Bari Harbor lies in a state of devastation. Picture courtesy of ahoy-tk-jk.net
On the morning of December 2nd, 1943 a single German reconnaissance plane stealthily banked over Bari, Italy and it’s large harbor situated along the Adriatic coast. The waters below were packed with dozens of Allied merchant ships loaded with supplies intended to help support the British Eighth Army advance up the peninsula. There were in fact two convoys inside the busy harbor that December day; one convoy had it’s ships positioned at the docks being unloaded of their goods , the second anchored off to the side awaiting their turn to disembark their cargo. Several small coastal defense ships and British MTB’s also were inside this bustling Italian port to help offer security. Although the engine of the reconnaissance plane was audible to many below, no fighters were alerted nor was security even raised at the port. Most assumed it was just another Allied plane that was buzzing overhead, the skies were now controlled by American and British fliers. Those below who called the harbor home were also quite confident in the safety provided by both the anti-aircraft guns and radar screen that protected the port. The noise above faded away as the plane made it’s way off into the haze of the horizon, and was quickly forgotten. The day in Bari would unfold as ordinary. That early evening however, all hell would break loose.
As the Mediterranean sky began to darken with the onset of dusk, the daily life of those in and around the harbor continued as normal. Civilian Italian workers and US merchant marines were hard at work at the immense task of unloading, organizing, and preparing for transport all the vital materials needed to fight a war. Everything from aviation fuel and ammunition to wool socks and medical supplies made its way into the war through Bari. As the stevedores labored on, naval personal journeyed from their ships to the city as regular leave was granted for many of the sailors to give them time to relax and enjoy what this coastal Italian town had to offer. The residents of Bari were just starting to sit down at home or in one of the many local restaurants to enjoy supper after a hard days work. Unbeknownst to all, death for many was only minutes away.
Soaring a mere 150 feet above the Adriatic were dozens of Luftwaffe Junkers JU 88 Bombers, their heading taking them straight for Bari. Two of the best, and perhaps most underrated German tacticians of the war, Marshal’s Albert Kesselring and Wolfram von Richthofen, had formulated and then ordered what would turn out to be one of the most successful aerial attacks on a marine facility of this entire global conflict. As the planes approached the harbor, many on the ground assumed once again that the sound they heard above was that of Allied transport planes, perhaps heading towards nearby airfields to deliver their cargo. As the Junkers moved overhead and the first bombs left their bays, it was much too late for those below to do anything about it.
In about thirty minutes time, the Luftwaffe would deliver a whirlwind of destruction onto their targets below. The ships, most of them lined up next to each other at berth, were sitting ducks for the Luftwaffe raiders. The German bombs crashed into the merchant fleet with devastating accuracy. Many of the ships hit were still laden with fuel or ammunition, and as the German ordinance exploded, the now deadly cargo was ignited causing even greater carnage.
Ship after ship exploded with earsplitting force as the German bombs continually found their mark. Several shock waves from the blast were strong enough to knock over men and equipment on the docks. Windows of houses were shattered up to seven miles away from the harbor, a testament to the power of the destruction. A petrol line on a quay was hit; its contents spilled free onto the surrounding earth and water and ignited. Ship and man alike were engulfed as the searing flame burst forward as if it had a life of it’s own. The fire spread quickly across the oil contaminated water burning anything in its path.
Several bombs would strike Bari itself; its inhabitants sent scrambling for shelter. The brick roads of this coastal city would soon be packed with victims from this ariel barrage. Minutes before the attack the streets of Bari had been filled with the sounds of life. Now death and destruction had been delivered from above; the war had come to Bari.
The bombers, their mission now complete, banked out over the calm Adriatic Sea and began their victorious flight home. Behind them the harbor was ablaze and in complete chaos. It now resembled something out of Dante’s vivid imagination instead of the coastal port it had been. Smoke and flame reached up into the early evening sky, an orange glow visible for miles. The horror however, was not yet finished.
The air raid had sent 17 ships to the bottom of the harbor. Another 8 were severely damaged during the onslaught. Montgomery’s Eighth Army was now denied the 34,000 tons of material that had been destroyed that day. The raid on Bari would come to be known as the “Pearl Harbor of the Mediterranean”. Even as fire crews were busy fighting several blazes still burning in and around the harbor the next morning, an insidious evil from another war was about to be unleashed on the now battered city of Bari.
During the First World War, almost 30 different types of poisonous gas were used on the fields of battle across Europe. A staggering one million men had become causalities of these silent killers. The men who experienced these gas attacks first hand and survived were left with the awful memory of what these chemicals could do to the human body. It was to Italy’s shame that more than a decade after the First World War had ended, the Italian military resorted to deploying gas in combat, this time on Ethiopian troops during their conquest of the country in 1936.
During World War I, the poison was mainly dispersed through the firing of gas filled artillery shells into the enemies rank. In 1936 Ethiopia, the Italians had demonstrated to the world the horror that could be wrought through the improvements that had occurred in aviation in the years between. Italian aircraft were used, with great effect, to distribute the gas on to the Ethiopian positions and troops below. If anything positive could be taken from these airborne gas attacks, it was that they demonstrated to the world that no place, no battlefield or even a civilian packed city, would now be safe from the reach of death that could be delivered from above.
The use of gas would be relegated to that of a deterrent in the European theater during the Second World War, and no attacks against troops or civilians were carried out by any of its belligerents. It was to be the tragedy of Bari however, that a weapon so feared that no one dared again use it, would emerge from the Hellish flames of the harbor and reach out as if Death itself had come that evening.
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Correction to the previous post.
The Japanese did not really have the chemical industry to support widespread use of chemical agents, and shifted their emphasis to biological warfare, which they also tested on the Japanese. They tested in on the CHINESE, along with a fair number of allied prisoners.
A couple of comments.
First, the M47A1 was not an artillery shell, it was the standard US Army Air Force 100 pound chemical bomb, which consisted of a thin steel shell with an explosive burster to distribute the contents. If I have the chance, I will post an image of the bomb on the site. Alternate fillings included white phosphorus and napalm. The napalm-filled bombs were used by Curtis LeMay’s 20th Air Force B-29 in the incendiary attacks on Japan in 1945.
Second, the Japanese used chemical agents against the Chinese on a fairly regular basis through about 1942, ranging from dual-purpose smoke candles, that produced both smoke and were vomiting agents, to phosgene, chlorine, a phosgene-chlorine mix, and mustard. There are strong indications in the communication intelligence leading up to the Battle of Midway that the Japanese were prepared to use at least the phosgene-chlorine mixture in a cloud gas attack to support the invasion, and Midway was quite concerned about the possibility of a mustard agent bombing attack. Fortunately, this did not occur, otherwise the Pacific War would have been even nastier than it was. The Japanese did not really have the chemical industry to support widespread use of chemical agents, and shifted their emphasis to biological warfare, which they also tested on the Japanese.
Most of this information is based on my research at the US National Archives.