Us Official Photographs

Supplies for Italian partisans in Italy

At a depot near an Allied headquarters in Italy, supplies for the Italian Partisans are piled high, ready for loading on Douglas C-47 transports. Packages contain explosives, guns, food, clothing, medical essentials and many types of special equipment. Partisans, fighting behind German lines in Italy, Southern France, Yugoslavia and Greece, have been important factors in Allied victories in the Mediterranean theater. Sometimes--as in Italy--they fight and harass the enemy in small bands, attacking his communication and supply lines, ambushing his patrols. Sometimes--as in Yugoslavia under the leadership of Tito--they fight in well-organized armies along more or less definite fronts. In the beginning, for lack of supplies and weapons, they were often helpless. They were cut off from Allied aid by land and sea. Only hope to help them become significant fighting forces was to supply them by air. High ground and air officers made plans, revolving around the C-47 transports of the 12th Air Force and Dakotas of the RAF. Soon supplies were getting to them regularly, flown in by crews which performed miracles of navigation to find the Partisans hideouts in the mountain wildernesses, by night and by day, in fair weather and foul. The 6th Troop Carrier Group of the 12th Air Force has been one of the principal supply mediums of the Partisans of Northern Italy. Its airmen risk flak and fighters in their cumbersome, unarmed transports and overcome nightmarish flying conditions to keep their rendezvous far behind enemy lines with the Partisans. The following pictures--taken by Sergeant Phillip F. Moses of Los Angeles, member of the 9th Combat Camera Unit--tell the story of a typical daylight supply mission.