THE ASSAULT ON FORTRESS EUROPE

In terms of men landed in a single day, Operation Husky, the Allied assault of Sicily on 10 July 1943, remains the largest amphibious invasion ever mounted in the history of the world. More than 160,000 American, British and Canadian troops were dropped from the sky or came ashore that day, more than on D-Day in Normandy just under a year later, or in any of the island battles in the Pacific. It was a remarkable achievement and all the more so since Britain and America had, just three years earlier, almost no armies to speak of and almost no tanks, guns, trucks and other essential equipment. In many ways, the Battle of Sicily is the moment the Western Allies came of age. It was on Sicily that the British and American coalition began to operate at a war-winning level. Modern warfare by 1943, said General Sir Harold Alexander, commander of all Allied land forces for Sicily, was a correlation of “the three elements we live in: land, air, water. Army, air force and navy must become a brotherhood”. At the time, it was only the Western Allies who were bringing these three elements together and it was to bring about a sea change in how they fought. Air power, especially, was a vital part of the pre-invasion operations on and around Sicily and continued to play a critical part throughout the campaign.

The 36-day Battle for Sicily is an extraordinary story. Its conquest involved the largest airborne operations ever witnessed up to that point, daring raids by special forces, the harnessing of the