22/23 Jan 1941 Sicily

[Gianandrea Bussi]

In the records of the Catania airport I find no mention of such a personal loss caused by bombardment in the night 22-23 jan 1941. According to that source, 29 bombs were dropped by extimated three aircraft from 19.45 till 22.30. No personnel loss, only light damage to the officer mess, then the railway station was hit, with damage or destruction of 6 cargo wagons.


According to the book about the seaplane bases of Augusta e Siracusa written by the late Tullio Marcon, only Augusta suffered a small bombardment in the night of 22 january, with one man wounded.


ciao


Gianandrea

[Larry deZeng]

The pages covering January 1941 in the source noted below are 103 to 138. Every raid on the Axis airfields in eastern Sicily is described and there is none matching your description, although there were two very costly night raids on Catania by 10 Wellingtons the night of 12/13 January and another 3 night later by 9 Wellingtons. The first raid cost the Germans and Italians 5 destroyed and 4 damaged on the ground, while some 35 Ju 87s and Ju 88s were either destroyed or damaged on the ground during the second raid on 15/16 January. There is no mention of munition dump explosions of Luftwaffe ground casualties.

[Source: Shores, Christopher and Brian Cull with Nicola Malizia. Malta: The Hurricane Years, 1940-41. Carrollton (TX): Squadron Signal Publications, 1987. ISBN: 0-89747-207-1. Hb. Dj. 457p. Illus. Maps. Numerous appendices. Bibliography. Index.]

Suspecting this might be a typo for what should be 1942, I checked the title cited below covering all of the month of January 1942, pages 29-66. All of the big Axis airfields in eastern Sicily, e.g., Catania, Comiso, Gerbini and the seaplane bases at Augusta and Syracuse were hit at night as the weather permitted by 1 to 6 Wellingtons and small numbers of Hurricane intruders. The book gives the result of each of these raids from both Allied and Axis sources and there is no mention of a munitions dump being hit with the loss of 96 Luftwaffe personnel. As for the night of 22/23 January 1942, there were no attacks on airfields on Sicily as Allied air assets were busy operating against an Axis convoy en-route to North Africa.

[Source: Shores, Christopher and Brian Cull with Nicola Malizia. Malta: The Spitfire Year, 1942. London: Grub Street, 1991. ISBN: 0-948817-16-X. Hb. Dj. 704p. Illus. Map. Numerous appendices. Bibliography. Index.]

L.