Montecorvino Airfield, Italy

[Sylvester Stadler]

The book The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1945 by Rick Atkinson claims that on 9 September 1943, when Allied divisions landed at Salerno, British forces advanced to the Montecorvino airfield, three miles from the beach, and surprised Luftwaffe units there and machine-gunned German pilots running to their aircraft and then going on to destroy around 36 German aircraft parked there. There is no indication of the type of aircraft claimed or the unit(s) stationed there. Is there any confirmation of such claims in Luftwaffe records?

[Andrew Arthy]

Hi,

II. and III./S.K.G. 10, equipped with the FW 190, were based at Montecorvino in the days before 9 September 1943. They had been busy developing the airfield, but it was reported unserviceable for operations on 8 and 9 September 1943.

II. and III./S.K.G. 10 had transferred elsewhere well before any Allied troops reached Montecorvino. On the morning of 9 September elements of III./S.K.G. 10 were still based at Montecorvino, but before the day was out they had left for other bases. By the end of the day II./S.K.G. 10 was based at Montalbano, and III./S.K.G. 10 was based at Avelino.

I've seen no evidence of any incident like that described by Atkinson.

II. and III./S.K.G. 10 did destroy a lot of their own aircraft at Montecorvino, although you'll see photos taken by Allied servicemen that show that the destruction of these FW 190s was not done very thoroughly (see for example 'DN + FV').

There will be lots more information about II. and III./S.K.G. 10 in the book by Morten Jessen and I about the FW 190 over Sicily, Italy, Sardinia and Corsica.

Cheers,
Andrew A.

[Sylvester Stadler]

I think Atkinson's fairy tale is based on the official history The Mediterranean and Middle East Vol. 5 by C.I.C. Molony, 1973. I have seen color photos of the Fw 190 in question and that it belonged to SKG 210. Evidently the British soldiers didn't do a thorough job of destroying this aircraft either.

BTW, Atkinson received a Pulitzer Prize for an earlier work, The Long Gray Line, and I hope he doesn't receive one for this book where he rarely looks at the German version of events in Sicily and Italy. He never even mentioned General Hans von Hube, commander of all German forces whose brilliant strategy resulted not only in the evacuation of all German soldiers from the island but also their equipment including tanks, trucks, AA, etc. His 60,000 men held off around one-half million Allied soldiers for over a month and then escaped.