The first American raid on Naples

On the afternoon of 4 December 1942 twenty four-engined B-24 Liberator bombers of the 98th and 376th Bombardment Groups of the US Army Air Forces appeared over Naples. They had taken off from airfields in Egypt and, after a flight across the Mediterranean, dropped high-explosive bombs on the harbour, where ships of the Italian fleet lay at anchor. The light cruiser Muzio Attendolo capsized and settled on the bottom by the quay, two other cruisers were damaged, and the bombs that missed the harbour fell on the densely built-up city centre. It was the first American raid on mainland Italy and at the same time the beginning of the hardest period in the wartime history of Naples.

American bombers in the Middle East

American heavy bombers had been operating over the Mediterranean since mid-1942. During the night of 11–12 June a dozen or so Liberators from Colonel Harry Halverson’s detachment, originally intended for operations against Japan from China, attacked the refineries at Ploiești, and a few days later the same aircraft supported the British convoy of Operation Vigorous by bombing the Italian fleet at sea. In the summer the 98th Bombardment Group arrived in Palestine and Egypt, and in the autumn the 376th Bombardment Group was formed from Halverson’s detachment and other units. Both flew mainly against the ports through which Rommel’s supplies passed: Tobruk, Benghazi, Navarino in Greece and the ports of Crete.

On 12 November 1942 the American air forces in the Middle East were reorganised as the Ninth Air Force under General Lewis Brereton. After the victory at El Alamein and the Allied landings in North Africa, however, the strategic situation changed. The Axis was moving troops and equipment to Tunisia, and the main base for this traffic was the ports of southern Italy and Sicily. Naples, one of the largest ports in the country, was also one of the principal anchorages of the Regia Marina: light cruisers and destroyers were based there. A strike on the port was therefore meant both to hamper shipments to Africa and to threaten a fleet that could still come out against Allied convoys.

The raid

The Liberators flew from bases by the Suez Canal, carrying 500 lb and 1,000 lb bombs. The round trip was nearly four thousand kilometres, at the limit of the aircraft’s capabilities with a full load. According to Italian accounts, on which most studies rely, the formation approached at an altitude of about 6,200 metres from the direction of Vesuvius and was at first taken for friendly Ju 52 transport aircraft. The anti-aircraft artillery did not open fire until about 4.40 p.m., when the bombers were already over the harbour. The raid lasted, with intervals, about an hour.

Muzio Attendolo had only just been returning to service. On 13 August, during Operation Pedestal, the British submarine Unbroken had hit her with a torpedo that tore off her bow as far as the first gun turret; within three months the ship had been largely repaired and brought to Naples. Now one, and possibly two, bombs hit her amidships. The fire and flooding proved impossible to control, and at about 10.19 p.m. the cruiser capsized almost completely and settled on the bottom of the harbour basin. A bomb also hit Raimondo Montecuccoli right by her funnel; her repairs took seven months. Eugenio di Savoia was damaged by a near miss and spent about forty days under repair. According to Italian figures, at least 188 sailors were killed and 86 wounded on the three cruisers.

Bombs on the city

Bombing from high altitude, by day, with a limited number of aircraft, could not be precise. Some of the bombs fell outside the harbour, on the districts lying just above the quays. According to Italian studies, houses, churches, hospitals and public offices were destroyed or damaged, including the main post office building, Via Monteoliveto and the area around Porta Nolana. The number of civilians killed is uncertain. Some studies give between 150 and 250 victims; others, citing American sources, give a figure of about 900 dead, which cannot be confirmed in the documents and may also include subsequent raids in those days. What is certain is that it came as a shock to the inhabitants. On 7 December the authorities closed all the schools in the city, and those who had somewhere to go began to leave Naples. A mass exodus of the population began, which in the following months slipped out of the authorities’ control.

Naples was ill prepared for such an ordeal. The British had been bombing it since the night of 31 October–1 November 1940, when Blenheims from Malta flew over the harbour, and in 1941 they attacked the port, the railway station, the refinery and industrial plants several times; on 18 November 1941 the collapse of a tenement onto a shelter in Piazza Concordia killed many people. These raids, however, were few and carried out at night, and in 1942 Naples was bombed only a few times. The city lacked shelters, and its air defence relied largely on the guns of the warships in the harbour. The fighters of the Regia Aeronautica, dispersed between Africa, Sicily and the north of the country, did not intercept bombers arriving by day from the south, from where they were not expected.

The war comes to Italy

The raid came two days after Benito Mussolini’s last great speech in the Chamber of Fasces and Corporations. On 2 December the dictator stated that from the start of the war to the end of November 1,886 civilians had been killed in Italy in air raids and naval bombardments and 3,332 wounded, and he admitted that the cities would have to be partly evacuated. It sounded like the prospect of a hard but limited ordeal. In the autumn of 1942, however, Italy came under attack from two directions. From the north, British Bomber Command had been wrecking Turin, Genoa and Milan by night since October. From the south, from airfields in Egypt and Libya, and soon from Algeria and Tunisia as well, American heavy bombers began to arrive by day. For Italian society, which until then had experienced the war mainly as a distant, colonial war, the raid on Naples was a sign that the front was drawing closer to the country itself.

The Americans soon returned. According to Italian studies, a few days later another raid destroyed the Loreto hospital, and in the following weeks Naples became one of the most frequently bombed cities in Italy. From January 1943 the raids were repeated almost daily. On 28 March 1943 the burning ship Caterina Costa, loaded with ammunition and fuel for the troops in Tunisia, blew up in the harbour, killing, according to Italian figures, more than six hundred people, and on 4 August 1943 American bombers destroyed the medieval basilica of Santa Chiara. According to various tallies, the city endured some two hundred raids; estimates of the number of civilians killed vary widely and in some studies exceed twenty thousand.

Place in the war

The raid of 4 December did not change the situation at sea. Muzio Attendolo was a second-rank ship, and the Italian fleet had not in any case put to sea for major operations for months for lack of fuel. The strike showed, however, that the fleet’s harbours were not safe even by day and far from the front; in December the naval high command, Supermarina, moved the main body of the fleet further north, to La Spezia. It was also the first step in the American air offensive against Italy, which in 1943, together with the invasion of Sicily, contributed to the collapse of Mussolini’s regime. Naples, liberated by the Allies in October 1943 after the uprising of its inhabitants known as the Four Days of Naples, emerged from the war as one of the most heavily damaged cities in Italy.