The Grosseto Air Base was considered by the Allies to be of strategic importance for operations in North Africa, since the attacks on British ships in the western Mediterranean Sea departed from there.

The base was also the site of a torpedo-bomber training school of the Luftwaffe's Kampfgeschwader 102 unit and the arrival of the Messerschmitts Me 323 employed in the defense of Tunisia.

[1] The first raid took place on 26 April 1943, day of Easter Monday, when 48 Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress of the Twelfth Air Force of the United States Army took off from airfields in Algeria and reached Grosseto, Tuscany.

The raid also hit care buildings such as the Red Cross hospital set up in the diocese's seminary and the House of Mother and Child.

The following day, 27 April, King Victor Emmanuel III went to Grosseto to pay homage to the fallen and to visit the wounded in the Misericordia hospital.