Supporting The Invasion of Italy
On 9 June, the minelayer weighed anchor and departed Yorktown, Virginia, and headed for New York. There, she joined a convoy bound for Algeria. During the crossing, a German U-boat apparently attacked the convoy on 22 June, for SS Gulf Stream sank rapidly after suffering an explosion. However, Weehawken arrived in Oran safely on U.S. Independence Day 1943. Two days later, she joined a convoy off Oran and set a course for Sicily where she arrived on the 11th, the day following the initial Allied invasion.
Throughout that day and most of the next, she laid defensive minefields around the invasion beaches at Gela on the southern coast of the island. On both days, the Luftwaffe appeared and dropped their explosive greetings to the invasion force. Between 2150 and 2345 on the 11th, Weehawken's group underwent a series of heavy attacks; however, the minelayer came through unscathed save for some fragments from a stick of bombs which exploded just off her starboard bow. On the 12th, she continued operations off Gela; and, around 1740 in the afternoon, German planes returned. The ship's war diary recorded these as "Stuka's," which indicates that they were probably Junkers Ju 87 dive bombers. After making a great deal of noise, both the US Navy and the German Luftwaffe emerged from that altercation unharmed.
Later that evening, Weehawken departed Sicily to return to North Africa. After stops at Bizerte, Tunisia, and Algeria, she returned to Oran on 17 July. Five days later, the minelayer shifted to Mers El Kébir where she remained until 6 September when she sailed for Bizerte. The ship stayed at the Tunisian port from 8 to 14 September and returned to Mers El Kébir on the 17th.
Read more about this topic: USS Weehawken (CM-12)
Famous quotes containing the words supporting the, supporting, invasion and/or italy:
“They keep such a dingdong about “supporting the Constitution.” One might imagine it was some miserable, decrepit old creature that was no longer able to totter on crutches but must be held on every side, and dragged along like a drunken loafer, on his road to the lock-up.”
—Jane Grey Swisshelm (1815–1884)
“I hope you will be benefitted by your churchgoing. Where the habit does not Christianize, it generally civilizes. That is reason enough for supporting churches, if there were no higher.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“We should have an army so organized and so officered as to be capable in time of emergency, in cooperation with the National Militia, and under the provision of a proper national volunteer law, rapidly to expand into a force sufficient to resist all probable invasion from abroad and to furnish a respectable expeditionary force if necessary in the maintenance of our traditional American policy which bears the name of President Monroe.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“For us to go to Italy and to penetrate into Italy is like a most fascinating act of self-discovery—back, back down the old ways of time. Strange and wonderful chords awake in us, and vibrate again after many hundreds of years of complete forgetfulness.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)