Cassino to the Alps - US Army Center Of Military History

CHAPTER XXVII
Breakthrough on the Fifth Army's
Front
Originally scheduled for 12 April, D­
Day for the Fifth Army's phase of the
spring offensive was postponed when
heavy fog rolled in over the airfields
and forced cancellation of all flights.
When meteorologists could forecast no
clearing for the next day, Truscott set
D-Day for the 14th, H-hour for 0600.
Before dawn on the 14th the army
commander and members of his staff
sat anxiously drinking coffee and smoking
in their headquarters at Traversa
while awaiting the latest weather reports.
Presently telephones began to
ring. All air bases repeated the same
story: fog-shrouded runways. Truscott
telephoned his IV Corps commander,
General Crittenberger, to tell him to
delay his attack but to be prepared to
move on an hour's notice. The officers
in the headquarters tent then settled
back glumly over more coffee and
cigarettes.
Only a few minutes passed before a
call from the air base near Grosseto
revealed that the fog might be lifting
there. Again more coffee and cigarettes
while calls went out to other bases.
Then at 0800 Grosseto reported the
end of the runway visible. Fighterbombers
were taking off. Elated, Truscott
telephoned Crittenberger: "The attack
is on for 0900." Messages from
other air bases reporting clearing
weather confirmed the decision. For the
critical first day of attack the IV Corps
would be assured of air support. 1
Precisely at 0830 wave after wave of
heavy bombers droned over the mountains
from the south. For the next forty
minutes the sky was filled with
hundreds of aircraft dumping thousands
of tons of high explosive, fragmentation,
and napalm bombs on the
enemy's positions. Eventually, over four
days, some 2,052 heavy lx>mbers flew,
first in support of the IV Corps, then
of the II Corps. That number exceeded
the 1,673 heavy bombers that had
supported the Eighth Army's attack
four days before: all in all, "the beginning
of the most sustained heavy
bomber close support effort ever undertaken
in the Mediterranean."2
As the heavy bombers completed
their first day's missions, medium and
fighter-bombers of the XXII T AC, engaged
since the 10th in operations
against enemy communications and
supply depots, appeared over the front
to attack the enemy's main line of
resistance. The aircraft flew over 459
sorties, mostly in flights of four planes
each against gun positions, strongpoints,
troop areas, and other defensive works
[ Truscott, Command Missions, p. 486.
2 Craven and Cate, eds., AAF III, pp. 486-87;
Fifth Army History, Part IX, pp. 91-92; IV Corps
History, pp. 614-15. Unless otherwise indicated the
following is based upon those references.