From YouTube:
In the afternoon, 105 German JU 88 bombers take off with the aim of bombing the port of Bari; at 19:30 they take the Allied defences completely by surprise. It is a massacre: by the end of the operation, 17 ships have been destroyed and the port of Bari has been made inoperable for many weeks.
But it is not over: hundreds of sailors and ordinary citizens fill the hospitals. They have not been burnt and they are not wounded, but they are beginning to have rashes, burning eyes and respiratory problems. Many are even dying without explanation.
Why? What is going on? What military secret lay behind those strange deaths?
Eisenhower sent his own medical officer to shed light on the events: in the end he made a terrible discovery, an American merchant ship, the John Harvey, was transporting a top secret cargo, mustard gas, a highly toxic gas banned by the 1925 Geneva Protocol.
The ship had exploded in the port, dispersing its 550 tons of lethal gas in the air.
Related Article:
The Irony of the SS John Harvey – Deadly Mustard Gas and Lifesaving Chemotherapy
