Prof. Greg Jackson
speaker
7,804 appearances
19 recordings
1 series
first heard Feb 2026
last heard yesterday
Prof. Greg Jackson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 19 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 5.
Appearances
The Yanks are heading to Salerno, a coastal town just 30 miles southeast of Naples.
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Now, Naples is the real goal.
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Its massive port is just what the Allies need to punch into the heart of Italy.
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The problem, however, is that it's just out of reach of the Spitfires currently calling Sicily home, and invading Allied ground troops will need those single-engine monoplane fires air support to make any amphibious landing successful.
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Otherwise, well, just cast your mind back to this episode's opening with Eugene Weandine Carson.
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Yeah, we saw all too well how terrifying it is to attack without fighter plane escorts these days.
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So, sitting just south enough of Naples to be at the northern edge of these Spitfire's range for an attack window of 20 minutes or so before having to turn around, Salerno is the obvious choice for Operation Avalanche.
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Of course, that's also the problem.
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It's so obvious.
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The Wehrmacht sees it too.
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Even before Eich took to the radio and made Italy's quote-unquote treachery known, the Germans had sent the 16th Panzer Division into the Salerno Plain and prepared defenses along the coast, including machine guns and their deadly 88mm artillery pieces.
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So there will be no element of surprise here.
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at least not for the Germans, but the allied troops, specifically the British 10th Corps and the US 6th Corps, both commanded by US General Mark Clark as part of his Fifth Army, might be in for a surprise.
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Shipping out as Ike announces Italy signing the armistice on the evening of September 8th, the infantrymen aren't grasping that just because Italians are no longer fighting doesn't mean that the Germans are no longer fighting.
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To quote maritime historian Samuel Elliot Morrison's summation of the average Allied soldier's thinking, we were landing in Italy, and the Italians had quit, hadn't they?
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Senior officers on the ships transporting these soldiers across the Mediterranean take to the loudspeakers to set them straight, to shout at them, literally, that they'll meet stiff resistance from German troops.
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Even still, the message doesn't sink in, but the bullets will.
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It's 3.30 in the still dark morning, September 9th, 1943, a mere nine hours since General Dwight D. Eisenhower announced an armistice with Italy.
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And about one-third of the way up Italy's west coast, several landing craft are cutting through the freshly mine-swept waters of the Gulf of Salerno.
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Those toward the Gulf's northern edge are filled with British boys who will move on the town of Salerno itself.
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Showing 121–140 of 7,804 · page 7 of 391
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