July 10, 1943, U.S. invades Sicily in Italy. Fleet of warships underway. Navy bombardment of Sicily. Coast Guardsman observes through binoculars. Coast Guardsmen carry troops and supplies in LCVPs (Higgins Boats). LST-356 approaching Blue Beach 2, in the "Cent" area on July 10, 1943, loaded with tanks and other vehicles. A beach master signals with semaphore flags. Troops landing from assault boats. Concentrated enemy air attacks destroy U.S. boats and ships. Enemy aircraft in flight. U.S. troops firing. A map shows Italy. September 9, 1943, amphibious assault on Anzio, Italy. Naval bombardment, followed by troop assault on the beaches.
Activities of the Seabees in Scotland in 1941 and in Algeria in 1943, during World War II. News headlines in 1943 read : ' Italy is out of war' and '17 more Italian towns taken'. An animated map. The Clyde valley in Scotland showing a base built by the U.S. Navy Seabees, in 1941. Numerous quonset huts and vehicles are seen. View of the River Clyde, where 2400 feet of oceangoing dock are being assembled. A ship anchored at a harbor displaying U.S. flag. Allied troops board a landing ship with their belongings. An animated map tracing travel of Allied invasion forces from Scotland to Oran, Algeria, where Seabees are seen testing a floating causway that would be used for invasion of Sicily. Scuttled axis ships and other obstacles and damage that Seabees must repair in occupied ports. Allied ships and troops proceeding for invasion of Sicily. Allied warships bombarding Sicilian coast.
Commander of the German 18th Army, Colonel General Georg Lindemann, arrives to personally recognize Spanish Army General Emilio Esteban Infantes, commanding officer of the Spanish "Blue Division" (German 250th Infantry Division) for successfully repelling attack by the Russian 55th Army, in the Battle of Krasny Bor on the Eastern Front in February, 1943. Other officers help General Esteban Infantes to place an Iron Cross decoration around his neck. Scenes of German General Field Marshal Albert Kesselring reviewing Italian and German troops in Italy at an airfield and presenting award to some of the soldiers. In next scene, Benito Mussolini enters a room and then is seated in the first meeting of the leaders of the new Fascist Republican Party, including Alessandro Pavolini and Italian Minister of War Rodolfo Graziani. Next segment covers arrival of German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel to Italy, touring fortifications and inspecting defenses in Italy. He is seen reviewing port lookouts and defense points with German artillery. In once scene he passes an elderly Italian civilian and gives him the Nazi salute, which is returned weakly by the Italian. Next segment covers further expansion of Italian defenses, with the laying of barb wire by troops, including one soldier cutting his pants knee on the barbed wire. Also shows demolition of trees using dynamite. Explosions as trees are blown up. Then shows placement of new artillery guns and positions. German soldier reviewing a map while on phone receiving enemy position information. German soldiers in hills fire artillery at enemy position in a valley.
Slate photographed at Grottaglie, Italy where the U.S. Army Air Forces 321st Bombardment Group is based, in September, 1943, during World War 2. View of a 321st Bomb Group B-25 bomber in flight over a River in Italy. A string of bombs dropping from the B-25. View of the Volturno River below and bombs striking roads, buildings, and a bridge over the river in the vicinity of Capua, Italy.
Aftermath of the Battle of St. Pietro Infine, Italy, after it was taken by soldiers of the U.S. Army 36th Division, 143rd Infantry Regiment and troopers of the 82nd Airborne Division, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, during World War 2. Several U.S. soldiers of the 143rd Infantry Regiment, scramble down a mountainside over rubble from destroyed buildings in San Pietro Infine, Italy, following the battle there during December 1943. (These scenes were photographed later, in 1944.) Next, more local people are seen running from a mountain cave, where they had taken refuge during the battle of San Pietro. Old people, women, and children make their way down the rubble strewn hillside and onto a remnant of road surrounded by destroyed buildings. Italian women carry their belongings balanced on their heads as they walk towards the remains of their dwellings. A man leads two cattle. One woman carries a new coffin balanced on her head. An 82nd Airborne trooper warns local people about the danger of mines and booby traps left behind by retreating German soldiers. A soldier removes a booby trap in a doorway. Women trying to clean up and settle in the ruins of their homes. As one woman sweeps debris, an huge explosion occurs, bringing down large portions of a building. U.S. Soldiers dig through debris, with shovels. An MP and infantryman stand with several Italian men as one is grief stricken while they retrieve the body of a loved one from the rubble. A woman weeps. Women nurse and comfort their babies. Small children are seen happily emerging from a cave. A mother admonishes her boy. Women and children are relieved and smiling. Several children scamper down a hill. Others are seen walking about and posing shyly for the camera. Local men clearing rubble and women washing clothes in an outdoor stream as they try to reestablish some normalcy in their lives. A shoemaker resuming business at a small bench outdoors. Men unloading sacks of flour from a truck. People purchasing flour being weighed in an outdoor market. Farmers plowing fields with oxen. A church procession, led by a youth carrying a Christian banner, moves from a bombed out church, between mounds of rubble, . Statue of a Saint at the church.
American soldiers in Italy, during Allied Operation Husky, and Operation Avalanche in World War 2. In landings during invasion of Salerno, Italy, soldiers pause their movements while two use a detector to search for possible buried mines. They detect one and are seen carefully digging it up from the sandy soil. Soldiers unroll steel matting across an area of beach. Close-up of heavy trucks moving across the matting. A bulldozer uses a cable to pull a section of temporary docking out of an LST (Landing ship tank). Troops move across several sections of such docking as they make their way onto the shore. A sherman tank making its way toward the shore . More heavy equipment coming ashore from LSTs, including a US M1 155mm “Long Tom” Gun. The gun being towed on shore, as trucks and jeeps maneuver through shallow water nearby. A long line of jeeps and trucks moving inland. Military vehicles being offloaded from the British Landing Ship Tank (HM LST-200). U.S. troops moving on a beachhead, along with artillery pieces, and vehicles. Soldiers carrying boxes of supplies and ammunition and struggling with large wooden crates of such, in shallow surf, and using a roller conveyor to offload some heavy items from a ship. A landing craft suspended from a cable operated A-Frame on wheels (in the water). At this point the thrust of the film shifts to illustrate the hazards of amphibious operations, in general. Swamped vehicles and a landing craft in the surf. The beach littered with damaged and swamped landing craft and equipment, including, among others, a landing craft from the USS Samuel Chase (APA-26). A huge explosion in the water. Glimpse of a German Junkers Ju 87 (Stuka) dive bomber attacking while being shot down by a U.S. sailor firing an anti-aircraft gun . View from above of sailors firing twin bofors 40mm antiaircraft cannons from an emplacement on a ship. Several German Junkers Ju 87 planes maneuvering as they attack. Quad bofors antiaircraft guns firing from a ship. More attacking Ju-87 dive bombers on the attack. A dramatic explosion and smoke from the Liberty ship SS Robin Rowan after being hit by a German bomb off the coast of Gela, Sicily on July 11, 1943. A landing ship burning from German bombing, off Gela, Sicily, with its deck full of halftrack and personnel carrier vehicles. The film continues the theme of losses encountered in wartime amphibious assaults, by shifting to the Pacific theater of operation, where a Landing Ship Tank (LST) is seen ablaze, off Guadalcanal, after being hit by Japanese shelling. View from beach with barbed wire, ashore, of the burning LST. Sherman tanks lost in a conflagration aboard an LST. Sailors carry a casualty on a litter, and place it next to other fallen crew members, on deck.