USS Savannah Hit By Radio-Controlled Bomb, 1943

By Elijah Palmer

Hampton Roads Naval Museum Educator



The picture above shows the aftermath of an aerial attack on the Norfolk-based USS Savannah (CL-42) off of Salerno, Italy, and an unknown PT-Boat attempting to lay smoke as cover in 1943. On the morning of September 11, 1943, anti-aircraft fire and fighter planes targeted a slow-moving German plane above the US fleet off of Salerno, Italy, but could not stop an object that the plane had fired. Soon, an explosion ripped through the light cruiser USS Savannah, causing serious damage and loss of life. The ship had been hit by an advanced German weapon that the fleet was ill-prepared to meet.

The Norfolk-based Savannah was a series of pre-World War II light cruisers that were used during the war as shore bombardment vessels. 

Commissioned in 1938, Savannah stopped in Norfolk a handful of times before World War II. In late 1942, she was included in the Northern Attack Group (part of Western Naval Task Force), when it sailed from Norfolk in October 1942. As part of Operation Torch, Savannah saw combat action off Morocco in support of the amphibious landings there. By January she had been assigned to help patrol the South Atlantic. Once there, the ship was teamed with the USS Santee (CVE-29) and several destroyers. Returning to the United States after a few months, Savannah sailed out from Norfolk in May 1943, heading for the Mediterranean Sea. Throughout the summer, she supported operations in Sicily and southern Italy, proving very effective in naval gunfire support against German shore targets. On occasion, the ship’s crew also provided medical care for wounded soldiers.

On September 11, disaster struck. The Germans launched a high-tech weapon against the ships offshore. This weapon was the “Fritz X” radio-guided bomb. The Germans used this anti-ship bomb largely in the Mediterranean. The attack on Savannah came shortly after a bomb narrowly missed her sister ship, USS Philadelphia (CL-43). It also came three days after several Fritz X bombs sank the Italian battleship Roma, killing over 1,250 men. The Allies quickly began work on countermeasures for these bombs beginning in August 1943, but effective means were not completed until early 1944, so the fleet at Salerno was vulnerable. 

The Fritz X was an air-dropped, radio-guided missile used by the German air force as an anti-ship weapon. With a 705-lb armor-piercing warhead, it was a weapon to be feared. 

The bomb that hit Savannah went through the top of the No. 3 turret and continued down three decks before exploding in the lower ammunition handling room. The explosion ripped a hole in the keel and part of the port side. The crew fought fires and sealed up the damage, getting the ship underway by the afternoon. After temporary repairs in Malta, the ship sailed for the Philadelphia Naval Yard for eight months of serious repair work. The bravery of these men saved the ship, but the cost of the attack was high. 197 men died, and over a dozen were seriously wounded.

After being repaired, USS Savannah returned to Norfolk and in early 1945 had the honor of sailing as part of the escort for USS Quincy (CA-71), which was carrying President Franklin Roosevelt to the Mediterranean on his way to the famous Yalta conference with Josef Stalin and Winston Churchill. Savannah served as part of the President’s convoy on his return to the United States.

1876-The Fleet Mobilizes at Norfolk Navy Yard

This is a Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper engraving from February 1876, showing the North Atlantic Squadron deploying from the Norfolk Navy Yard for Winter exercises in Port Royal, South Carolina. Ships in the engraving include the historic steam sloop USS Hartford, the rebuilt steam sloop-of-war USS Marion, and the new iron-hulled steam gunboat USS Huron. There are two monitor-type warships and they are believed to be USS Passaic and Lehigh. In the written portion of the paper, the editors were more interested in the historic ships that the Navy laid up at the Yard, then the active ships. This included the sail frigates Savannah, St. Lawrence, and Macedonian. The colorized engraving is currently on display in the museum's 1907 exhibit.

The year Frank Leslie's produced this image was the lowest of low points in the history of the Navy. Even with the embarrassment of not being able to mobilize a squadron to respond to the Virginius incident in Cuba, Congress advised the Navy to cut its personnel by ten percent and continued to cut funding in new ship construction and technologies. It was also the year that Navy inspectors found several irregularities with the Navy Yard's contracts and the way it conduct business with the private sector.

Nonetheless, the Navy still had a job to do and Hampton Roads and Norfolk Naval Yard were the center of most of the Navy's activities in the Atlantic Ocean. Until the construction of NOB Hampton Roads, the Navy Yards served as ad hoc naval stations and all ships of the North Atlantic Squadron spent at least two months in the region, before heading out to a foreign station. The squadron of ships depicted in this image provide proof of this. En route to Port Royal, the Navy ordered most of the ships to skip Port Royal and steam to trouble spots in Haiti and Mexico.

Alfred Waud's Hampton Roads Civil War Sketches, Part 1

One of the most accomplished battlefield artist of the American Civil War was Alfred Waud. Working under a contract to provide rough sketches for Harper's Weekly, (that were later turned into the paper's famous woodcut engravings), Waud was present for almost every major ground action in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. The Library of Congress is the caretaker of a large portion of Waud's drawings and has digitized several hundred sketches. 

Waud visited Hampton Roads in late 1861 to cover the Hatteras Expedition.  Here are a few examples of what he saw:

Gunboat USS Whitehall

Various ships anchored next to Fort Monroe

Steam frigate USS Minnesota, Fort Monroe, and the Rip Raps

Sloop-of-war USS Cumberland

USS Cumberland, USS Savannah, and shore batteries exchanging shots with CSS Yorktown