![]() The attacking German airplanes fled into the night. Smoke and flames rose from the city’s winding streets.Īs incendiaries rained down on the harbor, turning night into day, gunners aboard the anchored ships scrambled to shoot down the enemy-too late. German Junkers Ju-88s flew in low over the town, dropping bombs short of the harbor. Then came an earsplitting explosion, then another, and another. ![]() The ancient port’s single antiaircraft battery opened fire. Bright lights winked atop huge cranes that hoisted baled equipment up and out.Īt 7:35 p.m.-a blinding flash followed by a terrific bang. Visible on the upper decks were tanks, armored personnel carriers, jeeps and ambulances. Their holds were laden with everything from food and medical gear to engines, corrugated steel for landing strips, and 50-gallon drums of aviation fuel. “I would regard it as a personal affront and insult if the Luftwaffe should attempt any significant action in this area,” he said that day at a press conference.įour days earlier, the American Liberty ship John Harvey had pulled in with a convoy of nine other merchantmen, and some 30 Allied ships were crammed into the harbor, packed against the seawall and along the pier. The liberating Tommies had already chased the Nazis from the skies over Italy, and the British, who controlled the port, were so confident they had won the air war that Air Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham announced that Bari was all but immune from attack. Grand waterfront buildings were recently designated the headquarters of the United States Fifteenth Air Force. Even ice cream vendors were doing a brisk trade.īari was a Mediterranean service hub, supplying the 500,000 Allied troops engaged in driving the Germans out of Italy. Only a few miles outside of town, lines of women and children begged for black-market food, but here shop windows were full of fruit, cakes and bread. The British had taken Puglia’s capital in September, and though the front now lay just 150 miles to the north, the medieval city, with its massive cliffs cradling the sea, had escaped the fighting almost unscathed. The old port town of Bari, on Italy’s Adriatic coast, was bustling.
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