12/2/2023 0 Comments Crude gas mask ww1![]() The symptoms were unlike anything military physicians had seen before, and they had begun to suspect that the Germans had used an unknown poison gas. ![]() Too many men were dying, too quickly, of unexplained causes. There appeared to be a developing medical crisis in Bari. Stewart Francis Alexander, asleep in his quarters at Allied Force Headquarters in Algiers, was awake at the first harsh jangle of the telephone. It would be almost 30 years before the world would learn the truth about what really took place that night, and even today few are aware of the surprising role of the disaster and its impact on the lives of ordinary Americans. In the crucial days that followed, the task of treating gravely injured sailors would be made even more difficult by wartime secrecy. More than 1,000 American and British servicemen were killed, and almost as many wounded, along with hundreds of civilians. All told, the Nazis sunk 17 Allied ships and destroyed more than 31,000 tons of valuable cargo. The attack on Bari, which the press called “a little Pearl Harbor,” shook the complacency of the Allied forces, who had been convinced of their air superiority in Italy. Crews worked frantically to free ships before raging fires forced them to jump overboard and swim for it. A reporter for Time magazine noted a “fiery panorama.” Eight ships were already “burning fiercely,” he wrote, and the “entire center of the harbor was covered with burning oil.”Ī ruptured bulk-fuel pipeline sent thousands of gallons gushing into the harbor, where it ignited into a gigantic sheet of flame, engulfing the entire north side of the port. An exploding ammunition tanker sent a huge rolling mass of flames a thousand feet high. ![]() Soon a tremendous roar came from the harbor. The gripping story of a chemical weapons catastrophe, the cover-up and how one American Army doctor’s discovery led to the development of the first drug to combat cancer, known today as chemotherapy. The Great Secret: The Classified World War II Disaster that Launched the War on Cancer The attacking German airplanes fled into the night. Smoke and flames rose from the city’s winding streets.Īs incendiaries rained down on the harbor, turning night into day, gunners aboard the anchored ships scrambled to shoot down the enemy-too late. German Junkers Ju-88s flew in low over the town, dropping bombs short of the harbor. Then came an earsplitting explosion, then another, and another. The ancient port’s single antiaircraft battery opened fire. Bright lights winked atop huge cranes that hoisted baled equipment up and out.Īt 7:35 p.m.-a blinding flash followed by a terrific bang. Visible on the upper decks were tanks, armored personnel carriers, jeeps and ambulances. Their holds were laden with everything from food and medical gear to engines, corrugated steel for landing strips, and 50-gallon drums of aviation fuel. “I would regard it as a personal affront and insult if the Luftwaffe should attempt any significant action in this area,” he said that day at a press conference.įour days earlier, the American Liberty ship John Harvey had pulled in with a convoy of nine other merchantmen, and some 30 Allied ships were crammed into the harbor, packed against the seawall and along the pier. The liberating Tommies had already chased the Nazis from the skies over Italy, and the British, who controlled the port, were so confident they had won the air war that Air Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham announced that Bari was all but immune from attack. Grand waterfront buildings were recently designated the headquarters of the United States Fifteenth Air Force. Even ice cream vendors were doing a brisk trade.īari was a Mediterranean service hub, supplying the 500,000 Allied troops engaged in driving the Germans out of Italy. Only a few miles outside of town, lines of women and children begged for black-market food, but here shop windows were full of fruit, cakes and bread. The British had taken Puglia’s capital in September, and though the front now lay just 150 miles to the north, the medieval city, with its massive cliffs cradling the sea, had escaped the fighting almost unscathed. ![]() The old port town of Bari, on Italy’s Adriatic coast, was bustling.
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