returned to the continent and resumed ground offensive operations against the Axis.  The break in action between the fighting in North Africa and Sicily had been a mere matter of weeks.  During that short break in ground action, although not because of it, the Germans had launched Operation Citadel.  Already running into men and material shortages in that action, the Germans would soon have to withdraw forces from the East in order to redeploy them to counter Operation Husky.

Often sometimes missed, it should be noted that the Western Allies had committed troops with Operation Husky to the European continent, unless Sicily is not regarded as part of it due to its island status, almost a year before Operation Overlord.

A German air raid on East Grinstead killed 108 people, many of whom were children, in a movie theater.  The bombers struck at 5:17 p.m.

Congress recessed for the first time since 1939, the last time the body had allowed for vacations.

Thursday, July 8, 1943. The execution of Jean Moulin, Looming Operation Husky, Stalled Operation Citadel, Bombing Wake, Smog in Los Angeles.

Jean Moulin.

Jean Moulin, the first President of the National Council of the Resistance, but for less than two months, was executed by the Germans.  He had been arrested due to a betrayal that's never been solved. He was one of the individuals who was tortured under Klaus Barbie.

General Eisenhower arrived in Malta in anticipation of Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily.

By this point, it was obvious that an imminent invasion of Sicily was coming. The Allies were bombing it heavily.  Nonetheless, German attention was focused on the East, at Kursk, which had entered its fourth day of fighting.  In the north, Ponyri station switched hands back and forth.  The 9th Army attacked the second Soviet line, which featured defense in depth, a Soviet tactic, and failed to breach it.  The 9th Army was in turn suffering critical losses.  Model was forced to commit the last of his armored reserves.

In the south, the Germans broke through the second defense line in the Oboyansk direction, but then withdrew after a strong counterattack.

B-24s operating from Midway bombed Wake Island in the first land based strike on Wake.

The escort carrier USS Casablanca was commissioned.

Smog became a problem for LA.