Toward the Toe

British and U.S. bombers coursing over the Mediterranean last week outlined the next Allied objective. If the pattern of the bombings meant anything, it was to be a two-part objective: the island of Sicily and, just across the Strait of Messina, the southern toe of Italy.

Malta and the Middle East Air Command in Egypt and Libya sent bombers against southern Italy and over Sicily's eastern coast, where the Siculi, the Phoenicians and the Greeks began the island's long cycle of invasion. American Fortresses, medium bombers, fighter-bombers and night-flying British Wellingtons attacked from Tunisia (but not as heavily as some U.S. headlines screamed). Compared with the climactic air offensive on Pantelleria, the week, in fact, was one of lull and preparation.

When the American and British crews did strike, they ranged widely. They again raided the Naples docks. They flew over Sicily's western plain, an obvious point of amphibious invasion. They left their bomb-pocks on the hilly but approachable southern coast. They crossed the central plateau, which looks mountainous on the map but is a region of high wheat fields. They roared above the lemon and orange groves of the precipitous northern coast. On the port of Messina, the chief point of entry for supplies from the mainland, they dumped the biggest Sicilian bomb loads. (But none down the volcanic throat of nearby Mt. Etna-- On both island and mainland the targets were carefully chosen: airdromes with their repair shops and grounded aircraft, railway junctions, gun emplacements, munitions and gasoline dumps. Said a veteran of Jimmy Doolittle's raid on Tokyo, describing an attack on three airdromes: "It was the best job of Allied bombing I have ever seen."

Different Show. Allied commanders, eagerly studying the reports from air-conquered Pantelleria and Lampedusa, saw in them auguries of what could be done to specific targets in Sicily and southern Italy. On Pantelleria, an entire military establishment had been destroyed. Artillery, anti-aircraft positions and coastal batteries had been silenced. The island had not been able to withstand this demolition, coupled with the effective blockade by aircraft and the Royal Navy.

But Sicily is a different kind of target. It is much bigger (9,926 sq. mi. to Pantelleria's 32), more nearly self-contained, with stronger local aircraft and other defenses. If the Germans and Italians are able or willing to do so, the island can be given air cover from the mainland. At a few points the Axis air defenses stiffened last week, although as a whole they were noticeably weak. There were unconfirmed reports that the Luftwaffe had shifted its western Mediterranean air command from Sicily to northern Italy. But it still had defensive fighters on the island and on the mainland toe; it still sent bombers against Malta, Pantelleria and Allied shipping.

No Side Show. Whether Sicily and Italy's heel & toe fall to air siege, to air and amphibious invasion or by early Italian surrender, the military benefits will be greater than has often been realized, and they must have been pondered by Winston Churchill and General Marshall when they visited North Africa. Sardinia and Corsica could not long hold out, might not even try to do so. From the southernmost tip of Italy, the Adriatic and the western entry to the Balkans would be open to Allied air domination. Allied air fleets could turn upon the rest of Italy, upon southern Germany, the Axis oil pool in Rumania, the entire southern belt of Axis defenses, with bombings as intense as those already visited on Italy's islands.

In the eastern Mediterranean, the British and Americans were also preparing. Action against southern Europe was to be no side show.

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