USAAF attack on RN Hunt class destroyers

[Juha]

Hello
I have a question after reading G.G. Connell’s Fighting Destroyer and Stephen Harper’s Capturing Enigma

At dawn on 11 May 43 HMS Zetland and HMS Bicester were attacked by USAAF Spitfire fighter bombers off Tunisia, Bicester was hit by a dud. Any ideas on the Spit unit involved?

TIA
Juha

[Leendert]

Juha,

It appears that this incident was on this forum before (2006!) where one of the answers was:


9 May 1943
" ... If the Royal Navy seemed 'trigger-happy' to Colonel Kelly it was with good reason. From Norway, through Dunkirk, Greece, Crete and numerous other occasions, the RAF had totally failed to protect them from the Luftwaffe and the assumption that anything in the sky was enemy, was hard to break. Nor had the arrival of the USAAF helped much. Earlier in the year, on 9 May 1943, while patrolling the Sicilian Channel to prevent German troops from escaping to Sicily, and with their decks painted British red to make recognition simple, two British destroyers, Bicester and Zetland, had been dive-bombed by fifteen American-flown Spitfires of the 57th Group. One bomb hit the Bicester on her starboard side, and it passed through her Chief and Petty Officers' mess into the after fuel tanks. Fortunately it failed to explode. Another was a near-miss alongside. A second wave of fifteen Spitfires then made another attack. The destroyer's captain, Lieutenant-Commander S. W. F. Bennetts ('...a former submarine officer, famed for extensive knowledge of the lesser used terms of the English language') overheard the American pilots talking on their radio telephones overhead after the attack. Tuning in his own set he joined in, calling them all the names he could think of without reservation. After listening in, one of the Americans was heard to remark to his colleague, 'Say I guess this guy's friendly!' What Bennetts said to that is not on record. See Cunningham of Hyndhope, A Sailor's Odyssey, London, 1951. On 12 May the captain, along with a party of two other officers and twenty ratings from the ship visited 57 Group to talk with their attackers face-to-face. They were 'hospitably-entertained' and Bennetts was told that the Americans concentrated on his ship as the leading vessel and had aimed tenty-five bombs at her. Bennetts commented 'It seemed like more at the time! HMS Bicester, Report of Proceedings May 1943. ADM 199, Public Record Office, Kew, London. See Peter Smith / Straight Down!, p.134-135 ... "

Other sources also say 9 May 1943.


Regards,

Leendert

[Juha]

Thanks a lot, Leendert!!!
Yes, in times Connell's dates seem to be a few day off.

Thankfully
Juha

[Buz]

Just a small historcial correction here.

If the group was indeed the 57FG then the aircraft would have been P-40 Aircraft not Spitfires...If Spitfires then not the 57FG.

Buz

[Juha]

Hello Buz
a good point, only 31 and 52 FGs used Spits at that time, odds are that they were P-40s from 57 FG, sailors were no better in a/c recognisation than pilots or AA gunners.

Juha