I was the last Gunnery Officer on the destroyer USS Edison (DD-439) to fire a salvo in anger in World War II. This occurred at the invasion of Southern France beginning August 15, 1944. Edison's gunfire support missions there centered on the Gulf of Cannes, eastward to the Italian seacoast on the Tyrrhenian Sea. Edison was assigned D-day gunfire support missions to aid amphibious landings beginning at Casablanca (Fedala) on November 8, 1942, then Sicily (Licata beach) in July 1943, Salerno (Paestum beaches) in September 1943, Anzio ('a long siege') in December 1943-January 1944, and Southern France. Home-ported at Oran, Algeria, after the British took that port, and supported there by the repair ship USS Vulcan (AR-5), Edison assisted U.S. destroyers Trippe and Woolsey in sinking submarine U-73. This book is not just an Edison story. Included are Allied aircraft, the Luftwaffe and its standoff guided bombs and glider bombs, U.S.Army amphibious divisions, U.S. and Allied warships, U.S. AKAs, APAs, oilers (AOs), and the complete arsenal of amphibious craft that landed and supported our troops on the beaches. This concentration of U.S. and Allied war-craft and amphibious divisions and Rangers made huge sacrifices to take the Mediterranean Sea and the countries it bordered back from Axis control. The massive human and logistic operations also re-opened the sealanes through the Suez Canal to India, saving the Allies thousands of miles of sea transport and wolfpack exposure for its merchant ship supply train to India, and on to the war against Japan. Edison received six battle stars, one for ASW support of convoys in the North Atlantic and one each for the five invasions noted. The Fourth Edition (June 2009) ISBN 0966625153 contains a 47-page Index compiled by Dutch scholar Pieter Graf from his reading of the Third Edition, which Graf felt deserved indexing by a professional..
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