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The record · Invasion of Sicily, 1943
The 1st Fallschirmjäger Division in Sicily
German paratroopers flown in from France after the landings fought the British 1st Parachute Brigade for the Primosole Bridge and then held the Catania plain for three weeks. This page records what the division did in Sicily, and what one of its battalions did to Italian villagers in the Abruzzo four months later.
Illustration A neutral marker made for this site, not a unit emblem. No Nazi or Fascist symbol is reproduced on this page.
Paratroopers of the Luftwaffe
German paratroopers belonged to the Luftwaffe, not the army. The first parachute division, the 7th Flieger-Division, jumped into the Netherlands in May 1940 and onto Crete in May 1941, where its losses were so heavy that Hitler never again ordered a large German airborne assault. For the rest of the war the Fallschirmjäger fought mostly as elite infantry. In 1943 the division was renamed the 1st Fallschirmjäger-Division. Its commander, Richard Heidrich, had led a parachute regiment on Crete. In July 1943 the division was in southern France, near Avignon, as a reserve for the Mediterranean (Mitcham and von Stauffenberg).
When the Allies landed, the Germans had only two divisions on the island. On 11 July Hitler decided to reinforce Sicily and ordered Kesselring to fly the 1st Parachute Division in. At about 18:00 on 12 July the three infantry battalions of its 3rd Parachute Regiment, escorted by fighters, dropped near the Catania airfield, and over the next days more of the division followed: elements of the 4th Parachute Regiment, the machine-gun battalion and engineers. They reinforced Group Schmalz and the Hermann Göring Division’s battle groups holding the approaches to Catania against the British Eighth Army (Garland and Smyth, ch. XI; ParaData).
Primosole Bridge, 13–16 July
On the night of 13–14 July the British 1st Parachute Brigade, about 1,856 men under Brig. Gerald Lathbury, flew from Tunisia to seize the Primosole Bridge over the Simeto River, the gateway from the south onto the Catania plain. The British drop went badly: Allied naval gunners fired on the transports, flak broke up the formation, and only about 295 men reached the bridge. They took it overnight, removed the demolition charges and dug in (Wikipedia’s account of Operation Fustian, citing Mitcham; ParaData).
The Germans were already close. The Fallschirmjäger machine-gun battalion and other paratroopers who had arrived in the preceding days counterattacked the bridge on 14 July with machine guns, mortars and artillery. The British held until about 17:00 and then withdrew to high ground to the south. On 15–16 July the British 50th Division, with the 9th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry, in the lead, fought its way back onto the bridge against the German paratroopers dug in along the riverbanks and in the vineyards; the 9th DLI alone lost about 100 men, 34 of them killed. The British airborne lost 141 dead and 168 wounded or missing at Primosole (Wikipedia, citing Reynolds; ParaData).
Primosole is often described as the only battle of the war in which British and German paratroopers, both arriving by air, fought each other for the same objective. The claim is widely repeated; whatever its exact truth, the fight at the bridge was a meeting of two elite airborne forces, and the bridge changed hands three times in three days (Chapter 3).
The Catania plain
The British took the bridge, but not the plain beyond it. North of the Simeto the Germans held a line from the coast to the hills around Gerbini, with the paratroopers in the east and the Hermann Göring Division beside them, backed by artillery and later by the guns of the Etna line. Montgomery’s direct advance on Catania stalled, and he shifted the weight of the Eighth Army west into the hills, where the Canadians and the 78th Division fought for Agira, Centuripe and Adrano. Catania was not entered until 5 August. The paratroopers then withdrew with the rest of XIV Panzer Corps toward Messina and crossed to the mainland in the evacuation (CMH 72-16; Chapter 6; Chapter 9).
| British 1st Parachute Brigade | German paratroopers | |
|---|---|---|
| Arrival | Parachute and glider drop, night of 13–14 July | By parachute and air transport from 12 July; machine-gun battalion on the Catania front |
| At the bridge | About 295 men of 1,856 dispatched | Machine-gun battalion and parachute infantry with mortars and artillery |
| Outcome | Held the bridge until about 17:00 on 14 July | Retook it on 14 July; lost it to the 50th Division on 15–16 July |
| Losses | 141 dead, 168 wounded or missing (British airborne) | Not established in the sources used here |
Sources: Wikipedia, “Operation Fustian” (citing Mitcham, Molony and Reynolds); ParaData. German losses at Primosole are not given in the sources used for this page.
Pietransieri, November 1943
After Sicily the division fought on the Italian mainland, in Apulia, on the Sangro and at Ortona against the Canadians. In November 1943, behind the German Winter Line in the mountains of the Abruzzo, its men carried out one of the worst massacres of civilians of the Italian campaign. Between 16 and 21 November villagers of Pietransieri, near Roccaraso, who had refused to leave their homes in the evacuation zone were rounded up at farmsteads in the Limmari woods and shot; the buildings were then blown up. The research project NS-Täter in Italien lists 125 victims, among them women, old people and children, and attributes the killings to a battalion of the division’s 1st Parachute Regiment; its entry names the III Battalion in one place and the II in another (NS-Täter in Italien).
No one was ever punished. A British inquiry after the war produced nothing new; an Italian military prosecutor’s investigation closed in 2000; a German prosecutor’s investigation ended in 2013 without result, because the known perpetrators were dead and the others could not be identified. In 2017 a court at Sulmona ordered the German state to pay compensation to the victims’ families; like other such Italian judgments, it has not been carried out (NS-Täter in Italien).
The marker, rendered
Illustration A neutral marker made for this site, showing a generic parachute. It is not a unit emblem, and no Nazi or Fascist symbol is reproduced.
Timeline
- The 7th Flieger-Division jumps onto Crete and suffers heavy losses.
- The division is renamed the 1st Fallschirmjäger-Division; in July it is near Avignon, France.
- Elements arrive on the Catania front by parachute and transport aircraft.
- The British 1st Parachute Brigade takes the Primosole Bridge.
- German paratroopers retake the bridge.
- The 50th Division and the 9th Durham Light Infantry recapture it.
- Catania is entered by the British.
- Pietransieri: villagers killed in the Limmari woods.
- A German investigation of Pietransieri ends without charges.
Read the full story
- Chapter 3: Out of the Night Sky: The Airborne Story
- Chapter 6: The Hard Way North: Eighth Army, Primosole and the Canadians in the Hills
- Chapter 9: End Game: Lehrgang, Messina and What Sicily Changed
- Invasion of Sicily collection
- The record: the Hermann Göring Division in Sicily
- Special Units: No. 3 Commando and the Malati Bridge
- Special Units: the Glider Pilot Regiment and Operation Ladbroke
Sources
- ParaData (Airborne Assault Museum), Sicily operations.
- Wikipedia, “Operation Fustian,” citing Samuel W. Mitcham Jr. and Friedrich von Stauffenberg, The Battle of Sicily (1991), C. J. C. Molony, The Mediterranean and Middle East, vol. V (HMSO, 1973), and Michael Reynolds, Monty and Patton (2005).
- NS-Täter in Italien, “Pietransieri”.
- Albert N. Garland and Howard McGaw Smyth, Sicily and the Surrender of Italy (Office of the Chief of Military History, 1965), chapter XI (online).
- U.S. Army Center of Military History, Sicily, CMH Pub 72-16.
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