(Updated, April 2016) 'Bombardment of the coast near Trapani' is currently used here as the title, since that is how it has previously appeared in other references, but the original named subject location was Salerno, ahead of the Allied landings there in 1943. The painting is one of a group of eleven oil paintings by Eurich, an official war artist, allocated to the NMM after the Second World War. He was commissioned to do it by the War Artists Advisory Committee but appears to have been misinformed by its Secretary that the ships involved were the 'Howe' and 'King George V' (both 'King George V' class). However, the only two British capital ships at Salerno were HMS 'Valiant' and 'Warspite' (both 'Queen Elizabeth' class), where their effectiveness was a major factor in the landings' success and thus an appropriate subject for a commission. While the two shown are therefore by implication 'Warspite' and 'Valiant' , they are in fact loosely based on the two 'KGVs' that were not involved. These did bombard Trapani (Sicily) and the island of Levanzo on 12 July 1943, just ahead of the Salerno operation - though this was also a night action and the painting is clearly a daytime scene (as at Salerno). The general confusion of facts was pointed out by Admiral of the Fleet Lord Cunningham (wartime Mediterranean C-in-C, and whose flagship was 'Warspite') when he saw the picture first exhibited at the Museum in autumn 1951, labelled as showing the two KGVs at Salerno. A note from the artist, who only did WAAC work at home, quickly explained how he seemed to have been wrongly briefed and that 'the actual delineation of the ships is slight, the point of the design being to give the explosive quality and rending of the air etc.'. He added that someone in the landing fleet at Salerno had also recently told him that the painting gave 'a good idea of the effect', and himself later wrote of it in similar terms and as a 'dissection of gunfire'. That he was misinfomed is clear from his WAAC file, which in 1944 originally described the picture as just 'The Bombardment of Salerno'. When the WAAC asked for a more fomal title he suggested in a note dated 4 May that the names of 'Howe' and 'King George V' be included, adding that 'This action was considered decisive in the landings as the big [guns] put their [enemy] artillery out of action. I can't think of a neatly worded caption.'

The scene is shown from an aerial perspective, with the ship to the far left bathed in white light at the bow and firing from the stern, while the ship to the right is dark grey against the pale sea and sky. The smoke and explosions from her firing guns are bright orange in the foreground and as the smoke moves upwards it merges with the sky. The sea is represented as glassy and still, with the reflections of the action clearly visible on it. The town is hinted at on the horizon to the far right, where the grey vertical streaks of the shells fall.