USS Philadelphia - CL-41
Salerno - August 1943

Operation Avalanche (Salerno - the first full scale attack on the mainland): As Philadelphia’s Chaplain Fr. D.B Burke wrote, “we had to do one job – keep the Army from being shoved back into the sea. So we whipped up and down on the beach, blasting tanks, destroying concentrations of artillery and refusing to let attacking planes drive us out of range.” Philadelphia narrowly evaded a glide bomb 11 September, although several of her crew was injured when the bomb exploded.

With our troops desperate for artillery support and our overworked flotilla of sweepers unable to clear the dense thicket of mines, ADM Davidson announced “Philadelphia is coming through.” As Franklyn Dailey, a young Ensign on the Destroyer Edison, would later report, “Edison put her bow right up behind Philly's stern…(and used) the biggest minesweeeper in the Mediterranean, an American light cruiser, as Edison's own personal minesweeper.”