Disaster at Bari - December 1943

The date is December 2, 1943, and the local time is 7:25pm. On the southeastern coast of Italy, the city of Bari is a beehive of activity. Bari is a city of 200,000 people. It is a major supply seaport with thousands of tons of munitions, food and equipment being unloaded around the clock. Tonight is no exception, 30 Allied ships are crowded into the harbour waiting to be unloaded. Most of the ships are Liberty ships, including the SS John Harvey. The skipper, Capt. Erwin F. Knowles, has been waiting five days for his ship to be unloaded!

Confident that the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) had been swept from the skies, Air Vice Marshal Sir Arthur Conningham boasted that the Germans would never dare launch an attack on the port of Bari! That is why the docks were ablaze with lights, and the unloading went on all night long. Never the less, at precisely 7:30 pm, a large formation of 105 German Ju-88 bombers swept down out of the clouds! With the harbour lit up like a Christmas tree, The allied ships were "sitting ducks."

	Allied shipping burning at Bari, 3 December 1941

Seventeen ships were sunk and eight badly damaged. Without warning, the John Harvey suddenly disappeared in a huge explosion! Pieces of the ship and cargo were hurled hundreds of feet into the air. Everyone on board was killed instantly and the terrific force of the blast also destroyed part of the city. As ship after ship exploded or caught fire, hundreds of men were struggling in the oil-covered water in a desperate attempt to escape. On the British ship Fort Athabaska, 44 men out of her crew of 56 were killed.

As the wounded came into the military hospitals, many of the wounded began to complain that they were having trouble breathing, they were hacking and coughing very hard. Their eyes were swollen and skin lesions began to appear. Their condition worsened in spite of conventional treatment, and many began to die.

The doctors and nurses were puzzled; they were faced with a mysterious unknown ailment that they could not cure. The one man who did know the deadly secret was Capt. Elwin F. Knowles, the skipper of the Liberty ship John Harvey (and no trace of him has ever been found.)

No one else on the ship knew about the secret cargo, 2,000 M47A1 mustard gas bombs! The poison mustard chemical is a blister gas that irritates the respiratory system, producing burns and raw ulcers on the skin and in the body. Victims exposed to very much of this gas suffer an agonizing death. There were 628 mustard gas deaths among Allied military and merchant marine personnel.

Bari and the Kiwi Experiences

It was fortunate for the NZ Division that their use of the port of Bari was almost complete at the time of this big raid. The bulk of the Division’s transport had been shipped from Egypt to Bari and then motored down to the Divisional assembly point at Lucera, some 30 miles from Bari.

The biggest Kiwi presence in the Bari area in December 1943, was No.3 General Hospital which was alongside the 98th British General Hospital, situated a convenient distance from the docks area and railway station.

In the official war history of the NZ Medical Corps, Staff Sergeant A.J. Taylor recorded his impressions of the raid and the explosion of the USS John Harvey:

Without warning a vast fountain of flame, with multi-coloured jets streaming from the top arises in the air about a mile away. Those who pause to gape at the scene are, a few seconds later, flung flat by the might blast that follows the terrific explosion which the flame implied.

But the raid goes on. Leaping flames and billowing clouds of smoke …. By now some of the casualties from the raid are beginning to reach the hospital. Many of these are covered in oil and suffering from one or all of the effects of blast, immersion, and burns. There are Americans, Poles, Indians, Norwegians, and Italians. Far into the night the staff works to treat them and put them to bed.

A little closer to the scene was Ron Tanner of 27 Machine Gun Battalion. Wounded in the right hand, he had been trained to Bari along with other allied and German wounded. The hospital train was stationary approximately one kilometre from the harbour and was to remain their overnight before the wounded were processed into the hospital. Ron recalls what happened:

The night became day, ships were visible and everything around us. Then a mighty flash erupted and filled the night with a brilliance likened to the size of a huge multi storey building. I had a bent for measuring sound and counted just four seconds. A tremendous shock wave struck the hospital train. The window I had my nose against was sucked out. Every window in the entire train had disappeared. We had just witnessed an implosion.

On arrival at the hospital we were met with an unbelievable sight. Like the train, all window sashes had been sucked out and shattered glass lay everywhere outside. Imagine if they had been blown inwards onto the beds of unsuspecting inert patients with no escape.

Very soon the aisles between each row of beds were filled with charred blistered bodies, some writhing in pain, others in a lifeless desperate physical condition. Many did not respond to treatment. The medical team was mystified till they discovered a shocking fact. Many of these poor creatures were suffering from mustard gas burns.

Camped some five miles from Bari was Driver Hugh Harrison of the 1st NZ Ammunition Company. He recently recalled that night:

I can remember we were standing outside around a brazier trying to keep warm when the sky was light up from the explosions. The sky was a strange orange yellow for some time. Our immediate concern was to get the brazier extinguished as we believed it could become a beacon for the attacking Jerry bombers!

A few days later he had to visit the dockside area of Bari and was fascinated by the sight of the remains of many of the roller doors used on the fronts of the shops. They had been “sucked” out in the air vacuum formed by the explosion of the USS John Harvey and were twisted like crumpled tinfoil.

Hugh also recalled that the holding of mustard gas shells in the allied arsenal was an accepted fact. He and fellow members of the Ammunition Company transported truckloads of the “yellow” painted shells to stockpiles at the rear of the allied forces as they advanced through Italy.

The Bari disaster caused political problems for the allies. The presence of Mustard Gas shells in the allied arsenal was to be kept secret, as it was feared the Germans might respond in a similar vein. Additionally, the high loss of shipping and lives was an embarrassment to the allied war efforts in Italy at a time when the allied leaders were discussing final plans for “The Second Front” (the invasion of Europe). Because the port of Bari was under British jurisdiction, Prime Minister Winston Churchill had all medical records changed. The deaths by mustard gas read death by burns due to enemy action. The actual facts about the USS John Harvey’s cargo were not publicly released until 1948.