Some more info on the 209th CA, which is taken from the history of the 898th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion. The 898th was formed from the 2d Battalion of the 209th Coast Artillery Regiment (Anti-Aircraft) on 18 March 1944.
898th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion (Automatic Weapons) Combat History
The 209th was a National Guard unit from upstate New York, primarily from the Buffalo area, and was augmented by personnel from the 121st Cavalry Regiment, from around Rochester. The original strength of about 1,400 Guardsmen—present when the 209th was called into federal duty on 10 February 1941—eventually grew to over 4,000 by early 1944, and included officers, NCOs, and junior enlisted men of the Regular Army and the Army of the United States as well as the NY Guard.
The 209th was a distinguished unit in several ways. From its ranks came 840 enlisted men who were ultimately commissioned as officers—more than any other anti-aircraft regiment. After additional training at Camp Stewart, Georgia, the 209th, including the 2d Battalion that was to become the 898th, was the first US Army anti-aircraft regiment sent to the European Theater. The Regiment departed the New York Port of Embarkation aboard the Queen Mary on 10 May 1942 and arrived in the Firth of Clyde six days later. There, it transferred to a smaller vessel and was transported to Belfast, Northern Ireland three days later. During seven months in Ulster, the Regiment conducted both anti-aircraft training (in the vicinity of St. John’s Point, County Down) and actual anti-aircraft duty for the Lough Foyle US naval base and the Lough Erne seaplane base, as well as the city of Londonderry itself.
On 10 December 1942, the Regiment was transferred across the Irish Sea to Liverpool. Shortly thereafter, the 209th left by ship for North Africa, and arrived in Mers el Khebir, in Free French Algeria, on 3 January 1943.
From January through August, the various elements of the 209th performed anti-aircraft duties at locations across French North Africa, including Oran and Algiers in Algeria and Ouijda, French Morocco. For these activities, the Regiment was awarded campaign participation credit for the Tunisian campaign, which ended with the capitulation of the Germans’ Army Group Afrika in mid-May 1943.
After training with the 1st Armored Division in Algeria in September and October, the 209th sailed with the “Old Ironsides” Division to Italy, where it arrived in Naples on 28 October. By mid-November, as the Fifth Army attacked the German “Winter Line,” the Regiment was deployed for anti-aircraft duty in the vicinity of Vitulazio, about 21 miles north of Naples. There, the men of the 209th encountered their first major German air raid. On 20 November, crews of the 209th shot three Focke-Wulf 190s out of the Campanian sky to tally the Regiment’s first kills of the War.
After II Corps penetrated the Winter Line and reached the southern banks of the Rapido River—the edge of the next major belt of German fortifications, the “Gustav Line”—the 209th displaced forward to occupy anti-aircraft firing positions in the vicinity of Venafro. There, on 3 January 1944, the 209th claimed four more German aircraft, this time Messerschmidt Bf-109s.
As the Fifth Army’s II Corps and British X Corps battled to breach the Gustav Line, US VI Corps landed at Anzio in late January in an attempt to outflank the formidable German defenses further south. However, the VI Corps was quickly bottled up and the main effort again turned to penetrating the Gustav Line. After four more months of ferocious and costly fighting across the entire Italian Peninsula, in mid-May, Allied forces south of Anzio launched Operation DIADEM, in which French troops achieved a breakthrough of the Gustav Line near Sant’ Ambrogio, and units of the Polish Corps did the same at Monte Cassino.
Throughout this period, the 209th provided protection against low-flying German aircraft in the vicinity of San Pietro and Mignano. On 18 March, elements of the Regiment’s 2d Battalion were detached and became the 898th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion (Automatic Weapons), and the 209th was redesignated as the 209th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Group.
