Start date January 12, 1944 | ||
Operation Pomegranate was a six-man raid in support of Operation Shingle by the Special Air Service designed to be conducted against German aircraft based on the Italian airfield of Sant'Egidio, near Perugia, on the night of 12 January 1944. The commandos, aboard a C-47 of the USAAF, made their parachute jump on the slopes of Monte Tezio to the east of Lake Trasimeno, after which the plane on which they had been travelling crashed into the mountainside killing the entire crew.
Although all six parachutists landed safely four went missing in unknown circumstances - L/Cpl J. Malloy, and Privates T. Cox, A. Todd and S. McCormick - leaving Major Tony Widdrington and Lieutenant Jimmy Quentin Hughes to go ahead and reach the target, planting bombs on seven airplanes and destroying three. One of the remaining bombs detonated while being made safe, killing Widdrington and temporarily blinding Hughes in one eye. Hughes, upon being taken to the German military hospital in Perugia, was destined to be shot as a commando, but he enlisted the help of a German doctor with whom he had struck up a friendship and managed to acquire the status of Prisoner of War, after which he was transferred to another military hospital in Florence. After escaping with two others from a POW train bound for Germany, he made his way south and rejoined allied lines.