<text id=00he0711><title>Anzio and Monte Cassino</title>
<history>US Air Force: Events History</history>
<article><hdr>Anzio and Monte Cassino</hdr><body>
<p>To that point the air war for Italy had been the testing ground for concepts of tactical air power that had been developed in North Africa. The landings in Sicily had set the pattern; the landing at Salerno refined it. The Allies had unequivocal air superiority; the Axis had been driven from the skies. The Germans could muster only 29 bombers in the Mediterranean theater by December 1940.
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<p>On 22 January 1944, the Allies landed an invasion force on the resort beaches of Anzio and Nettuno, south of Rome. The purpose was to relieve pressure on the main ground offensive moving slowly toward Rome. The weather lifted long enough to permit strong air support for the Anzio assault.
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<p>A few days later, some sporadic German air activity began, but it was quickly beaten out of the skies. Allied fighters claimed 28 victories on 27 January, and 21 on the following day. By the next morning, German air opposition was very weak, and on 30 January, no German planes were spotted over the beaches.
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<p>The Germans counter-attacked in early February, and followed with a major counter-offensive in mid-February that called out the heaviest Allied air action of the Italian campaign up to that time. The Germans almost broke through to the beachhead; air power helped blunt their drive. Clearly, the landings at Anzio and Nettuno were not doing what they had been planned to do, i.e. relieve pressure on the main Allied thrust north along the west coast of Italy.
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<p>The Allied drive north stalled at a killing ground around Cassino, strongpoint of the German Gustav Line across Italy from Gaeta on the Tyrrhenian Sea to Pescara on the Adriatic. On nearby Monte Cassino stood St Benedict's Abbey, source of the Benedictine Order and a very sacred spot to Catholicism. The Germans either were, or were not, using the heights and the abbey itself for observation, communications and sniping. The argument still is open, even though it became only of academic interest after the destruction of the abbey on 14 February 1944.
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<p>A force of 254 bombers—B-17s from 15AF and B-25s and B-26s from 12AF—roared over the sacred site, dropping 576 tons of bombs and smashing the heritage of centuries. The next day, P-40 fighter-bombers from 12AF worked over the ruins in an attempt to pave the way for ground troops on the advance. Again the next day, close support for the troops was flown by 12AF A-36 aircraft in additional sorties against the rubble.
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<p>Monte Cassino was in ruins. Only St Benedict's cell and his tomb remained under the pulverized stones. And the advance was still stalled.
