escort duties and screened the minelaying operation near Gela. She escorted troop ships into Syracuse harbor the day after British troops captured the city. During this operation German torpedo boats attacked Niblack and PC-556 under cover of a dense smoke screen. The American ships drove off the E-boats by gunfire after the enemy craft had fired three torpedoes which missed and exploded near the harbor breakwater. The destroyer supported the advance of the Allied ground forces across Sicily and entered Palermo Harbor following its capture. Shortly after the rout of the Germans across the Strait of Messina, Niblack, with , , , , and sortied from Palermo on the night of 17/18 August 1943, and proceeded at high speed to the Italian coast for the first bombardment of the Italian mainland by U.S. Naval Forces. The ship took part in the landings at Salerno on 9 September 1943. She served at first in the screen, but when the situation ashore became desperate, she joined the fire-support destroyers. On 16–17 September she conducted eleven call-fire support missions. American forces advancing after the bombardment sent back reports of the complete destruction of enemy men and material in Niblack’s target areas. Later in the Salerno campaign the ship screened cruiser Philadelphia during the radio-controlled bomb attacks which damaged Philadelphia and . On 27 October Niblack and bombarded enemy coastal guns far behind the front lines in the Gulf of Gaeta, Italy, to pave the way for Allied ground forces. On 11 December 1943, Niblack joined in a search for a German U-boat whose torpedoes had sunk several freighters off Bizerte the day before. struck first however, and blew up Holcombe with an acoustic torpedo. Niblack rescued 90 survivors and transferred them to an Army hospital ship that night. During the transfer, she spotted antiaircraft fire from the submarine against a British patrol plane and directed and to the scene, where they sank U-593. Four days later, when a Liberty ship was torpedoed near the harbor entrance at Oran, Niblack and searched for the submarine. They had narrowed down the search to a small area when they were relieved by the , , and , who subsequently sank . After a month in Task Force 86, the ship was ordered to support the landings at Anzio. During this invasion the ship commanded the beachhead screen, and fought off simultaneous attacks by dive and torpedo