Italian bombing of Tel Aviv

[Horst Fliegel]

Anything about the Vichy bombing of Tel Aviv in 1941?

[Laurent Rizzotti]

I don't remember anything about French aircraft raiding Palestine during the Syria campaign: they flew bombing sorties mainly (if not only) against British ships and Allied troops on or close the battlefield. They flew recon sorties over Palestine on the other hand.

No German or Italian bombers were based in Syria, but they flew sorties in the area during this period, and wikipedia has the following (that should be checked, of course...):
"There was even another small bombardment of Tel Aviv in June 1941, done by the Italians together with some airplanes of the German Luftwaffe." given source: http://vilmes.altervista.org/vilmesj...6amp;page\\x3d

According to this, the second raid was on 12 June 1941.

The link below is precising that a bomb hit a invalid home, killing 12 and wounding others, three of which died later. There is also the list of the people killed and wounded.
https://groups.google.com/group/soc....50%26sa%3DN%26

[Stig Jarlevik]

Nick

Good point and nudge taken... Indeed I ment Rhodes. Not sure why I wrote Rhode Island, guess it sounded pretty OK in my brain...and after all there was quite a lot of Italian in the USA at the time so maybe they were working on a super plane, ehh?....

Larry
I DID check the Shores' books, but was not able to find anything.

Alex
Thanks, I admit I did not check any of those sources, but also admit I was hoping to get some more substance then what you extracted. Especially I would be interested in the reasoning of the Italians at the time, since to me any attack on Palestine would be a waste of military sources, and if the Italians thought the British would withdraw any troops/aircraft units from more important places, even I would not have done so at this threatening moment.

Horst/Laurent
I doubt very much we will find any French "strategic" bombing during the Syrian campaign. It's been some time since I read the story, but I don't have any recollection it was done.

Thanks anyway for your interest, but a bit surprising that not a single one of our Italian friends are interesting to expand the topic....

Cheers
Stig

[Nick Beale]

Originally Posted by Stig Jarlevik

Nick
Not sure why I wrote Rhode Island ...

Cheers
Stig

Because it was the last place the enemy would expect the Italians to start from?

[Laurent Rizzotti]

Back at home, I checked the 'Dust clouds in the Middle East' book, and, as I remembered, all bomber sorties are either reco, shipping attacks or attacks on Allied troops in Lebanon and Syria.

On the other hand, Ju 88 of II/LG 1 attacked on 12 june 1941 Allied ships in the afternoon and were intercepted by Tomahawaks of 3 Sqn RAAF, so maybe one did not find ships and attacked a ground target instead.

It is possible that actually only one bomb was dropped, as all casualties were suffered in the same incident, so it might be a recon aircraft carrying some bombs.

As for the interest for Italian to raid Palestine cities, Haifa was at the time the end of an oleaduc bringing oil from Iraq, and an important tanker port. Tel-Aviv had no strategic value, but the day of the main raid (9 September 1940) was also the day when Italian troops "invaded Egypt", this initial thrust stopping some days later at Sidi Barrani. A possibility was that this raid was a diversion and a way for Rhodes-based bombers to support the offensive at little cost.

As for the great range of the raids, the Italian Force launched during the war a lot of long range raids, for example on Gibraltar or Bahrein.