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A railway bridge near the Italian town of Allerona was the site of one of the largest and most tragic friendly fire incidents of the entire WW2.
On 28 Jan 1944, a train pulling unmarked cattle cars containing 800 British, American and South African POWs had the misfortune of crossing a bridge north of Rome at the precise moment a squadron of American B-26s arrived to take out the strategic rail link. Most of the POWs had come from Camp P.G. 54, Fara in Sabina, 35 kilometres to the north of Rome, and had been evacuated in anticipation of the Allied advance.
Amid the chaos of the bombing raid, the driver and the German guards fled the train, leaving the prisoners locked in the cars. While some of the POWs managed to force their way out of confinement, hundreds were unable to escape and were killed when the bridge took a direct hit.
Captain William Cook, the intelligence officer of the 320th Bombardment Group wrote afterwards that "an excellent concentration of bombs bracketed the bridge" and a "train of 40/50 cars standing across the bridge received direct hits destroying 10 cars, derailing three and the remainder buckled up in an arch".
To this day, no one knows for certain how many died. Estimates range from 200 to 600.
On 28 Jan 1944, a train pulling unmarked cattle cars containing 800 British, American and South African POWs had the misfortune of crossing a bridge north of Rome at the precise moment a squadron of American B-26s arrived to take out the strategic rail link. Most of the POWs had come from Camp P.G. 54, Fara in Sabina, 35 kilometres to the north of Rome, and had been evacuated in anticipation of the Allied advance.
Amid the chaos of the bombing raid, the driver and the German guards fled the train, leaving the prisoners locked in the cars. While some of the POWs managed to force their way out of confinement, hundreds were unable to escape and were killed when the bridge took a direct hit.
Captain William Cook, the intelligence officer of the 320th Bombardment Group wrote afterwards that "an excellent concentration of bombs bracketed the bridge" and a "train of 40/50 cars standing across the bridge received direct hits destroying 10 cars, derailing three and the remainder buckled up in an arch".
To this day, no one knows for certain how many died. Estimates range from 200 to 600.