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Bursting from a hazy sky at 3.30pm on 21 March 1945, a swarm of Allied fighters swept north-west from the Adriatic over German-occupied Venice. With 60lb rockets streaking from under their wings and 0.5-inch machine-guns blazing, powerful North American Mustangs and burly Republic Thunderbolts from RAF, USAAF, and Commonwealth squadrons began strafing the 45 anti-aircraft and other gun emplacements protecting the legendary lagoon city and its principal port, Stazione Marittima.
As the fighters peeled away, 26-year-old Wing Commander George Westlake, the commander of the mission, rolled his Curtiss Kittyhawk into a 60° dive. Straightening out, Westlake now spearheaded a group of 48 dive-bombers – single-engine Kittyhawks and Mustangs – down through the smoke and vicious flak to 1,500 feet, where the first in a cascade of 500lb and 1,000lb bombs was unleashed on the port, on warehouses and armaments depots, and on the mercantile and military ships berthed there.
From balconies and rooftop loggias dangerously close to the docks, Venetians on the edge of the city, taken aback by the sudden and unexpected onslaught, caught sight and sound of this blistering show of intensely focused aerial force. What on earth was happening? Were there other aircraft about to attack? Whose aircraft were these? Where else in Venice might be next? Who had dared to press such a ferocious attack on the city of St Mark’s Square, of leaning Gothic campaniles, of churches by Andrea Palladio, secret gardens and mysterious canals, of Titian and Tintoretto, of Danieli’s and the Gritti Palace, of Harry’s Bar and the Lido beaches? A city described by its 19th-century English archangel, the critic John Ruskin, as ‘set like a golden clasp on the girdle of the earth’, her history written ‘on the white scrolls of the sea-surges’, this gathering of ‘the glory of the West and of the East’?
‘God’, said the French philosopher Simone Weil in Venise Sauvée (Venice Saved), the play she wrote before her death in 1943, ‘would not permit the destruction of such a beautiful thing; the most heinous enemy would not have the heart.’
Targeting La Serenissima
By common consent, Venice had been all but sacrosanct throughout the Italian campaign of World War II. By early 1945, however, with the end of the war in sight, the city had become what Allied commanders believed to be a ‘legitimate’ target. Despite promises to the contrary, Rome and Florence had been attacked from the air, while, infamously, the abbey of Monte Cassino, one of Europe’s great art-historical, religious, and literary treasures, had been reduced to rubble in early 1944 by waves of high-flying USAAF four-engine bombers. Villages, towns, and cities from the south of Italy, up through its mountain ranges, across the plains of the Po Valley and in the shelter of the Dolomites and the Alps had been sought out and ravaged by Allied bombers. These were collateral damage in the Allied push up through what Winston Churchill had called the ‘soft underbelly of Europe’, which proved to be no such thing.
By March 1945, when Operation Bowler had Venice in its sights, Allied armies were still by and large trapped behind Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring’s Gothic Line (see MHM 141, August/September 2024), a bristling wall of daunting coast-to-coast fortifications and gun emplacements built across the inhospitable reaches of the high Apennines. Attack on German positions and strongholds from the air had seemed to be the only option here: this late in the war in Europe, battle-hardened German divisions were still dug in across northern Italy. They were supplied, now that Allied air forces had cut off very nearly every last route into the region, with fuel, armaments, and ammunition from ships sailing, as if innocuously, in and out of Venice. At this point, how could the city not be a military target?
What proved to be fortunate is that Venice was attacked so late in the war. Aerial bombing had been a remarkably crude affair from 1939 onwards. A British war cabinet report published in August 1941 based on an analysis of 633 target photographs taken by RAF bombers raiding industrial complexes in the Ruhr found that just one in ten flew within five miles of their target. Half of all the bombs dropped fell into open countryside, and only 1% were within the vicinity of the target. This shocking state of affairs was in part resolved by the formation of Pathfinder squadrons, guiding bombers to their targets, and by improved bombsights. Bombing, though, remained for the most part a crude, sledgehammer affair throughout the war.
What made Operation Bowler so different and so successful was the employment of precision dive-bombing. All intended targets, sourced by aerial reconnaissance provided by high-flying Spitfires over several weeks, were hit. The port was put out of action. No historic buildings – so very close to the action – were damaged or destroyed. Very few, if any civilians were killed or wounded (while living in Venice, the author was unable to confirm if an apartment building had collapsed due to shockwaves from bomb blasts and if there had been casualties).
Every effort was made to ensure that while the docks were hit, the city itself was undamaged. Air Vice Marshal Robert ‘Pussy’ Foster was in charge of planning the raid. He named it ‘Operation Bowler’ – because after all, should any pilot hit La Serenissima itself, he would fully deserve to be packed off to civvy street, where he would wear a bowler hat rather than an airman’s cap.
Although made in jest, Foster’s point was serious. The Allies were meant to be fighting on the Italians’ side, and there had already been far more than enough damage to their homes, villages, towns, and cities. And far too many civilians killed. Nothing was clear-cut, of course, as Italy was also enduring a civil war at the time – one that pitted those still loyal to Benito Mussolini (the nominal head of the new Italian Social Republic, formed by Hitler after the Duce’s fall and rescue by the Germans in September 1943) and Nazi Germany against those loyal to King Victor Emmanuel III and the Allies.
A lucky charm
In 1945, ‘Pussy’ Foster was Air Officer Commanding Desert Air Force (DAF) – the force’s name had lived on from its formation in the North African campaign. Foster himself, a charming and popular officer, had flown numerous low-level sorties under intense enemy fire on the Western Front during World War I. From the cockpits of Sopwith Pups and Sopwith Camels, he shot down or shared in the ‘kill’ of 16 German aircraft. His DFC citation noted: ‘This officer has taken part in numerous combats and his patrols brilliantly.’
Foster chose Wing Commander George Westlake DFC to lead Operation Bowler. It was an inspired decision. Charismatic, cool under fire, and popular with airmen and ground crews alike, Westlake was a veteran of 300 missions – from his time with Hurricanes in the Battle of Britain to pinpoint-accurate dive-bombing with Curtiss Kittyhawks in North Africa and, to date, in Italy. Significantly, the young Westlake had flown before he joined the RAF for Fox Photos, piloting craft to ‘ground level’ for news photo opportunities, and to sea level, too. To date, he had not been shot down. He was like a lucky charm.
Westlake had taken command of DAF’s fighter and dive-bombing 239 Wing in Italy, based at ever-shifting airfields on the Adriatic coast south of Kesselring’s seemingly impregnable Gothic Line in September 1944. Comprising 112, 250, and 450 RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force) squadrons flying Kittyhawk dive-bombers, and 3 RAAF, 5 SAAF (South African Air Force), and 260 RAF squadrons fronting Mk III and Mk IV P-51 Mustang fighters, the Wing flew sortie after sortie on increasingly precise ground targets in an arc sweeping around north-eastern Italy, Yugoslavia, and the Adriatic. While they met with decreasing resistance from what remained of the Luftwaffe in Italy, Italian Aeronautica Nazionale Repubblicana (ANR) Messerschmitt Bf-109s and Focke-Wulf Fw-190s could still be a threat. Flak, however, was the real enemy.
The Wing fought alongside the USAAF’s 79th Fighter Group, with its three experienced shoot-everything-that-moves squadrons – 85th, 86th, and 87th – equipped with powerful and heavily armed P-47D Thunderbolts. The Mk VIII Spitfires of 244 Wing gave air- superiority cover from enemy aircraft to 239. The Wing was also supported by air-sea rescue aircraft – Supermarine Walruses and Consolidated Catalina seaplanes – on missions made over and along the Adriatic.
Air Vice Marshal Foster revealed the target to his crews. Bombs were to be dropped on areas marked precisely on pilots’ maps in order to ‘avoid damage to cultural monuments and civilian habitations’. As the combined target area measured 950 by 650 yards, about the size of eight football pitches, there would be no room whatsoever for error. The weather was predicted to be wet, cold, and windy, with a few clear spells.
Days before the mission, Foster had flown to Forli, in Emilia-Romagna, with Generals Władysław Anders (Polish II Corps), ‘Dick’ McCreery (C-in-C, Eighth Army), John Cannon (Air C-in-C, Allied Air Forces, Mediterranean), Sir Archibald Nye (Vice Chief Imperial General Staff), and Sir Bernard Freyberg (C-in-C, New Zealand Expeditionary Force), among other top brass. Together they witnessed 239 Wing and 79th Fighter Group put on a precision dive-bombing display by the very aircraft that would fly Operation Bowler.
When the smoke faded, the results proved impressive: complete destruction of the targets contained within a tight circle marked on the ground. This was late in the day in terms of the war’s progress, yet DAF’s 239 Wing Mustangs and Kittyhawks, and 79th Fighter Group’s P-47Ds, were now capable of reaching enemy targets pretty much anywhere in Italy, and beyond in Yugoslavia and Austria, and hitting them hard.
No one seemed to know how fast a Kittyhawk could dive.
It had been astonishing to all concerned, pilots included, when on 5 May 1944 239 Wing had been directed to attack the 371ft concrete, iron, and steel dam across the River Pescara, near to the Adriatic town of that name. Completed in 1931, the dam fed a hydroelectric power station with pylons extending to Rome. With accurate dive-bombing by 260 Squadron’s new Mustangs and 3 Squadron’s Kittyhawks, the sluice gate gave way and the power station was rendered useless. Water flooded through the valley, occupied by German troops, as the streets of Pescara were inundated under four feet of water.
This remarkable dam- busting operation showed it was possible to carry out such demanding assignments without heavy bombers. Here, as with the demonstration of precision bombing set up by Foster at Forli, was the promise of single-engine aircraft being able to attack key targets in and around towns and cities with the minimum loss of lives – and of historic monuments.
The Wing was perfectly aware of the effect of inaccurate low-level and wayward high-level bombing. Pescara itself, home to key railway marshalling yards, had been bombed heavily nine times by the USAAF between 31 August 1943 and 14 May 1944. The first raid made on the railway yards by 45 B-24 Liberator bombers on 31 August missed its target completely. Rather than on tracks and sidings, bombs fell on streets and squares, killing 1,900 civilians. By the ninth high-level, four-engine US bomber raid, thousands more people had been killed, including those aboard passenger trains trying to escape the city, and 80% of the city centre’s buildings had been destroyed. ‘No one likes mass slaughter,’ wrote Guy Gibson, commander of the famous Lancaster ‘Dambusters’ raid carried out in May 1943, ‘and we did not like being the authors of it.’
If only the Allies had been able to fly and fight like this from the beginning of the Italian campaign, rather than raining bombs down indiscriminately on villages, towns, cities, and Monte Cassino, from 15-20,000 feet, from which height eight football pitches would look little or no bigger than a postage stamp.
Operation Bowler
On 21 March 1945, the day of Operation Bowler itself, the 79th’s Thunderbolts took out the eight heavy and 20 light guns along Litorale di Lido at Malamocco, where, until remarkably recently, Venetians had come to sunbathe and swim. Eight Mustangs of 3 Squadron RAAF strafed and dive-bombed the anti-aircraft guns on Punta Sabbioni, guarding the main sea entrances to the Lagoon. Rebuilt by the Germans in 1944, the Gothic Line-style concrete fortifications here bristled with 100mm Italian flak guns.
A pair of 3 Squadron Mustangs silenced the four heavy guns on the island of Sant’Erasmo, known for its venerable Renaissance and Napoleonic fortifications, and before the war for its market gardens and much-prized artichokes. Mustangs of 260 Squadron made rocket attacks on the fortified islet of Trezze, close by Stazione Marittima. As they did, and with at least some of the flak suppressed, George Westlake led 250 Squadron into the dive on the dock itself, his Kittyhawk plummeting full throttle from 7,000 feet at an angle of 60° towards its target.
No one seemed to know just how fast a Kittyhawk could be in a dive. The recommended official maximum was 480mph, although much higher speeds had been attained on test. The Kittyhawk carried a single 1,000lb bomb. There was to be no ‘going around’ for a second attempt. It took a very cool nerve and a level head to fly into flak at such breakneck speed without flinching, the Kittyhawk fishtailing slightly, before releasing the bomb from 1,500 feet and pulling up hard and away, engine screaming, without blacking out.
Diving behind Westlake, Lieutenant Senior’s P-40 was hit by flak. Turning instinctively out to sea, Senior bailed out ten miles to the east of Chioggia. As Spitfires of 7 Squadron circled overhead, a twin-engine air-sea rescue Vickers Warwick, a Supermarine Walrus, and a Consolidated PBY Catalina flying boat were all quickly on the scene. A member of the Catalina’s crew dived into the water to help the pilot, now in difficulties in the intensely cold water. Helped aboard the Catalina, Senior was flown to safety while under fire from German-manned Venetian gun batteries.
After 250 came 450 Squadron RAAF, its pilots firing their 0.5-inch machine-guns all the way down, before releasing their bombs and twisting up through the flak. RAF (112) and SAAF (5) Mustang squadrons were quick to pursue the attack, as the Kittyhawks headed seawards.
And then, whoomph, a great sulphurous column of dust and debris rising from below. One or more of the dive-bombers had hit an unexpected store of sea mines. The massive explosion blew a crater into the dock, the shock waves so great that they caused the photoreconnaissance Spitfire, recording the raid at 22,000 feet, to bounce in the reverberant sky.
Executed in 20 thunderous minutes, Operation Bowler had involved the dropping of 93 1,000lb bombs, 31 260lb semi-armour-piercing bombs, the firing of 114 air-to-surface 60lb rockets, and the release of countless armour-piercing bullets from 0.50-calibre machine-guns. The 3,682-ton Otto Leonhardt was severely damaged and seen, by PR Spitfires, submerged two days later. Two German-crewed Italian torpedo boats (some sources say one), one small freighter, and two lighters were sunk, and dockside installations, rolling stock, and railway track were severely damaged. The sea-mine store was wholly destroyed and, along with it, a training school for submariners.
Venetians themselves were witnesses to the sound, fury, spectacle, efficacy, and accuracy of the raid. Those on rooftops, aware that this was an Allied attack, gawped and cheered. ‘Bravo!’, yelled 13-year-old Tudy Sammartini, the future art historian who first alerted me to the story of Operation Bowler, an astounding mission overlooked and even forgotten in the events that overtook Europe north of the Alps between D-Day and VE Day.
For the loss of a single aircraft – Lieutenant Senior’s Kittyhawk IV – and flak damage to two of the Mustangs, no casualties, and everyone safely home, George and his fellow pilots had put Stazione Marittima out of action, boosted Allied morale, and – by an immeasurable yet important distance – helped to foreshorten the war in Italy. As far as the pilots could tell, every bomb had fallen within the target area. As they raced back south along the Adriatic, it was good to know that no one would have to wear a bowler hat.
Jonathan Glancey is a journalist, author, and broadcaster, whose many books include Spitfire: the biography (2006) and Harrier (2014). He was Architecture and Design correspondent of The Guardian from 1997 to 2012, and Architecture and Design editor of The Independent from 1989 to 1997. This piece has been adapted by the author from his new book Operation Bowler: the audacious Allied bombing of Venice (Oneworld Publications, £25).
All images: Wikimedia Commons, unless otherwise stated
