Italian bombing of Tel Aviv

[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.

[Larry deZeng]

Stig - (a) I am really surprised Shores missed all this because he is usually so thorough in his coverage. (b) You couldn't have picked a better state. Rhode Island has one of the largest per capita populations of Italian-Americans in the country and is about as far east as you can get, making it the perfect spot from which to launch a trans-Atlantic bomber strike on Tel Aviv!

[Laurent Rizzotti]

Larry, about your last point, my personal opinion is that Shores is very thorough in covering air-to-air battles and attacks on ships but will usually not study the attacks on ground targets and their effects. Best example of this tendency is his 2nd TAF series, that are very useful to know the losses and victories of the air units but will only list ground targets and how they were hit here and there, while they were the main targets of 2nd TAF.

That air attacks on Palestine are not well covered by Shores books is so not surprising IMHO, as they are not his main interest and they are hard to put in one of his books, as they are outside the time frame for the Syria campaign described in "dust clouds" and geographically out of the area concerned by his other books.

[Larry deZeng]

Laurent - I agree. I have Shores' old 2nd TAF book published in 1970 and his coverage of ground strafing attacks on Luftwaffe airfields is almost non-existent. He's an air combat guy and the other stuff just does not interest him. But with only a few raids directed against Palestine, I thought there was a good chance he would include these. Thanks for checking.

L.

[mapalm]

The first Regia Aeronautica (Aeronautica dell’Egeo) raid against Haifa was on july 15th, 1940.

The Unit was 41° Gruppo BT (magg. Ettore Muti), equipped with S.79 in the raids of july and august, with CantZ1007bis in the ones of September 1940.

They flew from the Rodi Gaddura (Rhodes-Rodi) airbase direct to the targets: the oil pipeline terminal in Haifa, the harbour and depots of Tel Aviv. These were the military targets, as recorded in the units war diaries. No resultances of any terroristic motivation.

Cheers

[Horst Fliegel]

This gleaned from elsewhere:


some infos about Italian air raids on Palestinian targets.
15/07/1940, Haifa, 10 S79 on fuel depots
24/07/1940, Haifa, 12 S79 on fuel depots
6/08/1940, Haifa, 10 S79
27/08/1940, Haifa, 10 S79 on refineries and railways station
6/09/1940, Haifa, 10 Cant Z1007bis
8/09/1940, Haifa, 7 Cant Z1007bis
9/09/1940, Tel Aviv, 6 Cant Z1007bis (1 landed in Turkey and interned)
21/09/1940, Haifa, 6 Cant Z1007bis
26/09/1940, Haifa, 10 Cant Z1007bis
29/09/1940, Haifa, 10 Cant Z1007bis (1 damaged by fighters, landed at Damasco and interned)
All the mentioned air raids were day attacks.
On Haifa Italian bombers performed also three night attacks on 10/07/1941, 9/09/1941 and 8/10/1941.

All the bombers were from Rhodes and were part of the 41. Gruppo BT.
In August 1942 there were 10 sorties from Rhodes against Haifa and other 24 between Jan., 1st and Sept., 6th, 1943 (no other details, at the moment) against Haifa and Tripoli (Syria).

Regards

Fabrizio

Source Santoro, G. : L'aeronautica italiana nella seconda guerra mondiale, Vol. I and II, Rome, 1958

[Stig Jarlevik]

Thanks Horst

The Italians were very persistent even if the attacks were rather low key and obviously failures.

B Rgds
Stig

[Brian]

Hi guys

My latest book FIGHTERS OVER THE AEGEAN (out this month) includes details of some of the 1942/43 Italian raids/losses.

Cheers
Brian

[Laurent Rizzotti]

I stumbled today on the Italian communique for september 1940: http://www.regioesercito.it/bollettini/09_40.htm

The one of 9th september records the raid on Haifa on the 8th, but it is interesting to note that the communique of 10th said that Italian bombers raided the port of Jaffa in Palestine. So maybe the town of Tel Aviv was not the intended target.