'Grapeshot' was the Allied overall plan for the first half of the final spring offensive in northern Italy by General Mark W. Clark’s Allied 15^th Army Group, comprising Lieutenant General Lucian K. Truscott’s US 5^th Army and Lieutenant General Sir Richard McCreery’s British 8^th Army, against Generaloberst Heinrich-Gottfried von Vietinghoff-Scheel’s Heeresgruppe 'C' comprising, from west to east, Generale d’Armata Alfredo Guzzoni’s Italian-German 97a Armata 'Liguria' (to the Germans the Armee 'Ligurien'), General Joachim Lemelsen’s 14^th Army and General Traugott Herr’s 10^th Army (9/20 April 1945).

The two primary sub-plans within 'Grapeshot', which led to the Battle of the Argenta Gap, were the British 'Buckland' in the east and the US 'Craftsman' in the west, and 'Grapeshot' was immediately followed by 'Grapefruit' (ii) to end the war in Italy. von Vietinghoff-Scheel expected such an offensive as soon as the onset of spring had dried the ground of northern Italy sufficiently for major operations by the Allied armoured formations and wished to undertake a campaign of delaying actions along all the available water barriers of the area, but Adolf Hitler ordered that Heeresgruppe 'C' should hold its ground and fight the Allies wherever they attacked.

Except for the minor blow they had dealt to Major General Edward M. Almond’s US 92^nd Division at the extreme western end of the Italian front in 'Wintergewitter' (ii), the Germans could take little comfort from the winter of 1944/45 in northern Italy except for the fact that their front was still intact. At first glance, the overall military situation of the Germans in the west, including Italy, did not appear hopeless. Despite the fact that there had been a threatening Allied penetration of the Western Front in the area of Aachen in the Rhineland, elsewhere the Germans were still holding the Allies from the North Sea to Switzerland. In northern Italy, except for the newly won positions of Major General Willis D. Crittenberger’s IV Corps on the high ground to the west of the upper reaches of the Reno river, Heeresgruppe 'C' still had an intact defensive line from the Romagna plain westward to the Tyrrhenian Sea. Closer examination revealed that Germany’s military position was rapidly worsening. Late in August 1944 Romania had capitulated to the Soviets and changed sides, and early in September of the same year Bulgaria had followed the same course. Only German arms prevented a third ally, the increasingly reluctant Hungary, from collapsing before the Soviets.

By the middle of January 1945 the time had passed when divisions from the Italian front could be used to influence decisively the course of the war on other fronts. Although in January and February Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring, the Oberbefehlshaber 'Südwest', had moved four divisions out of Italy to other fronts, by March the railways out of the Italian peninsula had been so severely savaged by Allied air attacks that it would have taken months to move additional divisions, even if they had been available. For the Germans the time had long since passed for a strategic withdrawal from Italy.

On 8 March Hitler summoned Kesselring to Berlin to tell him that he was to leave Italy to become the Oberbefehlshaber 'West' and in that capacity assume command of the Western Front where, following the failure of the 'Wacht am Rhein' offensive in the Ardennes of December 1944/January 1945, the Allied armies under General Dwight D. Eisenhower were pressing the Germans back into the Reich itself. When asked whom he would recommend as his successor in Italy, Kesselring named von Vietinghoff-Scheel. When Hitler readily agreed, von Vietinghoff-Scheel, since January the commander of Heeresgruppe 'Kurland' on the Baltic front, returned to Italy as the Oberbefehlshaber 'Südwest' and and took command of Heeresgruppe 'C'.

Kesselring was less successful in obtaining Hitler’s agreement to giving von Vietinghoff-Scheel greater operational flexibility in the conduct of operations when the Allies resumed their offensive in the spring. This inhibition on local flexibility had long embittered relations between Heeresgruppe 'C' and the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, and was a major constraint on the army group headquarters as von Vietinghoff-Scheel prepared plans for the defence which, her hoped, would prove effective when the Allied armies returned to the offensive in the spring.

Early in February the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht had informed Kesselring that under no circumstances was he to abandon major portions of his front voluntarily. Kesselring responded that while he had no such intention, he needed the operational freedom to pull back in certain sectors, even in advance of an Allied attack, when an offensive appeared imminent, for he lacked the manpower to hold every sector of the front in its present location against heavy Allied pressure. Kesselring observed that had he been given that kind of freedom before the recent 'Encore' attack of Major General George P. Hays’s US 10^th Mountain Division at Monte Belvedere, he might have been spared the need to commit Generalleutnant Dr Fritz Pollack’s 29^th Panzergrenadierdivision from army group reserve. Yet the most the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht offered was permission to fall back only in those sectors against which a large-scale Allied operation was already under way.

That concession afforded Kesselring and von Vietinghoff-Scheel little in the way of operational or strategic flexibility. If the Allied spring offensive forced Kesselring to abandon his positions in the Apennine mountains, he saw no alternative but to fight a series of delaying actions along each of the many east/west river lines of northern Italy as he withdrew his forces into the foothills of the Alps.

Although the German high command at first frowned on the plan, Kesselring remained convinced that as long as he was commander-in-chief in Italy, he could (as he had frequently done in the past) obtain approval directly from Hitler to disengage before the situation became catastrophic. While Kesselring had no intention of ordering an immediate and major withdrawal, neither did he intend to fight the decisive battle for northern Italy along the river lines to the south of the Reno river as that would place the future of the entire campaign on the outcome of one major event, and therefore no realistic opportunity to save his armies from destruction. Regardless of the Oberkommando der Wehmacht’s views, Kesselring believed his only choice to be the plan he had developed: withdrawal under pressure of an Allied offensive while fighting delaying actions along a succession of favourable defensive positions based on those river lines. That defensive strategy had worked well in the past and could, Kesselring believed, make the last offensive very costly for the Allies.

On 22 February, however, a directive from Hitler dashed Kesselring’s hopes for even this degree of freedom in action. Hitler acknowledged that although the overall strength of Heeresgruppe 'C' was essentially inadequate, the solution to the German problem in this theatre lay not in Kesselring’s plan but rather in deployment in greater depth in the sector facing the greatest threat. While Hitler would raise no objection to planned withdrawals to stronger positions in the face of a large-scale Allied offensive, he would never consent to voluntary withdrawals by means of a series of delaying actions as that, Hitler believed, would destroy the morale of the troops. On the eve of the Allied offensive Hitler was destined to reiterate his antipathy to voluntary withdrawals when he refused Heeresgruppe 'C' permission to implement 'Herbstnebel' (ii), a well established plan for a major withdrawal to prepared defensive positions along the line of the Ticino and Po rivers.

These and other differences failed to dampen the optimism of either Kesselring or von Vietinghoff-Scheel, or their obvious loyalty to Hitler. Yet there were senior officers of the German command structure in northern Italy who took a quite different view of Germany’s military situation, and agreed with Generalmajor Wolf Rüdiger Hauser, the chief-of-staff of Lemelsen’s 14^th Army, that Hitler’s decision spelled the end of German chances in northern Italy. As exchanges between the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht and Heeresgruppe 'C' about strategic, operational and tactical plans to check the anticipated Allied offensive gradually assumed an air of unreality, several senior SS officers in Italy took advantage of their unique position within Germany’s politico-military hierarchy to establish covert contacts with Allied agents. On 21 February, the day before Hitler’s directive binding the German armies in Italy to an essentially negative strategy was received at Kesselring’s headquarters, an Italian businessman, Barone Luigi Parrilli, an intimate of SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Waffen-SS Karl Wolff, the senior SS officer in command of the security forces in Italy, arrived in Zürich to establish contact with US intelligence agents in 'Sunrise' (otherwise 'Crossword').

Within the German forces in northern Italy, it was probably the SS police and security forces who had the best information about military and civilian morale, so it was natural that they had a more pessimistic and yet more realistic picture of the overall situation than many of their army counterparts, who were focused more specifically on the battle front. Yet in the weeks to come what amounted to their incipient treason would have no influence on the course of battle. Most commanders and the rank and file of the German armies in Italy would remain steadfastly at their posts until ordered to withdraw or until the tide of battle overwhelmed them.

The German armies in Italy faced a more immediate problem in the rapid disintegration of the transport system on which the continuation of their operations was wholly reliant. A general shortage of vehicles of all types and the almost total lack of motor fuel, complicated by a comprehensive Allied programme for the air interdiction of road and rail traffic, was largely responsible. To keep essential military traffic moving, the Germans had commandeered hundreds of civilian vehicles, and for several months even oxen had been employed to move heavy equipment, including artillery. In many motor convoys every third truck was employed to tow two others. Substitute fuels such as methane gas, fairly abundant in many areas of the Po river valley, were inadequate for combat vehicles, but were widely used to power administrative and logistical vehicles. Fuels such as alcohol and benzol were mixed with gasoline and Diesel oil on a 1/3 ratio in order to stretch limited fuel supplies. A few small oil wells in northern Italy, some producing as little as 1,000 US gal (455 litres) per day, contributed comparatively minuscule quantities of fuel.

Even the winter months failed to give the Germans the respite from Allied aerial harassment they needed so desperately. Although snow secured the flank of Heeresgruppe 'C' in the western part of the Alps and hampered Allied military operations in the Apennine mountains, it failed to halt the air onslaught on the German lines of communications. In December alone there were 900 major breaks in those lines, only 50 of which were still unrepaired by the beginning of 1945. Even so, it required very careful organisation of motor transport and the tight husbanding of dwindling resources for the Germans in Italy to keep their logistical system from collapsing before the end of 1944.

Up to the end of 1944, 50,000 tons of supplies (mostly coal) per month reached northern Italy from Germany, but after January 1945 all coal shipments came to a halt. This was the final spur to the German effort to make their forces completely self-sufficient in northern Italy. This effort in turn placed the economy of the region under severe inflationary pressures and caused increased unrest among the population, among which food shortages and widespread unemployment inflicted considerable hardship.

The almost complete absence of reconnaissance aircraft had long made it difficult for the Germans to obtain intelligence on Allied intentions. For almost a year the Germans had been unable to undertake anything near adequate aerial reconnaissance, which contributed to making it difficult to see through Allied deception plans.

At a time late in March Allied intelligence learned through 'Ultra' decrypts of German signals traffic that those plans were apparently succeeding, for it seemed that the 29^th Panzergrenadierdivision had been moved from the Bologna sector, where it had been in army group reserve, toward the Adriatic coast in the area to the north-east of Venice. Aware that the Germans were acutely short of fuel, the Allies believed that this could only have been prompted by a very strong conviction in the German command that a real threat existed on the Adriatic flank. So far as the Germans were concerned, there seemed to be considerable grounds for giving credence to numerous indications of a forthcoming Allied amphibious operation to the north of the estuary of the Po river. By a time early in April Marshal Josip Broz Tito’s Yugoslav forces had reached Senj, a mere 30 miles (48 km) to the south-east of Fiume, a major Italian port on the north-eastern corner of the Istrian peninsula. To the Germans it seemed logical that the Allies would seek to take advantage of this development with a landing somewhere to the west of the peninsula and then drive overland to effect a junction with the Yugoslavs for a joint advance toward Vienna via Ljubljana. The increasing threat of the Soviet advance on Vienna seemed to enhance this possibility into a strong probability.

In an effort to counter the threat, early in April the long eastern flank of Heeresgruppe 'C' was extended to the north to include the Austrian provinces of Vorarlberg, Tyrol and Salzburg, as well as the western half of Styria and Carinthia. This added responsibility meant that the eastern boundary of Heeresgruppe 'C' was withdrawn to the west by about 20 miles (32 km) from the pre-war Italo/Yugoslav frontier to the line of the Isonzo river, which flows to the south through the easternmost Italian province of Gorizia to debouch into the Gulf of Trieste some 12 miles (18.5 km) to the west of that city. Since Tito’s Yugoslav forces had long claimed the Isonzo river as the legitimate post-war frontier between the countries, on the grounds that it had been the pre-World War I boundary between the Austro-Hungarian empire and Italy, the German action had, perhaps deliberately, sowed a measure of discord into Allied thinking. As a result of the boundary shift between von Vietinghoff-Scheel’s Heeresgruppe 'C' and Generalfeldmarschall Maximilian Reichsfreiherr von Weichs’s Heeresgruppe 'F' (from 25 March Generaloberst Alexander Löhr’s Heeresgruppe 'E', control of General Ludwig Kübler’s XCVII Corps zbV (two divisions) passed from Heeresgruppe 'C' to its eastern neighbour.

On the eve of the Allied spring offensive in northern Italy, Heeresgruppe 'C' comprised 26 divisions of all types, of which 21 were German and five Italian: 16 of these formations were deployed across the front from the Adriatic Sea in the east to the Ligurian Sea in the west, and the remaining 10 were either in reserve or allocated to coastal defence or rear-area security.

Herr’s 10^th Army continued to hold the army group’s left wing with two corps: General Friedrich Kirchner’s LXXVI Panzerkorps and General Eugen Meindl’s I Fallschirmkorps, each of four divisions. Two of the I Fallschirmkorps's best formations, Generalleutnant Heinrich Trettner’s 4^th Fallschirmjägerdivision and Generalleutnant Viktor Linnarz’s 26^th Panzerdivision, were located astride Highway 9, which the Germans still considered the most probable Allied axis of advance to Bologna from the south-east. The sector in the foothills of the Apennine mountains was held by Generalmajor Karl-Lothar Schulz’s 1^st Fallschirmjägerdivision opposite Lieutenant General S. C. Kirkman’s British XIII Corps in the Monte Grande sector, and Generalleutnant Harry Hoppe’s 278^th Division opposite Lieutenant General J. L. I. Hawkesworth’s British X Corps. Defending the 10 Army's front, which would eventually bear the brunt of 'Buckland' offensive of McCreery’s British 8^th Army, General Gerhard Graf von Schwerin-Krosigk’s (from 25 April Generalleutnant Karl von Graffen’s) LXXVI Panzerkorps had Generalleutnant Walter Jost’s 42^nd Jägerdivision, Generalmajor Alois Weber’s 362^nd Division and Generalmajor Otto Schiel’s 98^th Division. Since these formations occupied positions which they had created since January, they were comparatively well protected from all but direct hits by artillery fire and bombs. All these formations had incurred heavy losses during the fighting of the previous autumn and winter in the mountains, however, and were still considerably understrength, as, indeed, were all German combat divisions in the last months of the war. A fourth division, Generalleutnant Ralph von Heygendorff’s 162^nd Division (turk.), was deployed along the Lake Comacchio’s north-eastern edge and on the spit of land separating this lagoon from the sea.

The front opposite Truscott’s US 5^th Army was held by Lemelsen’s 14^th Army, which had two corps deployed across a front extending some 50 miles (80 km) to the south-west from the Idice river valley to the south-east of Bologna to the Serchio river valley. General Friedrich-Wilhelm Hauck’s LI Gebirgskorps held the western half with Generalleutnant Eccard Freiherr von Gablenz’s 232^nd Division comprising largely older men and convalescents; Generalmajor Martin Strahmmer’s 114^th Jägerdivision comprising largely ethnic Germans from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Alsace; and Generalleutnant Hellmuth Böhlke’s 334^th Division, which had suffered heavy casualties while bearing the brunt of the 5^th Army’s drive through the Futa pass in October. General Fridolin Ritter und Edler von Senger und Etterlin’s XIV Panzerkorps held the rest of the army’s front with Generalleutnant Bernhard Steinmetz’s 94^th Division, since the fighting in the region to the south of Rome a frequent, if somewhat battered, opponent of the 5^th Army; Generalmajor Paul Shricker’s 8^th Gebirgsdivision; and Generalleutnant Hellmuth Pfeiffer’s 65^th Division, another long-term exponent of fighting on the Italian front. Since the beginning of April Generalmajor Heinrich von Behr’s 90^th Panzergrenadierdivision had been assembled in army reserve behind the XIV Panzerkorps' sector and to the north-west of Bologna.

Except for the 8^th Gebirgsdivision, which had more than 3,000 combat infantry, all of these divisions were woefully understrength in front-line soldiers. The 114^th Jägerdivision was worst off in this capacity, with just 984 combat infantry as of the end of March 1945; the other divisions were in somewhat better condition with strengths ranging from 1,766 to 2,542 men. It is clear that Lemelsen had concentrated his strength to the south of Bologna on the XIV Panzerkorps' sector and opposite Major General (from 17 April Lieutenant General) Daniel T. Keyes’s US II Corps rather than the US IV Corps.

The last component of Heeresgruppe 'C', under the supervision of Maresciallo d’Italia Rodolfo Graziani, was Guzzoni’s Italo-German Armee 'Ligurien' (otherwise the 97a Armata 'Liguria'). Comprising mostly fortress and coastal defence units, this formation was deployed along the Gulf of Genoa as far as the Franco/Italian border with two corps comprising two German divisions, one German brigade and three Italian divisions. These formations were Generalleutnant Kurt Jahn’s Corps 'Lombardia' with Generale di Divisione Amilcare Farina’s Italian 3a Marine Divisione 'San Marco' (3o and 5o Marine Reggimenti) and the Kampfgruppe 'Meinhold' (Oberst Almers’s 135^th Festungsbrigade and elements of Colonnello Giorgio Milazzo’s Italian 4a Alpini Divisione 'Monte Rosa').

Extending from coast to coast across northern Italy, the front line was the line along which the Allied offensive had come to a halt during the winter, and only on the western coastal plain did it still include portions of the 'Gotisch-Linie' defences.

Opposite the 8^th Army the German defences were of some depth to protect Bologna against an attack from the south-east. The defences were based upon a series of river lines. From the south-east, these were the Senio river, the Santerno river, the Sillaro river, a switch position along the Sellustra river, and finally the so-called 'Dschingis Khan-Linie' based on the Idice river and anchored in the east on the flooded plain to the west of Lake Comacchio. At their northern extremities these river lines were linked to another defence line based on a stretch of the Reno river which flows to the east from a great bend 12 miles (18.5 km) to the south-west of Ferrara. The latter line gave some depth to the defences of the line of the lower Po river, and was an essential element of the German defensive system. The Germans saw it as the pivot upon which the central and western sectors of their front had to swing toward the lines of the Po and Adige rivers and the north-eastern passes leading into Germany.

Throughout the winter more than 5,000 German engineer troops and additional thousands of impressed civilian labourers had prepared field works along the Po and the Adige rivers. The line along the Adige was reinforced with naval gun batteries from the Ligurian coast, while the line of the Po was continued to the west along the Ticino river to cover the withdrawal of the Armee 'Ligurien' on the German forces' western flank.

Behind the Po and Adige river defence lines, the Germans were in the early stages of developing yet another line, the so-called 'Voralpenstellung' (forward position of the Alps). Extending to the east and west of Lake Garda, this line represented an outwork of the almost impregnable bastion represented by the Alps. In a manner somewhat similar to the way the river lines to the south-east of Bologna were associated with the Reno river, the river lines of the Brenta, Piave, Tagliamento and Isonzo, all flowing from the Alps in a generally southerly and south-easterly direction toward the Adriatic, were associated with the 'Voralpenstellung', and were intended to cover any German withdrawal to the north-east in the direction of the Ljubljana gap.

As its officers studied the situation map on which the German defences were indicated, the staff of Field Marshal the Hon. Sir Harold Alexander, since 12 December the Supreme Allied Commander, Mediterranean Theatre, had available to it, as a result of 'Ultra' decrypts of German signals traffic, an accurate knowledge of the German troop dispositions. Alexander and his staff had to take into consideration the possibility that the Germans might ignore those defensive lines and instead opt to withdraw from northern Italy directly into what the Allies thought might be a German 'national redoubt' in southern Germany. This was believed by the Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Forces, and a number of senior Allied commanders, to be a possibility based on an assumption that Hitler and the survivors of his forces might fall back into an Alpine defence zone extending from Salzburg and Klagenfurt in the east to the Swiss frontier in the west and including the cities of Innsbruck, Bolzano, Landeck and Bregenz, there to make a last-ditch stand of indefinite duration. Although British intelligence circles, to which Alexander was privy, was dubious of the existence of any such redoubt, it was a possibility that no senior commander could ignore.

There were some within the Allied command structure in Italy who believed that Kesselring and von Vietinghoff-Scheel had either to surrender or to fall back into the Alps, there to seek refuge in former Austro-Hungarian fortifications that had survived World War I. Constructed along the former Austro-Hungarian/Italian frontier, many had been left intact by the Italians and could prove quite formidable if manned.

As the spring offensive was planned, there was another divergence in British and US strategic ideas along the lines of that which had affected the planning for 'Anvil', later launched as 'Dragoon' (i). As they had right from the beginning of the Italian campaign, the British perceived the Italian peninsula as the starting point for an Allied campaign into eastern Europe and the mid-Danube basin. The Americans, on the other hand, still saw the Italian campaign as a strategic distraction from what they believed should be the main, if not only, Allied strategic axis, namely that from the Normandy lodgement secured in 'Overlord' straight into the north-west European plain, as the direct and shortest route to the direct defeat of Germany. During the closing months of the Italian campaign, the Americans continued to believe in the shortest axis to the Alps in the form of a direct thrust via Bologna, Verona and Lake Garda straight to the north in the direction of the Brenner pass: this, the Americans believed, would trap the still large German forces in north-western Italy and provide access to the 'national redoubt' before the Germans could prepare their ultimate defences there.

Thinking in terms of the post-war European balance of power of political as well as military power, however, the British continued to look toward north-eastern Italy. Even if there should be no drive into the mid-Danube basin, the British averred, a thrust to the north-east could thwart long-held Yugoslav ambitions to acquire territory along Italy’s north-eastern frontier. The Italian ports of Trieste, Fiume and Pola all lay in the region coveted by Tito, and the British were determined to keep these ports out of communist hands lest they become naval bases from which a Soviet fleet might dominate the Adriatic. For several months since the launch of 'Manna' (i), the British had been involved actively in the first stages of the Greek civil war in an effort to keep that strategically important Balkan and Mediterranean land from falling into communist hands, and the loss of Trieste and control of the Adriatic would jeopardise that effort. Furthermore, the British needed Trieste as the port through which to support the occupation forces they eventually expected to deploy in Austria. As they had been since the start of World War II, British strategy in the Mediterranean area in general, and the Italian theatre in particular, was therefore considerably more comprehensive and complex than that of the Americans.

Inter-Allied differences were further complicated when, early in the planning for the spring offensive, it became clear that command changes had also modified attitudes and relationships among command and staff at the three major Allied headquarters in Italy. Formerly, Alexander and the commander of the 8^th Army (General Sir Bernard Montgomery to 29 December 1943, then Lieutenant General Sir Oliver Leese to 1 October 1944, and finally McCreery) had tended to think along similar lines in developing their operational concepts, especially during planning for the 'Diadem' offensive to the south of Rome and for the 'Gotisch-Linie' battle, while Clark as 5^th Army commander sometimes found himself a lone dissenter in the triumvirate. When Clark moved up to become commander-in-chief of the 15^th Army Group in mid-December 1944, the close identity of views that had characterised the relationship between that headquarters and the 8^th Army rapidly came to an end: Clark and the staff which accompanied him from the 5^th Army continued to see their former command as the dominant partner in the Italian enterprise and to view the 5^th Army’s role in the forthcoming offensive as essentially a continuation of that directed at Bologna.

As Clark’s successor in command of the 5^th Army, Truscott soon began to demonstrate that he too was as determined to develop his own operational concepts as independently of Clark as the latter’s concepts had been vis-à-vis Alexander. In this circumstance Clark frequently found himself once more holding a minority viewpoint (although, as army group commander, the prevailing one) in Allied planning councils. As planning progressed at the several headquarters, Clark had sometimes to compromise long-held views to make allowance for the particular operational concepts being developed at the headquarters of his two subordinate armies. The eventual plan by the 15^th Army Group was thus a rather loosely worded compromise allowing the two army commanders to carry out operational concepts which Clark had initially opposed.

Indications that that would happen surfaced even as Alexander and his staff embarked on the creation of broad operational guidelines for the coming offensive. As Alexander and his staff considered the zone of operations that lay between them and the Alps, they concluded that by occupying the 'Venetian quadrilateral' (Mantua, Peschiera, Verona and Legnano) the Allies would have a good chance of destroying many of the German formations in northern Italy and quickly reaching the north-eastern frontier and the Alps.

Some 30 miles (48 km) to the south-east of the 'Venetian quadrilateral' and defending the approaches to this, the Reno river makes a sharp curve from the north to the east and, passing to the south-east of Ferrara, enters the Adriatic Sea to the south of Lake Comacchio. It was along the northward-flowing tributaries of that section of the Reno river that the Germans had constructed their defensive positions in the area to the east of Bologna. If the Allies could cross the Reno river near its mouth, those successive lines might be turned with relative ease by an advance to the north-west along the Reno river’s northern bank, which would afford an opportunity to trap a major part of the 10^th Army to the south of the Reno as it flowed to the south-east, and also to prevent the Germans from using the Reno river as another defensive line to cover a withdrawal to the Po and the 'Venetian quadrilateral'.

Uninterrupted by large water courses and possessing a good system of roads, the plain to the north of the Reno river also offered the 8^th Army terrain favourable for manoeuvre warfare. Since the key to the area lay not in the 5^th Army’s operational zone to the south of Bologna but in that of the 8^th Army, Alexander and his staff no longer focused attention on Bologna. In Alexander’s words '[We] were…no longer thinking merely of the capture of Bologna, nor, indeed, of any objective on the ground, but of more wide-sweeping movements which would encircle as many of the Germans as possible between the converging blows of the two armies.' Drawing frequently upon earlier experience on the desert theatre of North Africa, Alexander had never lost his enthusiasm for 'wide-sweeping movement' and the 'double-fisted' blow.

As the 5^th Army’s IV Corps held suitable positions to the west of the Reno river as it flows to the north-east in the direction of the great bend to the south-west of Ferrara, the 5^th Army might serve as the left fist of the manoeuvre. The Americans might advance along the axis of Highway 64 and, remaining to the west of the highway and river, debouch into the Lombard plain to the west of Bologna, thereby avoiding the Germans positions to the south of the city. Once in the valley, the 5^th Army could attempt to cut off the German forces in north-western Italy by driving directly toward the Alps along Highway 12 on the axis from Ostiglia to Verona. As for the right fist, after crossing the Reno river as close to its mouth as possible, the 8^th Army could advance along the axis of Highway 16 to Padua, thence via Highway 14 into north-eastern Italy and the frontier with Austria, and also link with the Americans to cut off the German forces defending Bologna to the east and the area south of the Po river.

A prerequisite to success for the Allied plan was that the Germans continue to defend in place rather than fall back. Yet both Alexander and Clark were aware of the possibility that the Germans might at any time break contact and fall back beyond the Po river into their suspected Alpine redoubt. This was a factor which nagged at Clark throughout the planning period, for such a manoeuvre would adversely affect US rather than British strategic objectives. Alexander, at least, was confident that wide-ranging Allied aerial reconnaissance and information from partisan groups operating on the German side of the line would provide early warning of any withdrawal. Thus Allied planning proceeded on the assumption that the Germans would continue to fall back only under overwhelming pressure.

That Alexander’s broad operational concepts were somewhat different from those developing in Clark’s thinking started to become apparent when, early in January, the army group commander began a series of planning conferences with his two army commanders. The first took place on 8 January, when Clark and McCreery met at the former’s headquarters in Florence. McCreery arrived convinced that, inasmuch as the integrity of the north-eastern Italian frontiers was as significant a challenge as defeating the German armies in Italy, the 8^th Army should have primacy in the main Allied effort, and therefore have first claim on Allied resources in the theatre. Moreover, despite a chronic shortage of replacements and the transfer of troops to Greece, the 8^th Army in January was still the larger of the two Allied armies. In spite of McCreery’s arguments, which Clark agreed had some merit, the army group commander maintained long-held private reservations about the 8^th Army. Clark was determined not to yield to McCreery as he believed Alexander had done in the case of Leese on the eve of the 'Gotisch-Linie' offensive in August of the previous year.

On 12 February Clark presented to his commanders his own 'Diadora' operational concept for the offensive with instructions to prepare plans for its implementation. Clark’s plan followed essentially the same pattern that Alexander had outlined for the offensive of autumn 1944. The 15^th Army Group’s offensive was to be developed on an axis extending from Bologna to Verona in order to divide the German forces to the north of the Apennine mountains into two groups. Within this broad concept the offensive was to be divided into three phases: the first was to take the area in and around Bologna; the second to advance to the Po river and prepare a set-piece attack against that German-held line; and the third to cross the Po river and advance to the Adige river at Verona, whose capture would close the main line of retreat out of Italy to the north-east for the German forces in north-western Italy. At the same time, a so-called 'Venezianische-Linie' along the Adige River was to be attacked. If the Germans did not defend that line, both armies were to cross the Adige river without any pause, the 5^th Army striking toward the Alps and north-western Italy, and the 8^th Army advancing toward Trieste and the north-eastern frontier. Inherent in Clark’s 'Diadora' concept was that the 5^th Army would initially commit its main weight against the formidable German defences astride Highway 65 to the south of Bologna and take the city while the 8^th Army resumed its methodical advance to the north-west astride Highway 9 toward Bologna.

Taking into account the differing views of Truscott and McCreery, Clark’s staff prepared a detailed three-phase plan which Clark presented at a conference at his headquarters on 18 March. During the first phase, the 8^th Army in a secondary role was to cross the Senio river and drive forward to establish bridgeheads across the Santerno river. Until this waterway had been crossed, all available air support, including heavy bombers, was to be allotted the 8^th Army. Thereafter priority would shift to the 5^th Army, which was to make the main effort by advancing into the Po river valley either to capture or to isolate Bologna. The wording left Truscott free to bypass the city, if he wished, and downgraded the earlier priorities that Clark had placed on its capture.

Emphasis in the second phase was placed, as both Alexander and McCreery had argued, on encircling major German formations to the south of the Po river, rather than on Clark’s earlier emphasis on a rapid drive through the German centre to divide Heeresgruppe 'C' and develop the line first of the Po and then the Adige rivers.

If the first two phases were completed successfully, the third would be relatively easy: to cross the Po river, capture Verona, and develop the line of the Adige river which, if the Germans' main strength had been destroyed in the area to the south of the Po river, would in all probability be only lightly defended. As Clark saw it, the 8^th Army’s role in the third phase was primarily to assist the 5^th Army in trapping the Germans to the south of the Po river. After establishing bridgeheads over the Santerno river, the 8^th Army was to continue its advance along two axes, one in the direction of Bastia and the other toward Budrio. The former, a crossing of the Reno river, lies 3 miles (4.8 km) to the south of Argenta, while Budrio is located 9 miles (14.5 km) to the north-east of Bologna. Clark expected Budrio to draw the 8^th Army to the north-west in the direction most advantageous to the 5^th Army. Only if he appeared to be making good progress in that direction was McCreery to launch an amphibious operation across Lake Comacchio. If McCreery thereby managed to outflank the Argenta gap, which Clark doubted he would be able to do, the two commanders would then decide whether to redirect the 8^th Army’s main effort in a more northerly direction toward Ferrara, as McCreery had originally planned and still desired. Only then would Budrio and the entrapment of major German forces between Budrio and Bologna be relegated to the status of secondary objectives. In short, if all went well along the Santerno river, McCreery would be given an opportunity to make his right hook against the Argenta gap, which the British foresaw as the first major step on the road to Trieste.

For the launch date of the offensive, Clark insisted, over McCreery’s objections, on 10 April. Clark’s meteorologists had assured him that by mid-April the ground in the Po river valley would be firm enough for the movement of tracked and wheeled vehicles: moreover, even though the winter had been bitterly cold, there had been less snow than usual on the higher ground, and thus a reduced likelihood of flooding in the rivers' lower reaches during April. Clark was also concerned that the Soviet advance up the line of the Danube river and the progress of Lieutenant General Alexander McC. Patch’s US 7^th Army of General Jacob L. Devers’s US 6^th Army Group through southern Germany would reach Austria’s alpine frontier before the 15^th Army Group could get there. After the long, arduous advance to the north from Cassino, Clark was determined to have crossed out of his primary area of responsibility by the time the war ended, and therefore not become bogged down either in the northern Apennines or in the Po river valley.

McCreery objected to the start on 10 April because the LVT (Landing Vehicle, Tracked) vehicles, which the British called Fantail or Buffalo machines and which he hoped to use in an amphibious right hook over Lake Comacchio, had yet to arrive, and he doubted whether enough vehicles would be on hand and crews trained to operate them before May. When in mid-March it appeared that enough vehicles and crews would be available early in April to lift at least one infantry brigade, he agreed to the 10 April date.

Clark’s operational guidelines gave Truscott somewhat greater freedom than McCreery to realise his own operational concepts. Clark had downgraded the isolation or capture of Bologna to a secondary mission, for example, and Truscott was to debouch into the Po river valley, presumably to the west of Bologna. Once in the valley, the army was to exploit rapidly toward the Po river as well as toward a junction with the 8^th Army near Bondeno on the Panaro river to complete the encirclement of the German forces in the central sector. Clark’s failure to insist on Highway 65 as the 5^th Army’s primary axis represented a significant concession to Truscott’s views that the sector to the west of Highway 64 offered the greater opportunity to break through the German positions and enter the Po river valley. Truscott was determined to retain that concept in his plans and not to make it possible for Clark, as a result of his predilection for 'Pianoro' (Highway 65), to impose a restriction which would make it impossible. In this, Truscott had not forgotten Clark’s strategically futile change of axis in the 'Buffalo' break-out from the Anzio lodgement in June 1944.

Truscott was also to make a preliminary attack. Before the 5^th Army moved, the 92^nd Division was to capture Massa and exploit via Carrara toward the naval base at La Spezia. Truscott expected that this would serve to draw some of the German strength from the central front toward the west, thereby easing the task of his IV Corps and II Corps.

As McCreery and his staff studied the situation after the 8^th Army had reached the Senio river during January, they appreciated that they had a choice of one or two axes for their army’s main effort. The first, along Highway 9, accorded well with Clark’s strategic concept and led directly to Bologna. The second led 13 miles (21 km) to the north-west along Highway 16 to Argenta. If the main effort was made along the Argenta axis it would avoid the many defended river lines to the east of Bologna, and would make it possible for the army to outflank the east/west stretch of the Reno river on which those lines were anchored. The major disadvantage of this axis was the fact that much of it lay under water: the Germans had blown the dikes and dismantled numerous pumping stations, thereby flooding all but a narrow and easily defended corridor, known as the Argenta gap, through which ran Highway 16, and the immediate vicinity of Argenta itself.

This disadvantage called for extraordinary measures, and was the genesis of the British plan to use LVTs to outflank the corridor by moving across Lake Comacchio and the flooded lowlands next to it. The idea had long appealed to the 8^th Army engineers, but for long they had lacked the necessary topographic data, such as the depth of the water and soil conditions of the bottom and shore line. The information, it developed, could be supplied by friendly Italian fishermen slipping through the German line.

For such an operation to succeed the Germans had to be kept ignorant of the presence of the LTVs and persuaded to commit their reserves to another sector before the start of the amphibious movement. To achieve this, the 8^th Army devised a cover plan designed to suggest to the Germans that the main Allied effort would again be made along the axis of Highway 9 and a secondary effort, in the form of an amphibious landing, would be launched in a manner analogous to that of 'Shingle' at Anzio to the south of Rome in January 1944, in the area to the north of the Po river estuary in the Gulf of Venice. The concealment of the LTVs' presence from the Germans presented few difficulties as only a small number of the vehicles had reached Italy, and their crews were being trained on Lake Trasimeno far to the south.

After the withdrawal in February of Lieutenant General C. Foulkes’s Canadian I Corps and its two divisions to northern Europe in 'Goldflake', McCreery had extended the right flank of Lieutenant General C. F. Keightley’s British V Corps to cover the former Canadian sector on the Adriatic flank. With one armoured and five infantry divisions, Keightley’s corps was the largest of the 8^th Army’s four corps, and thus a logical choice for the assignment. Manning the sector from right to left from Highway 9 were Major General J. Y. Whitfield’s British 56^th Division (24^th Guards, 9^th Armoured, 2^nd Commando, and Italian 28a 'Garibaldi' Brigades), Generale di Brigata Clemente Primiera’s Italian Gruppo di Combattimento 'Cremona', Major General D. Russell’s Indian 8^th Division, Major General R. K. Arbuthnot’s British 78^th Division, and Lieutenant General Sir Bernard Freyberg’s New Zealand 2^nd Division. The 21^st Army Tank Brigade, 2^nd Armoured Brigade and 4^th New Zealand Armoured Brigade were in corps reserve awaiting an opportunity for armoured exploitation. The units had recently been reinforced with several items of new equipment, including Crocodile flamethrower (modified Churchill) tanks, Kangaroo armoured personnel carriers, and ordinary gun tanks adapted for river crossings.

Generał dywizji Władysław Anders’s Polish II Corps, with Generał brygady Bronisław Duch’s 3^rd 'Carpathian' Division and Generał brygady Nikodem Sulik’s 5^th 'Kresowa' Division, and the equivalent of one armoured division (Polish 2^nd Armoured Brigade, British 7^th Armoured Brigade and 43^rd Gurkha Lorried Brigade) held the sector astride Highway 9 near Faenza.

For a brief period at 8^th Army headquarters, after it was informed of the agreements reached at the 'Argonaut' conference at Yalta to determine the future of Poland, there had been some concern that the Polish forces in their despair might decide to sit out the last offensive. For a time Anders considered giving up his command and requesting that the Western Allies accept him and his corps as prisoners of war rather than accept the Yalta decision. How to replace the Polish corps was for a time a matter of serious concern for Clark, and it was only after consulting with the Polish government-in-exile in London that Anders decided that his formation would remain in the fray.

The 8^th Army’s other two major formations, Hawkesworth’s X Corps and Kirkman’s XIII Corps, had between them the equivalent of only two divisions and held that part of the army front still in the mountains to south of Highway 9. Along a sector extending from the upper reaches of the Senio river to a point to the south of Imola, the X Corps, recently returned from Greece, had only Brigadier E. F. Benjamin’s Jewish Brigade and Generale di Brigata Arturo Scattini’s Italian Gruppo di Combattimento 'Friuli'. The XIII Corps held the remainder of the 8^th Army’s front to the Monte Grande sector with Major General D. W. Reid’s Indian 10^th Division and Generale di Brigata Giorgio Morigi’s Italian Gruppo di Combattimento 'Folgore'.

Key elements of McCreery’s 'Buckland' plan included a two-axis attack to the north and north-west. The first and main attack was to be made by the V Corps in the direction of Lugo, 2 miles (3.2 km) to the west of the Senio river and 9 miles (14.5 km) to the north of Faenza on Highway 9. With Lugo taken, the corps was to drive on Massa Lombarda, 4 miles (6.4 km) to the west, before turning to the north in the direction of Bastia and Argenta: the former was the key to the Argenta gap. Spanning the lower Reno river some 13 miles (21 km) to the west of Lake Comacchio, Bastia represented the most desirable crossing point of the Reno opposite the V Corps' right wing. Once a crossing had been made, the line of the lower part of the Reno river would be turned, thereby permitting the V Corps to move along the river’s northern bank to turn the successive German river lines anchored on that stretch of the Reno waterway.

Before the V Corps' attack, Whitfield’s 56^th Division was to launch a series of preliminary operations in 'Impact Plain' and 'Impact Royal' to gain control of a wedge of flooded lowland at the south-eastern corner of Lake Comacchio and several small islands in the middle of the lagoon, and commando forces were to undertake 'Roast' to clear the Germans from the spit of land separating the lagoon from the sea. If those operations succeeded, the corps would gain control of the lagoon and of favourable sites along its western shore from which to develop attacks against the seaward flank of the Argenta gap. The object of these small but complex undertakings was to draw the attention of the Germans away from the main sector opposite Lugo and Bastia.

In preparation for the main attack, McCreery planned to concentrate six divisions behind his centre, from a bend of the Senio river near Lugo where the waterway toward the north-east to the area just short of Highway 9. The sector had the advantage of several good crossing sites, and might avoid the highway along which the Germans had concentrated at least two of their best divisions, the 4^th Fallschirmjägerdivision and 26^th Panzerdivision. Once the attacking British divisions had crossed the Santerno river, about 5 miles (8 km) beyond the Senio river, they were to turn onto a more northerly course toward Argenta. By holding the Germans in place and drawing units away from the coastal flank, the manoeuvre was expected to aid these formations and units making an amphibious right hook across Lake Comacchio against the Argenta gap.

The V Corps' operation against Lugo was to be made by the Indian 8^th Division and New Zealand 2^nd Division passing respectively to the right and left of the town. It was expected that be the third day of 'Buckland' both divisions would have established a large bridgehead beyond the Santerno river near Massa Lombarda. At that juncture the 78^th Division, having moved beyond Lugo, was to relieve the Indian 8^th Division and continue the attack toward Bastia. While that was in progress, a brigade of the 56^th Division, transported in LTVs, was to cross the flooded plain as far as the Menate pumping station on shore of Lake Comacchio 11 miles (17.75 km) to the east of Bastia. The New Zealand 2^nd Division was meanwhile either to cover the 78^th Division’s left or, in co-operation with the Polish II Corps, to advance to the west in the direction of Budrio, 17 miles (27.5 km) to the north-west of Massa Lombarda, depending upon the success of the thrust in the direction of Bastia. The Indian 8^th Division and Gruppo di Combattimento 'Cremona' were to capture bypassed Germans troops and then pass into V Corps reserve.

The Polish II Corps to the left of the V Corps was to form the second prong of 'Buckland'. The initial Polish objectives beyond the Santerno river were the towns of Medicina, 18 miles (29 km) to the north-west of Faenza, and Castel San Pietro, a similar distance from the Polish front on Highway 9. Eventually the Polish II Corps was expected to co-ordinate closely with the 5^th Army’s II Corps in the capture or isolation of Bologna, and in the event the V Corps failed to break through the Argenta gap, to keep open McCreery’s option for switching the axis of his main effort toward Budrio.

If his plan succeeded, McCreery intended to continue his offensive in two separate battles, of which the first was to be a battle of annihilation against the Germans to the south of the Po river, and the second an exploitation as far to the north as Ferrara. Both were to be followed by pursuits, the first beyond the Po and Adige rivers, and the second along the southern bank of the Po river to prevent German forces still to the south of this waterway from reaching and crossing to its northern bank.

On the other hand, if the V Corps had difficulty in forcing the Argenta gap, the headquarters of the XIII Corps was to move from the 8^th Army’s left flank to take control of those divisions fighting the first of the two battles in the direction of Budrio, thereby freeing the V Corps free to concentrate on the Argenta sector. Once the corps broke through there, the headquarters of the X Corps was to come around from the left to take control of a special engineer task force. Passing through the gap in the wake of the V Corps, the X Corps was to move forward on the right to prepare for the first crossings of the Po river.

By the end of March, Truscott was on the verge of completing the regrouping of his army for the spring offensive. With the British XIII Corps restored to 8^th Army control, the 5^th Army was operating on a narrower front. On the 5^th Army’s left, Crittenberger’s IV Corps continued to hold the wider segment, 50 miles (80 km) from the Reno river to the Ligurian Sea. Within the IV Corps, Crittenberger extended the sector of the 92^nd Division and its attached units, the 473^rd and 442^nd Infantry, as far as the Cutigliano river valley, where the 365^th Infantry, detached from the division, held an independent command in the former sector of Task Force 45. East of the 365^th Infantry lay General de divisão João Batista Mascarenhas de Morais’s Brazilian 1^st Division of the Força Expedicionária Brasileira, occupying a mountainous sector stretching to the north-east from the Riva ridge past Monte Belvedere to the US 10^th Mountain Division’s left flank to the west of Pietra Colora. With the exception of a narrow sector held by the 81^st Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron on the corps' right flank south of Vergato, Hays’s mountain division held the remainder of the IV Corps front.

On the 5^th Army’s right, the dispositions within Keyes’s II Corps reflected its commander’s plan again to use Major General John B. Coulter’s 85^th Division and Major General Paul W. Kendall’s 88^th Division to spearhead the renewed drive to Bologna and the Po river valley. Major General Vernon Prichard’s 1^st Armored Division, with the 91^st Reconnaissance Squadron attached, held a sector, 5 miles (8 km) wide, on the left wing just to the east of the Reno river. Major General Charles L. Bolte’s 34^th Division lay astride Highway 65 in the centre of the corps. On the right wing Major General William G. Livesay’s 91^st Division, with Generale di Brigata Umberto Utili’s Gruppo di Combattimento 'Legnano' attached, occupied positions in the Idice valley and on Monte Belmonte. Three formations (the 85^th and 88^th Divisions and Major General W. H. E. Poole’s South African 6^th Armoured Division) were grouped in the corps' rear area for rest and training.

Truscott had long ceased to focus his attention on Bologna, and intended instead to concentrate the 5^th Army’s primary effort in the IV Corps' sector to the west of Highway 64, between the Samoggia and Reno rivers, where he expected the IV Corps to outflank from the west the strong German defences to the south of Bologna. When the IV Corps debouched into the Po river valley, Truscott’s plan ordained that the II Corps, to the west of Bologna, was to shift to the left from the axis of Highway 65 to that of Highway 64. Once out of the mountains, the two corps were to advance abreast from Modena to the north in the direction of the Po river, the IV Corps capturing Ostiglia, where Highway 12 crossed the river, and the II Corps taking Bondeno, 18 miles (29 km) to the south-east near the point at which the Panaro river flows into the Po river. It was here that contact was to be made with the 8^th Army advancing from Ferrara, thus completing the encirclement of German forces still within the bend of the Reno river.

After crossing the Po at Ostiglia, the IV Corps was to advance as far as Verona and thence to Lake Garda. If all proceeded according to plan, this would cut off the German forces still in north-western Italy. In co-operation with the 8^th Army’s push to the north-east, the II Corps was to cross the Po river and advance to the Adige river. Meanwhile, on the 5^th Army’s left flank, the 92^nd Division, operating directly under 5^th Army control, was to continue its advance to the north along the Ligurian coast to Genoa, Italy’s major north-western port, and thence to the north-west for a junction with French forces along the Franco/Italian frontier.

Thus the 5^th Army’s 'Craftsman' (ii) operation was designed to deceive the Germans into believing that the II Corps was moving to the east to join the 8^th Army in making the main Allied effort along the Adriatic flank, and that the IV Corps would take over the 5^th Army’s whole front. Dummy radio nets were established for some units, and radio silence imposed upon others. While most of the movement was simulated, some units, their divisional markings removed from personnel and equipment, actually shifted but only within the army sector.

To avoid having to divide air support equally between the two armies, Clark instructed Truscott to delay his phase of the offensive until about four days after the launch of the British 'Buckland', by which time the British forces should have crossed the Santerno river. Thus the full weight of the strategic and tactical air forces could be committed first to the support of the 8^th Army on the right, and then of the 5^th Army on the left. Truscott developed a similar scheme for allotting air support between his two corps. Attacking first, Crittenberger’s IV Corps would at first receive the whole of the 5^th Army’s allotment of air power, then 36 hours later all air support would be shifted to the support of Keyes’s II Corps. This staggering of the 5^th Army’s attack had the additional advantage of placing greater firepower alternately behind each of the two army corps rather than dividing it between them as McCreery had done with the 8^th Army. While assigning one of the 5^th Army’s two armoured divisions to each corps, Truscott nevertheless managed to provide for a concentrated armoured thrust by positioning the two divisions side-by-side on the interior wings of the corps: the US 1^st Armored Division on the IV Corps' right and the South African 6^th Armoured Division on the II Corps' left.

In the 5^th Army’s main zone of operations opposite the IV and II Corps only Highways 64 and 65, on the left and right respectively, passed led through the 12-mile (19.5-km) belt of mountainous terrain between the front and the Po river valley. Highway 65 offered the more direct approach straight into the south-eastern sector of Bologna. Except for two rugged peaks, Monte Sole and Monte Adone rising above the north/south ridge lines bordering the Setta river valley between Highway 65 and the Reno river to the west, the terrain was suitable for US purposes, and allowed the movement and support of as many as five divisions. The main disadvantage of Highway 65 lay in the fact that the Germans had concentrated their strongest positions astride the highway in defence of the southern approaches to Bologna, so any major offensive along that route might risk a repeat of the costly experiences of the previous winter campaign.

On the other hand, Highway 64 offered the possibility of enveloping Bologna from the south-west instead of assaulting the city’s defences frontally. This route too allowed the passage of up to five divisions. Following the course of the Reno river, the highway was defiladed from the west for much of its length through the mountains by a 15-mile (24-km) ridge paralleling the highway from Monte Belvedere to Monte Pigna, 4 miles (6.4 km) to the north-west of Vergato, a heavily fortified road junction just to the north of the US line. An advance along Highway 64 therefore needed a simultaneous effort to clear the remainder of that ridge line as well as Monte Sole, which overlooked the highway some 5 miles (8 km) to the north-east of Vergato.

By the middle of March, almost all the salient details of a significantly modified 'Pianoro' plan had thus been finalised to create the 'Craftsman' (ii) plan. This ordained an attack with two corps abreast, the IV Corps attacking first four days after the launch of 'Buckland' and the II Corps on 24-hour notice to advance on army command. From a line just to the south of Vergato, the IV Corps was to advance to the north-east on a front 10 miles (16 km) wide bounded by the Samoggia river in the west and the Reno river in the east. The IV Corps was expected to debouch into the Po river valley near Bazzano, some 13 miles (21 km) to the west of Bologna.

Deployed essentially along the same line where the winter offensive had come to a halt, the II Corps was to advance at first directly toward Bologna along the axis of Highway 65, but after the IV Corps had captured the road junction of Praduro, on Highway 64 some 15 miles (24 km) to the north of Vergato, most of the II Corps was to side-step to the west onto the axis of Highway 64 so that both corps debouched abreast of each other into the Po river valley to the west of Bologna. Only a minor effort was to be made frontally against Bologna, mainly to pin the Germans holding the city.

For control purposes, Truscott fixed the Green, Brown and Black phases. During the Green phase, Crittenberger wold launch the 10^th Mountain Division toward Monte Pigna and Monte Mantino, 2 miles (3.2 km) to the north-east of Monte Pigna, and the 1^st Armored Division along the axis of Highway 64 against Vergato and Monte Pero, 1 mile (1.6 km) to the north-west of town. The IV Corps' left flank was to be covered by the Brazilian 1^st Division and the 365^th and 371^st Infantry detached from the 92^nd Division, which were to follow any German withdrawal along the axis of Highway 12, approximately paralleling Highway 64 some 15 miles (24 km) to its west. The II Corps was to be ordered to start its attack once the IV Corps reached the Green Line.

Once the offensive was under way, Truscott planned to form a mobile reserve of his armoured divisions with which to exploit the most promising opportunities. When his forces reached the Po river valley, Truscott planned to create, from his mobile reserve, infantry/armour task forces to lead the dash first to the Panaro river and then the Po river.

In the Brown phase the two corps were to advance abreast of each other, the IV Corps continuing in a north-easterly direction to the west of Highway 64 and the II Corps capturing Monte Sole, Monterumici and Monte Adone, the high ground between Highways 64 and 65. Truscott believed that Lemelsen would have to weaken these otherwise formidable positions to deal with the advance of the IV Corps to the west of Highway 64. On the II Corps' right flank, the Gruppo di Combattimento 'Legnano' was to patrol aggressively and maintain contact with t