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THE BATTLE OF
ANCONA
69>
9
770306 154103
No. 169
£5.00
NUMBER 169
© Copyright
After the Battle
2015
Editor: Karel Margry
Editor-in-Chief: Winston G. Ramsey
Published by
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ANCONA
Ancona lies in the Marche region in central Italy, east of the Apennines, 280 kilo-
metres north-east of Rome and 150 kilometres south of the Po valley.
CONTENTS
THE BATTLE OF ANCONA
FRANCE
Lost in a Foreign Field
FROM THE EDITOR . . .
JAPAN
Japan’s Worst POW Camp
IT HAPPENED HERE
The Execution of Sergeant Siffleet
2
24
32
38
52
Front Cover:
A 6-pounder anti-tank gun and a
memorial to the Italian Parachute Division
‘Nembo’ at the town of Filottrano in the
Marche region of central Italy. Filottrano,
located 25 kilometres south-west of the
Adriatic port city of Ancona, was the scene of
a ferocious battle of the Nembo Division, part
of the Italian Liberation Corps, with German
troops in July 1944, the gun and memorial
being set up in front of the town hospital,
which was the main German strongpoint
during the battle. The taking of Filottrano
facilitated the subsequent capture of Ancona
by the II Polish Corps on July 18. (Giovanni
Santarelli)
Back Cover:
A Royal Australian Navy sailor
stands guard of honour at the portrait of
Leonard Siffleet during a special
Last Post
ceremony held in commemoration of his
service and sacrifice at the Australian War
Memorial at Canberra on September 3, 2014.
A sergeant in ‘M’ Special Unit of the
Australian Special Reconnaissance Depart-
ment, Siffleet was beheaded by the Japanese
in New Guinea on October 24, 1943. (AWM)
Photo Credit Abbreviations:
AKG — Archiv
für Kunst und Geschichte; AWM — Australian
War Memorial; DND — Canadian Department
of National Defense; IWM — Imperial War
Museum; USNA — US National Archives.
Ancona’s military importance lay in its good seaport and large railway yard. The
black areas on this map mark the houses and buildings destroyed by Allied bombing
during the war.
2
On July 18, 1944, after an advance of 140 kilometres in four
weeks and a final enveloping operation, forces of the Polish II
Corps captured the port city of Ancona on the Italian Adriatic
shore. The taking of Ancona was of great benefit for Allied
operations in Italy because possession of its harbour shortened
the landlines of the British Eighth Army by over 400 kilometres
and enabled it to pursue operations to break through the
German Gothic Line and gain access to the Po valley. For the
Poles, the capture of Ancona was their second great victory
after the capture of Monte Cassino the previous May. Here
scout cars, armoured cars and a Jeep of the 12th Podolksi
Lancers, the reconnaissance unit of the Polish 3rd Carpathian
Division, stop in Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, Ancona’s main
street, on July 19.
THE BATTLE OF ANCONA
Ancona, located on Italy’s eastern shore
280 kilometres north-east of Rome, is one of
the main ports on the Adriatic. The capital of
the Marche region, it is the main economic
and demographic centre of the region.
Founded by Greek settlers coming from
Sicily about 387 B.C., and an important har-
bour since Roman times, the city flourished
during the 16th century when, like Venice, it
became a very important destination for
merchants from the Ottoman Empire, with
Greeks forming the largest of the communi-
ties of foreign merchants.
The city also had a sizable Jewish commu-
nity. Jews first began to live in Ancona in 967
A.D. and, due to the city being a centre of
trade with the Levant, the community grew
steadily from 1300 onwards. Jews from Ger-
many, Spain, Sicily and Portugal, persecuted
in their homeland and attracted by the pro-
Jewish attitude existing at Ancona, emi-
grated to the city. Given full civic rights in
1848, by the 20th century the Jewish popula-
tion numbered some 1,200 souls.
ANCONA UNDER AERIAL ATTACK
At the beginning of the Second World
War, Ancona had a population of some
78,000. For the first three years of the con-
flict the city was little affected by the vio-
lence of war, but this changed in 1943 when
the city began to suffer increasingly under
the mounting Allied air offensive.
Ancona was no stranger to attacks from
the air. Already during the First World War,
Austro-Hungarian seaplanes had dropped
bombs over the port on April 1, 1916, caus-
ing three deaths and injuring 12. However,
this small raid was nothing compared to the
By Sergio Sparapani
destruction and loss of life the city would suf-
fer in the Second World War.
Corso Vittorio Emanuele II has since been renamed Corso Garibaldi. Now a pedes-
trian area, it is the city’s principal shopping street.
3
SERGIO SPARAPANI
SIKORSKI INSTITUTE 3015
FAZIO FAZIOLI ARCHIVE
Left:
Earlier during the war, and particularly since 1943, Ancona
had been the target of frequent and heavy bomber attacks by
the Allied air forces. The city was ill prepared against such
attacks, its defences comprising just a few anti-aircraft batter-
ies manned by militia gunners and a number of hastily-built air
raid shelters. One of the batteries was located on Ancona’s
Molo Nord (North Pier). In this picture the gun crews from the
Ancona in 1943 was not ready to face an
aerial offensive. The air observation system
was obsolete, anti-aircraft defences were
mostly antiquated and manned by crews
made up of old men from the 15a Legione
Milizia Artiglieria Contraerei, a unit of the
Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza
Nazionale (Voluntary Militia for National
Security — MVSN), the Fascist blackshirt
militia. There were four batteries, each
equipped with four multi-purpose 76/40 guns
in fixed positions: one at Monte Cardeto, one
at the harbour along the Graziani Pier, one
at Forte Altavilla and one at Forte Montag-
nolo near the railway station. In 1942, two
other batteries armed with modern 90/53
guns (as effective as the German 88mm)
were set up, plus some 20mm pieces.
Civil defence was in the hands of the
Unione Nazionale Protezione Antiaerea
(National Association for Anti-Aircraft Pro-
tection — UNPA), a civilian voluntary
organisation that operated beside the more-
expert firemen of Ancona’s 3rd Fire-Fighting
Corps, headed by Carlo Albertini. (After the
liberation of the city in July 1944, the Poles
would put him in charge of keeping public
order.) In June 1940, the month Italy
declared war on France and Great Britain,
the municipality ordered the construction of
25 air raid shelters and by 1943 almost 50 had
been built.
The official list did not include the tunnel
shelter at the Santa Palazia Prison on Via
Manfredo Fanti. Excavated by the prisoners
under the prison’s garden and near the cliffs,
the tunnel was L-shaped, three meters wide
and 90 metres long. Officially reserved for
use by the prison inmates only, and never
officially licensed as a civilian air raid shelter,
in reality it was also used by the inhabitants
of the Guasco, the older district of the town.
During air raids, a gate in the middle of the
gallery separated the civilians from the pris-
oners.
In September 1943, major political
changes occurred that also affected Ancona.
Following the surrender of Italy on Septem-
ber 8 (see
After the Battle
No. 152), German
forces occupied the city and disarmed the
Italian garrison. Not wanting to surrender
their weapons to the Germans, many crews
of the anti-aircraft guns sabotaged their
weapons. However, the Germans used a few
captured 90/53 guns to set up a battery at
Monte dei Corvi, near the Mount Conero, in
addition to installing a number of their own
2cm light Flak guns. There was a regime
change too. From September 23, the city fell
under the administration of the Italian Social
Republic, the Fascist puppet state (also
4
2° Battaglione Milizia Antiaerea line up for parade in July 1940.
Right:
The North Pier today. In addition to the port lighthouse,
the jetty is home to an underwater section of the Italian Navy.
Their mission is to recover vessels and rescue people in emer-
gencies and also to dispose of mines and ordnance from the
two world wars and from the more-recent conflict in former
Yugoslavia.
The North Pier battery was equipped with four 76/40 guns. Dating from the First
World War, they could be used against ground, naval and air targets. This picture
was taken on September 10, 1941.
Vestiges of the gun platforms still remain on the North Pier today.
SERGIO SPARAPANI
FAZIO FAZIOLI ARCHIVE
SERGIO SPARAPANI
In addition to the four anti-aircraft batteries, there was one
anti-shipping battery. Subordinate to the Regia Marina (Italian
Royal Navy), it was located on the Monte Cardeto rock, just
east of the port and immediately north of the old city. It was
known as the Cagni Battery or San Giuseppe Superiore Bat-
tery, and armed with five Armstrong Model 1911 152/45 (six-
inch) heavy guns, captured from the Austro-Hungarians after
known as the Republic of Salò) set up by
Nazi Germany with Benito Mussolini as its
figurehead.
At the same time, with the Allied armies
having crossed over to the Italian mainland
in early September, and the land war now
slowly moving up the Italian peninsula, the
Allied air attacks increased in number and
strength, especially after the Allies captured
airfields near Taranto and Brindisi and then
later the group of airfields around Foggia.
Ancona was a key target of the Allied
bombers because of its marshalling yards and
harbour, both of which were vital for the
Germans to supply their defensive front fur-
ther south. Most of the attacks were carried
out by American bombers from the Mediter-
ranean Air Command (renamed Mediter-
ranean Allied Air Forces on December 10,
1943), the aircraft employed being mostly B-
25 or B-26 medium bombers but also some-
times B-17 heavies. The method used was
daylight precision bombing, not indiscrimi-
nate night-time area bombing. However,
precision bombing proved unworkable and
many bombs fell very far from their targets,
hitting residential areas as well.
From May to October 1943, there were
162 air raid alarms in Ancona. However,
none of them developed into an actual attack
on the city. The population often saw hun-
dreds of Allied bombers passing over their
city without dropping bombs, apparently on
their way to other targets further north. As
time went on, and air attacks continued to
avoid the city, so people began to foster hope
that it would perhaps be spared the horrors
of aerial bombardment. They preferred to
believe that their city could not be a target
because of the anti-Fascist disposition of its
population and the presence of the ancient
Jewish community.
the First World War. This picture was taken on August 15,
1941. These photos of Ancona’s gun batteries, never published
before, come from the archive of Count Fazio Fazioli, the com-
mander of the 15a Legione Milizia Artiglieria Contraerei, the
city’s anti-aircraft command. Of noble family, he was a grand-
son of Michele Fazioli, the first Mayor of Ancona and a hero of
the Risorgimento (Unification of Italy).
Today the Cardeto is a public park featuring numerous historical remnants, including
Jewish tombs, Napoleonic forts and 20th-century fortifications.
In July 1944, just before the arrival of Allied troops, the Cagni Battery was sabotaged
by German or Fascist Italian troops. One of the guns ended up on the beach below
where it remained abandoned for decades, arousing the curiosity of passers-by. In
2013 the piece was recovered by the port authority and placed near the dock quay-
side and the Arch of Trajan (named after the Roman emperor who developed the port
of Ancona, improving the docks and the fortifications).
5
SERGIO SPARAPANI
SERGIO SPARAPANI
FAZIO FAZIOLI ARCHIVE

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