The night bombardment of Bari on December 2nd, 1943 was a dramatic action carried out at low altitude by Luftwaffe aircraft, with the aim of attacking the transport ships of an important convoy that was in the port under unloading in the docks, and that had been reported in the morning by the German air reconnaissance. Bari had been reached by British troops on September 11th following the events of Italy's surrender, and most of the supplies that flowed there were destined for General Montgomery's 8th Army, and for the US Air Force whose heavy bombers of the 15th Air Force had installed themselves in the airports of Puglia, in particular Foggia, to beat German targets in Germany and the Balkans from the south. On the evening of December 2nd, 105 Junker 88 bombers from six bombing groups took off from the airports of northern Italy and 88 of them attacked the target with disastrous effects for the Allies, success achieved with the loss of two Ju. 88. The attack caused heavy losses to the Anglo-Americans, who had not suffered such a devastating surprise air raid since the Japanese attacked the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. The ships sunk in Bari, including those of small tonnage, were 21 and another 12 more or less damaged. The wrecks of the sunken ships caused the blockade of the port for three weeks, with the result that the Anglo-Americans had to use the ports of Brindisi and Taranto to land and air supplies, in order not to delay the advance in Italy. Particularly serious and alarming was the sinking by explosion of the ammunition cargo of the American Liberty ship John Harvey, which also carried 2,000 deadly mustard bombs for 1,350 tons, from whose holds leaked a large quantity of chemicals of that deadly toxic gas, which not only contaminated the waters of the port but killed more than 1,000 soldiers and civilians in the area, which represented one of the greatest ecological disasters of all time.

Francesco Mattesini, born in Arezzo on April 14th, 1936, resident in Rome since the summer of 1951, served in the 4th Army General Staff Department between February 1958 and July 1999. He is a studious and expert on air and sea warfare, a skilful and meticulous researcher, a member of the Society of Military History and of the Maritime and Naval Documentation Association, an active collaborator of the Giornale d'Italia for which he edited the column "Verità Storiche" (Historical Truths), he wrote, revealing many behind-the-scenes, articles of a political-military nature in newspapers and specialized press, and published, with private publishers, the volumes "La battaglia d'Inghilterra"; "Il giallo di Matapan"; "La battaglia aeronavale di mezzo agosto"; and with the co-author, only for the political part, Prof. Alberto Sanoni, "La partecipazione tedesca alla guerra aeronavale nel Mediterraneo", at the second edition, (2005), of which he oversaw all the research, operational, statistical and graphic part. In 2019 Mattesini published: "Luci e ombre degli aerosiluranti italiani Agosto 1940 - Settembre 1943; "La battaglia aeronavale di mezzo-agosto, Il concorso delle forze italo-tedesche all'operazione britannica "Pedestal. 10-15 August 1942"; Punta Stilo July 1940,80th Anniversary of the First Air-Naval Battle of History; Mussolini's Decision to Occupy Greece; and The Night of Taranto. Collaborator of the Historical Office of Aeronautics, for which he realized, "The technical operational directives of Superaereo", which include, in four volumes, the main documents expressed by the Operative Body of the Italian Air Force between April 1940 and September 1943, and the volume "Italian-German Air Activity in the Mediterranean. Il contributo del X Fliegerkorps", in its second edition (2003), revised and expanded. For the Historical Office of the Navy, after having received the assignment to carry out a strict and precise historical revision of the books published in the years 1950-1980, Mattesini published "La battaglia di Punta Stilo, "Betasom. La guerra negli oceani" (both works integrated with new elements in the second edition), "La battaglia di Capo Teulada", "L'operazione Gaudo e lo scontro notturno di Capo Matapan", "La Marina e l'8 settembre", in two Tomi, and the first four volumes of the series "Corrispondenza e direttive tecnico-operative di Supermarina", which cover the period 1939-1941. Delivered for printing the third volume, in four volumes, but not yet printed by USMM. Also for the Historical Office of the Navy, Mattesini compiled, for internal use, important statistics on Allied naval casualties in World War II, partly published in installments in the Archive Bulletin of the Historical Office of the Navy, of which he was a regular contributor, with the production of sixty large essays, many of which are particularly important and exhaustive.