But hopes are still high it can be more--an example of the best and newest developments EAW can offer.
To offer some good missions and stick to historical accuracy, plans have to be made. There is good information on the Allied Side, but little from the German viewpoint.
So readers may find this interesting, and may be able to add comments or additions.
The first part is background on the invasion, mostly from the Allied side.
There was a German air response, overwhelmed as the Luftwaffe was by mid-1944. It might be in the "heroic" category of a doomed defense by brave or even suicidal pilots and crews, but it was there.
Accounts of guided bomb attacks on Normandy beaches and offshore ships have been found. Prototype jet aircraft were said to be used.
From various sources:
D-DAY --IN THE AIR
http://www.aero-web.org/history/wwii/d-day/1.htm
Planning for Overlord
By D-Day, June 6, 1944, the Allies had been planning for the invasion of Europe for more than two years. In August 1943, the Combined Chiefs of Staff had approved the general tactical plan for the invasion, dubbed Overlord. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Commander of the European theater since February 1944, would be responsible for carrying off this bold gambit. The Allies' main strategy, in Eisenhower's words, was to
. . . land amphibious and airborne forces on the Normandy coast between Le Havre and the Cotentin Peninsula and, with the successful establishment of a beachhead with adequate ports, to drive along the lines of the Loire and the Seine rivers into the heart of France, destroying the German strength and freeing France.
The Allies believed that the enemy would resist strongly on the line of the Seine and later on the Somme, but surprisingly, once ground forces had broken through the relatively static lines of the bridgehead at Saint-L6 and inflicted heavy casualties on enemy troops in the Falaise Pocket, Nazi resistance in France disappeared. British and American armies swept east and north in an unimpeded advance which brought them to the German frontier and the defenses of the Siegfried Line
Air Power: Critical to Success on D-Day
From the beginning Eisenhower and the rest of the combined forces planners recognized that air power would be critical to success of Overlord. Experience had taught planners to avoid facing hostile air power over the battlefront. This meant that the Luftwaffe would have to be destroyed, but not at the price of sacrificing vitally needed air support missions for air superiority ones.
Fortunately, in early 1944 the Luftwaffe was on the skids. By the fall of 1943, Republic P-47 Thunderbolts equipped with long-range "drop" tanks were inflicting heavy losses on German fighters over Occupied Europe and in the German periphery. Then, in December 1943, the North American P-51B Mustang entered service. Featuring superlative handling qualities and aerodynamic design, and powered by a Packard-built Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, the P-51B (and its successors, the P-51C and P-51D) could escort bomber strikes to Berlin and back, thanks in part to a symmetrical wing section that was thick enough to house a large quantity of fuel and streamlined enough to minimize drag. These two fine aircraft were worthy supplements to the overall Allied strategic bombing effor
Between January and June 1941 the five months before D-Day - the Luftwaffe was effectively destroyed: 2,262 German fighter pilots died during that time. In May alone, no less than 25 percent of Germany's total fighter pilot force (which averaged 2,283 at any one time during this period) perished. During Big Week, American air forces targeted the German aircraft industry for special treatment; while production continued, the fighter force took staggering losses. In March 1944, fully 56 percent of the available German fighters were lost, dipping to 43 percent in April (as the bomber effort switched to destroying Germany's petroleum production), and rising again to just over 50 percent in May, on the eve of Normandy. No wonder, then, that the Luftwaffe could contribute less than a hundred sorties to the defense of Normandy. Months of concentrated air warfare had given the Allies not only air superiority, but air supremacy as well.
The requirements to keep the landing sites secret-particularly the deception to encourage the Germans to devote their greatest attention in the region of the Pas de Calais-complicated the air campaign. Strike planners had to schedule vastly more operations across the sweep of likely landing sites rather than just at the true site of Overlord. For example, rocket-armed Royal Air Force Hawker Typhoon fighter-bombers of the Second Tactical Air Force (2 TAF) attacked two radar installations outside the planned assault area for every one they attacked within it.
The "Desert Fox" (Field Marshall Erwin Rommel) was put in charge of coastal defenses along much of France. He emphasized meeting and defeating the invasion forces on the beach. Rommel understood that if the Allies got a toehold on the continent, it would be extremely difficult, probably impossible, to remove them. The field marshal discussed the upcoming invasion frequently with his naval aide, Vice Admiral Friedrich Ruge, and the Allied air threat figured prominently in his thoughts. On one occasion, as Rommel inspected a gun battery on the coast, two British fighters roared overhead. His staff members scattered at the low-level approach, but Rommel defiantly remained standing in plain view.
On April 27, forty days before the invasion, Admiral Ruge confided in his diary that he found the disparity between the Luftwaffe and the Allied air forces "humiliating." By May 12, he was reporting "massive" air attacks, though troops often exaggerated the amount of actual damage. On the 30th, with "numerous aircraft above us, none of them German," Ruge narrowly missed being bombed into the Seine by a raid that dropped the bridge at Gaillon. At 01:35 on June 6, as Ruge and other senior staff officers regaled themselves with tales of the Kaiser's army and real and imagined conditions around the world, the German Seventh Army reported Allied parachutists landing on the Cotentin peninsula. Overlord was underway.
THE AIR UNITS
Assembling the Allied Tactical Air Forces
As Overlord embarked upon its preparatory phase, tactical air power increasingly came into play. Two great tactical air forces existed to support the ground forces in the invasion-the AAF's Ninth Air Force and the RAF's Second Tactical Air Force. Both were under the overall command of Royal Air Force Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory. In addition, of course, Eisenhower and his ground commanders could call upon strategic aviation as required, in the form of the AAF's Eighth Air Force and Great Britain's Bomber Command.
In June 1944 the Ninth Air Force consisted of several commands, including the IX Fighter Command. The IX Fighter Command in turn spawned two Tactical Air Commands, the IX TAC and the XIX TAC. IX TAC had three fighter wings, and the XIX TAC had two. Each of these fighter wings contained at least three-and usually four-fighter groups, a group typically consisting of three fighter squadrons. Of the two, IX TAC was the "heavy"; it could muster no less than eleven fighter groups, while the XIX TAC could muster seven. From late 1943 to early 1944, IX Fighter Command had served primarily as a training headquarters, under the command of Brig. Gen. Elwood Quesada. Eventually Quesada assumed command of the IX TAC, and Brig. Gen. Otto P. "Opie" Weyland took over XIX TAC. No in-theater formalized structure linked the Ninth and its subordinate commands directly to specific land forces units, though there was a general understanding that the IX TAC would support the First Army, and the XIX TAC would support Lt. Gen. George Patton's Third Army once the Third became operational in France nearly two months after D-Day. Eventually, on August 1, 1944, when both Patton's Third Army and Bradley's 12th Army Group became operational, this arrangement was formalized.
On the British side, the RAF's Second Tactical Air Force (2 TAF) had grown out of initiatives in mid-1943 to structure a "Composite Group" to support the invasion of Europe. It had risen from the ashes of the moribund and never-satisfactory Army Co-operation Command. In January 1944, Air Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham took command of 2 TAF, and two months later he assumed additional duties as commander of the Advanced Allied Expeditionary Air Force (AAEAF). Ironically, at this critical point, two serious command problems arose. Relationships among the RAF commanders, particularly Coningham, Leigh-Mallory, and Arthur Tedder (Deputy Supreme Commander for Overlord) were strained at best. Much more serious was the breakdown between the RAF commanders and 21st Army Group Commander, Field Marshal Sir Bernard L. Montgomery, who also wore an additional hat as commander of Allied ground forces during the invasion.
While fighting Rommel in the Western desert, Montgomery had enthusiastically supported air action in the Mediterranean and accepted whole-heartedly Coningham's thoughts on air support. Ironically, Montgomery and the RAF now came to disagree over the relationship between the air and the land commander. Montgomery paid lip service to the concept of independent air action, but his actions in early 1944 clearly indicate that he considered his equals in the RAF merely advisers. For their part, Coningham and Tedder nursed grudges going back to the plodding advance after second El Alamein and Montgomery's notorious slowness during the pursuit of Rommel's retreating forces.
For the airmen, the critical question in Overlord was how rapidly Montgomery would advance to seize airfields so Allied tactical air forces would not have to operate across the Channel from bases in England. In fact, this issue turned out to be far less important than originally thought. Bases were quickly hacked out of the Normandy terrain, often only a few thousand yards from opposing German forces. Montgomery's planned advance from the beachhead (which the airmen considered too slow) turned out to be instead over-optimistic; the actual advance was even slower. Given this, Allied air power in Normandy proved all important. As historian John Terraine has noted:
History insists that the last word, in regard to the Battle of Normandy, must be that the quarrels did not, finally, matter: Allied air power was so overwhelming that the defeat of Allied intentions on the ground never threatened disaster, only delay, and that happened only in the early stages, well compensated later. But let us be quite clear about it: what made the ultimate victory possible was crushing air power.
Britain's 2 TAF consisted of four RAF Groups: No. 2 Group, No. 83 Group, No. 84 Group, and No. 85 Group. Of these four, only the first three were really available for the air-land battle in Normandy; 85 Group was under the temporary operational control of No. 11 Group, attached to an RAF home defense command. No. 2 Group consisted of four wings of Boston, Mitchell, and Mosquito light and medium bombers. No. 83 Group, exclusive of a reconnaissance wing and some light aircraft used for artillery spotting, contained one Mustang wing, four Spitfire wings, and four Typhoon wings. No. 84 Group, again exclusive of recce and spotting aircraft, consisted of one Mustang wing, five Spitfire wings, and three Typhoon wings. As the campaign progressed, 2 TAF's subordinate units directly supported units of the 21st Army Group. Thus, the British Second Army could rely upon 83 Group, and 84 Group supported the First Canadian Army.
------------------------
BRITISH UNITS OPERATIONS
http://www.valourandhorror.com/DB/BACK/Bombers.php
Use of bombers at Normandy
Harris withdrew the Stirlings from his area bombing raids on Berlin. They suffered too many casualties from flak. Some of the Stirling units were transferred to Transport Command, and saw service as glider tugs in the invasion of Normandy. In April, 1944, the bomber offensive was harnessed to the needs of Overlord. In March, 70 per cent of the bombs dropped by Bomber Command were on targets in Germany; by May it was 25 per cent, by June, close to 0. Not until September when Eisenhower relinquished control of the British and American heavy-bomber forces would the offensive against Germany itself resume.
Before the invasion, The Canadian Group was involved in bombing transportation targets.
"The accuracy of Bomber Command's bombing in support of the D-Day invasion build-up would be one of the surprises of that period of the war, and no one appears to have been more surprised than Harris himself. Like most mortals, Harris saw every situation in the context of his own ambitions. Although he wanted to win the war as much as the next man, he wanted to do it his way, by the strategic area-bombing of German cities....
Reap the Whirlwind: pages 235-6
"On March 4, [Harris] received his orders. Bomber Command was to mount a series of pre-invasion attacks on railway targets, activating the "Transportation Plan" that had been under discussion for months. It called for widespread damage to the railways around the proposed landing area, so the Germans would be unable to use them to bring up reinforcements or supplies. The first target was the marshalling yards at Trappes, sourthwest of Paris. The question that gnawed at the planners was whether Bomber Command could do the job without killing French and Belgian civilians in their thousands..."
Reap the Whirlwind: 237
The attacks followed on March 6/7, 1944. Of the 263 aircraft sent to bomb Trappes in the first pre-invasion ops, nearly half, 124, were from 6 Group.:
"In the bright moonlight the marshalling yards were clearly visible and we saw our bombs fall directly on the target," writes Dick Garrity, a 431 Squadron navigator who participated in the raid. The sortie was indeed a spectacular success with the tracks rapidly transformed into a tangled network of steel and most of the sheds and rollin g stock wrecked or severely damaged. Practically no damage was done to the town. And not one 6 Group aircraft was lost on this operation despite the presence of four flak batteries in the vicinity."
Reap the Whirlwind: 237
--------------
AIR OPERATIONS-- GLIDERS, PARATROOPS
http://www.valourandhorror.com/DB/BACK/Normandy_1.php
On the night before the invasion, the U.S. 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions would land by parachute and glider near the town of Ste. Mere-Eglise, securing the roads that led from the shoreline, and obstructing enemy efforts to reinforce beach defenses. The next morning Bradley's First Army would arrive.
http://www.valourandhorror.com/DB/BACK/ ... _sites.php
ALLIED AIRDROPS
The drops took place on both flanks of the invasion area in the late hours of June 5th and early on the morning of the 6th. British 6th Airborne dropped on the eastern flank to secure the bridges over the Orne and Dives rivers. The drops took place in clear weather, but were scattered over a large expanse of countryside. In spite of this, the British met most of their D-Day objectives, including the daring glider assault on the Orne River/Caen Canal bridges. The drop also confused the German defenders, thus buying time for the invasion troops.
The U.S. drops were completely scattered, with the exception of one regiment. This was a result of thick cloud cover and in some cases the inexperience of the pilots. As a result, the drop serials of 101st and 82nd were scattered over a wide area of the Cotentin Peninsula, some troops ending up 40 kms from their planned drop zones. The Germans had also flooded large areas of the Cotentin, including several drop zones. Scores of paratroopers drowned upon landing. Despite heavy localised resistance, some of which was encountered on the way to the ground, all U.S. units were able to gain their objectives to some extent with the forces available. Additionally, the scattered nature of the drop served to confuse and paralyze defending German units. The German commander of the 91st Luftlande Division, one of the best formations in the Cotentin, was ambushed and killed by troops of the 1Olst. As with the British drop, these events served to buy time for the seaborne invaders.
-----------------------
AIR OPERATIONS--GLIDERS, PARAS, (from another site--)
http://www.history.rochester.edu/mtv/overview.htm
In fact, the probable location of the 352d Division was less of a concern to Eisenhower than was Air Chief Marshal Leigh Mallory's pre-D Day warning that casualties in the American airborne divisions might run as high as 70 percent in the glider units and 50 percent among the paratroopers. On 30 May, Eisenhower agonizingly reappraised the airborne assault plans before deciding against cancellation. Perhaps the gravity of that decision prompted him to draft a press release taking full responsibility if the invasion failed. It certainly drew him to the 101st Airborne's encampment in the evening of 5 June, where he mingled with small groups of paratroopers as they waited to board their transports.
By midnight, the 822 C-47s carrying the assault units of the 82d and 101st Airborne divisions, some 13,000 men, were over the Channel in clear, moonlit skies. An unexpected cloud bank over the Cotentin, combined with heavy AA flak, scattered the tight formations, causing many paratroopers to land far from their designated drop zones. Despite the losses of "sticks" (the eighteen paratroopers carried by each plane) that came down in the Bay of the Seine, the flooded river bottoms, and far behind German lines, the D Day casualties came to only 15 percent. The scattered night drop seemed to confuse the Germans, who were unable to mount effective counterattacks against the often outnumbered and isolated paratroopers. After some hard fighting in the hedgerows and marshes around Ste.-Mère-Eglise, and with support from their glider infantry, the paratroopers were able to disrupt German efforts to reinforce their defenses behind Utah Beach, thereby greatly aiding the 4th Division's landing.
As dramatic as the American landings had been, it must not be forgotten that the first Allied soldiers to land in Normandy were British. At 0016, five gliders of the 6th British Airborne Division's glider infantry skidded to stops on the approaches to the bridges over the Orne River and the parallel Caen Canal. In short order both bridges were in British hands. Those six platoons of the 2d Battalion of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry and the 249th Field Company, Royal Engineers, along with the sixty pathfinders (paratroopers equipped with beacons to mark the landing zones) who landed at the same time, were the vanguard of the British airborne assault on the eastern end of the lodgment area.
Before dawn, paratroopers and glider infantry from the 3d Brigade had captured the Merville Battery (a heavily fortified complex thought to contain 150-mm guns) in the most daringly conceived operation in the Neptune plan. Other men from the 3d Brigade destroyed bridges in the Dives valley in an effort to seal off the eastern approaches to the landing beaches.
High winds played havoc with both the pathfinders and paratroopers from the 5th Parachute Brigade, scattering them for miles along the Dives valley. Although concentration and movement were slow, units were able to reinforce the glider infantry holding the Orne bridges and to clear the landing zone near Ranville for the seventy-two gliders due to land at 0330.
By afternoon, the 3d Division's drive inland began to falter short of its D Day objectives as troops dug in, anticipating a counterattack by the 21st Panzer Division. Nevertheless, commando units made contact with the paratroopers holding the Orne bridges at noon, and elements of the 3d Division relieved those in Benouville that evening. For all their D Day successes, the British had failed to capture Caen, then only lightly held by the 21st Panzers.
----------
From http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/brochures/no ... or-pam.htm
U.S. Army Center for Military History
As planned, airborne units led the invasion. Shortly after midnight the British 6th Airborne Division dropped northeast of Caen, near the mouth of the Orne River, where it anchored the British eastern flank by securing bridges over the river and the Caen Canal. On the other side of the invasion area, the U.S. 101st and 82d Airborne Divisions dropped near Ste. Mere-Eglise and Carentan to secure road junctions and beach exits from which the VII Corps could push to capture Cherbourg.
Some of the American airborne troops came to ground near their objectives, but most were scattered over a wide area. A number drowned in the flooded lowlands. Others landed in the midst of German positions, where they were killed or captured. In the hours that followed, nevertheless, paratroopers from the 101st succeeded in clearing much of the way for VII Corps' move inland. The 3d Battalion, 505th Infantry, of the 82d Airborne Division meanwhile captured Ste. Mere-Eglise and cut the main enemy communications cable to Cherbourg.
Other units, entangled in the thickets and hedgerows of the region, failed to achieve their objectives, but by their very presence they sowed confusion in German ranks. Reports began to surface in enemy headquarters all along the line that paratroopers were landing, but little information was available to commanders on the size and meaning of the attack. Was it a probe to test Germany's defenses, a diversion for a larger assault in the Pas de Calais, or the long-awaited invasion itself? The Allies added to the confusion by parachuting dummies wired with firecrackers far to the rear of German positions. The trick drew major enemy units away from the landing zone, where their presence might have done considerable damage to the attackers.
As dawn neared, bombers began to strike up and down the coast, flying the first of what would become, by the end of the day, more than 11,000 sorties against enemy batteries, headquarters, railroad junctions, and troop concentrations. The gliders Eisenhower had watched depart also arrived. Those of the British landed on target as did most of those from the U.S. 101st Airborne Division. Fewer than half of the gliders assigned to the U.S. 82d Airborne reached their assigned landing zones. The rest lodged in hedgerows, struck German obstructions, or floundered in the swollen marshes. By midmorning, 4,000 men of the 82d were still unaccounted for, along with 60 percent of the equipment they had carried.
On 9 July Montgomery launched a massive air assault against Caen in hopes of clearing the way for an attack the following morning. Four hundred fifty heavy aircraft participated, dropping 2,500 tons of bombs, but the airmen negated most of the effect by releasing their loads well back from the forward line to avoid hitting their own troops. As a result, the city incurred heavy damage but German defenses went largely unscathed. In the two days of desperate fighting that followed, the Germans fought back viciously. Montgomery's forces entered Caen and took half the city but moved no farther. Casualty rates during the battle were appalling. Most infantry battalions sustained losses of 25 percent.
-----------------
CZECHOSLOVAK AIRMEN
http://www.radio.cz/en/article/67140
The three independent Czechoslovak fighter squadrons — the 310th, 312th and 313th —operating Spitfires and under British command, flew numerous sorties on D-Day. Otto Smik, a Slovak ace with the 310th, shot down his lucky 13th plane above Normandy, while the 311th, a bomber squadron, patrolled the English Channel.
Otto Smik"Bernard Peters, flight sergeant, 311th squadron. I was in the air on D-Day, flying in a Liberator near Brest, looking out for subs — submarines".
On D-Day, the 311th was patrolling the skies in B-24 Liberators, looking for the Kreigsmarine, the Nazi submarine fleet, in an operation codenamed "Cork".
"It's hard to say now what you felt. Fear? Excitement? You just don't think about it. You just take it as it comes".
They sank one sub and effectively sealed off the Western part of the English Channel.
Karel Kuttelwascher, photo: www.math.fce.vutbr.cz"As well as those four Czechoslovak squadrons there were quite a lot of Czechs and Slovaks who served in other British squadrons", says Roger Darlington, who wrote a biography of the Czech ace Karel Kuttelwascher, his late father-in-law. He notes that the Czechoslovak fighter Wing provided crucial cover in direct support of the British Second Army's landings on and around the beaches of Normandy. "Most of the action was on D-Day was on the beaches, but of course they needed air cover and a great many units — including Czechoslovak pilots — provided that cover. And, in fact, fairly rapidly the Allies did assume mastery of the air, which enabled the soldiers to penetrate into France and get the invasion underway".
Altogether, over 2,000 Czechoslovak airmen served in the RAF, the British Royal Air Force. Of the 482 Czechoslovak airmen killed in battle, the 311th bomber squadron suffered the greatest number of casualties - 273. Unable to sustain further losses, the British had reassigned the squadron to Coastal Command.
B-24 Liberator"My name is Warlich, Charles Warlich. I was with the 311th squadron, Coastal Command".
"Na Mnozstvi Nehledte" was their motto—"Disregard their numbers"—and Czech airmen of the 311th told Radio Prague last year, ahead of the 60th anniversary of D-Day, that they simply didn't think about how the odds were stacked against them.
D-Day landing"On D-Day... I don't think there was nervousness, I think it was more an elated feeling that something was happening, finally. And I think we took it all in stride, let's put it that way. We took it all in stride".
------------------
FREE FRENCH FORCES. Armée de l'Air
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_French_Forces
By the time of the Normandy Invasion, the Free French forces numbered more than 400,000 strong. The Free French 2nd Armoured Division, under General Leclerc, landed at Normandy and eventually led the drive towards Paris. The Free French 1st Army, under General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, joined the Allied invasion of southern France, and liberated the Vosges and southern Alsace.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm%C3%A9e ... 40-1945%29
Altogether, under the umbrella of the USA (not just in North Africa, but also in Sicily and Corsica), there were nine FAFL fighter groups, three of which were (interestingly enough) designated as RAF fighter squadrons, namely No.326 (“Nice”), No.327 (“Corse”) and No.328 (“Provence”) Squadrons, with other units similarly named after regions in metropolitan France, namely Roussillon, Champagne, Navarre, Lafayette, Dauphiné and Ardennes. Similarly, there were six bomber groups (Bretagne, Maroc, Gascogne, Bourgogne, Sénégal and Franche-Comté), one reconnaissance group (Belfort) and one transport group (Anjou).
Following the dissolution of the Vichy French naval aviation arm, the second escadrille of the combat fighter group GC II/7 accepted several navy pilots into its ranks. In March 1943, it received its first British aircraft, namely examples of the Supermarine Spitfire Mk.Vb fighter plane. When GC II/7 was broken up in August, the squadron received two designations - one of which was French, the other British - by virtue of the fact that its complement included both French and British pilots. While the British designated the unit No.326 Squadron of the RAF, the French knew their squadron as GC 2/7, even if it was attached to No.345 Wing of the Mediterranean Allied Coastal Air Force (MACAF).
Altogether, under the umbrella of the USA (not just in North Africa, but also in Sicily and Corsica), there were nine FAFL fighter groups, three of which were (interestingly enough) designated as RAF fighter squadrons, namely No.326 (“Nice”), No.327 (“Corse”) and No.328 (“Provence”) Squadrons, with other units similarly named after regions in metropolitan France, namely Roussillon, Champagne, Navarre, Lafayette, Dauphiné and Ardennes. Similarly, there were six bomber groups (Bretagne, Maroc, Gascogne, Bourgogne, Sénégal and Franche-Comté), one reconnaissance group (Belfort) and one transport group (Anjou).
Following the dissolution of the Vichy French naval aviation arm, the second escadrille of the combat fighter group GC II/7 accepted several navy pilots into its ranks. In March 1943, it received its first British aircraft, namely examples of the Supermarine Spitfire Mk.Vb fighter plane. When GC II/7 was broken up in August, the squadron received two designations - one of which was French, the other British - by virtue of the fact that its complement included both French and British pilots. While the British designated the unit No.326 Squadron of the RAF, the French knew their squadron as GC 2/7, even if it was attached to No.345 Wing of the Mediterranean Allied Coastal Air Force (MACAF).
PRE-BOMBING AND ATTACK CAMPAIGN---AIRCRAFT CONTROL
As historian John Terraine has noted:
History insists that the last word, in regard to the Battle of Normandy, must be that the quarrels did not, finally, matter: Allied air power was so overwhelming that the defeat of Allied intentions on the ground never threatened disaster, only delay, and that only in the early stages, well compensated later. But let us be quite clear about it: what made the ultimate victory possible was crushing air power.
Britain's 2 TAF consisted of four RAF Groups: No. 2 Group, No. 83 Group, No. 84 Group, and No. 85 Group. Of these four, only the first three were really available for the air-land battle in Normandy; 85 Group was under the temporary operational control of No. 11 Group, attached to an RAF home defense command. No. 2 Group consisted of four wings of Boston, Mitchell, and Mosquito light and medium bombers. No. 83 Group, exclusive of a reconnaissance wing and some light aircraft used for artillery spotting, contained one Mustang wing, four Spitfire wings, and four Typhoon wings. No. 84 Group, again exclusive of recce and spotting aircraft, consisted of one Mustang wing, five Spitfire wings, and three Typhoon wings. As the campaign progressed, 2 TAF's subordinate units directly supported units of the 21st Army Group. Thus, the British Second Army could rely upon 83 Group, and 84 Group supported the First Canadian Army.
Another important relationship, however, evolved between the Ninth Air Force's IX TAC and the 2 TAF's 83 Group. IX TAC's Elwood Quesada and 83 Group's commander, Air Vice Marshal Harry Broadhurst, worked well together. For example, after troops were ashore at Normandy, control of tactical aircraft passed from shipboard control centers to two land-based control centers: a IX TAC control center in the American sector of the beachhead, and an 83 Group control center located in the British sector. Coningham later praised the "excellent teamwork" between the two control centers. This teamwork would be refined even further in the weeks ahead.
Altogether, the tactical air forces had 2,434 fighters and fighter- bombers, together with approximately 700 light and medium bombers available for the Normandy campaign. This force first struck against the Germans during the preparatory campaign prior to D-Day. At D minus 60 days, Allied air forces began their interdiction attacks against rail centers; these attacks increased in ferocity and tempo up to the eve of the invasion itself and were accompanied by strategic bomber raids against the same targets. The bridge campaign, which aimed at isolating the battlefield by cutting Seine bridges below Paris and Loire bridges below Orleans, began on D minus 46. Here, fighter-bombers proved more efficient than medium or heavy bombers, largely because their agility enabled them to make pinpoint attacks in a way that the larger bombers, committed to horizontal bombing runs, could not. The fighter-bombers also had the speed, firepower, and maneuverability to evade or even dominate the Luftwaffe. Though ground fire and (rarely) fighters did claim some attacking fighter-bombers, the loss rate was considerably less than it would have been with conventional attack or dive bombers. By D minus 21, Allied air forces were attacking German airfields within a radius of 130 miles of the battle area and these operations too continued up to the assault on the beachhead.
Air Support on the Beaches
During the June 6 D-Day assault itself, a total of 171 squadrons of British and AAF fighters undertook a variety of tasks in support of the invasion. Fifteen squadrons provided shipping cover, fifty-four provided beach cover, thirty-three undertook bomber escort and offensive fighter sweeps, thirty-three struck at targets inland from the landing area, and thirty-six provided direct air support to invading forces. The Luftwaffe's appearance was so minuscule that Allied counterair measures against the few German aircraft that did appear are not worth mentioning.
Of far greater importance was the role of aircraft in supporting the land battle. As troops came ashore at Normandy, they made an unpleasant discovery all too familiar to the Marine Corps and Army operating in the Pacific campaign. Despite the intensive air and naval bombardment of coastal defenses, those defenses were, by and large, intact when the invasion force "hit the beach." This was particularly true at Omaha beach, where American forces suffered serious casualties and critical delays. Despite a massive series of attacks by Eighth Air Force B-17s, B-24s and medium bombers in the early hours of June 6, the invading troops were hung up on the beach. The air commanders themselves had, in fact, predicted that the air and naval bombardments would not achieve the desired degree of destruction of German defensive positions. The Army's general optimism that air would cleanse the beaches before its approach, however, was shattered. Only the subsequent success of fighter-bombers operating against the battlefield would revive the Army's confidence in air support. Indeed, throughout the post-Normandy campaign-and in the Second World War as a whole the fighter-bomber proved overwhelmingly more valuable in supporting and attacking ground forces in the battle area than did the heavy or even the medium bomber.
RADAR
Allied tactical air control in Normandy and during the subsequent European campaign was generally excellent. Fundamental to this success was the wartime evolution of radar. The Allied air forces had radar available to them from the very first day of Normandy operations, and it was soon incorporated into tactical air control as well as for early warning and air defense purposes.
AIR RECONN--- GROUND FORCES COORDINATION
Normandy's most noteworthy tactical air support development, however, was the close partnership between air and armored forces, typified by the "armored column cover" missions perfected by the IX TAC under Quesada. During the Italian campaign, the British had begun operating so-called contact cars that served as mobile air-ground control posts with armored forces. Now, at Normandy, 83 Group under Broadhurst placed "contact cars" with leading British armored forces so that tactical air units would always know the precise location of friendly and enemy forces. The contact cars functioned in close cooperation with tactical reconnaissance aircraft, reducing the time necessary to set up immediate support strikes. This scheme proved its value particularly during the German retreat out of the Falaise Pocket.
Shortly before the Saint-Lo breakout, Quesada became convinced that Bradley was reluctant to concentrate his armored forces because of the magnitude of German defensive forces along the front. So Quesada made a deal: if Bradley would concentrate his armor, IX TAC would furnish an aviator and an aircraft radio for the lead tank so that it could communicate with fighter-bombers that Quesada would have operating over the column from dawn until dark. Bradley immediately agreed, and a pair of M4 Sherman tanks duly arrived at IX TAC headquarters in Normandy (only a hedgerow away from Bradley's own command post) for trial modification. The modification worked and became a standard element of First Army-and subsequently 12th Army Group as a whole-operations.
From Quesada:
Our best air (reconnaissance) information came from the column cover. On occasions G-2 asked me for specific information, and I asked the planes to get it. In most cases the pilots furnished information to me without request, especially that of enemy motor movements. Before leaving,the flight leader would report to me on likely prospective targets, and I would pass the information on to the incoming flight commander.
On one occasion we made an unexpected move for which no air cover had been provided. Information was received of a group of hostile tanks in some woods three or four miles away. I called direct to a plane operating in the zone of another corps and asked him to relay a request to fighter control center for some fighters. Within 15 minutes about 12 planes reported in to me. I located my tank for the plane commander by telling him of the yellow panel [used for identification of friendly forces, and located on the back deck of the tank], then vectored him on to the woods where the enemy was reported. When he seemed to be over the target, I told him to circle and check the woods under him. He located the tanks, and they were attacked successfully.
GROUND POUNDER OPERATIONS
Virtually immediately the tactical fighter-bombers of the IX TAC and 2 TAF made their presence felt on the land battle. For the first four days of the invasion, they flew from their bases in southern England, but the first rough airstrips were available for use on the Continent on June 10. Eventually Allied fighter-bomber strips numbered thirty-one in the British zone and fifty in the American. Two problems quickly manifested themselves in these early operations at the front. The peculiar thick dust of Normandy played havoc with the inline engines of the Spitfire and Typhoon, until mechanics fitted special air filters to the aircraft and engineers watered down the runway surface. Second, these forward strips were perilously close to enemy positions and came under frequent shelling. In one case, Typhoons operating from a forward strip attacked German tanks and fortifications a mere 1,000 yards away from the runway,
While darkness offered some protection to the besieged Germans, it did not grant total immunity. The 2 TAF used twin-engine De Havilland Mosquitos as night battlefield interdiction aircraft, sometimes having the "Mossies" bomb and strafe under the light of flares dropped from North American Mitchell medium bombers. Later in the European campaign, when the German night air attack menace had largely disappeared, the AAF used Northrop P-61 BlackWidow night fighters in a similar role. Overall, however, their inability to successfully prosecute night attacks to the same degree as daytime attacks frustrated air and ground commanders alike. Bradley's air effects committee noted that there was "never enough" night activity to meet the Army's needs.
Intelligence information from Ultra set up a particularly effective air strike on June 10. German message traffic had given away the location of the headquarters of Panzergruppe West on June 9, and the next evening a mixed force of forty rocket-armed Typhoons and sixty-one Mitchells from 2 TAF struck at the headquarters, located in the Chateau of La Caine, killing the unit's chief of staff and many of its personnel and destroying fully 75 percent of its communications equipment as well as numerous vehicles. At a most critical point in the Normandy battle, then, the Panzer group, which served as a vital nexus between operating armored forces, was knocked out of the command, control, and communications loop; indeed, it had to return to Paris to be reconstituted before resuming its duties a month later.
DEATH OF ROMMEL
By July 6, during a dinner party, a "colonel of a propaganda battalion" remarked that soldiers were constantly asking "Where is the Luftwaffe?" In staff discussions about the future as if one really existed for the Third Reich-Rommel and Ruge concurred that "the tactical Luftwaffe has to be an organic part of the army, otherwise one cannot operate," which showed how little the two men understood the evolution of Allied air power over the previous three years of the war. It was precisely because Allied air power was not subordinate to the armies that it was free to use mass and concentration to achieve its most productive ends-and thereby help the Allied armies the most.
Ironically, Rommel's complaints at this time mirror those of the British and American army leaders of 1941 and 1943, respectively. The field marshal grew increasingly testy about air matters; during breakfast on July 16, he was "incensed" at the presumptuousness of a Luftwaffe staff officer who intemperately accused the German army of not taking fullest advantage of Luftwaffe attacks throughout the war.
The next day, as Rommel drove to his headquarters after a quick trip to an SS armored unit, two 83 Group Spitfires strafed him, killing his driver, wounding a passenger, and causing their car to plunge off the road, out of control. Rommel, thrown out, narrowly escaped death from a fractured skull. With that, the Desert Fox's war effectively ended. He returned to Germany for treatment and recuperation, dying by his own hand that October when implicated-rightly or wrongly-in the officers' plot to assassinate Hitler, a plot that tragically went awry. Allied tactical air had removed from command the German commander best suited by experience and leadership to oppose the ground forces building up to the breakout from the Normandy lodgement area.
LARGE BOMBER OPERATIIONS
Any breakout from the lodgement area would require the insightful and creative use of air power, including bomber aircraft such as the American B-17 and B-24 and the British Halifax and Lancaster operating in a troop-support role. Altogether there were six major raids by heavy bombers in support of breakout operations in Normandy. The first of these involved 457 Halifax and Lancaster bombers from RAF Bomber Command on July 7, in support of Montgomery's assault on Caen. The second was an even larger raid by 1,676 heavybombers and 343 light and mediumbombers onJuly 18. On the 25th, American bombers of the Eighth and Ninth Air Forces struck at Saint-Lo, preparatory to the First Army's breakout. A fourth attack on the 30th supported the Second British Army south of Caumont. Then an Anglo-American raid on August 7-8 supported the attack of the First Canadian Army toward Falaise from Caen, and the sixth raid, again supporting the attack on Falaise, followed on August 14.
'FRIENDLY FIRE BOMBING MISTAKES
Unfortunately, heavy bomber missions could cause serious problems. The first two strikes on Caen resulted in numerous "collateral" casualties to French civilians. Sometimes friendly troops were victims of misplaced bomb strikes. In the Normandy campaign, as in other campaigns, air and land forces had to get used to working together. Bradley remarked after the war that "we went into France almost totally untrained in air-ground cooperation." It is difficult to accept this statement at face value because the air and ground forces worked together with an unprecedented harmony. Nevertheless, in the very early stages of Normandy some "disconnects" did occur between the air and land communities. Friendly troops experienced attacks from Allied fighter-bombers. To minimize this danger, air and ground commanders arranged for friendly forces to pull back in anticipation of an air strike against German positions. But if communication failed and the strike did not come off, troops found themselves fighting twice for the same piece of real estate as German forces moved back into the gap. Soon commanders learned to follow-up air strikes with artillery barrages so that friendly infantry and armor forces could close with the demoralized enemy before he recovered and redeployed. Within six weeks after the Normandy landing, air and land forces were so confident of working together that fighter-bombers routinely operated as close as 300 yards to American forces. This was not true, unfortunately, of strategic bomber operations, as the strikes of late July and August clearly indicated.
The most publicized example of the difficulties of operating heavy and medium bombers in support of ground forces came during the preparatory bombardment for Operation Cobra, the breakthrough attack at Saint-Lo that led to the breakout across France. The Cobra strikes killed slightly over 100 GIs and wounded about 500. Without a doubt, the strikes were badly executed, and serious command errors were made. The first came on July 24, a cloudy day, when Cobra had been initially set for launch. A postponement order reached the Eighth Air Force Commander, Lt. Gen. James H. "Jimmy" Doolittle, too late: the Eighth's bombers were already airborne. Most crews wisely refrained from bombing due to weather and returned to base. Some found conditions acceptable and did drop. Friendly casualties occurred in three instances. When another plane in the formation was destroyed by flak, a bombardier accidently toggled his bomb load on an Allied airstrip, damaging planes and equipment. A lead bombardier experienced "difficulty with the bomb release mechanism" and part of his load dropped, causing eleven other bombardiers to drop, thinking they were over the target. Finally, a formation of five medium bombers from the Ninth Air Force dropped seven miles north of the target, amid the 30th Infantry Division. This latter strike inflicted the heaviest casualties 25 killed and 131 wounded-on the first day that Cobra was attempted.
The next day, in better weather, there were three more friendly bombings, all by B-24s. First, a lead bombardier failed to synchronize his bombsight properly, so that when he dropped-and eleven other bombers dropped on his signal-a total of 470 100-lb high- explosive bombs fell behind the lines. Then a lead bombardier failed to properly identify the target and took the easy way out- bombing on the flashes of preceding bombs. A total of 352 260-lb fragmentation bombs fell in friendly lines. In the third case, a command pilot overrode his bombardier and dropped on previous bomb flashes; previous bombs had been off target but within a safe "withdrawal" zone. The pilot's bombs fell within friendly territory.
DEATH OF A GENERAL BY "FRIENDLY" BOMBING
During this series of strikes occurred the most sensational casualty of Cobra. Lt. Gen. Leslie J. McNair, former Commander of Army Ground Forces and currently the "commander" of the fictional "1st Army Group," was killed in his foxhole by a direct bomb hit as he waited to observe the follow-up ground attack McNair's death and the other friendly casualties infuriated the ground forces, perhaps in part because they remembered the general's vociferous criticism of the air support organization in 1942-43. Strangely, the tragedy seems not to have harmed ground-air relations at higher command levels. Though Bradley has stated that Eisenhower informed him that strategic bombers should no longer be used to support ground forces, this is not evident Tom Eisenhower's written comments. In fact, American "heavies" continued to be used in troop support missions, notably in the German winter offensive. Eisenhower's comments after Cobra's bombing were far less critical than might have been expected:
OPERATIOIN COBRA--EFFECT ON GERMANS AND THE BREAKOUT
Cobra: Key to Breakout
The main weight of the Cobra bombings fell opposite Maj. Gen. J. Lawton Collins's VII Corps, on Lieutenant General Fritz Bayer-lein's already battered Panzer-Lehr Division. The initial confusion of the July 24 strikes had misled the German defenders into thinking that they had withstood and repulsed an American attack. They were not prepared for the whirlwind that descended on the 25th. The bombing, Collins recollected, "raised havoc on the enemy side." Though VII Corps, hurting from the accumulated short bombings of two days, did not make great progress in its ground attack on the 25th, Collins shrewdly realized that the German command and control structure had been badly disrupted by the air attack, and he planned a full-scale assault for the next morning. There began the genuine breakthrough. Combat Command A of the 2d Armored Division, ably supported by Quesada's IX TAC and building on the accomplishment of the 30th Infantry Division (which had taken the brunt of the short-bombings), cut through enemy defenses. Breakthrough now became breakout. The stage was set for the drive across Northern Europe.
------------------------------------
