Tug of War
Page 28
At Cassino the bombardment of the enemy positions had been prolonged and woefully inaccurate, and the infantry follow-up delayed, so that the German defenders had been able to recover, emerge from their shelters and man their weapons. There were no procedures for coordinating the action of heavy bombers and the ground forces and no special communication network for making them effective, as had been developed between the ground forces and the tactical air forces.
Eaker’s sensible conclusion was that the strategic bomber crews were not trained for close support and in future should be used only in emergencies as they had been at Salerno. The tactical air force, which had performed much better at Cassino, was the proper agent. To reinforce his point he took immediate action to improve liaison between the Fifth Army and the 12th Air Support Command. To strengthen his interdiction programme, which he had started on March 19 under the code-name STRANGLE, he added a tactical objective to the strategic one in the Zuckerman report, on the ground that medium bombers were more accurate than they had been at the end of 1943.
STRANGLE filled in the gap between DICKENS and DIADEM and merged into the interdiction programme for the latter. Exaggerated claims were made for its success at the time, and they were repeated in the US Air Force history, but if it is to be judged by its intention of making it impossible for the Germans to maintain their forces in the Gustav position it failed. Even the lesser claim that it forced the Germans to break off the battle south of Rome for want of supplies is unsubstantiated by the Germans. One motive for the exaggerated claims made for STRANGLE was to show that the air force was a decisive arm. Harris, Arnold, Spaatz, perhaps even Eaker, all believed that OVERLORD would not be necessary if the CBO were pursued to its logical end. The armies would land in Normandy to find that the air battle had been won and the Germans, starved of supplies, incapable of prolonged resistance.
STRANGLE had a third aim: to act as an operation test for a similar programme in Normandy. Its directors could monitor its progress by intelligence intercepts giving the details of damage repair and shifts to road and coastal shipping. Total interdiction seemed possible but Allied Intelligence had grossly overestimated the tonnage per German division consumed at “quiet” rates, and underestimated the amount already dumped close behind the front. Furthermore, the air force intelligence staffs underestimated the extraordinary ability of the Germans to organise emergency lifts and to use the hours of darkness to repair damage. Above all there was the spare capacity in the railway system, to which Zuckerman had drawn attention, and additional capacity in small coastal craft which supplied units within twenty miles of the coast through small harbours and over the beaches. Finally the weather did not improve very much in March and there were gaps of days in the offensive of which the Germans made good use.
The switch to tactical targets in April — to bridge-busting as well as marshalling yards — brought some successes but small targets were extravagant with crews and aircraft. Gordon Saville, the USAAF officer, told a friend in Washington on April 20: “Our waste of effort in trying to hit railroad tracks and bridges from high altitude is simply fantastic.” In his opinion fighter-bombers were the most effective aircraft and their missions could be verified at low altitude. But they were unable to operate at night when medium bombers were not available either. This was a grave defect:
We have neglected, and are neglecting, woefully night units for interdiction in close and direct support. The B-25 is a good airplane for this, but a unit cannot be both day and night.4
The interpreters of air photographs exaggerated the effectiveness of raids to support the optimistic reports of senior officers who favoured tactical over strategic targets.
Using the full range of German documents Eduard Mark has recently written an account of STRANGLE which balances the negative account of it offered here and the overoptimistic, and probably politically inspired expectations of the contemporary airforce leadership. He has discovered that the Germans made up divisional supply trains north of the alpine passes from Austria and unloaded them into road transport north of Rome, sometimes north of Florence and even north of the northern Apennine passes. The bombing of marshalling yards was, therefore, inappropriate except as a means of denying their use. Despite the titanic effort of the quarter-masters, the Germans did not restore significantly the level of ammunition holdings in the forward area after they had been run down in the February and early March battles. They remained at dangerously low levels through April and into the DIADEM battles in May. The Fourteenth Army attack against the 6th Corps at Anzio was not resumed in March because of ammunition shortage and von Senger’s advice that his corps should be withdrawn from the Gustav position was offered because of the ammunition situation. It is evident that, while Allied soldiers may not have appreciated it, German shelling and mortaring might have been considerably worse but for STRANGLE. Unfortunately, there was a simultaneous dearth of ammunition in AAI, although not on the German scale, and it prompted Alexander to fly to the UK in April to obtain sufficient for DIADEM. Had there been a sufficiency German morale might have suffered more than it did from the Allies’ gun superiority before DIADEM.
But when all this has been said, evidence has not been produced that German ground troops were handicapped in holding ground in DIADEM by shortage of ammunition. No doubt in retreat they were able to fall back on ammunition depots and avoid transporting it forward in daylight over roads watched by cab-ranks of fighter-bombers.
Not that STRANGLE was a wasted effort for German material was destroyed, fuel supplies and labour were expended. But the effort would have been better directed, in January and February at least, to stopping the movement of men rather than supplies, particularly the movement of units between the Gustav position and Anzio, the Plain of Lombardy and Anzio, and the Mediterranean fronts. These movements were slow and painful because of winter conditions but they were not prevented or made appreciably slower by air attack. As Zuckerman pointed out, interdiction was really effective only in close conjunction with ground operations, but there were none between the middle of March and the opening of DIADEM in May.
Slessor and Eaker kept in close touch with Spaatz in England who, with Harris, was trying to prevent his heavy bombers being used for Eisenhower’s pre-OVERLORD interdiction programme in France. Spaatz found it useful to be able to point to STRANGLE as an example of an interdiction programme where tactical aircraft had been effective against bridges, contrary to Zuckerman’s thesis, and to argue that the tactical air forces could provide for Eisenhower’s needs while his strategic bombers were left to get on with their campaign against oil targets. It was a particularly appealing idea since tactical targets were usually further from civilian dwellings and the accuracy of tactical aircraft restricted the damage to houses.
Eaker’s actions to improve the close support of Fifth Army by 12th Tactical Air Command* came to fruition in time for DIADEM, but the seeds were planted in January, when the Cassino battle was just beginning. Then a group of British air liaison officers arrived at Fort Benning, Georgia, to help the US Army conduct its first course on the subject. “We look upon ourselves as ambassadors,” one of them remarked at the pre-course conference. His listeners thought, at first, that he was referring to the presence of British officers at an American school. But when he continued to explain that the British “found that the ground and air forces live in entirely different worlds and that liaison officers had come to regard themselves as ambassadors to a foreign power”, one of those present thought that his words should be recorded. The RAF and the British Army were already separate services, wore different uniforms and had learned to respect each other’s foibles, concerns and aims. Although all the Americans present were supposed to be in the same service, the airmen were still fighting for their independence and the soldiers to retain control. Good air support was the result of diplomacy and the recognition of the different and equal status of the Army Air Force by army officers.
In the British system, it had
not been until the dogmatic separatist “Maori” Coningham had been succeeded by the positive, cooperative Broadhurst that the air support of Eighth Army had come of age. Clark and Saville, too, had to take the rough edges off the operational bible of the Army Air Force, FM 100–20, which categorically placed close support third and last in their priorities. The inferior rank of air officers working with the army, lower in the American system than the British, had to be disregarded and the arrangement between Clark and Saville, for instance, to become “less a system than certain practical arrangements which gave expression to a mutual understanding and close working relationship between the commands”. The army had to say clearly what they wanted to achieve and the airmen had to decide how to do it. Aircraft had to be allocated for the use of army formations, even if they were not actually under command. It all amounted to a pragmatism that seemed un-American. But as in so many similar problems, once the Americans saw the need, they overcame the obstacles. Eaker wrote in April:
There must be a thorough understanding on the part of the ground forces supported by such operations of the powers and limitations of the Air Forces engaged. A plan is now in operation in this theatre for the exchange of personnel between the ground forces which will go a long way towards better education of both the air and ground elements on the other’s problems.
All this was long overdue in the Fifth Army, but it was timely. April marked the beginning of better weather and of the pre-DIADEM planning and training. It was the first spring of the campaign in Italy, a time for new beginnings after the unsatisfactory experiences of the winter. The regrouping by which non-American divisions left the Fifth Army except for the French and the British in the Anzio bridgehead, facilitated air support. Furthermore, once the front started to move, strategic interdiction would give way to tactical interdiction and close support. The P 47 fighter-bomber — the Thunderbolt — carrying a 1,000-pound bomb, eight 50-calibre machine guns and, increasingly, rockets rather than bombs, came into service as the work-horse. The P 51, in its F 6 form, carried a K 22 camera for photography at from 6,000 to 8,000 feet. A P 38 without armament, called the F 5, flew at a minimum ceiling of 18,000 feet to undertake higher-level photographic reconnaissance. TAC also had medium bombers.
The key to success was to integrate observing and reporting agencies down to the lowest levels. In the early days a bomber safety line (BSL) was laid down by the army and was usually at least five and sometimes ten miles in front of the leading troops. At Cassino it had been a 1,000 yards. There were no forward controls to pass target information or to control bombing any closer. Support tended not to be “close” at all. Maturity had come too slowly, but by the great May offensive (DIADEM) a mature system had come into use. Forward controllers were established in the US 2nd and US 6th, and the CEF, both on the ground and airborne in light aircraft. A Close Support Line (CSL) was laid down inside the BSL and the previous embargo about taking on targets within artillery range was abandoned. It was recognised that not only had rockets and bombs a different effect and, often, a more salutary one than shells, but aircraft could see targets that were invisible to artillery observers. Formerly, German troops felt reasonably safe near the front if they were hidden from ground observers. Now they were liable to be shot at in daylight wherever they appeared above ground. Air controllers could summon aircraft from as far away as Naples. The result was that between May 16 and June 1 about 10,000 German vehicles of all descriptions were destroyed on the Fifth Army front. The cry “Achtung! Jabo” was often heard on German radio.
The CSL opened up a whole new area of activity and brought airmen and soldiers to see that they were fighting the same battle. An example was the introduction of “Horsefly”, the appropriately named air force equivalent of the British “Air Observation Post”, used by the artillery. The instigator of Horsefly was an artillery pilot flying a Piper Cub light aircraft (L 5) who landed, short of fuel, at the command post of the 1st Armored Division, fighting with 6th Corps. He had been engaging a horse-drawn battery at extreme range. Seeing Captain William Davidson, the chief air controller, he enquired why the air force had not established an L 5 airborne observer to bombard targets that were out of his range or were better suited to bombs and rockets than shells. Subsequently Brigadier-General Barcus, then commanding the 64th Fighter Wing, discussed the idea with Saville, procured the necessary aircraft, and on June 15 started to use Horsefly. Davidson, with an army observer beside him, inaugurated the scheme and it became standard practice for two pilots to be seconded to it for a month at a time. The aggressiveness of the earlier practitioners led them to operate up to twenty miles inside enemy territory. On several occasions pilots dived on their targets to indicate them to the Jabos which they had called up, no doubt praying that the Jabo pilots were quick in the uptake. One pilot, more eccentric and daring even than usual, fixed a bazooka to his aircraft and successfully joined in the fun when the target was a tank. There were casualties and at least one Silver Star, that awarded to First Lieutenant Ryland Dewey. Light aircraft were soon restricted to the zone between the BSL and the CSL.
Horsefly provided the finishing touch to a system that had seen the emphasis shift from Phase 1 in Tunisia and Sicily, to Phase 2 at Salerno and afterwards, to Phase 3 in the summer of 1944. By then the US practice bore a close resemblance to the British pattern, varying from it in detail and in style, perhaps, but very little in spirit. The USAAF had become wholly absorbed in its task of helping its friends on the ground.
In this way two important steps to ensure effective cooperation between the USAAF and the US Army had been taken between the landing at Salerno and the beginning of the battle for Rome in May 1944. First, the prejudices and suspicions of both sides were broken down. Second, command and control machinery on the same lines as the British had been created, with the added benefit that the two Allied air forces became interchangeable in terms of ground support. The third and equally important step was insistence on training. If they had a weakness, Arnold and Marshall (like Churchill) had a tendency to calculate battle-effectiveness by the numbers of guns, tanks, aircraft and men available. They seemed to have found it difficult to understand why not much more was achieved in 1943 when resources were lavish, than in 1942 when they were merely adequate. It was a question of training, not simply in skills, but in battle-wisdom. When Eaker was commanding the Eighth Air Force his correspondence with Arnold was filled with appeals not only for more aircrews but time to train them. In peace he had had all the time in the world to train but few aircraft: now in the midst of war he had all that American industry and ingenuity could supply and no time to train. He tried to impress on Arnold and Marshall, who found it somehow difficult to understand, the vast difference between aircrew fresh from training units and after the experience of several operations. He had to resist the importunate higher commanders who pressed him to throw all his resources into the fray at once, for the veterans had to teach the newcomers things that could only be learnt in combat. This principle was not limited to aircrew training. It also applied to the whole machinery combining the efforts of the Fifth Army and 12th Tactical Air Force; the special pilots, special air liaison staffs, the ground forces themselves (who had to learn what the air force could and could not do in battle) and the senior commanders of both services. Its successful application was important in the continuing struggle in Italy and, indeed, in OVERLORD.
* Lord Zuckerman, as he became, is a man of wide knowledge and formidable powers of analysis. The military were somewhat puzzled by his appointment at first, for he had so far distinguished himself as a zoologist and anatomist, with an excursion into a different field in the shape of his book The Social Life of Monkeys and Apes. He was scientific adviser at AEAF, MAAF and SHAEF in 1939–46.
* The new name of 12th Air Support Command.
VI
At Last A Plan
15
A MAN OF RUTHLESS LOGIC
The ability to evaluate the situation objectively has alwa
ys been a sign of true leadership.
General F. von Senger und Etterlin
Alan Brooke, the British chief of the Imperial General Staff, kept a watchful eye on every Allied operation from his desk in Whitehall. He sensed a lack of grip in Alexander’s direction of the armies in Italy and suspected the competence of his command apparatus. This was no sudden perception. He had been aware of Alexander’s shortcomings much earlier, during the concluding phases of the war in Tunisia and the battle in Sicily, but the responsibility then had been Eisenhower’s and Brooke had not thought it proper to interfere. After Eisenhower left and was replaced by a British officer Brooke felt more directly responsible and decided to act. He could do nothing about Alexander’s personality, but he could do something about his command arrangements. In the spring of 1943 Montgomery had written frequently to Brooke (the only mentor he acknowledged) urging that Alexander be given a first-rate staff and, what was essential, a chief of staff able to provide him with sound strategic advice who could also reorganise and invigorate his HQ. This, with its atmosphere, something between a London gentleman’s club and the senior common room at an ancient university, may have faithfully represented Alexander’s calmness, lack of urgency and distaste for vulgarly or ostentatiously imposing his will on operations, but it was not a powerhouse for energising armies.1 In January Alexander’s field HQ was at Taranto, he depended on an advanced HQ of AFHQ in Algiers for logistics, and he proposed to control the SHINGLE and Garigliano operations from a tactical HQ in railway carriages near Naples. Montgomery had once offered to send Alexander an experienced officer from the Eighth Army. It so happened that there was just such a one in England, lately recovered from his wounds, who had proved in the desert to be a brilliant staff officer and a commander in the field. Brooke wasted no time. On New Year’s Day 1944 Lieutenant-General A. F. Harding flew to Algiers to take up the appointment of Chief of Staff HQ 15th Army Group.*