Commanders justified such bombing in terms of saving lives in the long term, denying the enemy, and the price of war, and once one town had been flattened it was just a little bit easier on the conscience to flatten another. Even so, for the most part it was recognized that such action should be avoided if possible. On the other hand, the destruction of Périers showed that a comparatively small number of medium bombers, used to support ground operations, could bomb clinically and accurately, causing a considerable amount of destruction without the need to call on the strategic air forces, who were busy bombing factories and oil installations.
None the less, the following day, 14 June, Air Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory had flown over alone to France to confer with Montgomery and had then annoyed his peers and subordinates by agreeing to use heavy bombers to directly assist the ground forces, something he announced as a fait accompli at the next commanders’ conference. The Mediterranean veterans had begun muttering ‘Cassino’ – the town 60 miles south of Rome where, earlier in the year, strategic air forces had flattened the Benedictine monastery and then pulverized the town with no benefit at all to the troops they were supposed to be helping; the Germans had simply occupied the rubble, which had blocked the path of Allied armour. A cultural and architectural jewel had also been unnecessarily destroyed, and it had been widely considered a prime example of how not to use strategic air power. In fact, Cassino had taught Allied commanders that it was best to use strategic forces sparingly in direct support of ground operations. There were times when big four-engine heavies bombing from generally greater heights could help, but they were less accurate, not used to operating in tandem with ground troops, and experience showed it was all too easy for instructions to get lost in translation as they were passed down the line and for friendly troops to get hit in the process. Concern about hitting troops and ships on D-Day, for example, had caused the heavy bombers to over-fly and so their efforts had been largely wasted. Tedder, Spaatz and Harris were not keen on seeing heavies used in the way Leigh-Mallory proposed, while Coningham and Brereton were annoyed that such conversations had been going on without their consultation. Humiliatingly for Leigh-Mallory, the plan was firmly and swiftly cancelled by Eisenhower and Tedder.
For the most part, Anglo-American rivalries at command level have been over-egged by historians. On the whole, the senior commanders cooperated well with one another and in comparison with the German senior command, at any rate, the Allies were a marriage made in heaven. It has to be remembered, as well, that these men had gargantuan amounts of responsibility and it was only natural that, if they believed strongly about something, they should argue their corner. It was also the case that some people simply didn’t get on, but usually this had little to do with national differences; rather it was a combination of personality clash and looking at a situation from different perspectives and requirements.
For all the immense dominance of Allied air power, tensions were rising with regard to its use and the different outlooks of those commanding the air forces and those in charge of the land battle below. One of the problems was Leigh-Mallory, who was not part of the Mediterranean gang of air commanders who had built up mutual respect, trust, friendships and had helped develop new tactics and operational systems together. Already something of an outsider, his lack of charm and prickliness only exacerbated the situation. No one, it seemed, wanted him as C-in-C of the AEAF; frankly, no one wanted the AEAF at all. Coningham, Brereton, Tedder and Spaatz would all far rather have established an overseeing air command within SHAEF, although in many ways Tedder had already created this in his role as Deputy Supreme Commander. Leigh-Mallory, however, simply dug in his heels. There was also a growing feeling that he was in far over his head. Nor had his hysteria over the use of airborne troops just prior to D-Day done much to help his standing.
Then there was Montgomery, whom none of the senior Allied commanders much liked either. He was a past master at rubbing people up the wrong way; the Americans resented being lectured by him while his fellow Brits had been brought up to show a little more modesty and self-effacement. Both parties disliked the air of superiority and condescension he tended to show towards them. Tedder and Coningham had spent long months with Montgomery in North Africa and after the victory at Alamein in early November 1942 had found him increasingly insufferable; nothing they had seen of him in the build-up to OVERLORD had made them change their minds. A big part of the pre-invasion plan had been to capture not only Caen swiftly but also the high, open ground to the south and south-east of the city, which would be ideal for massing airfields. Monty had been absolutely right to present such a confident and positive picture before the invasion, and his estimation that the Germans would withdraw in stages was entirely reasonable, based as it was on previous experience. After all, what else was there to go on? As everyone on both sides agreed, with the sole exception of Hitler, it made absolutely no military sense to fight on so close to the coast when they remained within range of the guns of the two most powerful navies in the world.
Montgomery, however, singularly refused to admit the pre-invasion plan was going off course and that his predictions had been incorrect. He was quite right in claiming that all plans change the moment battle is joined – it had been ever thus – and he was also right to point out that the British and Canadians were still drawing the mass of the enemy’s mobile divisions. Nor was it his fault that the weather had been so atrocious. ‘Should there be a serious and unexpected break in the weather before D + 14,’ he had warned back in April, ‘this will have a serious effect on the maintenance of both forces.’5 And so it had come to pass. The poor weather had not only set back the build-up but had restricted the amount of direct air support as well, and possibly decisively so during EPSOM; there was historic form of Allied air forces breaking up and destroying German ground attacks, and when the weather had been clear on 29 June, air power had greatly contributed to halting the enemy counter-attacks.
There was also, by 1 July, much for the Allies to celebrate. The invasion had been an enormous success, despite being launched in the most difficult of circumstances. Unquestionably, the Allies had also won the build-up race. Cherbourg and all the Cotentin Peninsula were now in Allied hands, and EPSOM and the fighting around Tilly had not only massively chewed up two of Germany’s finest divisions, it had stopped dead in its tracks any possible coordinated German counter-attack. It might not have won the Allies the decisive breakthrough, but, despite its reduced scale, appalling weather and the very limited air support, it had achieved much. By the end of June, 452,460 Americans and 397,819 British and Canadians had been landed, along with a further 25,000 airborne troops who had jumped into Normandy; that was some 875,000 in all, numbers with which the Germans could not compete. The Allies were going to win; all the anxiety, apprehension and concerns about a failed invasion had been flung to one side.
Despite this, the failure to capture Caen swiftly was upsetting wider Allied plans, something Montgomery refused outwardly to acknowledge. In many ways, by fighting so close to the coast, the Germans were helping him. His lines of supply were shorter and, of course, there were those offshore naval guns, which were assisting him enormously to grind down the German forces. But it was also causing congestion and stifling movement. Before the invasion, he had stressed how important it was that build-up was rapid. ‘It is essential,’ he had said at St Paul’s on 7 April, ‘that the British forces should advance sufficiently far East and South to allow room for the development of the RMA [rear military areas] and administrative installations at as early a date as possible.’6 He had also told his audience that Second Army’s prime objective was that area to the south and south-east of Caen ‘in order to secure airfield sites’; the tactical air forces had been planning on this ever since. Now, though, he was brushing off the failure to capture this ground swiftly as of little consequence. It was driving Coningham, especially, potty.
The trouble was that, despite the impressive number of airfield
s being hastily created in the bridgehead, there weren’t enough. A large number of both American and British wings and groups were still operating from southern England, which meant they were less effective than they might be and less able to respond swiftly to the capricious changes in weather. All the air commanders were frustrated by the V-1 attacks as well. The launch ramps were narrow, very difficult to bomb accurately, and the control centres were deep underground and encased in spectacularly thick concrete. Neither the strategic nor tactical air forces liked hitting these CROSSBOW targets; they understood why they had to try, but it was frustrating sending bombers and fighter-bombers over when they were achieving very little and when it meant they couldn’t be hitting oil installations, or railways or enemy columns. The sooner the ground forces got a move on so that they could have their airfields and the V-1 sites could be rapidly overrun, the better. And their impatience was being compounded by Montgomery’s character.
Another reason for the growing tension was the dispersal of headquarters. In North Africa, Coningham had been instrumental in placing his air HQ right next to the Army Tactical Headquarters, something Montgomery had embraced and which had, for a time, worked very well. Now, however, not only was Coningham still in England, because that’s where most of his air forces were, but Monty’s main HQ was still near Portsmouth and that was where General Freddie de Guingand, his chief of staff, was based. De Guingand made up much of the charm shortfall and did much to smoothe ruffles and iron out misunderstandings caused by Monty’s crass interpersonal skills. But he wasn’t in Normandy and the air and ground HQs were no longer side by side. Issues could not be easily sorted out or explained, and so resentment grew.
On 27 June Churchill had written to Tedder asking to know what airfields were now up and running in Normandy. ‘I had to report in reply,’ noted Tedder, ‘that our progress was well behind schedule.’7 On that morning, there were now thirty-five fighter and fighter-bomber squadrons in France. There were five airfields in the British sector and eight in the American, all of which had been created by Allied engineers. Not one German airfield had yet been captured, while two that had been created had been pulled out of service for being too close to enemy fire, while three of the American air strips were being used by C-47 Dakotas for flying in emergency supplies and so couldn’t be used by fighters. By this time, the Allies had planned to have eighty-one squadrons operating from Normandy, so the shortfall was around 60 per cent. The Allies were now caught in a chicken-and-egg scenario: the lack of air power was hindering the chances of a swift decisive breakthrough, but without such a breakthrough there could be only limited numbers of airfields – and support – from the air forces. Montgomery felt the air forces could do more, but both Coningham and Tedder believed the ground forces were being too slow and ponderous. Neither party in this argument was right; weather and space were hindering air support, while the ground forces could not realistically move any faster than they were – not in this terrain and against the enemy forces arrayed opposite them.
On 25 June, all of 602 Squadron had moved across to France to their new base at Longues-sur-Mer, and while it was true that the Luftwaffe flew barely a hundred sorties on D-Day itself, that had changed as enemy units were brought closer to the front: over 200 fighters were flown in from Germany in the first thirty-six hours and a further 100 by D plus 4. By the end of June there were over 400 over the Western Front, and while that was a hugely inferior number compared with the Allies’, it was enough to ensure that Allied fighters often found themselves tussling in the air with Me109s and Focke-Wulf 190s and facing increasing amounts of flak.
A few days later, on 29 June, the squadron had taken off on their third operation of the day at around 7 p.m., an armed reconnaissance over the battle front. They had swept south-east but, after the fine weather early in the day, suddenly the thick cloud was back and it began to rain. Pierre Clostermann found himself separated from the rest of the squadron, rivulets of rain running across his windshield and back through a tiny gap in the canopy until they began dripping, landing on his legs and creating a widening patch of damp. He dropped down lower, trying to pick out some features and feeling increasingly certain he would hit a high-tension electric cable at any moment. He was also lost. ‘I began to feel the terror of being alone in a hostile world,’ he noted.8 ‘I began to expect a deadly stream of tracer bullets from every hedge, every crossroad, every wood.’
He decided to climb up above the cloud base, emerging at 10,000 feet and watching, slightly mesmerized, the shadow of his Spitfire dancing like a happy porpoise on the clouds, until suddenly he caught sight of ten black spots heading towards him. Moments later they were on top of him – Focke-Wulfs, massively outnumbering his lone Spitfire. His only hope was to dive into the clouds and then use his instruments to throw them off, but this was easier said than done. For one moment he found himself spiralling downwards with a pair of enemy fighters above, another turning in front and a fourth blocking his retreat. Where were the others? He could only see four; frantically, he craned his neck and glanced around, then pulled the stick hard towards him, climbing steeply and narrowly avoiding a stream of tracer, just as a nervous tremor in his left leg made it effectively useless. Crouching low to protect himself with the armour plate behind him, the G-forces made his oxygen mask slip off his nose and he couldn’t get it up again. He was panicking, saliva running down his chin. More tracer and a glance in his mirror told him four 190s were on his tail, the closest just 50 yards behind.
Kicking hard on the rudder, he pulled the stick urgently into himself, then sideways and, although cannon shells hit his plane and a black veil from the G-forces crossed his eyes, the manoeuvre had shaken the enemy off; they passed beneath him as he hurled himself vertically towards the clouds. Somehow, self-preservation had kicked in. But he was still lost when, emerging briefly from the cloud, he spotted a 190 up ahead, probably separated from the others. Closing in behind him, Clostermann opened fire before he was spotted and hit the German with his first burst. ‘He mowed down a row of trees along a road by a level-crossing,’ wrote Clostermann, ‘and crashed into the next field, where he exploded.’9 Staying low, he eventually recognized the Merville viaduct, which they had dive-bombed a few weeks earlier. He let fly at the reconstruction effort then set course for home, landing at B-9 with barely a gallon of fuel remaining.
The P-51 Mustangs of the US 354th Fighter Group were getting used to their new airfield at Cricqueville, although they were flying in a different manner now they were once again part of the Ninth Air Force and no longer escorting the heavies of the Eighth. That meant they rarely operated as a group; on most days the three squadrons would fly separately on a combination of fighter sweeps, beach patrols, dive-bombing and close support for the ground troops. ‘The new set-up served to unify individual squadrons,’ noted Dick Turner, ‘as they ran missions as fighting units independent of other squadron action.10 But we all missed the big aerial battles with the Germans that old group missions yielded.’
They did, however, occasionally engage with enemy aircraft. On 28 June, Turner was leading his squadron on a patrol of the beachhead and was flying off the coast near Bayeux in the direction of Le Havre when up ahead he spotted a number of fighters diving from the cloud base a little way off to the east. Gunning the throttle, he manoeuvred his flight in an ‘S’ turn to the port so that he could approach the aircraft in a quartering head-on direction which would give him a better chance of quickly identifying them. They were still heading in his direction and he now realized it was a lone Me109 being pursued by Spitfires. For a moment, Turner wondered what the German pilot would decide to do, then watched as he turned southwards in the direction of Caen. ‘I wasn’t planning to waste time being polite to our allies,’ wrote Turner.11 ‘As it turned out, I was downright rude.’ Whipping over his Mustang in a steep right turn, he sped towards the Messerschmitt, cutting behind him and ahead of the Spitfires. With the rest of his squadron following his lead, the Spitfires
pulled up and abandoned the chase. Closing in, Turner let off a short burst, clipping the German’s wing. The 109 now pulled into a shallow climbing turn to port, but Turner followed, closing tighter, and just as the enemy reached the edge of the cloud base, Turner pressed down on the gun button again, hitting him from the wing root up to the engine cowling. Trailing smoke and fire, the Messerschmitt disappeared into the cloud.
A moment later, the pilot tumbled downwards and his parachute opened. Turner circled and narrowly missed being hit by the burning wreck of the Messerschmitt, but continued to follow the pilot down. As the parachute neared the ground, Turner saw British troops running towards him and even raising their weapons. Only after he vigorously waggled his wings did they lower them again. Away towards Bayeux, in a wood near a chateau, he also saw the Me109 glide in and crash-land, and, making a mental note of the site, he opened the throttle once more and climbed back up to rejoin the rest of the squadron.
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