The question that autumn was whether there would be enough Mustangs to make a decisive difference quickly enough. By November 1943, the first complete P-51B Mustang fighter group, the 354th, was in England and the following month they began flying their first missions. By January, a second Mustang fighter group had arrived, while a third, the already legendary 4th Fighter Group, was due to switch from Thunderbolts at the end of February. In March and April more had followed.
At the end of November, the height of the autumn crisis, a new directive, ARGUMENT, had been issued. This was an all-out concentrated offensive against the Luftwaffe and the enemy aircraft industry, but it was held back by the poor weather that descended over Britain and Europe like a shroud for much of the winter. For ARGUMENT to have any chance of success, a spell of high pressure was essential, but not until the third week of February 1944 was there any sign of such a break in the weather.
In what became known simply as ‘Big Week’, the Allies repeatedly bombed key Luftwaffe factories and did their best to draw the German fighter force into the air. It was the biggest air battle ever witnessed and, although damage to the German aircraft industry was not as great as had been originally hoped, the real victory of Big Week was the blow to German pilots. Losses of aircraft of all types amounted to a staggering 2,605 for February 1944 alone. Such attrition was totally unsustainable; experienced pilots were being chipped away while the new boys were arriving with decreasing amounts of training and were being slaughtered. Yet more were shot down in March and April. Germany was still churning out thousands of fighter aircraft each month, but the ability of its pilots to fly and fight effectively was diminishing further with every passing week. Like the rest of Nazi Germany, the Luftwaffe was in terminal decline.
Meanwhile, the Eighth Air Force was being protected by an increasingly large cadre of highly experienced pilots like Gabby Gabreski. From Oil City, Pennsylvania, he was the son of Polish immigrants and after the invasion of Poland in September 1939 was determined to join what was then the Air Corps. He soon discovered, however, that he was far from being a natural pilot and very nearly flunked out. Given a reprieve, he scraped through and was posted to Pearl Harbor. He was still there when the Japanese attacked in December 1941, but later managed to get approval to transfer to England and the RAF, where he briefly joined 315 Polish Squadron flying Spitfires. Only once the Eighth began arriving in England in early 1942 did he switch back to the United States Army Air Forces, USAAF, and join the 56th Fighter Group. Since then, incredibly, he had become one of the Eighth’s leading aces, developing into not only a fine fighter pilot but a natural leader too. It was around men such as Gabreski that VIII Fighter Command was rapidly growing in strength, confidence and skill.
With the end of Big Week, however, and the rapid approach of OVERLORD, there had been much discussion about, and even consternation over, exactly how the Eighth Air Force in England and RAF Bomber Command should be used in the weeks and months to come. Both were ‘strategic’ air forces – created, set up and trained to operate independently of any other force. Ever since Eisenhower had been appointed Supreme Allied Commander for OVERLORD in December 1943, however, it had been accepted that by April 1944 the strategic air forces would have to start operating in direct support of OVERLORD. This had prompted deep concerns from the strategic air force commanders, not least General Tooey Spaatz, the C-in-C of US Strategic Air Forces, and Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, the C-in-C of Bomber Command. Both men were deeply committed to strategic bombing and were considerable personalities wielding equally considerable influence. Since taking over Bomber Command in early 1942, Harris had run his force with almost complete autonomy and did not appreciate being told what, where and when to bomb by either his peers or his superiors. Rather, he preferred to listen to the suggestions of others and then make his own judgement on targets based on a series of considerations about which he felt he and his staff were best placed to decide.
Spaatz was second only to General Henry ‘Hap’ Arnold in the USAAF and was, by early 1944, hugely experienced, highly regarded and a deep thinker about air power. He carried about him an easy air of sagacity and authority, and commanded a great deal of respect after being the first senior American airman to visit Britain back in 1940, then taking command of the Eighth Air Force before being given key commands in the Mediterranean during the campaigns in North Africa, Sicily and Italy. He had returned to Britain in January as the most senior US airman in the European theatre, with overall command of the Eighth and the Fifteenth Air Forces.
Harris and Spaatz disagreed about how best to use the strategic air forces in support of OVERLORD. Harris believed his ongoing policy of hammering German cities was the most effective use of his force, while Spaatz thought that focusing on hitting German fuel sources was most likely to bring the German war effort to a standstill and so, in turn, help the invasion. With the so-called ‘Oil Plan’, Spaatz intended to target synthetic-fuel plants as well as Ploesti in Romania, the one real oil well to which the Germans had access. Spaatz reckoned this sustained attack would account for 80 per cent of production and 60 per cent of refining capacity. What was less clear was the time frame within which this might be achieved.
The Deputy Supreme Commander, on the other hand, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, favoured the Transportation Plan, in which railways, marshalling yards and bridges would be hit. A lot of the work outlined in this plan would be left to the tactical air forces, who, with their smaller and faster medium twin-engine bombers and fighter-bombers, could fly in at lower levels and hit smaller targets. Where the heavies came in was in attacking the large marshalling yards in major cities in France and Germany particularly. Harris protested that his bomber force could not be expected to hit targets with the kind of accuracy that would be needed. Even a year earlier this might have been the case, but by the spring of 1944 improved navigational technology and better marking tactics meant that it no longer was. In this, squadrons like 617, which had destroyed the German dams in May 1943, were taking a pioneering lead, using very fast Mosquitoes to drop target-marker flares at low level.
Much has been made of the dispute over how best to use the Allied heavy bomber forces, but in fact the differences of opinion over the priority of targets was secondary to the issues of the chain of command. Really, it was all about control, and more specifically the unwillingness of Harris and, especially, Spaatz to serve under the direct command of Air Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory, a man whom neither liked very much and whom they respected as an air commander even less.
Leigh-Mallory had been one of the first of the key command appointments for OVERLORD the previous summer. Much had changed since then and a number of those singled out early on had been replaced, but Leigh-Mallory, the Commander-in-Chief, Allied Expeditionary Air Force (AEAF), was still very much in place. Younger brother of the famous George Mallory, lost heroically in his attempt to reach the summit of Everest in 1924, he was a career RAF officer, who at the end of the First World War had commanded 8 Squadron, then the first dedicated to army cooperation. In the interwar years he had also commanded the RAF’s School of Army Co-operation.
In 1940, however, Leigh-Mallory was commanding 12 Group of RAF Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain, and then later held the all-important command of 11 Group, in the south-east of England, before being promoted to become C-in-C of Fighter Command itself. While in this role he began lobbying to take command of a unified Allied air force for the forthcoming invasion. In the spring of 1943, Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal, a member of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, believed that the most important air aspect of D-Day and the subsequent establishment of the beachheads would be the maintenance of air superiority overhead. Both the British and Americans accepted that the air C-in-C should therefore be a fighter commander, so there was some logic, especially given his army cooperation background, in giving that role to Leigh-Mallory.
There is little doubt, however, that Leigh-Mallory’s ego,
ambition and ability to ingratiate himself with superiors also played a part in his appointment. As head of Fighter Command, with an HQ on the edge of London, he was a stone’s throw from Downing Street, the Air Ministry and the War Office. What’s more, Portal, who had been based in London ever since becoming chief of the Air Staff in October 1940, had less experience or understanding of how rapidly tactical air power had been developing in North Africa and the Mediterranean. Leigh-Mallory, the commander of the British-based fighter force, was on his doorstep, lobbying hard and saying all the right things.
At the time of his appointment, he had been cooperating with the Americans well enough and providing short-range fighter escorts for the Eighth’s bombers. By early 1944, however, with Spaatz now in place in England as overall commander of US Strategic Air Forces, serious doubts were starting to emerge about Leigh-Mallory’s abilities. He was perceived to be not much of a team player, had a somewhat aggressive temperament, especially to peers and subordinates, and was as stubborn as a mule. Close examination of his wartime career should also have raised some serious concerns. It was he who had introduced the ‘Big Wing’ theory of massing four or five fighter squadrons together towards the end of the Battle of Britain. Although they had some psychological value, they were tactically extremely questionable because it took them longer to form up than for the Luftwaffe to reach London and so the aim of intercepting the enemy before they reached their target was scuppered. He oversaw outrageous claims he knew to be false and repeatedly undermined the authority of Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding, the first CO of Fighter Command, and schemed against Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park, commander of the RAF’s 11 Fighter Group. Both were sacked to Leigh-Mallory’s career advancement. Subsequently, as 11 Group commander and then C-in-C of Fighter Command, he hoarded seventy-five fighter squadrons for ineffective fighter operations over France and north-west Europe. Only very reluctantly did he finally agree to release Spitfires to Malta and North Africa in the spring of 1942, where they swiftly proved decisive; they could quite conceivably have made a significant difference had they been sent in 1941. Even then, he still stubbornly refused to release new Typhoon and Tempest fighters overseas, so there were none operating in Italy, for example.
Nor had he pushed to give Spitfires long-range capabilities, something that could and should have been easily resolved and provided, had he had the inclination and foresight. Instead, masses of Spitfires were flying short-range missions to France and achieving very little as, for the most part, the Luftwaffe quite sensibly refused to play ball. Both Britain and America were blessed with some truly talented and dynamic air commanders, men who had repeatedly proved themselves to be tactically acute, charismatic and wonderful coalition players. Sadly, Leigh-Mallory did not fall into that category.
Over the summer of 1943, Leigh-Mallory had gradually begun to assume the role of Allied Air Commander for OVERLORD and, in August, was the first of the key appointments to be formally approved. It was proving to have been a premature appointment to say the very least. In December, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder had been made Deputy Supreme Allied Commander directly under Eisenhower. This was a smart move and, of course, reflected the vital importance air power was to play in the invasion. Tedder had been Allied Air Forces C-in-C in the Mediterranean, where he had repeatedly proved his skill, vision, operational competence and astuteness. What’s more, he worked effectively with Eisenhower and the two got on well; OVERLORD was not the time to be forging new relationships but rather to be building on those already established. It was also accepted that since Eisenhower was an American, his deputy should be British. No one quibbled over Tedder’s appointment.
There were now two tactical air forces for the invasion and they were, on paper at any rate, now directly under Leigh-Mallory’s control. The first was the USAAF Ninth Air Force under Lieutenant-General Lewis Brereton, who also had experience of command in the Mediterranean. There were question marks about his overall competence, but none over Brigadier-General Elwood ‘Pete’ Quesada, the young, dynamic commander of IX Fighter Command. The second was the RAF’s newly formed Second Tactical Air Force, and it made perfect sense to give this command to Air Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham, a tough and equally charismatic New Zealander nicknamed ‘Mary’, supposedly a derivation of ‘Maori’. It is hard to imagine a more macho figure with a less appropriate name, but Coningham rather liked it; certainly, it was the name by which he was known to most.
Coningham had played a huge part in the Allies’ development of tactical air power. Taking command of the RAF’s Desert Air Force in North Africa the autumn of 1941, he had – with the active support of Tedder, then C-in-C RAF Middle East – spent much time and effort developing concepts of close air support for Eighth Army as they battled back and forth across the desert below, arguing that his forces should support ground operations but should never come under the direct control of the army. He suggested his HQ and the Tactical Headquarters of Eighth Army should be side by side and they should work in the closest of harmony, but while the army could put in specific requests for targets, ultimately such decisions should remain with the air force commanders. In this he had the backing of both Tedder and Churchill.
In partnership with his right-hand man and administrative chief, Air Commodore Tommy Elmhirst, Coningham also honed the operational performance of the Desert Air Force with incredibly effective results. Maintenance was streamlined, while his squadrons were able to move forward or backwards to operate from different airfields with astonishing efficiency and flexibility. Arguably, it was the Desert Air Force that saved Eighth Army from annihilation after the terrible defeat at Gazala and the loss of Tobruk on 21 June 1942. As the battered remnants of Eighth Army streamed back into Egypt and the Alamein Line, the Desert Air Force never let up on their pursuers, Rommel’s Panzerarmee Afrika. Round-the-clock attacks checked the Germans’ progress, not only allowing Eighth Army to escape but buying them time to shore up defences at Alamein.
Techniques were further honed during the ground victories at Alam Halfa and Alamein and as Eighth Army chased Rommel’s forces in turn all the way to Tunisia. There Coningham was made commander of the newly created North African Tactical Air Force, with the American Brigadier-General Larry Kuter as his deputy. Together, and in perfect harmony, Coningham and Kuter began to establish the tactical air doctrine that holds for close air support even to this day. Training pilots and aircrew in low-level and dive-bombing techniques was part of it, but most important was the method of communication between air and ground forces, which, in essence, involved army forward observers operating in a vehicle on the ground alongside an RAF ground controller and radio operators.
In Tunisia, over Sicily and in Italy, tactical air power became an integral part of offensive ground operations, taken forward not only by Coningham, Elmhirst and Kuter but by other enlightened air commanders such as Jimmy Doolittle, Pete Quesada and more. Operationally and tactically, close air support was constantly being honed, principally by improving the speed with which impromptu requests for strikes from ground troops could be passed on to air forces in the skies above.
It therefore made perfect sense that Mary Coningham should take over command of Second Tactical Air Force with his pioneering understanding, experience and his long collaboration with Tedder. ‘Mary Coningham was the logical person,’ said General Pete Quesada, ‘and his was the easiest selection of all the selections that had to be made.’1 General Brereton, too, was well known to Tedder and had enough experience in the Middle East to warrant retaining his position in charge of the Ninth Air Force, especially with Quesada in charge of the Ninth’s fighters, which, with their speed, agility and increased fire-power, were by 1944 a crucial part of the ground-attack support role and of keeping any potential enemy fighters – the primary defensive aircraft – at bay.
While that meant the tactical air forces had firm and strong leadership, there remained a massive question mark over the role and chain of command of the strategic ai
r forces, and precisely what role they would play in support. Matters had come to a head on 25 March at a bombing policy conference in which it was agreed that Tedder would coordinate the operations of the strategic forces, while Leigh-Mallory would coordinate the tactical plan, both under the ‘direction’ of Eisenhower – wording that was eventually ratified by the Combined Chiefs of Staff on 7 April.
Eisenhower had been so fed up with the to-ing and fro-ing and differing arguments about both the role of the strategic bombers and the chain of air command that he had privately threatened to resign if a solution could not be found. That day, 25 March, both issues were finally resolved, albeit subject to final approval from the Chiefs of Staff. Eisenhower came down in favour of the Transportation Plan over Spaatz’s Oil Plan, because it quite clearly offered more immediate help to his invasion forces. Spaatz had admitted that attacking synthetic-fuel plants would require longer to show results, and in any case there was no reason why, within the broader POINTBLANK directive which still demanded the continued hammering of the Luftwaffe, Spaatz could not order his daylight bombing force to attack such targets as well as marshalling yards. In other words, the Oil Plan could, to a certain extent, sit alongside the Transportation Plan. In fact, Spaatz was delighted by the outcome. Lieutenant-General Ira Eaker, C-in-C of the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces, who dined with him after the 25 March conference, reckoned he had never seen his old friend and colleague so jubilant. ‘The strategic British and American Air Forces were not to be put under Leigh-Mallory,’ Eaker reported to Hap Arnold.2 ‘The communication plan had won out over the oil plan, but Tooey was not too displeased about this, since all had firmly agreed that the German Air Force was to be an all-consuming first priority.’
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