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German Panzers Were 1,000 Yards From the U.S. Beach - Then Naval Guns Opened Fire

WW2 Phil

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July 1943, Sicily. German tanks from the Hermann Göring Division were closing in on the American beachhead at Gela, pushing exhausted U.S. troops toward the Mediterranean with almost no heavy artillery available on shore. With the Panzers barely 1,000 yards from the beach, massive explosions suddenly tore into the armored columns. The Germans searched for American artillery but found nothing. The devastating fire was coming from U.S. Navy warships miles offshore, including USS Savannah, guided by forward observers on land. This is the story of how naval gunfire helped stop one of the most dangerous German counterattacks of Operation Husky and turned the sea behind the Americans from a trap into their most powerful weapon.

Sources:
https://www.history.navy.mil/research...
https://www.history.navy.mil/research...
https://www.history.navy.mil/about-us...
https://history.army.mil/Research/Ref...

#WW2 #WorldWar2 #OperationHusky #Sicily1943 #USNavy #USArmy #MilitaryHistory #WWIIHistory #GermanTanks #USSsavannah #BattleOfGela #historydocumentary

15 Comments

@galesams4205 3 weeks ago

The navy 16" guns stoped the german 88's. My farther was in artillery in WW-2 , he served in the Phillipines island . When the 16" guns the ship would list to one side for such recoil.

@BasilBarking 3 weeks ago (edited)

When you look at the Battle Of Gela 1943, obviously a US designated landing ground, there were many vessels. The British provided many aircraft carriers and the Royal Navy landed the US Rangers.

It appears by far, and I could be wrong but research tends to show this, the American ships had relatively small calibre main guns but it was HMS Abercrombie with her 15 inch guns that might have caused the main damage on Gela Beach- no other ships came close in terms of calibre.

@JimmyJimanambo 12 days ago

God Truly blessed America,It really means when we say God bless America.🌈🇺🇸 These were the great heroes and the world was safe.And evil wiped out from Germany.I watching from Papua new guinea 🇵🇬

@qstrian 3 weeks ago

My father named me after Mark US Navy gun fire. He served as a US Marine on the South Pacific island of Guadalcanal. 😊

@bbb8182 2 weeks ago

4:56 I enjoyed the micro-tank on the landing craft. A tight fit for this soldier

@truehistory1940 8 days ago

The most fascinating part of Gela is that the Germans thought they had trapped a lightly armed American beachhead against the sea, when the sea was actually the source of the firepower that stopped them. A single forward observer with a radio connected the American infantry to USS Savannah's 6-inch guns miles offshore, turning an apparently defenseless beach into a battlefield the German tanks could not escape.

@roberthohlt469 3 weeks ago (edited)

AI indicator on this one too. Some of those ship turrets would have made me spit my drink out if I had been drinking while watching. Wow. 3 barrels normal and one barrel on each side of the turret? Lt Cruisers were sometimes known as machinegun cruisers to the Japanese but wow. I was looking for where the 6 inch belt was coming out of the turrets. Laughable.

@CatShot1983 3 weeks ago (edited)

Who was the idiot who selected the sandy beach without proper means of making beach more stable? Furthermore when the German tanks attacked, why didn't the Allied forces on shore just call for fire from the ships right away??? Duh, thank goodness there were shore parties of Naval personnel in contact with the off shore ships!

@PhilKrueger-v8d 2 weeks ago

Please due yourselves and everyone a favor and stop monkeying around with AI. OR, we might wish we never did.

@markdillon2075 2 weeks ago

This video is ridiculous, you have GI's in the beach, they are facing the water. This is incompetent use of AI to generate a video which the author clearly doesn't understand. READ A HISTORY BOOK!!