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To minimize contact with the invasion fleet, the transport planes would take a circuitous route from their airfields in Tunisia, flying east to Malta, making a left sharp turn, and approaching Sicily from the east. Three days before the invasion, on July 7, 1943, it agreed to provide a safe corridor: a two-mile-wide lane devoid of ships that the 504th could fly over without drawing fire. Patton, Husky’s American ground commander, the navy compromised. Under pressure from Lieutenant General George S. Without a firm guarantee of safe passage, he said, he would recommend canceling the follow-up jump. Cunningham, expected that ships would fire “at any aeroplane particularly low flying ones which approach them.” Ridgway stood his ground. Husky’s overall naval commander, British Admiral Andrew B. The navy, however, refused to make a promise it wasn’t sure it could keep. Navy-over whose ships the 504th transport planes would fly-that it would hold its fire when his men passed overhead. Weeks before the invasion, Ridgway demanded a guarantee from the U.S. Because the 505th would jump before the invasion began, its transport planes would avoid the ships after the landings, the 504th would have no such luxury. What worried Ridgway was the danger of friendly fire when the 504th’s transports flew over the Allied invasion fleet anchored off Sicily. Ridgway, 48, was an intense man, described as “hard as flint” Time magazine claimed he could “out-hike 90% of his men.” A 1917 graduate of West Point, Major General Matthew B. Since well before the invasion, the 504th’s planned follow-up jump had gnawed at the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division. Landing before dawn, British and American troops established a beachhead and pushed inland. Although high winds and navigational errors scattered the paratroopers, they caused confusion among the German and Italian defenders.

The 505th dropped behind enemy lines shortly after midnight. The invasion took place on July 10, as planned. Allied commanders had high hopes for the paratroopers, but airborne operations were still in their infancy, and Husky would be the Allies’ most ambitious use of parachute infantry to date. The 504th was on call, scheduled to jump any night thereafter, depending on how the campaign progressed. The plan, named Operation Husky, called for the 82nd Airborne Division’s 505th Regimental Combat Team to jump behind enemy lines at midnight on July 10, 1943, followed by infantry landings on Sicily’s southern coast at 2:45 a.m. Its capture would solidify Allied control of the Mediterranean and provide a launching pad for attacks on the Italian mainland. (US Air Force/Getty Images)ĪFTER THE ALLIED INVASION of North Africa in 1942, the next stop was Sicily, the island at the foot of Italy. To their dismay, a seemingly simple mission had inexplicably turned into a friendly-fire nightmare-one of the bloodiest such incidents of the war-and startled commanders soon realized they had a lot to learn about modern warfare.Įn route to Sicily, paratroopers of the 504th Regimental Combat Team appear relaxed, anticipating a relatively problem-free flight as they move in to reinforce another unit that had jumped the night before. The paratroopers and aircrews immediately realized that it wasn’t the enemy sending up this deadly wall of fire. Planes caught fire and “tumbled out of the air like burning crosses,” one paratrooper recalled. Bullets and shrapnel ripped through wings, fuselages, and flesh. Tracers lit the sky and antiaircraft shells rocked the low-flying transports. As the planes neared the Sicilian coast, the paratroopers’ “highest hope for a safe crossing seemed justified,” one of them recalled. The flight would be entirely over Allied-controlled water and land, and the men would jump onto an airfield already in American hands. Now, the 504th was en route to reinforce that beachhead.

Less than two days prior, American and British troops had landed on the southern coast of Sicily and established a beachhead. The smell of lacquer and gasoline filled their C-47 transport planes. Some men dozed and others craned their necks to glimpse at the Mediterranean’s whitecapped waves below them. The night sky was clear and moonlit as the paratroopers made the three-hour flight from Tunisia to Sicily. IT LOOKED LIKE a milk run for the 82nd Airborne Division’s 504th Regimental Combat Team. How a Friendly Fire Tragedy in Sicily Transformed Airborne Warfare | HistoryNet Closeĭuring 1943’s Operation Husky, fire from ship and shore killed dozens of Americans-and provided the Allies with a costly lesson.