Battle of Piombino

The Battle of Piombino was fought on the night between 10 and 11 September 1943 during the largest events of Operation Achse of the Second World War. Piombino was a strategic location for naval connections between the Tuscan coast and the islands of Corsica and Sardinia, and as early as the day after the announcement of the armistice between Italy and the Allies on 8 September 1943, German troops stationed in the city attempted to take control of the port, but were repelled by the prompt reaction of the sailors and soldiers of the city garrison. Greater numbers of German troops began to gradually flow into Piombino starting on the morning of 10 September on the orders of his superior, General Cesare Maria De Vecchi, the commander of the Piombino garrison, General Fortunato Perni, allowed the German naval vessels, loaded with troops, to enter the city port, despite the head of the Navy Command, Andrea Capuano, calling for force to be used to oppose the attempt to occupy the city. The presence of the Germans generated a strong response from the civilian population and the city's industrial workers, who took to the streets to protest under the direction of an anti-fascist committee formed in the previous weeks.

The battle between the Germans and the Italians suddenly broke out in the late hours of 10 September, and continued until the early hours of 11 September the coastal defence artillery batteries opened fire on the German ships in the port, while groups of soldiers, sailors, customs officers and armed civilians fought the Germans who had landed; due to the presence of civilians alongside the military, the Battle of Piombino is considered one of the first battles of the Italian Resistance. The Germans were forced to surrender after suffering heavy losses in men and ships, although later, on De Vecchi's orders, the prisoners had to be released. The success of Piombino proved ephemeral for the Italians, as the rest of the garrisons along the Tuscan coast capitulated during the same 11 September; left isolated, the city was then occupied without further fighting by the Germans on 13 September.

Background

At 6:00 PM on 8 September 1943, the Anglo-American-controlled Algiers Radio broadcast the news of the coming into force of the armistice stipulated by Italy with the Allies, signed in secret on 3 September in Cassibile by emissaries of the Badoglio government, which had come to power after the deposition of Benito Mussolini on 25 July. Marshal Pietro Badoglio himself later gave official confirmation of the news by reading, at 7:42 PM, a proclamation from the microphones of the EIAR. Although the Italian high command had already issued instructions on 31 August that were intended to prepare the armed forces for the change of front and dictate the behavior to be adopted towards the Germans, the news of the armistice took a large part of the Italian military units by complete surprise, leaving them without precise orders. The same could not be said of the Germans, since May 1943 contingency plans had been drawn up to deal with the collapse of Kingdom of Italy or its surrender to the Allies; these preparations had then been accelerated after the deposition of Mussolini, while more and more divisions were sent to Italy to be deployed in strategic points of the peninsula. Once the armistice was made official, the German troops immediately began the work of occupying Italian territories and disarming the Italian armed forces, under the code name of "Operation Achse".

In the German plans, possession of the Tuscan coast represented an important strategic objective, given that the Tuscan ports and airports were to be the point of arrival for transports carrying troops evacuated from the islands of Sardinia and Corsica, which the German high command had decided to abandon because they were judged to be undefendable; tension between Italian and German garrisons therefore became very high from the first hours following Badoglio's announcement. The city of Piombino, a central hub for naval connections between Tuscany, the island of Elba and Corsica, was included in the defence sector of the 215th Coastal Division, a unit constituted just on 1 August 1943 with headquarters in Massa Marittima and placed under the command of General Cesare Maria De Vecchi ("quadrumvir" of the March on Rome and member of the dissolved Grand Council of Fascism); the garrison of Piombino was under the command of the vice-commander of the division, General Fortunato Perni. The garrison troops included a battalion from the 215th Coastal Division and approximately 500 sailors from the (Italian Royal Navy) under the command of Lieutenant Commander Giorgio Bacherini, who was responsible for the fixed defenses, which included three coastal and anti-aircraft artillery batteries manned by naval personnel and two batteries manned by the Royal Italian Army. The XIX Tank Battalion was quartered in the pine forest near Venturina Terme, a little further north, and was about to be transferred to Rome to join the 136th Armored Division "Centauro" but was temporarily assigned to the 215th Coastal Division. It was equipped with 20 M15/42 tanks and 18 self-propelled guns but lacked ammunition for their guns. The Piombino Navy Command, headed by frigate captain Amedeo Capuano, included another 300 sailors and controlled the local naval forces, which at the time of the armistice amounted to four auxiliary minesweepers (formerly requisitioned civilian fishing vessels) and two small transport steamers (Cappellini and Capitano Sauro) used for connections with the islands of the Tuscan Archipelago. As a transit point, Piombino was also home to several hundred Italian soldiers transferring from one location to another.

Since 25 July 1943, with the fall of fascism and the overthrow of Mussolini, Piombino had been experiencing a fervent period of popular demonstrations and profound political and trade union debate. The announcement of the signing of the armistice on 8 September had rekindled citizens' hopes for a rapid cessation of hostilities, but that same night, a first incident occurred that foreshadowed the events of the following days. The only German soldiers normally stationed in Piombino were a non-commissioned officer and seven or eight sailors from the assigned to operate a coastal radar station, but in the days preceding the announcement of the armistice, significant forces had converged on the Tuscan city: on the evening of 8 September, ten German motor launches and three river transport barges, carrying approximately 400 armed men, were moored in the port. During the final hours of 8 September, German troops disembarked from their ships and began disarming the Italian patrols and sentries guarding the port of Piombino. Captain Bacherini, who had immediately ordered the radar station personnel to be taken prisoner after hearing the news of the armistice, sent a unit of naval machine gunners to the port to order the Germans to reboard their ships and leave the city. When the Germans attempted to surround the machine gunners, they responded by opening fire, triggering a battle that lasted a quarter of an hour, which was also joined by several Italian coastal batteries. The Germans eventually desisted, returning to their ships after leaving dead and wounded ashore, as well as several prisoners in Italian hands. The Italians, however, suffered three wounded. Four of the German motorboats were sunk in the harbor by Italian fire. The commander of the 215th Coastal Division, General De Vecchi, and of the Piombino garrison, General Perni, then intervened to order the release of the German prisoners and the return of their weapons; around 12:00 on 9 September, having embarked all the soldiers present in the city, the surviving German ships left Piombino to head for Livorno, scuttling one of the barges outside the port because it was too damaged to continue.

The German troops then concentrated their attention on Livorno, which had been fully invested already in the early hours of 9 September; that same day, in the waters between the island of Gorgona, Livorno, and Castiglioncello, various clashes occurred between German naval units and Italian ships fleeing from the ports of Liguria and heading south to respect the dictates of the armistice: the auxiliary cruiser Piero Foscari and the steamer Valverde were sunk and various units were captured by the Germans, while Rear Admiral Federico Martinengo was killed by enemy fire while proceeding on board an anti-submarine patrol boat.

Battle

The return of the Germans

At 4:30 on 10 September, a small convoy of German ships from Torre Annunziata appeared at the mouth of Piombino harbour, asking the local authorities to let them in so they could refuel and refuel. Under the command of Karl-Wolf Albrand, the convoy consisted of the torpedo boats TA 9 and TA 11 (former French units of the La Melpomène class captured in 1942) and the large armed merchant steamer Hans SS Cabert. Captain Capuano, head of the Piombino Naval Command, initially refused, but on explicit orders from the 215th Division headquarters and the command of the city garrison, he finally had to grant the request and have the barriers at the harbour mouth removed. The German ships then entered the commercial port at 09:30 the torpedo boat TA 11 went to anchor at the southern pier while the TA 9 and the Hans SS Cabert moored at the northern one, positioning themselves so as to keep the entire inlet under fire with their guns. Albrand's intention, in fact, was not so much to resupply as to take control of the port as soon as possible, given that the evacuation of German troops from Sardinia and Corsica was in full swing.

Shortly after the arrival of the German ships, four Italian VAS entered the port: having fled Imperia to avoid capture by the enemy, the four units had initially set course for Portoferraio but were driven back by fire from Italian coastal batteries, which mistook them for German vessels, and therefore continued sailing towards Piombino. The Naval Command ordered the VAS to move away, but the Germans were quicker under threat from the torpedo boats' guns, the four VAS were stopped, boarded, and forced to anchor alongside the German vessels. Throughout the day of 10 September, convoys of German ships arrived in Piombino and dropped anchor in the port around 12:00, two motor torpedo boats, two barges, and four motor launches loaded with troops arrived, followed shortly thereafter by two boats and four motor launches from a naval rescue team. Informed of these naval movements, around 13:20 three Italian corvettes (Folaga, Ape, and Cormorano) left Portoferraio to patrol the Piombino channel; at 13:50 the Italian units opened fire on a convoy of five German motor launches headed for Piombino, sinking one and forcing the others to run aground in the Gulf of Populonia. Despite this intervention, at 17:00 another eight German units, including motor launches, barges and motor torpedo boats, dropped anchor in Piombino, followed later by three patrol boats and then, by now at dusk, by the R-Boot minesweeper R 185. At Albrand's request, General Perni agreed to allow two German soldiers to position themselves at the semaphore in Piombino to send signals to units approaching the port; the Germans began to land armed troops on the docks of the port under every pretext, establishing at 11:30 a double guard post between the pier and the Piombino steelworks as well as occupying the harbour master's building and the command of the artillery battery of the Semaforo. Albrand, furthermore, put forward a request to Perni to suspend Italian ferry traffic between Piombino and the island of Elba for 24 hours.

The presence of armed German soldiers and the possible suspension of traffic to Elba increasingly unnerved the civilian population of Piombino, particularly the steelworkers. Spontaneous protests erupted in front of the garrison headquarters, located near the Stadio Magona d'Italia, demanding an immediate response to the German demands, threatening an insurrection if they did not. A group of civilians stormed the old Casa del Fascio in Piombino in an attempt to find weapons but were repelled by a military unit that fired into the air to disperse the crowd. The chaos in the city was further increased by the arrival of hundreds of Italian soldiers and sailors from other areas of Tuscany and Liguria, disarmed by the Germans but then released because they were too numerous to all be taken prisoner. Their presence undermined the morale of some units of the city garrison, which began to disintegrate and desert their positions. To address the situation and respond to the population's demands, Perni ordered the XIX Tank Battalion to move from its cantonment in Venturina and enter the city; the general's intention, inspired by De Vecchi, was also to use the armored vehicles to repress the popular demonstrations and restore public order. The Italian military hierarchy began to split over the best way to proceed, with General Perni, supported by De Vecchi, intending to negotiate with the Germans, also with a view to a peaceful surrender of the city to them, while Captain Capuano favored armed resistance to any aggression. The rift was such that, at 2:30 PM, Perni formally dismissed Capuano from his post and ordered him to report to the command of the 14th Coastal Regiment in Follonica; In response, Capuano refused to obey the order, claiming that an Army officer could not dismiss a Navy officer, and remained in his post.

The paralysis of the military command was countered by the initiative of Piombino's civilian population, led by an "Anti-Fascist Concentration Committee" formed in the preceding weeks by the city's leading anti-fascist political figures. Members of the committee conferred with the commander of coastal defense, Captain Bacherini, who had already distinguished himself in the first clash with the Germans on 8–9 September, and convinced him to assume command of the operations. At the committee's invitation, a patrol of sailors blocked the 11:00 train at the station and forced the numerous military personnel who had boarded in civilian clothes to disembark and flee, convincing them to return to their positions. Many civilians spontaneously joined the coastal defenses, supplementing the personnel serving at the artillery batteries; other civilians began pressuring their subordinate officers to move the tanks of the XIX Battalion, deployed in the hamlet of Fiorentina to guard the main road accesses to Piombino and Baratti, towards the port to confront the Germans. Under pressure from the population, Perni met with the Germans at 6:00 PM. Captain Albrand continued to insist that the German units simply needed to refuel and would leave the port no later than 9:00 PM. Perni ordered the German ships to complete their refueling within six hours and leave the port no later than midnight. Despite the proclamations, the Germans showed no intention of leaving one of the torpedo boats cast off and positioned itself just outside the harbor to better cover the Italian coastal batteries, while the other completely blocked the entrance to the harbor. The disembarked units continued to station themselves in their occupied positions. The paralysis of the Italian command was finally resolved at 8:30 pm during a meeting with all the officers involved, Perni finally agreed to unify the command of all the artillery batteries in the hands of Captain Bacherini, and to give the order to open fire if the Germans had carried out further provocations. The tanks of the XIX Battalion were ordered to deploy in the port area.

The clashes

The battle between the Italians and the Germans suddenly broke out around 9:15 PM. It is unclear how the fighting started according to one source, Captain Albrand mistook an Italian flare, launched to illuminate the harbour area, for a light signal to attack and immediately ordered the German torpedo boats to open fire on the Italian positions. According to other sources, the fighting opened with a surprise attack by a German patrol using hand grenades on the Italian tanks; at the same time, Captain Bacherini, informed that strange movements were taking place on the German ships, ordered them to be illuminated with the light of a searchlight, which was however immediately shelled by the Germans. In any case, the fighting immediately developed into an intense crossfire, with the coastal batteries and the Italian tanks responding to the shots of the German ships; The Italian battery of Semaforo, armed with 102/35 mm guns, and that of Montecaselli, armed with 76/40 mm guns, responded intensely, while groups of soldiers, sailors, financial police officers and armed civilians faced the Germans on land. Both German torpedo boats were hit directly and many of the lighter units were hit while trying to cast off; the steamers Carbet and Capitano Sauro were badly hit. A shell hit one of the Italian VAS captured by the Germans, setting it on fire; burning fuel engulfed the torpedo boat TA 11, already under heavy fire by Italian artillery the hull of the unit, badly damaged and abandoned by its crew, finally sank in the port of Piombino around 05:00 on 11 September. TA 9 battled with the Italian coastal positions until around midnight; Severely damaged, the unit finally disengaged from the fight and retreated into the open sea to then proceed towards Livorno.

The fighting ended around 3:00 AM on 11 September, when the surviving Germans laid down their weapons and surrendered. Four Italians were confirmed dead and a dozen wounded, but it is unclear how many casualties there were among the crews of the four captured VAS, all of which were completely destroyed in the battle. Public and private buildings and industrial facilities suffered extensive damage, while the port was partially destroyed, with numerous vessels burned and dismembered while still moored at the dock. The precise number of Germans killed is unknown, with various estimates putting the number at 108, 110, or 120; numerous wounded were also admitted to the city hospital. Some German soldiers attempted to evade capture but were taken prisoner at first light; There is no precise estimate of the number of prisoners either, with various sources speaking of a minimum of 100 and a maximum of 300 captured soldiers. In addition to the torpedo boat TA 11, seven motor launches, three barges and six light boats were sunk or completely destroyed, while all the surviving units were more or less damaged (except the minesweeper R 185, which emerged completely unharmed from the clash).

Aftermath

The Battle of Piombino resulted in a clear victory for the Italian forces, but it remained a unique event in the surrounding area. During that same 11 September, through various agreements between local commanders, the Italians capitulated and handed over control of Livorno, Cecina, Grosseto, and other towns on the Tuscan coast to the Germans, leaving Piombino completely isolated. That morning, General De Vecchi ordered the Piombino garrison to immediately release the German prisoners and to have them leave the city after returning their weapons. The decision completely disconcerted both the population and the local command, but it was ultimately carried out. Around 11:35, the first Germans left the port aboard their still seaworthy vessels, heading for Livorno, where they arrived between 4:00 and 6:00 PM on that same 11 September. Later in the afternoon, between 100 and 200 Germans were loaded onto the steamer Cappellini, which had emerged practically unharmed from the battle, and also set sail for Livorno. The steamer Cabert, badly damaged, was sunk inside the port; the steamer Capitano Sauro suffered an identical fate, scuttled by its own crew on 12 September while still docked at the dock.

The decision to release the German prisoners sparked riots in the city, with General Perni, spat upon and insulted, forced to barricade himself in the garrison command post. From his command post in Massa Marittima, General De Vecchi continued to negotiate with the Germans for the surrender of arms and the surrender of the last remaining garrisons on the Tuscan coast; Piombino's position was now untenable, with the city practically surrounded by the Germans, communications severed, and the coastal batteries low on ammunition after the intense battle. On 11 September, General Perni, on De Vecchi's instructions, ordered the disbandment of the XIX Tank Battalion and the sabotage of its remaining vehicles; over the course of the day, the military commands virtually ceased to exist, while more and more soldiers, left without precise orders, abandoned their positions and joined the stream of stragglers passing through the city. On the morning of 12 September, some German minesweepers appeared in front of the port and opened fire on the city, then sent an ultimatum ashore demanding the immediate capitulation of the Italian forces; Captain Capuano, the only high-ranking officer still in his post, soon realised that any resistance was useless having released the last sailors, he handed over the remaining weapons to the city's anti-fascist committee and left Piombino that morning by train after handing over the offices of the Navy Command to the Germans. A German unit then completed the occupation of Piombino on 13 September; the workers and civilians who had exposed themselves most in the fight against the Germans fled the city and took refuge in the surrounding woods; in the following weeks, some of them gave life to the first partisan formations in Tuscany. Also with reference to the events of the battle of September 1943, on 18 July 2000 the city of Piombino was awarded the Gold Medal for Military Valour.

See also

  • Battle of Rome (1944)
  • Raid on Premuda

Reference

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