Some weeks ago I had the opportunity to visit the Anzio Beachhead museum. Opened in January 1994, in the 50th Anniversary of the Allied landings, the Anzio Beachhead Museum is hosted at the ground floor of Villa Adele, a 17th Century mansion house located at Anzio, 57 kilometers to the SW of Rome. The Museum, made by voluntary and no-profit members is diveded into four sectors (American, British, German and Italian), contains exhibits with authentic uniforms, patches, badges, documents, pictures, articles, etc all generously donated by other Museums and by Veterans’ Associations and, of course, veterans and their families. Many exhibits come from sea in front Anzio where remains of aircraft, war and merchant ships, landing craft are still lying at various depths: many of these wrecks still have the crew on board, like the H.M.S Spartan, H.M.S. Janus and the Hospital ship St. David.
But what about the battle?
The Allied amphibious landing in the coastline area between Anzio and Nettuno, Italy, dubbed “Operation Shingle” was intended to outflank German forces and enable an attack on Rome. Towards the end of 1943, Allied forces that had invaded Italy were blocked at the Gustav Line, the main line of fortification which ran across Italy from north of the Garigliano River outlet in the Tyrrhenian Sea to the mouth of the Sangro River on the Adriatic coast in the east. The Germans, headed by Field Marshal Albert Kesselring had found the terrain of central Italy ideal to provide a natural defense of the most important strategic target: Rome. In order to break the defensive line, many proposals were made, the most important of which was Winston Churchill’s “Operation Shingle”. The idea behind the amphibious operation was that a major attack from the south by the Fifth Army commanded by Lieutenant-General Mark W. Clark would push the Germany’s forces away from the area around Rome and from the hills between Rome and the coast a condition that would create the perfect scenario for a surprise landing in the Anzio and Nettuno area. The beachhead would prelude to a quick advance to cut the German communication lines and to capture of Rome. The Southern attack
was performed by the Fifth Army’s on the Gustav Line on Jan. 16, 1944, at Monte Cassino. As a result of the attack, Gen. Heinrich von Vietinghoff, commanding the Gustav Line, asked for reinforcements, and Kesselring transferred the 29th and 90th Panzergrenadier Divisions from Rome. The door was open.
Fifth Army’s U.S. VI Corps under the command of Maj. Gen. John P. Lucas could land on the beaches of Nettuno and Anzio to secure a beachhead in the vicinity of Anzio to advance and secure Colli Laziali in the outskirts of Rome and to prepare the advance on Rome. Allied forces involved in the attack consisted of 5 cruisers, 24 destroyers, 238 landing craft, 62+ other ships, 40,000 soldiers, and 5,000+ vehicles. The landing took place on Jan. 22, 1944. Initially the Allied Forces did not find any opposition and were able to penetrate a few kilometers inland. Even if Lucas’s superiors expected an aggressive offensive action from him and a quick run towards Rome, he stregthened the defenses around the beachhead and did not advance. This represents a most controversial decision in the history of Operation Shingle since, according to many 
historians, Lucas (that was later replaced) exposed his forces to risks without imposing any on the enemy. In fact, the Axis forces’ reaction was quite rapid: even if Kesselering did not expect the landing to take place in that way, he had prepared a series of contingency plans; in a few days Anzio area was surrounded by three divisions that outnumbered the two Allied ones. The most detailed analysis of the Anzio beachhead and subsequent offensive actions and counterattacks I found was in an Osprey Publishing book: Anzio 1944. Osprey is an independent England-based book publisher specializing in military history, that runs several military and aviation series. Every book contains everything I and many other military experts or enthusiasts look for: data, diagrams, maps and pictures. The “Anzio 1944” (Paperback; August 2005; 96 pages; ISBN: 9781841769134) analyzes the questionable decisions by the Allied leadership that led to three months of World War I-style trench warfare, and provides the chronology of the operations, a description of the opposing plans, forces and commander, the in-depth description of the whole campaing and a “picture” of how the battlefield appears today. 
I suggest you reading this book to fully understand how the the beachhead survived three violent attacks in February 1944, the largest German counter-attacks in the west until the Ardennes offensive ten months later. By March, Anzio had degenerated into an agonizing stalemate. Operation Diadem (which was later to be called the fourth Battle of Cassino), intended to trap the bulk of the German Tenth Army between the Allied forces advancing through the Gustav Line and VI Corps thrusting inland from Anzio, had the aim to fully engage Kesselring’s armies with a major offensive preventing Germans withdrawing forces from Italy to redeploy elsewhere. However because of another controversial decision made by Gen. Clark Operation Diadem (that cost U.S. 5th and British 8th Armies 44.000 casualties) failed in its objective of destroying the German 10th Army and enabled the Allied to enter Rome on Jun. 4, 1944. As Steven J. Zaloga, author of the Osprey’s “Anzio 1944” commented: “Ironically, an operation that had been launched to redeem the Gustav line operation in the end depended on a successful conclusion of the Cassino breakthrough before the bridgehead could be exploited. To further add to the controversy of the operation, Gen Mark Clark decided to focus the advance out of Anzio in the direction of Rome rather than eastward to trap the German forces retreating from the Cassino sector. Rome fell to the Allies on 4 June 1944, but it was a bitter victory that was quickly forgotten when the main Allied campaign opened in Normandy two days later”.
The following pictures show the Anzio Beachhead Museum exhibits. As you can see, there are also some aircraft parts and a propeller belonging to an SM79 downed near Anzio.
It provides a detailed history of the MiG-21 in Egyptian, Syrian and Iraqi service including many pictures, most of which have never been seen before, outside the Arab world. The book sheds a light on the Arab-Israeli conflicts that in the past have been recolled mainly from the Israeli’s perspective. It doesn’t present a different story and doesn’t suggest that the Arab forces were better than Israeli ones, but contains many research material, much more than I could expect, coming from official sources and from private collections and recollections of those who flew (or fought against) Migs in combat and recounts a story of (courage and) competence that was underestimated in the West. The book covers the Arab operations from 1959 to the Gulf War. Interestingly, the analysis of the Yom Kippur war, not only describes the facts, but provides details of the actions and in most cases even the tactics and the names of the pilots involved in the operations against Israel. According to the authors (David Nicolle and Tom Cooper), by late 1973, the SyAAF had 10 Mig-21 squadrons equipped with more than 100 operational aircraft, 60 to 70% of which were combat ready. The number of MF examples was sensibly lower than that of older Mig-21F-13s and PFs that were kept into active service. The Ramadan War (as the 1973 conflict is also known as), for the SyAAF Mig-21 units started with escorts missions the Fishbed flew in support of the Su-20s, Su-7s and Mig-17s sent to attack Israeli radar sites located on the Golan Heights. As the Israeli fighters were not airborne, the first missions were rather simple. Noteworthy, the Mig-21s, escorted also a formation of Syrian Mi-8 helicopters that were used to deploy commandos to capture the Mount Hermon observation post, even if the main role of the Fishbeds was interception and CAP (Combat Air Patrol).
e’s no way to identify it since no serial is readable), a SUU-30B/B dispencer, an underwing tank used by both F-4s and F-15s (since it is in almost perfect conditions it was possibly jettisoned by an F-4 during a low level attack) and the wreckage of a unknown aircraft (most probably a Mystére IV or a Vautour II), whose pictures, again, 
can be seen 
as the area of Gaza, and then the controller once again changed our direction. He frantically ordered us north to Mount Hermon. On our way it was explained to us that (Syrian) forces were approaching the (Israeli) strongpoint which was ours but it had possibly been abandoned by its crew. Our guys were inside the bunker and our target was to attack enemy forces. Everything out there was the enemy except for the tank. We mainly attacked targets to the north of the strongpoint, whule there was a fair mess because the Syrians were firing quite a lot of mortars. There was also a SAM threat…..My four ship formation returned safely and I think that we did some damage but we did not save the strongpoint.
