This would be the landings at Salerno when the German 16th Panzer Division led a counterattack which nearly drove the Allies from the beaches. This account comes from a crewman of a US destroyer watching US navy cruisers and destroyer come into close range to provide :

The Germans were now making a terrific counterattack on our precarious landing area. Some of the Tiger (Mark VI) tanks were actually moving southward along the beach to the beachhead. We (the Edison) were faced with counter battery fire from these tanks and other Wehrmacht gun emplacements throughout the remainder of this engagement. The flat trajectoried 88 mm shell had a unique piercing sound as it passed between our Director and the #1 stack. We had been used to the fluttery sound of larger projectiles in arched trajectories. (Like our 5" 38s, most enemy artillery projectiles were subsonic. The 88, I later learned, had a 4,000 feet per second muzzle velocity, and when you heard the sound, the projectile was long gone. At Salerno ranges, the 88 shell was in a very flat trajectory, where a "miss was as good as a mile", usually more. They had to hit you directly and hope you had enough metal to set off their fuze, which was essentially designed to be anti tank, armor piercing.)

We got right down to business with our newly adopted SFCP and went to work. From my own station in secondary AA on the after deck house, although we had a few air attacks the first afternoon, I was able to get quite a perspective on our participation in the engagement. The Skipper and the Gun Boss teamed up in a driving and dynamic display of destroyer gun power. The Exec. and Navigator teamed up in a most difficult job of high-speed navigation in restricted waters, while opening up fire lanes for the 5" guns. Some unseen bond between these two teams kept matters from getting completely out of hand. The Captain wanted to present an unpredictable target to enemy fire while maintaining our guns on firing bearings for long periods of time. I am sure the Exec. and Navigator did not actually have time to think about Rocks and Shoals (the vernacular name for Navy Regulations), as they kept us from straying back into the mine field to seaward or running aground on Salerno's shores. The engineers supplied flank emergency ahead and back in total disregard of acceleration curves.

(Since we were firing almost all of the time , and the water was full of spent cartridge cases-"brass"- it needs to be added that the firing cut-out cams would take Guns #1 and #2 out of action, or Guns #3 and #4, depending on how fast we could turn in that mine safety zone and get going the other way.) All the "systems" worked perfectly. Guns and engines and boilers are stress-tested to some per cent over normal, and the Edison worked that extra percent all the time in the no man's land of Salerno. Yes, we had to be rebricked and regunned after Salerno, but the systems never failed under those punishing conditions.

On some of the early targets, we had to fire rapid continuous (about 20 rounds per gun per minute) fire for one, two and in one grueling demonstration, for six minutes at a time. Although our "doctrine" told us this could be uneconomical of projectiles (rapid "timed" fire was better) the "spot" from the NLO was "on" and the urgency in his voice conveyed to us a requirement for extreme performance. Later we went to continuous timed fire, more economical of projectiles and nearly as effective on a per unit time basis. The Army's Artillery General Officer ashore who was fighting this phase of his battle with our artillery, sent repeated messages of encouragement. Finally, in the waning hours of daylight, as we left the firing scene, he sent one of the most magnificent messages of appreciation to Rear Admiral Lyal Davidson that I have ever seen recorded. "Thank God for the fire of the blue-belly Navy ships. Probably could not have stuck out Blue and Yellow beaches. Brave fellows these; tell them so. General Lange." Later and without waste of language, he told vividly of tanks piled up in rubble and how attack after attack of the German forces had been blunted, and finally turned back, and the beachhead made secure. Again, by mail we received from this expressive and appreciative source, photographs showing the terrific damage inflicted on twelve German tanks. They were piled up like scrap iron. Many of us were truly amazed at the localization of effective blast damage from concentrated 5" 38 HC fire.

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