The spot that Bradley chose for the COBRA breakthrough was the strategic St. Lo–Périers-Lessay road. At several points this key artery intersected the only coastal road for the advance to Coutances and Avranches. It was in terrain that was favorable for attacking German positions from the air.
On June 19 Bradley flew to the Allied air force headquarters at Stanmore, north of London. He wanted to ensure that there was a “safety zone” to protect his ground forces from airborne friendly fire. Bradley personally explained COBRA's requirements to Trafford Leigh-Mallory, Major General Elwood R. “Pete” Quesada, who headed the IX Tactical Air Command with its P-47 Thunderbolt fighter-bombers, and the other heavy-bomber air barons. Their consensus was that they needed a 3,000- to 1,500-yard safety zone to avoid hitting American ground forces. Bradley finally settled for a 1,250-yard border to the bomb zone to prevent the Germans from recovering before the American advance reached them.4
Miserable rainy weather delayed the opening air bombardment and COBRA's ground attack from July 21 to July 24. Despite the reservations of weather forecasters, Leigh-Mallory set the carpet-bombing for noon on July 24. After personally flying to France for a last-minute check, he canceled the air attack. But it was too late. The Eighth US Army Air Force bombers were already airborne. Three hundred fifty bombers released their bomb loads. Some fell near American ground troops, which had only dug a few foxholes for protection. Twenty-five Americans were killed and 131 wounded by so-called “friendly fire.”5
On July 25 the skies gradually cleared. On that day British forces were still in combat with six German panzer divisions that fielded 645 tanks. Bradley's offensive was facing only two panzer divisions, the Panzer Lehr and the Second SS Panzer, with a total of 190 tanks. Nine other badly battered German infantry divisions also opposed the American attack.6
At 9:38 a.m. Allied Ninth Air Force fighter-bombers began a twenty-minute assault on the German front. The entire 1,800 B-17s and Liberator heavy bombers of the Eighth Air Force created a corridor of death four miles wide and two miles deep. They dropped over 2,000 tons of high explosives and more than 2,500 tons of fragmentation bombs mixed with white phosphorous and napalm. But they too were sometimes short of the targeted front. US ground troops made desperate efforts to identify their positions using yellow panels and smoke markers but to no avail. In this enormous conflagration, 111 American ground troopers died, 490 were wounded, and 200 were disabled by shell shock. The entire command headquarters of the Ninth Division's Third/Forty-Seventh Infantry Regiments was decimated. Despite being warned, Lieutenant General Lesley J. McNair, commander of army ground forces, went up to the front to witness this unprecedented bombing attack. He was the highest-ranking officer to be killed in northwestern Europe.7
The Panzer Lehr Division was in the center of this inferno. General Fritz Bayerlein, Panzer Lehr commander, said in a postwar interrogation, “It was hell. The planes kept coming like a conveyor belt…. My front line looked like a landscape on the moon…. All my front line tanks were knocked out.”8
After the bombing, American artillery smashed the Germans with fifty thousand rounds. The total devastation was unbelievable. “I looked out of the bunker. The world had changed,” said Major Joachim Barth, commander of the German 130th Anti-Tank Battalion, “our tanks were stuck in holes; in others, the big guns had tipped over.”9
Thousands of German soldiers died from the COBRA bombing attack. Tanks were obliterated, command posts decimated, and an entire Wehrmacht parachute regiment disappeared. Advancing into the target area, an American infantry officer observed that “all kinds of trucks, guns and machines of every type were in twisted disorder over the deeply-scarred soil.”10
The bombing and artillery assaults, however, did not succeed in wiping out all the German forces. A notation in the First US Army diary stated that the massive bombing had only a “negligible” effect. The first response was that “breakthrough for which we had all hoped had failed to materialize.”11
At 11:00 a.m. General Joseph Collins's VII Corps of armor and infantry attacked under and behind the previously mentioned heavy artillery barrage. They met ferocious resistance from German soldiers who had taken shelter in tunnels, trenches, foxholes, or dug-in armored vehicles. Intense fighting over heavily cratered ground hindered the American advance. In fact the Americans barely got across the St. Lo–Périers highway. On the first two days the US advance only went forward five miles.
After the first seven hundred yards, the Fourth Infantry Division encountered German tanks concealed in sunken lanes behind hedgerows. However, the Rhino tanks enabled the Americans to bypass these German positions and continue their advance. The accompanying infantry and engineers then dealt with these German outposts. But on the first day, the Fourth Infantry became bogged down on its way to La Chapelle, advancing only about a mile and a half.12 (See Map 16.)
For Eisenhower and Bradley COBRA's first day seemed something of a bust. They didn’t know how brittle the German defensive forces had become. But Collins had discovered that the Germans no longer formed a continuous belt of defense. Because of their tremendous losses, the German forces now only formed a crust that could be outflanked.13
At that moment Bayerlein's Panzer Lehr lay decimated on the front line. Desperate to stop the American advance Kluge sent a staff officer with the order to hold the St. Lo–Périers line—“not a single man was to leave his position!”14 Bayerlein sent back this bitter message:
Out in front every one is holding out…. Every one. My grenadier and my engineers and my tank crews—they’re all holding their ground. Not a single man is leaving his post. Not one!…They’re lying in their foxholes mute and silent, for they are dead. Dead…. The Panzer Lehr Division is annihilated.15
Collins sensed that the Germans’ communications and command structure had been seriously compromised. He saw the physical evidence from their severed telephone wires and broken radio antennas. Collins also deduced this from the Germans’ lack of coordination and their failure to launch prompt counterattacks.
He then took a big risk by ordering two of his three mobile divisions to attack on the morning of July 26. Collins's decision proved decisive, for except around Marigny, the German opposition began to melt away that day.16
The First Infantry Division and the Third Armored Division broke through on the right. Brigadier General Maurice Rose's Second Armored Division and the Thirtieth Infantry Division then struck on the left, advancing south toward Saint-Gilles. (See Map 16.) Rose had trained them to “marry up” infantry to armor, with eight men of the Thirtieth riding on a Second Armor's Sherman tank or four infantrymen on a light tank. They moved off the roads and maneuvered across the fields where the Rhino tanks spent an average of only two and half minutes cutting through a hedgerow.
By midafternoon the Second Armored Division (nicknamed “Hell on Wheels”) drove through Saint-Gilles heading south. At the end of July 26, it was nearly ten miles behind the former German lines.
This was an astounding day for the American army. As Collins's VII Corps advanced, General Troy Middleton's VIII Corps attacked across the Lessay-Périers road (see Map 16) with his Eighth, Ninetieth, and Eighty-Third Infantry Divisions. They established a bridgehead over the Ay River in order to move south toward Coutances. This was a significant accomplishment. The Allies had at long last broken clear through the German positions. This was no time to stop. All units were ordered forward.
On July 27 the Seventy-Ninth Division captured Lessay and the Eighth moved south, while the Ninetieth occupied Périers. By that evening Coutances had been captured.17
On July 28 the advance accelerated down the coastal road. German counterattacks were rapidly broken up by air attacks. With the sea to their right, the Sixth Armored Division leaped ahead almost thirty miles. If the Germans tried to block the road, an air liaison officer traveling in an advance tank quickly called in a squadron of P-47 Thunderbolts and usually within fifteen minutes, the German position was oblit
erated. This was the key contribution of General Quesada, who is credited with inventing the methodology of “close air support” by integrating tactical air power with infantry, artillery, and armor as part of a total coordinated attack.
Quesada also placed some of his airmen with lead tank columns in the Second and Third Armored Divisions. They communicated directly with each other over VHF radio. As the Thunderbolts screamed into the attack, they fired at point-blank range with machine guns and dropped five-hundred-pound bombs and napalm. The rugged P-47 Thunderbolt fighters had never before done this on a large scale. The P-47s also flew reconnaissance and attacked targets assigned prior to takeoff as well as others that developed during a battle and were approved by a central ground command center. The P-47s provided an invaluable constant air umbrella over the armored advance.
During the first six days of COBRA, in only the VII Corps operations zone, the IX Tactical Air Force destroyed 362 panzers and assault guns as well as damaging another 216. An additional 1,337 vehicles were destroyed and 280 damaged. The roads were clogged with destroyed and burning German equipment. Quesada's concept of “close air support” was a critical part of the COBRA breakout. It became a key component of Patton's “American-style blitzkrieg” in the breakout across France.18
The Wehrmacht literally began to fall apart. Since the Americans cut all cable and telephone lines, most commanders lost track of their troops’ location. In many areas, German troops did not even realize the Americans already had broken through. With almost no information reaching his headquarters, Kluge had few battle details. But by July 27, one condition became very clear. He told Hitler's headquarters that the Americans were “running wild.”19
The Germans were often shocked to find Americans were now far behind what had previously been the front line. On several occasions, German motorcycle troops discovered too late that they had driven up to American vehicles. What resistance that was left came from small groups of soldiers who were surrounded or fighting to make their escape. General Paul Hausser of the Seventh Army, a formidable SS commander, stated that ten of his divisions had disintegrated. They had become only scattered bands of demoralized men without equipment or leadership. Chaos on the roads meant that ammunition, food, and fuel did not get through, and panzers and vehicles were abandoned. Combat action became so confused that in one episode an American medic found himself sharing a slit trench with a German medic. They both nervously pointed to their Red Cross armbands. Then they frisked each other for weapons before returning to treat the wounded. Another American medic noted that the rapid advance of the Second Armored Division resulted in fewer fatalities from booby traps or land mines. The hasty German retreat left them little time to sow these seeds of death.20
German morale now began to crack. On the night of July 26, a corporal, who had received a German Iron Cross in Gold for extreme bravery on the eastern front, told a senior medical officer at an aid station that “this is no longer a war here in Normandy…. Our Highest Command [Hitler] doesn’t do anything to help us…. Well, for me the war is over.” Another wounded infantryman joined in: “This piece of iron which hit me, should have hit the Fuhrer's head on 20 July, and the war would be over already!”21
By July 30 the spearhead of the VIII Corps, the Fourth Armored Division, had reached Avranches. (See Map 16.) Finding the two bridges over the Sée River undamaged, they entered the city without encountering any German resistance. The tanks then raced four miles farther south to the key crossroad town of Pontaubault and captured it unopposed. Here the road network led south, east, and west. The prized gateway for the Allied advance into Brittany and the pursuit of a shattered Wehrmacht lay open before them.
That day Kluge spoke to Speidel, the chief of staff for Army Group B. Speidel told Kluge his left flank had ceased to exist. Other officers put it much more bluntly. It was a Weltuntergangsstimmung—the collapse of their whole world.
Later that day a stunned Kluge told General Gunther Blumentritt, OB West chief of staff, “It's a madhouse here…. Someone has to tell the Fuhrer that if the Americans get through at Avranches they will be out of the woods and they’ll be able to do what they want…. It's a crazy situation.”22
BLUECOAT “DISASTER”
While the Americans’ rapid advance continued, Montgomery still had British and Canadian forces mount small, largely ineffective attacks. However, pressure was building from London to renew the British offensive. Churchill sent a message to Montgomery on July 26, stating he was glad for the Americans’ “good success today. It would be fine if this were matched by a similar British victory.”23
In a second message the next day, Churchill wanted to know about the “serious set-back”—a Canadian offensive to take the Verières Ridge, a strip of high ground on the route from Caen to Falaise, had been unsuccessful resulting in heavy casualties—announced by SHAEF and told Monty, “It certainly seems very important for the British Army to strike hard and win through.”24
Montgomery immediately replied, “I know of no ‘serious set-back’. Enemy has massed great strength in the area south of CAEN to oppose our advance in that quarter.”25 On July 27 he also sent a directive to Bradley, Dempsey, Patton, and Crerar asserting it would be virtually impossible to advance against the German positions southward toward Falaise: “He is so strong there now that any large scale operations by us in that area are definitely unlikely to succeed.”26
Monty would only reverse course when a letter from Brooke arrived on July 28 in which he warned that Eisenhower and Churchill were growing increasingly restive over Montgomery's failure to mount a major offensive. His mentor bluntly told Monty, “I feel personally quite certain that Dempsey must attack at the earliest possible moment on a large scale.”27
When Brooke lit his fuse, Montgomery replied that same day, “It will be on the largest scale and everything will be thrown in…pressed with the utmost vigor and all caution thrown to the winds…. He [Dempsey] must step on the gas.”28 Of course this was all part of Monty's original “plan.”
Montgomery's promised offensive, Operation BLUECOAT, kicked off on July 30. BLUECOAT began near Caumont (west of Caen) with the objectives of seizing the important road junction at Vire and Mont-Pincon, thus securing the highest ground south of the Bourguébus Ridge. (See Map 17.)
Though O’Connor's VIII Corps advanced well on the right flank, Lieutenant General Gerard Bucknall's XXX Corps became bogged down. British infantry-armor cooperation had improved somewhat, but their lighter-armored Churchill and Cromwell tanks melted before the German Tiger Panzers and huge assault guns.
Though the British enjoyed ground superiority of three-to-one and had total control of the air, the initial attack went nowhere. The XXX Corps was driven back to its line of departure. It had been attempting to smash through some of Normandy's heaviest bocage terrain. The performance of the XXX Corps and division commanders was also very weak.
Over the next two days Dempsey sacked Bucknall and two division commanders. Some British officers thought that this should have occurred after the earlier Villers-Bocage fiasco. Alun Chalfont termed the initial BLUECOAT attack a “disaster.” It was not until August that the cautious British offensives slowly began to make headway and finally reached their original D-Day goal of Falaise by mid-August.29
On August 2 Montgomery incredibly alleged in a letter to Sir James Grigg, secretary of war, “The broad basic plan…is now unfolding in the exact way in which it was intended. This is very gratifying.”30
“LET'S TAKE A CHANCE NOW THAT WE HAVE THE BALL”
On the American front, COBRA was shaping up to be Bradley's greatest victory. Once General John Wood's Fourth Armored Division took Coutances on July 27, Bradley decided to recast COBRA from a breakthrough into a breakout. The operation's sudden success forced him to make the decision that he now needed Patton to fully exploit the German collapse.
Patton had been literally chaffing at the bit to get involved with COBRA. Even Eisenhower, who usually
remained detached from field operations, had earlier urged Bradley to make the Third Army operational and use Patton's skills in offense to guarantee a breakthrough. But Bradley remained afraid of Patton. Keeping Patton at arm's length was made even more awkward by the fact that major components of his Third Army—including its entire VIII Corps—were already part of the COBRA offensive.
After the war Bradley admitted,
My own feelings on George were mixed…. I was apprehensive in having George join my command for I feared that too much of my time would probably be spent in curbing his impetuous habits…. But at the same time I knew that with Patton there would be no need for my whipping Third Army to keep it on the move. We had only to keep him pointed in the direction we wanted to go. George soon caused me to repent these uncharitable reservations, for he not only bore me no ill will but he trooped for Twelfth Army Group with unbounded loyalty and eagerness.31
On July 27 Bradley called Brigadier General Hugh Gaffey, Patton's aide, and told him to have his boss contact him immediately. Patton was out inspecting the 101st Evacuation Hospital, a gasoline dump, and several other sites near his headquarters. At 4:45 p.m. he called Bradley. “George,” Bradley announced, “this is it…. You’ll supervise operations in VIII Corps zone as Deputy Army Commander.” To keep the deception of Operation FORTITUDE working Patton would remain the mystery man of OVERLORD “to keep the Germans guessing.” Bradley wanted Patton to remain in the background assisting General Troy Middleton, VIII Corps designated commander, in speeding up the advance on Avranches. Bradley did offer Patton this inducement: “The quicker Patton got the VIII Corps to the threshold of Brittany, the sooner he would be able to enter battle at the head of his army [Third Army].”32
Patton moved quickly and quietly took over VIII Corps headquarters. He immediately moved Wood's Fourth and Gerow's Sixth Armored Divisions through the infantry to the front of the advance. The Fourth and Sixth now took the lead forward. On the evening of July 28, Wood occupied Coutances. Patton then moved his own headquarters on up to the Coutances-Saint-Lô road. (See Map 16.)
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