'The One Ship Fleet'
An exclusive excerpt from a new history of one of the busiest ships in the US Navy - the USS Boise - in action eighty years ago this week, off Salerno
This week’s excerpt comes from The One Ship Fleet: The USS Boise - WWII Naval Legend 1938-45. We join the action as the USS Boise, already a veteran of supporting Patton’s troops in the invasion of Sicily, arrives to provide much-needed fire support off the beaches of Salerno during the invasion of Italy:
At first, it went so badly for the Americans and the British that some consideration was given to actually withdrawing. But here again, it was the fire support provided by the American and British warships in the roadstead that saved the day for the soldiers. Boise’s absence during the opening days of the Salerno landings, while she was participating in Operation Slapstick, had created some problems for Admiral J. L. Hall, USN, commander of the Eighth Fleet’s amphibious force. He complained that the loss of her firepower had been “keenly felt,” and her absence had caused some confusion and “misunderstandings during the early stages of the attack.”
Nevertheless, the American light cruisers and destroyers, together with Royal Navy warships including the monitor HMS Abercrombie with her 15-inch guns, hammered enemy tanks, field artillery, troop concentrations, machine gun emplacements, and other targets identified by the SFCPs or spotted by the reconnaissance planes from the Savannah and the Philadelphia. Despite the heavy presence of enemy fighters, the little spotter planes were protected as they worked on the first day of the operation by a CAP of USAAF P-51 Mustangs that flew in pairs; one fighter assisted in spotting targets for the ships, while the others provided cover from the Luftwaffe.
Both the “Philly” and the Savannah rained death and destruction on enemy tanks destroying a considerable number of them. The SFCP credited one destroyer with killing 11 tanks on its own.
Morison quotes the following message from the U.S. 36th Infantry Division’s artillery commander, Brigadier General John W. Lange, sent to all the gun ships in the American sector by the naval gunfire liaison officer: “Thank God for the fire of the blue-belly Navy ships. Probably could not have stuck out blue and yellow beaches. Brave fellows these; tell them so.”
The Boise’s arrival in the Gulf of Salerno on the morning of 12 September came not a minute to soon, as the Germans launched a furious counterattack that day. The fighting on shore was fiercer than on any day previously. Her guns helped fill the gap left by the Savannah, which had been heavily damaged and was forced to retire from the operation. On 11 September, while operating off Salerno, the Savannah was struck by a radio-guided, 1,400 kg Fritz X glide bomb launched by a German bomber from 18,000 feet. The bomb scored a direct hit on her number 3 turret and exploded in the lower handling room. Despite heavy casualties her valiant crew saved the ship from sinking, but with a huge hole in her bottom she was no longer operational. The stricken cruiser had to withdraw to Malta for emergency repairs and from there returned to the United States for major repair and overhaul.
Avery said these “Buzz Bombs” (the nickname commonly given to the German V-1 flying bomb) were frequently used in the enemy air attacks against the Allied fleet at Salerno. One of his shipmates, James Starnes, declared in an interview that this threat truly put the Boise “in harm’s way” for the first time in the Mediterranean campaign. He described the buzz bombs as frightening, because you could hear it coming, but had no way of knowing where it would hit. The Fritz X glide bomb was dropped from a bomber and guided to its target by an operator using a joystick and a radio transmitter.
Boise immediately jumped into the fight to help repel attacks by German armor that was pushing back the American Fifth Army. She took her station in the southern part of the gulf off the ancient Greek city of Paestum, with its magnificent temples that had withstood the ravages of time and warfare in near perfect condition for over 2,000 years. This was the area of the American sector where the fighting was fiercest, and the cruiser contributed substantially to throwing back the German advance on the beachhead.
A gunner in Boise’s main battery, Richard Plunkett, wrote: “The Fifth Army would have been pushed back into the ocean if it hadn’t been for the Navy.” Fortunately, the heavy naval gunfire that hammered the Germans on shore during the battle caused no damage to the magnificent Greek temples as the ships took great care to avoid hitting them.
Boise spent the next four days providing fire support for the landing operations, shelling the Italian coast around the Gulf of Salerno wherever she was needed, and providing AA protection for the transport ships against frequent, heavy air attacks from the Luftwaffe. According to Admiral Davidson, commander of TF-86, gunfire from Boise’s 6-inch and 5-inch batteries “played an important role “in repelling the enemy tank attacks against the American invasion force.
After seeing what the Boise and her bobtail sisters had done to their tanks at Gela, at Salerno the Germans singled out the cruisers for attacks by the Luftwaffe. Avery recalled that they were under almost constant air attack from the first day the ship arrived on station in the Gulf of Salerno until the day she left. He said that during air raids the skipper, an “old tin can sailor,” would ring up full speed and begin cutting figure eights as if the big cruiser were a destroyer; the high-speed turns were so quick and tight that the deck crew had to hang on to keep from being thrown overboard.
Around 1800 on 12 September, as dusk fell over the gulf, three German dive bombers made a run at the Boise. She rammed up her speed and began firing her AA guns at the attackers. The enemy planes dropped three bombs, all of which narrowly missed the ship—two fell within 100–150 yards off the port bow and another barely 100 feet off the starboard beam. In the words of Moneymaker, those near misses “jarred us up a little.”
The German air raids continued almost without let up. During the night of 12–13 September, one of the three hospital ships in the gulf was bombed; the fires blazed on board her for about six hours. At around 1446 on the afternoon of 13 September, Boise fired her AA batteries at five Focke Wulf FW-190s that dived out of the sun and released their bombs, which failed to hit any of the ships.
“They tried like hell to get us,” said Richard Plunkett, but the Boise seemed to lead a charmed existence. Ten minutes later, the USS Philadelphia narrowly escaped the Savannah’s fate when a radio-controlled rocket bomb exploded close aboard. The nearly constant air raids failed to deter the cruisers from their fire support mission, and later that afternoon the Boise smashed an enemy tank attack and knocked out a gun emplacement with her main battery’s rifles, letting up only when the SFCP advised that the German battery had been demolished.
At 1928, after escaping unscathed from several more air attacks, she put to sea to pass the night, returning at dawn the next morning to take up her station. During one of the many air raids at Salerno, the Boise was strafed by an Me-109. Avery was up in the superstructure during the attack, and on one of its passes the enemy fighter flew by the ship so close that he was able to look the German pilot in the eye. Avery said if he had been holding a potato in his hand, he could have hit the 109 with it, but the plane was flying so low and fast that the ship’s AA guns were unable to draw a bead on it. He greatly admired the Me-109, which he described as “a sweet airplane,” and had tremendous respect for the Germans as a formidable adversary. Moneymaker complained about all the air attacks and noted that the electronic sights on the 20mm guns were not “worth a damn.” He wondered why they did not allow the gunners to fire tracer rounds instead.
At dawn on 14 September, the Germans renewed their counteroffensive against Allied positions with armor and infantry, making it another very busy day for the cruisers and other fire support ships. The German commander gave the naval guns significant credit for stopping his counterattack and preventing his troops from breaking through after the Germans were hammered by the heaviest shelling they had ever experienced. He grudgingly admitted, “With astonishing precision and freedom of maneuver, these ships shot at every recognized target with overwhelming effect.”
Philadelphia had been shooting throughout the night in response to calls from her SFCP. Boise did not go to work that morning until 0846 after she received calls to fire on tanks and troop concentrations. She continued blasting away with her main battery almost continuously up until 1349, slamming 18 separate targets with hundreds of 6-inch rounds.
After Boise blasted a tank group with a barrage of 83 shells, the SFCP signaled “well done.” She then had a break from providing call fire while Philadelphia took over for the rest of the afternoon. It wasn’t much of a break, however, as it was interrupted at least four times by air raid alerts. Plunkett wrote in his diary that while they were firing that day, the German planes “came at us again and dropped one radio-controlled bomb which exploded right off our fantail - missed us again (pretty lousy).” Plunkett claimed they shot down one of the attackers.
In one such bombing attack, Avery told of how a firefighting team was standing ready on the cruiser’s fantail with their fire hoses hanging over the side so that their powerful streams were directed into the sea. Suddenly, a bomb exploded just astern of the ship, startling the men who took off running to escape the blast, leaving their hoses unattended.
One of the fire hoses slipped back aboard and was slithering around the deck like a cobra dancing to the music from a flute with its head raised in the air. The nozzle whipped around, spraying its heavy stream with great force, until one young sailor ran up and tackled it like a linebacker slamming into a charging fullback. Unfortunately, in trying to bring the fire hose under control, the poor boy grabbed the hose with the nozzle beneath his chin, and the powerful force of the water almost tore his head off. With help from other firefighters, the hose was quickly restrained, and the kid suffered no major injuries, although he most likely had a sore neck for several days.
This excerpt from The One Ship Fleet: The USS Boise - WWII Naval Legend 1938-45 appears by kind permission of Casemate Books. Copyright remains with the author.
The USS Boise (CL-47) had gained international renown for her part in the invasion of the Solomons in 1942 - and securing the highly contested seas off the islands from the Japanese. After her adventures in the Mediterranean she returned to the Pacific where amongst other actions she participated in the Battle of the Leyte Gulf, eventually ending the war with a record eleven battle stars for a light destroyer.
So this is the story not just of one ship but provides a cross-sectional insight into the activities of the US Navy during the war and the challenges it faced. Already attracting interest from those whose relatives served on the USS Boise, it will be of a wider appeal to those interested in the naval war.
