Volume Two
EUROPE: TORCH TO POINTBLANK AUGUST 1942 TO DECEMBER 1943
THE ARMY AIR FORCES In World War II
PREPARED UNDER THE EDITORSHIP OF
WESLEY FRANK CRAVEN
Princeton University
JAMES LEA GATE
University of Chicago
New Imprint by the Office' of Air Force History Washington, D.C., 1983
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents. U.S. Government Prlnjtlng Office Washln|?ton» D.C. 20^02 '
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 37
The University of Toronto Press, Toronto 5, Canada
Copyright 1949 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. Published 1949. Second Impression 1956. Composed and printed by The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
Copyright registration renewed 1976
This work, first published by the University of Chicago Press, is reprinted in its entirety by the Office of Air Force History. With the exception of editing, the work is the product of the United States government.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Main entry under title :
The Army Air Forces in World War II.
Vol. 1 originally prepared by the Office of Air Force History; v. 2, by the Air Historical Group; and v. 3-7, by the USAF Historical Division.
Reprint. Originally published : Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1948-1958.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
Contents: v. 1. Plans and early operations, January 1939 to August 1942 — v. 2. Europe, torch to point- blank, August 1942 to December 1943— [etc.]— v. 7. Services around the world.
1. World War, j 939-1 945^Aerial operations, American. 2. United States. Army Air Forces — History— World War, 1939-1945. I. Craven, Wesley Frank, 1905- . II, Cate, James Lea, 1899- III. United States. Air Force. Office of Air Force History. IV. United States. Air Force, Air Historical Group. V. United States. USAF Historical Division. D790.A89 1983 940.54'4973 83-17288 ISBNO-912799-03-X (v. 1)
ii
FOREWORD
to the New Imprint
IN March 1942, President Franklin D, Roosevelt wrote to the Director of the Bureau of the Budget ordering each war agency to prepare "an accurate and objective account" of that agency's war experience. Soon after, the Army Air Forces began hiring professional historians so that its history could, in the words of Brigadier General Laurence Kuter, "be recorded while it is hot and that personnel be selected and an agency set up for a clear historian's job without axe to grind or defense to prepare." An Historical Division was established in Headquarters Army Air Forces under Air Intelligence, in September 1942, and the modern Air Force historical program began.
With the end of the war, Headquarters approved a plan for writing and publishing a seven- volume history. In December 1945, Lieutenant General Ira C. Eaker, Deputy Commander of Army Air Forces, asked the Chancellor of the University of Chicago to "assume the responsibility for the publication" of the history, stressing that it must "meet the highest academic standards." Lieutenant Colonel Wesley Frank Craven of New York University and Major James Lea Gate of the University of Chicago, both of whom had been assigned to the historical program, were selected to be editors of the volumes. Between 1948 and 1958 seven were published. With publication of the last, the editors wrote that the Air Force had "fulfilled in letter and spirit" the promise of access to documents and complete freedom of historical interpre- tation. Like all history, The Army Air Forces in World War II reflects the era when it was conceived, researched, and written. The strategic bombing campaigns received the primary emphasis, not only because of a widely-shared belief in bombardment's con-
tribution to victory, but also because of its importance in establish- ing the United States Air Force as a military service independent of the Army. The huge investment of men and machines and the effectiveness of the combined Anglo-American bomber offensive against Germany had not been subjected to the critical scrutiny they have since received. Nor, given the personalities involved and the immediacy of the events, did the authors question some of the command arrangements. In the tactical area, to give another example, the authors did not doubt the effect of aerial interdiction on both the German withdrawal from Sicily and the allied land- ings at Anzio.
Editors Craven and Gate insisted that the volumes present the war through the eyes of the major commanders, and be based on information available to them as important decisions were made. At the time, secrecy still shrouded the Allied code-breaking effort. While the link between decoded message traffic and combat action occasionally emerges from these pages, the authors lacked the knowledge to portray adequately the intelligence aspects of many operations, such as the interdiction in 1943 of Axis supply lines to Tunisia and the systematic bombardment, beginning in 1944, of the German oil industry.
All historical works a generation old suffer such limitations. New information and altered perspective inevitably change the emphasis of an historical account. Some accounts in these volumes have been superseded by subsequent research and other portions will be superseded in the future. However, these books met the highest of contemporary professional standards of quality and comprehensiveness. They contain information and experience that are of great value to the Air Force today and to the public. Together they are the only comprehensive discussion of Army Air Forces activity in the largest air war this nation has ever waged. Until we summon the resources to take a fresh, comprehensive look at the Army Air Forces' expferience in World War II, these seven volumes will continue to serve us as well for the next quarter century as they have for the last.
RICHARD H. KOHN Chief, Office of Air Force History
iv
FOREWORD ***********
THIS volume is the second of seven planned for The Army Air Forces in World War IL Elsewhere* the editors have taxed the patience of the reader by describing in some detail the under- lying concepts and the general design of this AAF history; here they have thought it sufficient to set the present volume into the context of the whole work. As the subtitle {Europe: TORCH to POINT- BLANK [August 1942 to December 1943]) suggests, Volume II deals with the American air effort against Germany and Italy, a story which will be completed in Volume III. The chronological limits of the present volume, indicated by the operational code names and in the more familiar reckoning of the Christian calendar, were arbitrarily chosen. But they are not without their own logic.
In Volume I, the authors showed that plans and preparations made by the U.S. armed forces before Pearl Harbor for the war which then seemed imminent had been oriented toward Europe; defensive strategy in the Pacific, offensive strategy against Germany, had seemed to offer greatest hope for eventual victory in a global war against Axis powers formally linked in the Tripartite Pact of 27 September 1940. The pro- posed mission of AAF heavy bombers against the two major enemies was suggestive of the general pattern of thought: in the Pacific a few groups of B- 1 7's were to be used in an effort to impede Japanese expan- sion toward the south; in Europe many groups were to swell current RAF efforts to crush German war power by strategic bombing in what was planned as the initial offensive effort of the U.S. forces.
These plans had been sharply warped by the astounding string of Japanese victories which began at Pearl Harbor. Anglo-American strategists had stood firm on their over-all concept of the war, but immediate needs in the Pacific had focused Allied attention on that
* Vol. I, pp. vii-xxii.
V
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
area. For several months the Pacific had enjoyed a higher priority in the intertheater competition for the limited resources available than had previously been contemplated. By summer of 1942 this diversion of men and materiel— especially heavy in naval and air categories— had begun to bring results. The Japanese had been abruptly checked; their defeat at Midway was a turning point in the war, a fact apparently recognized at the time by some of their leaders. In early August the invasion of Guadalcanal by American forces had opened a period of local and limited offensives designed to provide bases from which more substantial efforts could be launched as forces became available.
The unexpectedly heavy demand for AAF resources in the Pacific had been complicated by threats to the Middle East. The British especially were alarmed lest German and Japanese advances allow the Axis to join forces somewhere east of the Red Sea and thus disrupt communications vital to the Empire, and had pressed the Americans to reinforce the RAF in Egypt with AAF units.
Under these conditions it had been impossible to put into effect ear- lier plans for the air offensive against Festung Europa; U.S. operations against Germany were limited to desperate efforts to check the U-boat campaign. The Combined Chiefs of Staff had committed Allied forces to an invasion of the continent from England— in September 1942 or spring 1943— however, and the AAF had begun the build-up of forces in the United Kingdom, while extending such aid as they might to the hard pressed British in Egypt. Plans for the offensive in western Europe had remained fluid in the face of Axis successes on the Russian front and in North Africa until the project was indefinitely postponed (In summer 1942) in favor of a grand invasion of Northwest Africa. It was thus against a background of strategic uncertainty that the AAF flew its first bombardment missions into Europe— against Ploesti from Egypt on 1 2 June, against Rouen from England on 17 August. And so in Europe, as in the Pacific, the summer of 1942 marked a new phase in the war: with those two missions began the AAF's offensive war against Germany, and with them begins this volume.
The organization of the volume reflects in its first four sections the geographical separation between the European and Mediterranean theaters symbolized by those initial missions. Sections I and III deal with the war in the Mediterranean, with the first coming to a natural con- clusion in May 1943 as the Allies rounded up the last PW's in Cap Bon and stood poised for their northward spring toward Sicily. Section III
vi
FOREWORD
ends less decisively with the Allies temporarily stalled in their drive up the Italian peninsula.
Sections II and IV are concerned with the AAF*s campaign of stra- tegic bombardment against occupied Europe and Germany, the break coming, at a time conveniently near the Axis surrender in Tunisia, with the adoption of the Combined Bomber Offensive plan. During the earlier of those periods AAF operations from England were tentative in nature as the heavy bomber formations felt out German defenses and were attenuated in weight as the Mediterranean siphoned off much of the air strength previously allocated to the Eighth Air Force in the United Kingdom. Indeed, the fundamental tactical assumptions of the Eighth were brusquely challenged at the Casablanca conference (Jan- uary 1943), and it was months after that crisis had been weathered be- fore the promised build-up of forces had begun which was to make the CBO possible. The story of that build-up and of an ever accelerating air attack on Germany itself comes in Section IV which, like Section III, closes with the anticlimax of a December lull in air activities. By that time the imbalance of AAF deployments which had previously favored the Mediterranean had been wiped out, then reversed, and in the United Kingdom the Eighth Air Force was impatiently awaiting a favorable turn in the weather before launching its most telling blows. Friendly critics seem to have sensed something of the pulp magazine serial technique in the suspense in which the reader was left at the end of Volume I, and the editors must offer apology for again breaking off at so crucial a moment; but they are not above hoping that the reader may share vicariously something of the Eighth's impatience.
The volume follows then, with some hazard to its unity, the parallel stories of two campaigns widely separated in space but intimately con- nected in highest strategy and in their competing demands for re- sources. By the end of 1943 the distance between the active air fronts had been materially lessened and the essential unity of the two theaters— long a favorite maxim with AAF leaders— had become more obvious. The authors have attempted throughout to emphasize the in- terdependence of the two theaters, and in Section V they have brought together in a single chapter significant organizational changes in the MTO and ETO which presaged the grand invasions of 1944 and which coordinated more closely the efforts of heavy bombers based in East Anglia and in eastern Italy.
The threat to unity inherent in the dual organization of the volume is
vii
THE ARMY AIR FORGES IN WORLD WAR II
accentuated by a sharp contrast in the nature of air operations in the two areas. In their campaigns in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy the Allies were possessed of a Strategic Air Force built around AAF heavy bombers. But their use of the term "strategic," and indeed of the bombers, bore little resemblance to current practice in the north. The Northwest African Strategic Air Force, like the Tactical Air Force, was used almost exclusively in support of (or "in cooperation with"— significantly enough, the AAF's ban on the former expression and approval of the latter grew out of experiences in the Mediterranean) ground and naval forces. That support (or cooperation) might be very close indeed as a squadron of fighters hovered protectingly over an armored column or as light bombers struck at a bomb line dangerously near an advancing infantry battalion. Or support (cooperation) might entail far-reaching strikes by medium and heavy bombers at shipping in the Mediterranean or at military installations in Sicily, Sardinia, or Italy. But in either case the function of air power was to aid in the defeat of an enemy's armed forces and in the occupation of his soil, and hence the story of the AAF is tied closely to the story of ground— and naval— operations. The few cases in which the strategic force was utilized in operations of the sort typical with the Eighth Air Force merely emphasize, by their rarity, the truth of this generalization. The happy circumstance that between El Alamein and Salerno army air and ground forces were finally welded into an effective team is in itself a clinching argument against attempting to divorce the narratives of air and of ground warfare. Similarly, it would be difficult (and often im- possible) to distinguish wholly between the activities of the AAF and the RAF in those instances in which their units were amalgamated into a single striking force.
The story of the AAF in the Mediterranean thus takes on a rhythmic pattern imposed by the successive phases of the combined campaigns in the desert, in Northwest Africa, in Sicily, and in Italy. In each case there is a certain sense of movement, of definite accomplishment marked by the enemy's retreat or surrender and by the gaining of a land mass. Each phase has its beginning, middle, and end; and though the separate phases have in the air no such distinct pauses as come on the ground, the air historian still may follow here a narrative form which is as old as Thucydides.
In the ETO, during the period covered in this volume, AAF units were engaged exclusively in strategic bombardment as that term was viii
FOREWORD
convenrionally defined in American doctrine. Their aim was not to aid immediately a ground army; there were no Allied armies on western European soil, and the concept of the bomber offensive as a sort of second front to relieve pressure on the Red Army was an argument after the fact rather than an initiating motive. The true mission of the Eighth Air Force was to weaken Germany by hitting directly at its war potential—industrial, military, and moral— although this required the previous destruction of German air power. The nature of the bom- bardment campaign imposes on the historian a problem of presentation as novel as was that concept of war.
The heavy bomber offensive was an impersonal sort of war and monotonous in its own peculiar way. Day after day, as weather and equipment permitted, B-i 7's and B-24*s went out, dropped their deadly load, and turned homeward. The immediate results of their strikes could be photographed and assessed by intelligence officers in categories reminiscent of high school **grades"— bombing was excellent, good, fair, or poor. But rarely was a single mission or series of missions deci- sive; whatever earlier theory had taught of sudden paralysis of a nation by strategic bombardment, in actual practice the forces available were in 1942-43 inadequate for such Douhet-like tactics. The effects of the bombing were gradual, cumulative, and during the course of the cam- paign rarely measurable with any degree of assurance. Thus there was little visible progress, such as Allied troops could sense as they pushed Rommel's forces back from El Alamein toward Cap Bon, to encourage the Eighth Air Force. Bomber crews went back time and again to hit targets which they had seemingly demolished before. Only near the end of the war when the bottom dropped out of the German defense did the full results of the Combined Bomber Offensive become appar- ent; before that the "phases" of the long-drawn-out campaign seldom achieved the sharp focus they had shown in the early plans. Drama hovered close to each plane which sortied (as the American public was never allowed to forget), but as drama the big show itself was in 1942-43 flat, repetitive, without climax. The bomber crew found its sense of accomplishment in the twenty-fifth mission, which, in theory, would bring rotation and relief, not in an island won, an enemy army's surrender.
Such being the nature of the war, it would not be profitable to chronicle each of the 171 missions staged by the Eighth Air Force in the period here under consideration— certainly not in the detail made
ix
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
possible by the richly informative mission reports which constitute the basic sources for the operational narrative.* A few missions stood out because of the size of the force dispatched (as Ludwigshafen, 30 De- cember 1943), or because of ferocious defense (as Schweinfurt, 14 October) , or because of brilliant bombing (as Marienburg, 9 October) . For a mother who lost a boy in the Eighth's 1 2 1 st mission, that operation was uniquely and tragically important, but for a more detached reader (as for many of the participants) it was pretty much like another. And hence in his effort to give meaning to the operational story the historian must often reduce to statistical summaries the details of many an air battle; figures on sorties and tons dropped and claims registered sup- plant blood and anguish and heroism. This method is not without its weakness, since the deliberate suppression of derring-do from the narra- tive may tend to obliterate the human element which is basic to all combat. But the method has this additional justification, that it seems more appropriate than a dramatic style to the matter-of-fact spirit of the boys who flew the missions and to the studied calculations of those leaders who dispatched them.
The authors have adopted in general the point of view (in the sense of perspective rather than of bias) of the AAF commanders and their staffs. Often their estimates of the enemy situation were wrong and their evaluations of damage inflicted were exaggerated; but it was upon such incomplete intelligence that the war was fought, and the frequent critiques and corrections imposed upon the narrative by the authors are essentially parenthetical This point of view explains in some degree the manner in which enemy sources have been used in this volume.
The fortunes of war have put at the disposal of Allied historians a vast fund of official records of the European Axis powers. According to agreements made by the Combined Chiefs of Staff, the United States kept the ground force files. Great Britain those dealing with the enemy air forces. After the collapse of Italy the Germans gutted the archives of the Italian Air Force so thoroughly that part of the story in the Mediterranean can never be fully documented. But in the swift debacle of May 1945 the Luftwaffe records fell almost intact into Allied hands. Since then the historical section of the British Air Minis- try has been engaged in processing those records for more convenient use, but because they have proceeded in chronological sequence the
* A list of the missions, with a brief summary of the most important data, is provided below on pp. 841-52 for ready reference.
X
FOREWORD
readily available materials deal as yet with the period before Pearl Harbor. Nevertheless the Air Ministry and the RAF have done all within their power to make available to the U.S. Air Historical Group Luftwaffe documents of the later period. Two of the present authors, Mr. Simpson and Mr. Goldberg, went to London to pursue investiga- tions for themselves and for the other historians concerned. For the rest the authors have called on the Air Ministry for copies of needed docu- ments and for spot research on specific problems. From their own expe- riences in the Air Historical Group both authors and editors of this volume realize how such requests intrude upon current duties, and they render thanks here, as they have done before, to Mr. J. C. Nerney and his staff for material help graciously given.
The authors have found most valuable those German reports which deal with enemy policy or which consolidate detailed information from the lower echelons. Practical considerations of time, to be sure, have inclined them to lean most heavily upon Allied sources and the general- ized Axis reports, to the exclusion of diaries or journals of the lesser units of the Luftwaffe, for the operational story; it would require years of research for the authors to sift the German records as thoroughly as they have our own. But the deciding argument against attempting to follow each day's operations in the detailed enemy sources has been that the nature of the air war makes that a process of rapidly diminish- ing returns.
Even by infinite pains it would be impracticable to compile a day- by-day account of air operations by a comparative analysis of U.S. and enemy reports, as one might do for ground armies locked in an extended battle. The air war was continuous but in a real sense transient. On the ground, corps faced corps, division faced division for days, sometimes for weeks. In the air on successive days the aircraft engaged were drawn from different units; in the AAF's bomber offensive the planes were formed into a one-day task force which would never again be duplicated, and on the defensive each day's effort was supplied by such German fighters as were available. It was especially true in the ETO that the air war was between rival air forces, not between mutually opposed groups or squadrons, and this fact tends to depreciate the immediate value of the detailed unit record.
As for the details of the actual air battle, the information, whether from American or German sources, is rarely as exact as the historian could wish. That fault, too, stems from the very nature of aerial combat.
xi
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
A nineteen-year-old boy takes off in a "hot" plane, alone or with a crew, in accordance with a plan to bomb or strafe a specified target at a desired time; he must fly from his base, often at great distance from the target, through weather which frequently makes precise navigation difficult and through opposition from fighters whose passes are incred- ibly swift; he arrives over the target at as nearly the set minute as pos- sible and performs his deadly task under circumstances which rarely permit him to take time out for the sort of entry so familiar in the ship's log. Even without the emotional strain of the battle, the boy would find it impossible on his return to give to his interrogating officer an accurate and detailed report of his own experiences, and the story of a large mission must be compounded of hundreds of such imperfect indi- vidual reports. So it is that the historian though literally swamped by the mass of his sources may raise for any mission questions as difficult to solve as if they dealt with the Battle of Hastings or Custer's Last Stand.
A case in point is the simple problem of checking AAF claims of losses inflicted on the enemy air forces. Eighth Air Force leaders, recog- nizing by autumn 1942 that accepted claims of German fighters de- stroyed or damaged by heavy bomber crews were too optimistic, made repeated efi^orts to scale down previous statistics and to correct pro- cedures for reporting. As a check against the validity of the adjusted figures, the records of the General Quartermaster's Department of the German Air Ministry have been consulted for the present volume. These are based upon requisitions for replacement of planes lost or damaged, a type of information far more reliable by its very nature than battle claims, as can be shown by comparable AAF reports. It is true that these records can provide only an approximate figure for com- parison with claims entered by Eighth Air Force crews. The form of the German documents in question is such that it shows for a given day the total number of GAF fighters lost to "enemy action" and of those lost for causes not attributed to "enemy action." It is possible to determine total losses in western Germany but not always to distin- guish sharply between losses which should be credited to the AAF and to the RAF. But the German records seem to constitute a reliable outside maximum for AAF aerial victories, and, utilized for that pur- pose, they have proved invaluable.
Unfortunately those records became available only after the present study was nearing completion. Considerations of time and the present state of the records have forced upon the editors acceptance for the purposes of this volume of an imperfect spot check on a number of key
xii
FOREWORD
air battles. The results of this sampling have been so startling that the editors have been torn between regret at the tardiness of the discovery and relief that it was made before the book went to press. For the sampling has indicated that Eighth Air Force claims were far more exaggerated than even their severest critics had assumed. Indeed, the preliminary results of the investigations raise questions so fundamental to this history— and to evaluation procedures of the AAF itself— as to require closer study of the whole problem than can be made at this time. Rather than delay indefinitely the publication of the present volume, the editors have chosen to go to press with a study frankly written, as they have suggested above, from the point of view of the AAF records but with the disparity between those and enemy records noted. It is the sort of decision which all too often faces the historian working with contemporary materials, when any day may bring forth fresh evidence. The editors hope, however, that a wider use of the per- tinent German documents can be made for the succeeding volume on the air war in Europe and that a closer study of the whole problem of claims can be included in the seventh and last volume of this history. At this writing steps have been taken to work out with the British Air Ministry arrangements to make possible both those objectives.
Fortunately, on the more crucial issue of bomb damage the available record is much more complete and satisfactory. The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey has gathered and made accessible a great deal of infor- mation about the German war economy under air attack. Especially helpful has been the information taken from the Speer ministry papers. While the present authors may not have agreed in every detail with the over-all conclusions of the survey's report, they have not felt it neces- sary to go behind the compilations and specialized studies upon which that report was based.
In the matter of antishipping claims in the Mediterranean the authors have been less fortunate. There was in that area no JANAC* to sit in judgment on claims of ships sunk or damaged, and it has been necessary to check as often as possible the AAF and RAF mission reports against enemy records. This method was not wholly satisfactory, since the enemy was not always sure of the agent which sank this or that ship. But the general pattern is clear enough to suggest a possible revision of the dismal appraisal in Volume I of the capabilities of land-based bombers against shipping. Various explanations have suggested them- selves—AAF rather than Navy operational control, better crews, better
• Joint Army-Navy Assessment Commission.
xiii
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
weather, shorter missions, etc.— but for whatever reason, the B-24 and B-17, the B-25 and B-26, were more effective against ships in the Medi- terranean than they had proved in the early months of the Pacific war.
These preliminary explanations having been given, there remains only the pleasant task of introducing those who have made this book. All four authors, in their several military grades, were connected dur- ing the war with the AAF historical program. Thomas J. Mayock carried the responsibility in the Historical Office, AAF Headquarters, for covering air operations in the North African theater. Arthur B. Ferguson, a member of the same staff, divided his attention between antisubmarine and Eighth Air Force operations. Albert F. Simpson served in Italy as historical officer of the AAF Service Command, MTO. Alfred Goldberg gained his knowledge of air logistics in the ETO as a historical officer first with the VIII Air Force Service Com- mand and later with the United States Strategic Air Forces.
Once again the editors are happy to record their heavy indebtedness to Col. Wilfred J. Paul and Dr. Albert F. Simpson, military and civilian chiefs, respectively, of the Air Historical Group. All members of their staff have contributed loyally to the production of this volume and special acknowledgment is due to: Mrs. Wilhelmine Burch and Mr. P. Alan Bliss for invaluable editorial service; Miss Fanita Lanier, who did the maps and the jacket; Mrs. Juanita S. Riner for her cheerful aid in the preparation of the manuscript; Miss Juliette Abington for help in selecting the illustrations and in compiling the appendix; and, for a variety of helpful acts, to Lt. Col. Garth C. Cobb, Lt. Col. Arthur J. Larsen, Capt. John W. Miller, Capt. William A. Bennett, Dr. Chaun- cey E. Sanders, Miss Marguerite Kennedy, and Mr. Frank C. Myers. And again, as with Volume I, editors and authors have found at all times friendly and useful criticism from Dr. Kent Roberts Greenfield and his military chief, Maj. Gen, Harry J, Malony, of the Historical Division, Department of the Army. Professors Richard A. Newhall of Williams College, Joseph R. Strayer of Princeton University, and John A. Krout of Columbia University, as members of the Air Force Advisory His- torical Committee, have offered welcome advice.
Wesley Frank Craven James Lea Cate
Washington
29 December 1948
xiv
CONTENTS
I. THE NORTH AFRICAN CAMPAIGNS Thomas J. Mayock Air Intelligence Division
1. Crisis IN THE Middle East 3
2. TORCH AND THE Twelfth Air Force 41
3. The Landings AND THE Race FOR Tunis 67
4. The Winter Campaign 105
5. Defeat AND Reorganization 132
6. Climax in Tunisia 166
II. ORIGINS OF THE COMBINED BOMBER OFFENSIVE
Arthur B. Ferguson Duke University
7. The Daylight Bombing Experiment 209
8. The War AGAINST the Sub Pens 242
9. The Casablanca Directive 274
10. Over Germany 308
11. The CBO Plan 348
12. The Antisubmarine Command 377
III. SICILY AND SOUTHERN ITALY
Albert F. Simpson Air Historical Group
13. Pantelleria 415
14. Conquest of Sicily 446
XV
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
15. Invasion OF Italy 488
16. The Fifteenth Air Force 546
17. Operations TO THE End OF THE Year 575
IV. TOWARD OVERLORD
Alfred Goldberg, Air Historical Group Arthur B. Ferguson, Duke University
1 8. Air Logistics in the ETO 599
Alfred Goldberg
19. Build-up 631
Alfred Goldberg
20. POINTBLANK 665
Arthur B. Ferguson
21. The Autumn Crisis 707
Arthur B. Ferguson
V. FINAL REORGANIZATION
Alfred Goldberg, Air Historical Group Albert F. Simpson, Air Historical Group
22. Final Reorganization 733
Notes 759
Appendix 839
Glossary 855
Index 865
xvi
LIST OF MAPS AND CHARTS ***********
Beginnings of AAF Operations Frontispiece
The Delta and Related Areas 12
The torch Area 44
Casablanca and Oran Areas 69
Eastern Algeria and Tunisia 80
El Alamein to El Agheila 93
Bengasi to Gabes loi
Southern Tunisia 133
Northern Tunisia 197
Eighth Air Force Targets, August i 942-JuNE 1 943 215
Bomber Combat Formations, Summer 1943 332
Principal Units of Northwest African Air Forces, i June
1943 417
Pantelleria 420
Principal NAAF Targets, 15 JuNE-9 July 1943 436
Final Allied Plan for Invasion of Sicily 443
Airborne Operations, HUSKY 448
Principal NAAF Targets in Sicily during HUSKY, 10
JuLY~i7 August 1943 457
Advance of Seventh and Eighth Armies, 10 July-i 7 August
1943 461
Principal NAAF Targets outside Sicily, 10 July- 17 August
1943 467
xvii
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
Ploesti Attack, i August 1943 480
Plans for post-HUSKY Invasions 490
Northwest African Air Forces, 15 August 1943 . . . 497
Southern Italy, Principal Rail Lines 505
Southern Italy, Principal Roads and Airfields .... 508
Invasion of Italy 513
Principal NAAF Targets, i 8 August-8 September 1943 515
Salerno-Paestum Area, 12 September 1943 522
Airborne Operations, AVALANCHE, September 1943 532
Advance of Allied Armies in Italy, 3 SEP'rEMBER-6 October
1943 540
Advance of Fifth Army, 7 OcTOBER-15 November 1943 549
Central Italy, Principal Roads and Airfields 553
Central Italy, Principal Rail Lines 556
Twelfth and Fifteenth Air Forces, i November 1943 , 569
Eighth Air Force Installations, June 1944 647
USSTAF Air Service Installations, June 1944 .... 650
Eighth Air Force Targets, June-December 1943 667
Mission TO ScHWEiNFURT, 14 October 1943 7Q0
VIII Air Force Service Command, December 1943 745
Mediterranean Allied Air Forces, 9 January 1944 . 751
U.S. Strategic Air Forces in Europe, May 1944 . 753
Twelfth and Fifteenth Air Forces, i 5 December 1943 839
Units of Mediterranean Allied Air Forces, i January 1944 840
Eighth Air Force Heavy Bomber Missions, 17 August 1942—
31 December 1943 841-52
xviii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ***********
FACING
Desert Air War 94
Housekeeping Squadron Headquarters
Sandstorm 94
Airfield Construction in Africa 120
Breaking Ground Three Days Later
Mediums IN Africa 120
B-25 Mitchells B-26 Marauders
The Rugged B- i 7 120
This One Got Back
Part of the Crew Bailed Out
USS Ranger Delivers P-40's to AAF in Africa ... 120
Heavy Bombers Hit Ammo Ship, Palermo, 22 March 1943 . 184
The End of the Trieste , i o April i 943 1 84
24 B-17's at 18,750 Feet Bomb Cruiser Anchored in Anti- sub Net Bombs Hit Cruiser Cruiser Sinks
Next Day Photo Reconnaissance Shows Cruiser Sunk, Giv- ing Off Air Bubbles and Oil Slicks
Heavy Bombers Hit Ammo Ship off Bizerte, 6 April 1943 . 184
xix
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
FACING
Sequel TO FL/iX; B- 25 's Attack Axis Transports 192
B-17 Antishipping Strike off Bizerte 192
Two Ships Sighted One Ship Sunk
German Sub Pen, Lorient 248
Eighth Air Force Attack on Lorient, 17 May 1943 . . 248
Battle Casualties, Eighth Air Force 248
Interrogation, 381ST Group, Summer 1943 248
B-17 Combat Formation 344
B-17 Combat Formation 344
B-17 Combat Formation 344
B-17 Contrails 344
Pantelleria 424
Air Attack on the Island Wreckage on Marghana Airfield
Airborne Operations in HUSKY 424
Sicily Bound
Wrecked CG-4A Glider
First AAF Attack on Rome, i 9 July i 943 456
B-17 Interior 45 <5
Tactical Operations 462
Attacking Motor Transport Bridge-busting
POSTHOLING ^62
Ploesti, I August 1943: The Astra Romana Refinery . . 482
Mud in Sunny Italy 482
Fog and Mud in England 616
XX
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING
Eighth Air Force Bomb Dumps 6i6
B-17 Milk Run 616
Eighth Air Force IN Rural England 616
Hangar Queen 648
P-47 Drive-away from an English Port 648
Maintenance 648
Second Echelon Third Echelon Fourth Echelon
Marienburg Mission, 9 October 1943 696
Strike Photo Recon Photo
xxi
United States Air Force Historical Advisory Committee
(As of May 1, 1983)
Lt. Gen. Charles G. Cleveland, USAF
Commander, Air University, ATC
Mr. DeWitt S. Copp
The National Volunteer Agency
Dr. Warren W. Hassler, Jr. Pennsylvania State University
Dr. Edward L. Homze University of Nebraska
Dr. Alfred F. Hurley
Brig. Gen., USAF, Retired North Texas State University
Maj. Gen. Robert E. Kelley, USAF Superintendent, USAF Academy
Dr. Joan Kennedy Kinnaird Trinity College
Mr. David E. Place,
The General Counsel, USAF
Gen. Bryce Poe II, USAF, Retired
Dr. David A. Shannon (Chairman) University of Virginia
xxii
SECTION I ***********
THE NORTH AFRICAN CAMPAIGNS
CHAPTER 1
***********
CRISIS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
FOR all its awesome history as a battleground between civiliza- tions, the Middle East did not strike American strategists as an area in which the European war could be expeditiously won. On the other hand, they recognized it as an area in which the global war could be very speedily lost. So, although large-scale U.S. offen- sives, air or ground, did not figure in the plans for the Middle East (the offensive function against the European Axis being largely reserved for the more convenient United Kingdom base), aid for its British defenders was never stinted.^ In fact, it was the large degree of logistical support afforded the Royal Air Force in the Middle East that finally, in the spring of 1942, brought the decision to commit an American air force there. The difficulties which shortly thereafter beset the British Eighth Army only advanced the date for that air force's appearance.
The story of the logistical support begins properly before the U.S. entry into the war, with the passage of the Lend-Lease Act in March of 1 94 1.* When in April the British cleared the Italians from the last of their Red Sea ports, the President promptly, on the i ith, proclaimed the area open to American shipping. Already a trickle of Tomahawks (early model P-4o*s) had begun to reach the Middle East, brought by ship to Takoradi on the Gold Coast for erection and flown across central Africa to Khartoum over a primitive air route pioneered by the British in the thirties. In March the Air Corps had dispatched a few officers and enlisted men to aid in the operation and maintenance of
• For a discussion of policies shaping prc-Pearl Harbor aid to the British and U.S.S.R., see Volume I of this series, pages 126-35.
3
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
these planes. Besides aiding the RAF in technical matters, these men supplied Washington with firsthand information on the desert air war. In this endeavor, their efforts were supplemented by manu- facturers' representatives who reported on the performance of the various American aircraft already in use by the British.^
The enormous Axis successes in the Mediterranean area during the spring of 1941 made it abundantly clear that the flow of American personnel and supplies to the Middle East would continue and grow. Moreover, the larger role now assumed by air power had swelled by so much the demand for American aircraft. The Germans had rapidly engulfed Yugoslavia and Greece; and in May the German Air Force put on an air show over Crete, in the process badly battering the British fleet. From Sicily the newly arrived GAF dive bombers were perform- ing so earnestly against British naval power that it became an open question as to whether the German Fliegerkorps or Adm. Sir Andrew Browne Cunningham's tars ruled the waters. Since the defense of Egypt, and of the whole eastern Mediterranean, had been predicated in the first instance on sea power (a conception previously validated by the fine handling of the British fleet), the premises upon which the British had waged war in the Mediterranean area were now subject to modification.^
The RAF's severe losses in the Greek campaign had been partially made up by June, when the German invasion of the U.S.S.R. took the heat off the Middle East; but the British still viewed their aircraft situa- tion with misgivings. Rommers desert army kept the threat to Egypt very much alive; and the British feared that the Axis, operating over its short Mediterranean supply lines, might soon be able to concen- trate forces for a blow at Suez. In contrast, the defenders labored under the disadvantage of the long Cape haul; their one direct air route, Gibraltar-Malta-Egypt, was not practicable for short-range fighters, and its bomber and transport traffic was increasingly threatened by the active GAF in Sicily. The Takoradi-Khartoum air route assumed new importance.*
In Washington, late in June 1941, the British began discussions with the Air Corps and lend-lease authorities. They proposed that their central African airway be hooked up with American aircraft factories by a ferry route running from Florida through the Antilles to the hump of Brazil at Natal, thence across the narrows of the South Atlantic to Bathurst in Gambia, to Freetown in Sierra Leone, or to
4
CRISIS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Monrovia in Liberia. There were difficulties: the limited facilities of the Takoradi-Khartoum leg had been responsible for a good many- plane crashes; neutral Brazil's permission had to be obtained for flights across her territory; of the available American flyers, few were qualified to undertake transoceanic operations. But some obstacles were rapidly surmounted. With Brazil's assent, Pan-American Airways, which had already undertaken to deliver twenty transports to the British for service on the trans- African run, created three subsidiaries to carry on a ferrying and air transport service. Funds came mostly from lend- lease. The contracts were signed on 1 2 August. However, largely be- cause of the shortage of trained pilots, only a few transports had been delivered by October. Late in that month, on the 29th, the President authorized the Air Corps Ferrying Command to deliver aircraft to the Middle East; and after Pearl Harbor it was decided to use Ascension Island as a steppingstone to bring Africa within the range of the light bombers badly needed by the RAF, Middle East.*^
While Pan- Am was surveying its new responsibilities, Americans had become involved at the farther end of the route, extending aid to the RAF, which was engaged in echeloning to the rear some of its repair and supply depots after its Delta installations had been severely dam- aged by GAF bombings in July and August. Halfway down the Red Sea, Port Sudan had been selected for the erection of deck-loaded Bostons and Havocs'^ and crated P-40's, thence to be flown to dispersed storage units near Wadi Haifa and Cairo. The British had decided to fly no more P-40's over the central African route because of the frequency of crashes. Early in September, American technicians and factory representatives arrived to assist the RAF mechanics at Port Sudan,
The RAF was, not unnaturally, handicapped by its lack of famil- iarity with American aircraft and equipment, even entertaining some prejudice against certain planes on this account. Consequently, factory representatives endeavored to initiate the RAF into the mysteries of American handbooks while U.S. officials undertook to see that the best use be made of lend-lease materiel. Brig. Gen. Ralph Royce, a member of the Harriman mission which visited the Middle East in June of 1941, and Maj. Gen. George Brett, who surveyed the situation in the fall, both advised that greater control over U.S. personnel and installations
• For a fuller discussion, see Vol. 1, 319-28.
t Variant models of the Douglas DB-7, the AAF A-20.
5
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
would enhance their efficiency. These recommendations were ob- served in the establishment of the depot at Gura in Eritrea. Gura, de- signed to overhaul all types of American engines and planes currently in use in the Middle East, grew out of a British request in the summer of 1 94 1. By a contract signed in December, the Douglas Aircraft Com- pany undertook to operate the depot on lend-lease funds. Gura utilized an old Caproni assembly plant and an airfield near Massaua; it was expected to be in operation by April 1942.®
By mid- 1 94 1, the growing numbers and diverse activities of Amer- ican military personnel in the Middle East, and the certainty that more personnel would be sent, called for a new administrative agency. On 27 September, in accordance with an earlier presidential directive, the War Department created the United States Military North African Mission. Brig. Gen. Russell L, Maxwell was charged, in instructions issued on 21 October, with establishing and operating supply, main- tenance, and training facilities for the British or other friendly forces in his area. Over the ensuing months, he would also supervise and control the activities of American companies under contract to the British. Brig. Gen. Elmer E. Adier was appointed chief of the mission's important air section. Adler was to have the additional task of advising, on technical aircraft matters, the United States Military Iranian Mis- sion, which, under Brig. Gen. Raymond A, Wheeler, was preparing to enter Iran to help open a southern supply route to the U.S.S.R.^
In flying out the members of the Maxwell group, the Air Corps Ferrying Command took the initial action for establishment of a regular transport service to Cairo, Adler leaving on the first plane on 14 No- vember.* Maxwell arrived via Pearl Harbor, India, and Iraq on 22 November. Little time passed before the shock of Pearl Harbor, and with the subsequent Italian and German declarations of war, the mis- sion found itself aiding not a potential but an actual ally. With this new status of affairs, there inevitably rose the question of deploying U.S. combat units in the Middle East.®
The Washington air planners had already considered the area. AWPD-i,t proposed in September 1941, envisioned Egypt-based B-29's adding their weight to an ambitious bomber offensive against industrial Germany. But the choice of Egypt did not arise out of any strong conviction of its value as a strategic area. The planners' inf or-
• See Vol. 1, 326-27.
tFor a full discussion of this basic air war plan, see Vol. I, 131-32, 145-50.
6
CRISIS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
mation suggested that the United Kingdom air base might become over- crowded, and Egypt was the only location available for the overflow— for the balance of the force calculated as necessary to weaken fatally the German war potential. The plan had no relation to the war in the Middle East, except that it assumed the possession of the area by friendly powers.
Following Pearl Harbor, when the American and British staffs met in Washington to lay the basic strategies which were to govern the conduct of the war, they designated the Middle East an area of British responsibility and suggested that because of its distance from the seats of enemy power the as yet weak United Nations' forces might there engage the Axis on comparatively favorable terms. But the ARCADIA conference came up with no specific recommendation for the early deployment of U.S. troops in the Middle East: first call for available forces went to previous commitments in the Atlantic and to the emergency born of Japanese successes in the Pacific*
One thing was evident enough: the Middle East had become as important to American communications as it had traditionally been to British imperial communications. The loss of Guam and Wake, in December 1941, had prevented the reinforcement of the Philippines via those islands. The air route employing the island ladder between Hawaii and Australia inaugurated by three B-17's in January 1942 was still in the stage of feverish development. By reversing Columbus* principle it was possible, however, to reach the Indies by flying east. Brett had already flown from Boiling Field, D.C, through the Middle East to Basra at the head of the Persian Gulf. The air route was now extended across Iran and India for delivery of supplies and planes to Java and Burma.
A good part of the Middle East's efforts in early 1942 was absorbed in bolstering the defenses of the Far East, breached by the February disasters at Singapore and in Java and by the menacing Japanese move into Burma. Late in February, Wheeler was ordered to India to develop the port of Karachi, The U.S. Tenth Air Force had been established in India by early March under Maj. Gen. Lewis H. Brereton, who im- mediately requested that Adler be assigned to head his air service com- mand, but Adler did not arrive in India until 26 April.® With the closing of the lower portion of the Burma Road in the first week of March, an air route from Burma to China became a necessity, and when it was in-
• For a discussion of the ARCADIA conference, see Vol. I, 237-45.
7
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
augurated in April Pan-Am's trans- African run lent ten The Combined Chiefs had already recognized the de facto interdepend- ence of the China-Burma-India theater and the Middle East.^^ If, so far, the CBI had been mostly favored by this association, it was soon to pay its debts.
Advent of USAMEAF
Meanwhile, the British had been pressing for the dispatch of an American air force to the Middle East, and a number of tentative plans had been drawn in Washington. In response to a January request by Sir Charles Portal, British Chief of Air Staff, Task Force CAIRO was set up, on paper: two groups of pursuit for June 1942 commitment. A little later the AAF opposed augmenting the proposed task force by one heavy bombardment group on the ground that any heavy groups would have to come out of commitments to the United Kingdom, But by mid-March— Portal having made another plea— the problem of air reinforcements for Egypt was being approached from a different angle. It was thought that from the American production allotted them the British might furnish American aircraft types at Cairo; the AAF would furnish personnel. Under this plan the AAF hoped that two medium, one light, and two pursuit groups could be provided at an indefinite future date.^^
The decisive step was taken in conversations which General Arnold and Rear Adm. John H. Towers opened on 26 May with the RAF in London, conversations which resulted in recommendations as to the allocation of aircraft among the several United Nations. Middle East allocations proved a thorny question in these discussions. The AAF was faced with alternatives, neither of which it relished. Either it could acquiesce in the Middle East's swallowing up large quantities of air- craft and stores to maintain an RAF which had built up its force to a considerable extent with American equipment or it could send its own combat units, replacing altogether an equivalent RAF strength and utilizing aircraft previously allotted to the British. With the growing output of the AAF's training establishment, the latter course was finally chosen, in deference to the principle that if powerful U.S. air forces were to be developed every appropriate American aircraft should be manned and fought by a U.S. crew. By 30 May, nine groups had been tentatively agreed upon for the Middle East: one heavy group complete by I October 1942; two medium groups complete by i March 1943;
8
CRISIS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
six pursuit groups, two available in the theater by September 1942, two by December 1942, and two by April 1943.*
Developments since Pearl Harbor had furnished fresh evidence of the importance of air power in the Middle East. In Libya, where the Axis armies were almost totally dependent on sea transportation for their sustenance, secure sea communications were a primary requisite for success. The ably led British Mediterranean Fleet had almost cut off Graziani's supplies at one point in 1940, but of late its surface opera- tions had been greatly circumscribed by the Luftwaffe. However, British submarine and air forces working from Malta and Egypt had been able to redress the balance, so much so that when Rommel began his comeback from El Agheila in January 1942 he started with three days' rations and subsisted mainly on British stores in his drive to the Egyptian frontier. Before supplies could be accumulated for another effort in the desert, the Axis found it necessary to neutralize Malta's air and naval bases and mounted a scale of air attack on the island which cost dearly in Axis aircraft but paid off in cargoes for Rommel, The enemy was also meditating an amphibious assault permanently to re- move the island's threat. As Malta inevitably lost some of its effec- tivisness, Egypt-based planes and submarines were forced to greater efforts,^* Not only was additional air strength badly needed by the British in the spring of 1942 but because of the long flights necessary to interrupt the Axis sea communications, heavy bombers were par- ticularly prized. Brett had thought B-24's especially suitable for the theater; Col. Bonner Fellers, the U.S. military attache at Cairo, be- lieved that the big planes could control the shipping in the Mediter- ranean;^^ that the British appreciated their value can be seen from the repeated attempts they made to persuade the United States to send a heavy group to the Middle East.
As it turned out, the debut of U.S. heavy bombers in the Middle East was prompted by other circumstances: a combination of Japanese success in Burma and the American desire to render all possible aid to the U.S.S.R. The bombers were B-24's of the Halverson Detach- ment, a prize example of a unit pulled hither and yon by the alarms and crises of early i942.t The unit was originally set up under the code name HALPRO and trained in the greatest secrecy for the bomb- ing of Tokyo out of Chinese bases, with the proviso that its employ- ment would depend on the global strategic situation which would • See below, p.14. t See Vol. I, 341-42, 493.
9
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
obtain when the unit was ready for commitment. When that time ar- rived, in mid-May, the deteriorating situation in Burma rendered un- likely the prospect that the B-24's could be logistically supported in China. General Marshall then secured the President's approval to divert the aircraft to Egypt for a surprise raid on the Ploesti oil refineries, an enterprise designed to put a spoke in the wheel of the summer drive the Germans were preparing against the U.S.S.R. Negotiations were set in motion to obtain the use of landing grounds in the Caucasus (the Soviet approval came too late to be of any use) and two AAF officers were rushed to Cairo for liaison between Col. Harry A. Halver- son and headquarters of RAF, Middle East. The detachment was in- structed to proceed to Khartoum and await orders. When the orders came, they directed Halverson to the Delta for the Ploesti mission, and, because of the full-blown emergency which quickly developed in the Middle East, his bombers were fated to remain there.^**
The RAF made available a plan, on which it had been working for two years, which involved flying via the Aegean, rendezvousing near the target at daybreak for a formation attack, and returning to Egypt over the same route. Halverson, however, whose command constituted an independent task force, finally decided to return to Habbaniyeh in Iraq despite the hazard of violating Turkish neutrality. Late in the evening of 1 1 June, then, thirteen B-24D's took off singly from Fayid, an RAF field near the Canal; twelve proceeded individually to the target, which they reached and bombed at dawn through and below an overcast at about 10,000 feet. Only four of the returning aircraft made Habbaniyeh; three others got down at other Iraq fields, and two put in at Aleppo. Four B-24's were interned in Turkey, and the heavy loss— another B-24 had crash-landed— contrasted with the negligible damage sustained by the oil installations. Probably the most favorable aspect of the raid was the impression the big bombers produced on the intensely interested citizens of Ankara.^*^
Despite its modest results, this strike of 1 2 June was as significant in its way as any the AAF had flown in the six months since Pearl Harbor. It was the first American mission in World War II to be leveled against a strategic target, if the Tokyo raid be excepted. It struck at an objective which later would become a favored target for American bombers. It was the first blow at a target system whose dis- location contributed mightily to the final German collapse. It was the first mission by what later came to be known as the Ninth Air Force.
10
CRISIS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
In June 1942 the British in the Middle East underwent another of their recurrent crises, the gravest and the last they were to sustain. If a year before it generally had been considered that only the require- ments of Hitler's drive into the U.S.S.R. had saved Egypt, this time seasoned military observers conceded its possible loss. On 12 and 1 3 June, just after Halverson's planes had carried out the Ploesti mis- sion, the battle which had been raging for two indecisive weeks in Libya took a turn for the worse. Rommel succeeded in luring Maj. Gen. Neil Ritchie's numerically superior Eighth Army into a tank trap in the Knightsbridge area, the ^'Cauldron" of sad memory. In the Cauldron 230 British tanks were destroyed.^^
While their desert army staggered under its appalling tank losses, the British were anxiously watching the progress of one of their periodic provisioning expeditions to Malta. The island had been in receipt of a savage Luftwaffe blitz (an invasion, for which a German parachute division was being prepared, had been scheduled to follow Rommers blow at the Eighth Army). The blitz had all but knocked out the RAF fighter defenses, forced the Royal Navy to abandon Valetta as a base for surface units, and somewhat lessened the worries of Rommel's quartermaster.^^
Passing ships through to Malta was at best a perilous enterprise; and in hopes of forcing a division of enemy efforts the British had decided on a large operation involving two convoys, one from the east and one from the west, to berth at Malta within twenty-four hours of each other. The convoy westward from Egypt faced the grimmer prospect because it was liable to a greater weight of air attack— from Crete, Libya, and Sicily; the danger here had, moreover, increased, since the RAF no longer held fighter airfields on the Cyrenaican hump. The British chiefs of staff were unhappily convinced that the Axis knew all about the projected blockade run and was preparing a warm reception. Thus, when Halverson's long-range bombers made their appearance in the Levant, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, the air officer commanding Middle East, perceiving their value in the event of a sortie by the Italian fleet, requested through British channels their assistance in fighting through the convoy. After some hesitation the War Department approved on 10 June, just before the Ploesti mission.^^
Convoy A passed eastward through Gibraltar on 13 June, took its losses, and came into Malta on the i6th. Convoy B, westward from Egypt, had been in motion three days when, on 15 June, seven of
1 1
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR 11
Halverson's B-24's and two Liberators of 160 Squadron, RAF, were ordered out with torpedo-carrying Beauforts against the Italian fleet, which had now put to sea. Locating the fleet, the Beauforts sank a cruiser, and five of the USAAF planes bombed, claiming hits on a Littorio-clsss battleship and a Trento-chss cruiser. Had their British bombs been heavier (2,000-pounders instead of 500-pounders) the damage might have been crippling; as it was the fleet did not reduce
B£l R UT i • RAYAK
f f'
If
THE DELTA AND RELATED AREAS | ^
ST.J^EAN O'ACRE
HA I ''^I^^MAr OAVID I •MUOEIBILE
TEL AVIV \ • .LYOOA
■A
{ Dead • GAZA :;Sea
UE.AHOR.A'^^flf/V^ ■
sueir**|qeversoir
v( # /' cj, VI f.^'-«KA BRIT
9
ELALAMEIN HELIOP.OLIS^ '^'^ " " v^S HAN DOR ^AQABA
speed. According to the RAF, however, the damage inflicted by the Beauforts and the B-24's kept two battleships in dock for the ensuing three months. Returning to base at minimum altitude, the bomber for- mation encountered and shot down an Me-i 10, achieving the first aerial victory in which Americans had participated in the Middle East. Convoy B, however, was forced to turn back, its ammunition expended fighting off repeated air attacks.^^
Because of the difficulties which HALPRO as an independent task force had posed in combined operations with the British,^^ on 16 June General Maxwell suggested to Washington that Halverson be in- structed to report to him as chief of the North African mission,^^ The War Department, for its part, had been planning for some time to
12
CRISIS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
appoint Maxwell commander of a U.S. Middle Eastern theater with boundaries coterminous with those of the British Middle East Com- mand—a measure calculated to establish unified control over the bulk of the Army activities in the area.^^ In fact, by the i6th, a letter had been prepared relieving Maxwell of his mission command and desig- nating him commanding general of U.S. Army Forces in the Middle East (USAFIME). The cable which went out on the 17 th to advise him of his new status also informed him that the Halverson Detach- ment had been directed to assemble in the vicinity of Cairo and report to him, the news of the attack on the Italian fleet having evidently convinced the War Department that, for the time being at least, the B-24's Avould be most useful in the Middle East.^^ On 19 June, Maxwell formally assumed command of USAFIME. He was given to under- stand, however, that if the parlous situation in the Middle East neces- sitated the sending of an American ground-air task force, its com- mander would also command USAFIME.^®
Maxwell was still pondering his sudden elevation and new respon- sibilities when the British suffered fresh disasters. Gen. Sir Claude Auchinleck had had no intention of allowing any part of his forces to be shut up in Tobruk, but enemy successes on its flank finally isolated the fortress. Nevertheless, ninety-day provisions for a garrison of over 25,000 were stored behind the port's fortifications. With Tobruk constricting Rommers supplies, the Eighth Army could stand in the strong frontier positions at Solium and Half aya Pass, and before ninety days it could expect to be back. Rommel overwhelmed Tobruk on a single day, 20 June, and what had been a limited drive in the desert became an all-out attempt on Suez.^''
On 1 7 June, Churchill had left England for the United States and another of the periodic war conferences. As he afterward admitted to Commons, at the time of his departure neither he nor Sir Alan Brooke, chief of the Imperial General Staff, had been made fully aware of the disaster befallen the Eighth Army at Knightsbridge, Once in Washington and apprised of the danger, Churchill made a powerful plea for American military aid, and especially air aid. His sentiments were seconded by urgent messages from Colonel Fellers warning that only the employment of Axis energies elsewhere had so far saved the Middle East. Should the enemy immediately take the offensive, the only assistance that could be provided in time would be that of the heavy bombers.^®
13
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
The American Joint Chiefs, who were interested in husbanding their resources for decisive air and amphibious actions in western Europe in 1943, were thus presented with a dilemma. To lose the Middle East meant to lose the southern supply routes to the U.S.S.R. and the main air ferry route to India. India itself would be rendered difficult, if not impossible, to defend, and the life line to China would be correspond- ingly endangered. Loss of the oil wells in Iraq and Iran would be a most severe blow, tantamount to cessation of Allied air and naval activity in the Indian Ocean. The economic gain to the Axis, although admittedly substantial, would not be so great as the economic and strategic loss to the Allies. And the key to the Middle East was Egypt: the best hostile avenue to the Persian Gulf, the Allied base most convenient for reinforcing any threatened part of the Middle Eastern area.^®
Despite the vigor of the Prime Minister's demands, the Americans succeeded in the end in restricting their troop commitments to Air Corps units, although for a short time it was planned to send an armored division under Maj. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr., and generous amounts of materiel continued to flow to the Middle East.^^ Especially useful for the desert war were the new Sherman tanks for, as an English ob- server put it, at that date in the war the British had still not pro- duced a tank capable of taking on the Panzers on even approximately equal terms.^^
The Air Corps' commitments were set forth in the Arnold-Portal- Towers agreement, signed on 2 1 June and approved by the U.S. Joint Chiefs on the 25th.* As agreed in London in May, nine combat groups were to go to the Middle East; but the dates for their commitment were advanced, and in contrast with other earlier paper commitments the Combined Chiefs bent every effort to get the units in motion. A group of heavies was to be at full strength in the theater by Oc- tober 1942, one group of mediums operational in the theater by Sep- tember and another by the end of the year. Six groups of pursuits were to be sent on the following schedule: one by i September 1942, one by I October, two by i January 1943, and two more by i April. On 27 June, The Adjutant General gave Maxwell somewhat more detailed information on the tentative build-up of the air force for his theater. Besides the groups listed above, there were "on order" headquarters units for an air force, a fighter command, and an air service command.
* For full detail, see Vol. I, 566-70.
14
CRISIS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
The air service command would comprise two air depot groups, sailing in September 1942 and March 1943, and five service groups, one each moving in July and October 1942, two in December, and the last in March 1943.^" These USAAF units were understood to be in lieu of RAF units which otherwise would have gone to the Middle East.
As always, the chief difficulty in deploying these units consisted in finding shipping for them without deranging other approved military movements, such as the BOLERO concentration of U.S. forces in the United Kingdom which at this time took precedence over the various global commitments. By 25 June some progress had been made: Admiral King had approved the use of the aircraft carrier Ranger to ferry P-40's to Takoradi, whence they could be flown by their pilots over the established route across central Africa and by way of Khartoum to Cairo; the British had agreed to the use of the S.S. Pasteur, a fast 22-knot personnel ship, to bring 4,000 Air Corps troops into Egypt. Since the initial AAF combat groups were to go minus main- tenance units, the Air Ministry had already advised Tedder that British maintenance personnel would have to be provided.^^
For more immediate aid to the hard pressed British, the War Depart- ment turned to India. Fellers had previously recommended that the CBI furnish heavy bombers for the Middle East. In his opinion, if the Middle East went, so went India; the converse, which he alleged to be the British strategic emphasis, he regarded as untrue. The War Depart- ment may have shared his views, or reasoned that the imminent mon- soon season would ground the CBI bombers. At any rate, on 23 June a message went out to Brereton, ordering him to Egypt on temporary duty to assist Auchinleck. Brereton was to take with him such heavy bombers as he could muster. On arrival he was to make use of Maxwell's headquarters for liaison and Coordination with the British; and eventu- ally, when the emergency had passed, he would return to India. General Stilwell was so advised. Brereton interrupted a staff meeting at New Delhi to read the cable ordering him to Egypt. He combed from his by no means redoubtable air force nine B-17's of the 9th Bombard- ment Squadron; ''near cripples,'* they were described. Two days later he left India. Altogether 225 men flew in his party, in bombers and transports, prominent among them Adler and Col. Victor H. Strahm.^*
On 28 June, upon Brereton's arrival at Cairo, Maxwell's headquarters issued orders placing him in command of the U.S. Army Middle East
15
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
Air Force, comprising the Halverson Detachment, the Brereton De- tachment, and the air section of the North African mission. Brereton then activated the USAMEAF in his first general order.^"^ Subordina- tion to Maxwell came as an unexpected shock to Brereton, whose in- structions were merely to use Maxwell's headquarters for liaison and coordination with the British. Brereton's initial reaction to USAFIME was that it was an extra and unnecessary link in the chain of command, likely to cumber relations with the British and, consequently, his combat operations— a link, moreover, presided over by a ground officer junior to him. Whatever initial coolness this situation caused between the generals soon gave way to cordial relations which endured through- out Maxwell's tenure as theater commander, a tenure which from the outset was understood to be temporary.^^ Also activated on 28 June was the Air Service Command, USAMEAF, of which Adler assumed command. Adler's chief immediate duties were to see that requests for supplies and equipment went to appropriate RAF elements, for no service units or Air Corps supply existed in his command.^^
Brereton's initial force was small, but in the former air section of the North African mission he gained the services of a number of men quite familiar with the tactical and logistical problems of the Middle East. The help earlier extended to the British was paying dividends. At Gura was a depot for the repair of American aircraft. Moreover, the North African mission had turned to account its observations of the Mediterranean war by laying plans for the advent of an American air force, a development its members had considered only a matter of time.^®
Furthermore, in its formative days USAMEAF could lean on the RAF, Middle East, a fine fighting force destined to pass on to Brere- ton's command, and eventually to the whole Army Air Forces, lessons it had learned in the stern school of experience. Except for its hopeless struggle in the Greek and Cretan campaigns, the RAF, ME had con- sistently maintained an ascendancy over its Italian and German op- ponents. In June 1942, at the moment when USAAF reinforcements were being rushed to the defense of the Delta, the RAF was carrying out a furious offensive against the Axis columns rolling into Egypt. When the military observers had the leisure to study the campaign, they concluded that the RAF's unprecedented offensive protecting the retreat of the Eighth Army had prevented that retreat from becoming a rout. The army might not have stopped at El Alamein.^®
16
CRISIS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Under Tedder there were a number of principal subcommands. Air Vice Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham, as the commander of the Western Desert Air Force, had the primary responsibility of cooper- ating with Eighth Army headquarters. Air Headquarters, Egypt, de- fended the army's lines of communication, the Canal, and the cities of the Delta, while Air Headquarters, Malta, operated the RAF squadrons in that beleaguered isle. No. 201 Group cooperated with the Royal Navy on such matters as air protection for friendly shipping, recon- naissance of and strikes against Axis shipping, and antisubmarine patrols. No. 205 Group operated what heavy and medium bomber squadrons the RAF possessed. It should be mentioned that there was no unified British command in the Middle East. Tedder as air officer com- manding in chief enjoyed a coequal status with the army and navy com- manders in chief, at that time General Auchinleck and Adm. Sir Henry Harwood.^*^
While Brereton had been stripping India of bombers preparatory to departure for the Middle East, the Halverson Detachment, as the only AAF combat unit in Egypt, was adding what weight it could to the efforts to stop the drive on Suez. As ordered by Washington, it worked under the operational direction of the RAF (No. 205 Group), and it struck at the harbors serving Rommel. Halverson had hoped to go on to China, but the War Department, after consideration of the situation in Burma, ordered him to stay on in the Middle East, once again "temporarily." On the night of 21/22 June, nine of the B-24's raided Bengasi harbor after British Wellingtons had lit the target with flares and incendiaries. Three nights later the mission was repeated; after this raid Bengasi passed out of range of the Wellingtons as the progress of the Axis armies forced the RAF successively closer to the Delta fields. Tobruk was added to the list of the detachment's targets on the 26th when a diversion was flown by the B-24's for an Albacore attack on two merchant vessels.'*^
At the end of June, when USAMEAF was set up, the British were feverishly preparing the defense of the Delta. Auchinleck had sent posthaste to Syria and Lebanon for the British Ninth Army's only effective units. If he could hold until the reinforcements coming from England by the Good Hope route could reach him, he might not only save Egypt but the Eighth Army might eventually once again pass over to the offensive. But it was with no thought of an immediate offen- sive that Auchinleck took over personal command of the Eighth. By
17
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
I July he had dug in at El Alamein on a thirty-two-mile line stretching from the sea to the Qattara Depression, the desert's last good defensive position. By 3 July the heavy units of the British fleet had withdrawn through the Canal to the upper reaches of the Red Sea, and a general civilian and military exodus from Egypt had begun. Brereton and Maxwell were perfecting plans to fall back with their heavy bombers toward the Persian Gulf area, in case the Eighth Army were destroyed.*^
Brereton had already on 30 June sent his B-17's to Lydda in Pales- tine, but the Halverson Detachment stayed on at Fayid until 16 July. Both units operated directly against Rommel's supplies, which were becoming increasingly inadequate owing to the normal difficulties of administration under conditions of mobile warfare and to the consid- erable distance separating Tobruk, the nearest major port, from the battle line at Alamein. Between 26 June and 5 July, nine missions were flown, all but one against Tobruk. The B-17's of the 9th Squadron participated in two attacks, one by night, and the B-24's, sometimes in company with the RAF's Liberator squadron, also operated both by day and by night. All missions were, by later standards, on an extremely small scale, no more than ten American bombers setting out on any single occasion; moreover, available records do not give any detailed estimate of the damage inflicted. Generally speaking, the opposition, either by AA or intercepting fighters, was not very effec- tive. One B-24 failed to return from a mission on the night of 29/30 June, during which an enemy night fighter appeared, but no con- nection was established between these events and the crewmen were simply put down as missing. The only attack not directed against Tobruk was carried out after dark against an enemy convoy and succeeded in firing a tanker.
The immediate threat to Egypt subsided in a series of stubborn battles on the Alamein line in which the initiative gradually passed to the Eighth Army. The Axis units had been pushed to the limit of endurance in their career into Egypt, while the Eighth Army had fallen back on strength. Moreover, the RAF, despite the necessities of successive retreats, continued to best the GAF and the lAF and to harass the weary enemy ground forces. The RAF bag of Stukas was particularly comforting during these operations. Although stalemate had been reached on the Alamein line by the end of the first week in July, not until the end of the month did the opposing armies accept the situation and settle down for rest while awaiting reinforcements.^^ 18
CRISIS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
The Tide Turns For the war in the Western Desert there were what may be called, for convenience, primary and secondary lines of supply. The primary lines were the water routes over which the sinews of war moved to the African ports. The secondary supply lines extended from the ports of entry to the front. In the first category the Axis always had the advantage of the short haul across the Mediterranean. Because the Mediterranean was closed to the Americans and the British, their haul was, on the other hand, of fantastic length— it is 13,000 miles from England to the Suez via the Good Hope route—and, although this supply line was never seriously endangered by air or submarine attack, it imposed an almost intolerable strain on Allied shipping resources. In one particular, however, the Allies had the advantage— their prox- imity to the oil refineries in Iraq. From Bahrein and Abadan came loo-octane gas.
When the battle line was stabilized at El Alamein, the secondary lines of supply began heavily to favor the British; the Suez depots, if anything, were a little too close to the front. Rommel, on the contrary, had overextended himself: he was relying largely on British supplies captured during his advance; his nearest port of any size lay at Tobruk, 350 miles to the rear. He controlled as well, of course, Matruh's small harbor, 150 miles back, and Bengasi, 600 miles away. If the enemy powers could have supphed and fueled a large air force and wrested air superiority from the RAF, they might have, with bomb and aerial mine, severely impaired the flow of Allied supplies at Suez. In the nature of the case the Axis could do neither, and its own supply line began to fail under air and sea attack.
The main Axis shipping routes to North Africa gave Malta a wide berth. One route was as follows: leaving Naples the ships made for Palermo, skirted Sicily's western tip, ran for Cap Bon, kept close in- shore along Tunisia and Tripolitania to Tripoli; from there they might hug shore to Bengasi or undertake to dash across the Gulf of Sirte. Smaller craft then crept on to Tobruk, Derna, or Matruh. Alter- nately, ships out of Naples could proceed by way of the Strait of Messina and the heel of Italy and join the route leading from Brindisi and Taranto along the Greek coast and thence across to Tobruk. A variation of this eastern route involved a passage through the Corinth Canal and a stopover at Crete.
19
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
Convoys plying these lanes were given aerial as well as naval pro- tection. On the southward runs from Greece and Crete the Germans provided day-fighter escort, Me-109's or iios from both Libya and Crete, the Me-i lo's carrying antisubmarine bombs and depth charges which they jettisoned on approach of hostile aircraft. During the sum- mer of 1942, the enemy introduced a new feature to ease his main- tenance problem at Alamein— tank landing craft (F-boats) which sailed in convoy from Tobruk to Matruh. But after some experimentation the RAF found a method of attacking the heavily armed F-boat which forced the enemy pretty largely back on road and rail transportation for moving supplies east of Tobruk.
An incessant campaign against enemy provisioning was carried out by airplanes and submarines based on Malta and in Egypt, the im- portance of the Delta gaining as the recurrent blitzes hindered Malta's operations. The RAF's Egypt-based 201 Group had been formed in September 1941 in anticipation of the attempted neutralization of Malta, and with the cooperation of 205 Group, of Air Headquarters, Western Desert, and of the newly arrived USAAF the battle went on unabated during the critical summer months of 1942, with special attention being paid to tankers. The Americans began to take their heavy bombers not only to Tobruk, Bengasi, and Matruh but to Navarino Bay in the Peloponnesus and Suda Bay off northern Crete, assembly points for convoys, and to places as distant as the Corinth Canal.^^
On 20 July, the Brereton and Halverson detachments at Lydda, previously given squadron designations, were organized under Halver- son's command as the ist Provisional Group. Their combined strength was not impressive, being reported by Brereton as nineteen B-24's and nine B-17's, of which on 19 July seven and three, respectively, were operationally fit. At this point, however, the promised reinforcements began to arrive from the States, the air echelon of the 344th Squadron of the 98th Group (B-24's) coming into Ramat David, Palestine, on the 25th. By 7 August the complete group was in the Holy Land under Col. Hugo P. Rush, two squadrons apiece at Ramat David and St. Jean d'Acre. The 98th carried with it enough small spare parts for the anticipated period before its ground echelon would arrive, a wise precaution considering the limited facilities of USAMEAF Air Service Command.
For targets westward of Egypt it was normal course for USAMEAF's
20
CRISIS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
heavies, which received their mission orders and plans from 205 Group, to . stage through Fayid where the briefing was accomplished and whence the bombers took off for Tobruk or Bengasi. Unfortunately, communications were not too efficient and the necessary warning orders were not always early enough for the American commanders in Palestine. This problem led to the establishment of a small opera- tional staff at Fayid and of Maj. Alfred F. Kalberer as liaison officer with 205 Group at Ismailia/^ Malta and Egypt sent out the photo- reconnaissance Spitfires and 205 Group determined the targets. From 5 July to 30 August the American planes carried out an average of five missions a week, working by day in the excellent Mediterranean summer weather or going out on night strikes with the RAF. The B-17's, unable to reach Bengasi harbor from Fayid, concentrated their efforts on Tobruk, which as Rommel's most important depot attracted the greater share of the combined bomber effort. Attacks on convoys at sea or in Greek waters accounted for about a third of ail the USAAF heavy bomber missions. On the night of 5 July, however, the Hal Squadron, the redesignated Halverson Detachment, struck at Bengasi and caused a terrific explosion, thought to represent a hit on an ammu- nition ship in the harbor.
Four days later, on an unsuccessful hunt for a convoy, six of Hal Squadron's B-24's were attacked by four Me-109's; two of the fighters were shot down, but a B-24 and crew were also lost. When convoys were engaged, however, the results were often excellent: on 22 July, Hal Squadron hit two ships in Suda Bay; on the 27th it hit two more in the open sea; on the 30th a merchantman in Navarino Bay took a bomb. RAF reconnaissance confirmed that as the result of an attack on I August a 10,000-ton tanker, one of a class supplying the bulk of Rommel's oil and gas, went to the bottom. On 21 August nine B-24's from two squadrons of the 98th Group engaged a convoy just south- west of Crete; two more merchant ships were scored as probably sunk. Two Me-i lo's and an Me- 109 attacked the bombers and forced one B-24, which was straggling, to come down in the sea. Three days later an unsuccessful attack was made on the Corinth Canal. The damage inflicted on Tobruk or Bengasi by any single attack during this period is hard to evaluate.'*^
Although USAMEAF operations proceeded on a modest scale, they demonstrated the larger fact that the Middle East was an area in which the employment of heavy bombers was peculiarly lucrative. Brereton
21
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
made this the central theme in his first strategic estimate, dispatched home by cable on 5 August, after he had found time to study the general character of the Middle Eastern war.^^ He indicated three major objectives for the Allied air forces: to assist the destruction of Rommel by direct and indirect air support to ground troops; to secure the sea and air communications on and over the Mediterranean; to carry out a sustained air offensive against Italy and the vital oil installa- tions at Ploesti and in the Caucasus, should the latter fall into Axis hands.
Brereton believed additional bombardment aircraft necessary before the Eighth Army could take the offensive with good prospect of suc- cess. He asked, therefore, in order to meet this first requirement, that the established schedule of USAAF units for the Middle East be revised to permit the sending of the units "at the earliest possible date"; and that two heavy groups, preferably B-24's, and two light or medium groups, preferably dive bombers, be added to the Middle East com- mitment and dispatched "immediately." These aircraft were to be used for direct action against the Axis army, against the desert-based GAP and lAF, and for "indirect support" against ports and sea lanes.
The attack on the ports and sea lanes would forward the second objective: securing the sea and air communications in the Mediter- ranean. Brereton pointed out that Malta, formerly the best base for interfering with enemy convoys, had seen its effectiveness restricted by repeated bombing attacks; nor was the British surface fleet in any condition to interfere. The bombardment aircraft based on Palestine or Egypt was the only available weapon to fill the gap. Therefore, to accomplish this second objective, Brereton asked for two additional heavy groups and two torpedo-carrying dive-bomber groups over and above the current commitments to USAMEAF. He reminded the War Department that Mediterranean weather was favorable to air operations, that airdromes were easily constructed and airdrome space presented no problem, and that enemy defense against air attack was weaker than in northwestern Europe. Moreover, the British were prepared to furnish initial maintenance for USAAF groups moving by air.
If the Eighth Army could defeat Rommel and thereby secure Cyr- enaica's airdrome sites, the sustained air offensive against Italy, Ploesti, and other strategic targets (objective number three) could become a reality. Malta would be more easily supplied and her offensive capabil- ities revived. Then a heavy bomber offensive based on Malta and
22
CRISIS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Cyprus would bring all of Italy, and the Balkans south of Bucharest- Budapest, within range; if combined with an air offensive out of Eng- land against Germany, the result might be to knock Italy out of the war. Two more heavy groups would be necessary for this phase.
Brereton believed the strategic opportunity so great— the Mediter- ranean could be opened in the sequence of these operations— that diver- sions from other theaters were justified to find the ten groups neces- sary. "Nibbling" at such vital targets only gave the enemy time to prepare his defenses.
Others besides Brereton— and besides Maxwell and the British chiefs in the Middle East by whom his strategic estimate had been approved- thought the time ripe for a blow to open the Mediterranean, although their thinking was not so much influenced by the realization of a strategic opportunity at hand as by the seeming imminence of a defeat of catastrophic proportions. The Germans and their puppet armies on the eastern front had devoted July of 1942 to clearing the Soviet forces almost entirely out of the Don bend. The next Axis move obviously would be towards the Volga and the oil-rich Caucasus— the land bridge to Asia. Loss of the Caucasus might not put the U.S.S.R. altogether out of the war, but it would imperil the vital Persian Gulf area and endanger Egypt and the lands between. These possibilities seemed to put flesh on the nightmare of Allied strategists, the junction of Euro- pean and Asiatic enemies on the shores of the Indian Ocean. That Germany and Japan had no such plans for a coordinated strategy was not then known to the Allies.*®
The deteriorating situation on the eastern front occasioned a major revision in Allied strategy. By August the American and British gov- ernments had decided to mount in 1942 Operation TORCH,* landings on the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts of Northwest Africa, as the most practicable means of relieving the pressure on the U.S.S.R. and of removing the menace of Rommel from Egypt. TORCH was to be coordinated with a renewed offensive by the Eighth Army. It replaced ROUNDUP, the landing in France projected for the spring of 1943.
By these circumstances the Mediterranean achieved a higher relative importance as a theater of war. Hence, it might have been reasonable to expect that Brereton's plea would have found favor+ and that
• See below, pp. 46-47.
t Brereton probably was not aware of TORCH when he dispatched his strategic estimate.
23
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
USAAF forces in the Middle East would be reinforced for the coming operations. But just prior to the receipt of Brereton's cable the Joint Chiefs had successfully resisted a similar suggestion from a higher quarter. On the evening of 30 July, General Arnold had received a summons to the White House. He found there with the President, Adm. William D. Leahy, Brig. Gen. W. Bedell Smith, and Colonel Fellers, the last just back from Cairo. Fellers had delivered a very pes- simistic report on the British ability to hold the Nile. On the Pres- ident's querying as to what the United States could do to help, Fellers had indicated aerial reinforcements as the most practicable form of aid. These planes, explained Fellers, would operate against Rommel's sup- ply line. Arnold commented that substantial reinforcements were al- ready on the way to Egypt and that any further reinforcements to the area would injure the Eighth Air Force, TORCH, or the Pacific the- aters. The President nonetheless desired that the Joint Chiefs look into the matter.
On I August the AAF, in a memorandum to the Operations Division of the War Department, set forth existing air commitments to the Mid- dle East and suggested paring down allocations to the Caribbean as the most suitable means of providing reinforcements for USAMEAF. Ac- cording to General Arnold, the question of Middle East reinforce- ments was taken under advisement by the Joint Chiefs as early as 3 August, two days before Brereton's strategic estimate was dis- patched. The upshot of their deliberations was that USAAF aid to the Eighth Army could be best accomplished by speeding up the move- ment of units already allocated to USAMEAF— admittedly a limited solution.
Thus when the reply to Brereton's request for reinforcements went out to Cairo on 8 August it indicated that "because of other important projects" it was not "probable" that his air force could be increased beyond the present commitments. TORCH had clearly become the No. I project on the Allied agenda, and although the Middle East shortly received a priority in shipping second only to TORCH it was soon to become evident that with the limited Allied resources only the No. I priority was really comfortable.^^
This was borne out by diversions shortly inflicted on USAMEAF. It was generally understood that Brereton's command would be redesig- nated as the Ninth Air Force and, as promised in June, the AAF was training headquarters units for an air force, a fighter command, and an
24
CRISIS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
air service command. In August these units ran afoul of the needs of the new Twelfth Air Force being set up for TORCH, were diverted, redesignated, rushed to England, and eventually landed at the oppo- site end of the North African littoral. Not until November did USAMEAF become the Ninth Air Force.*
Potentially more serious was the diversion of the 33d Fighter Group (P-40's). The 33d was intended to fulfil the schedule set up by the Arnold-Portal-Towers agreement by which the second fighter group allocated to USAMEAF was to arrive in the theater by i October 1942.+ On 5 September, however, Brig. Gen. James H. Doolittle, com- manding the Twelfth, requested that the 33d be turned over to him for use in the action against Casablanca in French Morocco. The re- action to this proposal was mixed, for it was generally believed in Washington and London as well as in the Middle East that a high degree of air superiority in the Western Desert would be a great help to TORCH. Moreover, the 33d was ready to depart for the Middle East. The niatter was finally left up to Eisenhower as TORCH com- mander; the 33d went to Casablanca. At the same time he stressed that P-40's were urgently needed in Egypt, and the War Department, tak- ing the same view, set up the 79th Group as a replacement.®^
The initial reinforcements promised by the Arnold-Portal-Towers agreement, however, had moved quickly to the Middle East. The air- craft of the 57 th Fighter Group— of which Lt. Col. Frank H. Mears, Jr., was commander— left Quonset, Rhode Island, aboard the Ranger on I July; when the carrier was within 100 miles of Africa the P-40's were flown off to begin their journey over the ferry route. The move- ment across Africa was very skillfully accomplished. Ground crews in transport planes followed the fighters, spending the nights readying the P-40's for the next day's flight, so that a negligible percentage of aircraft was lost. By 3 1 July the complete air echelon was at Muqei- bile, Palestine, where a small number of the 57th's key personnel, trav- eling entirely by air, had arrived two weeks earlier.'^
At about the same time the 12th Bombardment Group (M), com- manded by Col. Charles Goodrich, was added to USAMEAF. Pro- ceeding via Florida, the Antilles, Brazil, and Ascension, the air echelon also took its B-25's across the central African route, completing the movement without losing a plane. The aircraft left Morrison Field, Florida, between 14 July and 2 August and were all in the Delta by
•See below, p. 39. tSee above, p. 14,
25
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
mid- August, the 8ist and 8 2d Squadrons at Deversoir and the 83d and 434th at Ismailia.^^
When the Pasteur came into Port Tewfik on 1 6 August, not only was the personnel of USAMEAF greatly augmented but its supply and maintenance prospects materially improved. Aboard were the ground echelons of the 57th Fighter and the 12th and 98th Bom- bardment Groups; their arrival permitted the relief of the unarmed RAF squadrons previously attached to take care of the base and main- tenance requirements of these groups. Only the ist Provisional Group was left still leaning on similar British assistance. Moreover, also on the Pasteur came the 323d Service Group, which promptly became a jack-of-all-trades in USAMEAF Air Service Command.
General Adler had been facing several problems unusual in an air service command. No American depot existed nearer than Gura, i ,200 miles down the Red Sea, and the RAF suggested that it take over AAF supplies and make them available to AAF units through RAF distribution depots. Adler and Brereton, knowing the way of depots, reasoned that the AAF would get very few of these supplies back. The alternative, of course, was an AAF depot. That meant a depot site. Be- cause the British, backed up against the Delta, were using every avail- able Egyptian airdrome, a decision was finally taken in favor of Rayak in Syria, which offered the desired facilities— a good airdrome, hangars, warehouses, and quarters. Although Rayak's location was far from ideal, the choice was justified. At the time, most of USAMEAF's com- bat groups were stationed in Palestine, with the 57 th even having a squadron training over in Cyprus; moreover, Rayak permitted the use of American methods of supply which Brereton believed a matter of the utmost importance. The 323d Service Group, as the only service unit in the theater, took on the job of running Rayak. It also furnished detachments for unloading at the ports and for base unit and quarter- master functions at the heavy bomber airdromes. In fact the group did about every job except the one for which it was trained, and per- formed excellently in all capacities.®*
The American heavy bomber units, the Brereton and Halverson de- tachments and, later, the 98th Group, had gone into action imme- diately after their arrival in the Middle East. Heavy bombers were scarce and badly needed in the struggle against Rommel. With these AAF organizations, unit training and command experience were ade- quate for operations against ports and convoys; as no long-range 26
CRISIS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
fighter escort could be provided, the aircraft could be employed fairly independently of other commands. On the other hand, the 1 2th Bom- bardment (M) and the 57th Fighter Groups, entering upon a highly cooperative type of air warfare under unfamiliar desert conditions, were fed into existing RAF formations. The training they received and the accumulated experience made available to them contributed greatly to their subsequent successes.
Elements of the 57th's advance air echelon, arriving in mid-July, were trained at Muqeibile and in actual combat in RAF formations in the Western Desert. The squadrons, which arrived in mid-August, were trained in the back areas, in Cyprus and at Muqeibile; elements of the 66th, however, did participate in the operations opposing the Axis smash at the Alamein line early in September. Not until 17 September did the entire group assemble at Landing Ground (LG) 174 in the desert. Here its P-40's served as an air force reserve and saw only occa- sional action until well into October. The 57th's pilots were filtered into the three-echelon V formation then in use by the RAF, flying first top cover, then support, then in the most exposed low-echelon position. The group discovered that all RAF fighter units were com- pletely mobile and that their ground echelons were divided into A and B parties for the leapfrogging technique used in the recurrently fluid desert war. The 57th was initially short of the vehicles necessary for such mobility, but by mid-September, after some difficulty, enough had been secured.^^
The 1 2th Group, based along the canal, began under the tutelage of RAF and South African Air Force (SAAF) light bomber wings. A month's training ensued, including five missions intended to acquaint the crews with the aids to navigation available in the Middle East. The first of these missions, night operations against the port of Matruh and the enemy airdromes at Daba and Fuka, proved that without flame dampeners to black out the bright spurt from their exhaust pipes the B-25's were easy targets for A A and night fighters. Further difficulties arose in locating targets by day in the monotonous desert. By the end of August, nonetheless, the group had made rapid progress and it con- tributed forty-eight sorties to the light bomber eflFort at the time of the Axis repulse.^^
The Western Desert Air Force, to which USAMEAF's fighters and mediums were attached, had developed techniques of air-ground co- operation representing the first sensible advance over the system of
27
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
intimate "support" employed with such telling effect by the Luftwaffe in Poland and France. The men associated with these techniques, the long-term effect of which was to emancipate both the RAF and the USAAF from subservience to ground commanders in land campaigns, were Coningham, the AOC Western Desert, and Tedder, top air officer in the Middle East. Coningham's force had performed magnif- icently in the disastrous action precipitated by Rommel's May attack on the Eighth Army's Gazala position; in the RAF, Middle East's own words, "Any lingering idea that the R. A.F. was simply a useful adjunct of the land forces . . . was finally swept away."^^
Brereton quickly grasped the importance of drawing on Western Desert Air Force experience. Ten days after his arrival in Cairo he was urging the War Department to dispatch qualified observers to study Coningham's employment of fighters and light bombers; and on 22 August he submitted to AAF Headquarters a report on the "support" rendered the Eighth iVrmy in the period 26 May to 21 August.
By general admission, the foundation of the RAF's success in cooper- ating with the army lay in the sympathy and understanding normally existing between the commander of Western Desert Air Force and the commander of the Eighth Army. Although operations against the Axis armies proceeded, naturally, under the general direction of the ground arm, the army and air commanders maintained a joint air-ground head- quarters embodying the idea of coequal striking forces.* There they worked towards a common goal, neither commanding the other's forces, yet each cognizant of the other's requirements. Even the head- quarters location ^yas a compromise between the needs of the two arms: the air commander had to be within ten miles of the bombers and fighters he controlled and adjacent to a landing ground for his ov/n use; a position forty to sixty miles behind the front was usually acceptable to the ground commander.*^^
With his forces centralized under his own control, Coningham had been able to seize and hold the ascendancy in the air without which he could not have efficiently aided the Eighth Army. Under him, No. 2 1 1 Group controlled the fighter squadrons, the basic weapons of air su- periority. By use of an efficient radar screen the group directed the squadrons in their constant war with the enemy fighters and in their
* The Brereton report evidently did not refer in this particular to the situation during Auchinleck's personal command of the Eighth Army. Auchinleck's headquarters was separate; Montgomery moved back with the RAF. (Cf . Francis de Guingand, Operation Victory, p. 138.)
28
CRISIS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
escorting of the bombers to hammer the enemy airdromes. To con- struct its airdromes 2 1 1 Group controlled a detachment of Royal En- gineers; to protect the fields, it provided armored-car squadrons and an antiaircraft brigade. Its fighter types consisted of the obsolescent Hurricane, American-made Tomahawks and Kittyhawks (P-4oD's and E's), and Spitfires, the last considered the best answer to the Me- 109, although the Kittyhawk could handle it under 1 2,000 feet.
Besides 2 1 1 Group, WD AF employed light bomber wings of Bostons (A-2o's) and Baltimores (A-30's), whose bombardment oper- ations were augmented by bomb-carrying Hurricanes and Kitty- hawks. The extensive use of fighter-bombers by the RAF was itself an indication of the degree of air superiority it had achieved, for without air superiority the fighters would have had enough to do in their normal roles. The operation of the Bostons and Baltimores had become very skillful, and the fighter escort kept losses from enemy intercep- tion to a minimum.
Coningham's coequal status with the army commander allowed him to exploit to their mutual advantage the peculiar capabilities of air power. His planes were not tied down to ground formations in "penny packets." They were not wasted on fleeting or unsuitable targets but were available for concentrated blows. Since his force had been kept fully mobile, it could perform uninterruptedly, a matter of the utmost importance in the seesaw desert battle. Communications, however, had proved to be a limiting factor in air operations, and there was always the troublesome problem of identification of friendly troops.®*'
In mid-August, when the British shook up their command in the Middle East, their army received two new general officers who were to prove as successful ground commanders as Coningham and Tedder were air commanders. Auchinleck had resisted Rommel's first assault on the Alamein line but had used up his own reinforcements in at- tempting to drive his adversary out of Egypt by an abortive series of at- tacks which he opened on 2 1 July.®^ The replacements were Gens. Har- old L. Alexander, who took over the theater command, and Bernard L. Montgomery, who assumed command of the Eighth Army after the untimely death of Lt. Gen. W. H. E. Gott. Montgomery's influence was felt at once. The Eighth's morale improved with rest, with better rations, and upon the new commander's making clear that he planned no further retreats, that the battle for Egypt would be fought out at Alamein.
29
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
The rival forces recuperated during most of August, but it was uni- versally appreciated that the Axis armies would mount another attack despite their numerical inferiority in men, tanks, and aircraft. The Nile was so close, they were so visibly losing the reinforcement race, and their commanders were believers in the tactical offensive. On 29 August the Axis troops were informed that in a matter of two or three days they would be in Alexandria, and just after midnight of 30/31 August the attack began. The result was the battle of Alam Haifa, named for a key hill in the British defenses.®^
The main attack flowed around the Eighth Army's southern flank, the British withdrawing before it to ground of their own choosing. After the first day of the battle the RAF found continuous good flying conditions and thenceforth subjected the enemy concentrations to an almost uninterrupted pounding. The Axis intentions were plainly to draw the British armor from its prepared positions for a battle in the open, an honor which the British, with the tank trap at Knightsbridge fresh in their memory, firmly declined. The enemy accomplished nothing but the waste of his resources in futile attacks. USAMEAF aircraft were active in their several capacities. The heavy bombers scored a hit on a merchantman in a Mediterranean convoy while the B-25's attacked truck columns and the P-40's flew sweeps and escort.®^
On 2 September the enemy exhibited reluctance to resume the offen- sive. The Eighth Army had already laid plans to restore the Alamein line and meanwhile had been carrying out harassing operations de- signed further to weaken the Axis battlefield supply position. On the night of 3 /4 September the 2 New Zealand Division initiated action to close the mine-field gaps through which the attacking Axis columns had driven. The enemy fought stubbornly and, after pushing him back somewhat, Montgomery decided to break off, leaving the Ger- man-Italian forces a slice of the British mine fields for their trouble.^^
A feature of the eight-day battle was the nonstop effort put forth by the RAF, which had switched its Wellingtons from attacks on ports to battlefield bombing. The total of Allied bombs dropped ran to 868 tons; over 3,500 sorties were carried out, to which the 12th and 57th Groups contributed 48 and "over 150," respectively. Coning- ham's fighters, moreover, finally destroyed the fearsome reputation of the Stuka, the Ju-87's jettisoning their bombs when the Allied pursuit approached. Despite a vastly larger number of bomber sorties, the RAF lost only seven bombers, the GAF and lAF, twenty-six. The fact
30
CRISIS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
that the RAF lost forty-three fighters to the enemy's twenty-two was largely a reflection of the Hurricane's inferiority to the Me- 109 and the Italian Mc-202.®'
Alam Haifa, besides keeping the Axis out of Alexandria, gave rise to hopes that the answer to Rommel's tactics had at last been found. The British forces had not been committed piecemeal nor in the hither- to disastrous mobile tank actions, and the morale of the troops im- proved with success. Moreover, Montgomery had exhibited a lively appreciation of the role of air power in the land battle.®^
For the Axis the supply situation had continued unsatisfactory, par- ticularly in the category of petroleum products. Lack of aviation gas robbed the enemy of the full capabilities of his air force and, specif- ically, was thought by the British to have forced a four-day postpone- ment of his Alam Haifa offensive. Lack of fuel and lubricants had slowed hostile tank movements and forfeited the advantage of surprise. By Middle East calculations, 100,000 gross registered tons of shipping made Axis ports in North Africa in August 1942; in the same month 80,000 were sunk by the efforts of the USAAF, the RAF, and the Royal Navy. Of the 80,000 tons, 40 per cent represented the handi- work of the air forces. The net cargo tonnage which the enemy re- ceived enabled him to improve his supply situation only slightly; he was sustaining but could not sensibly augment his forces, despite some improvement in September. With these statistics at hand, Montgomery was able to proceed methodically to develop his own offensive in the comfortable certainty that with each day the odds lengthened against his adversary.*^
Malta, despite its perennial aviation fuel shortage, had been able to increase its exertions in the vital period when the opposing armies were building strength for further efforts. Its antishipping sorties were somewhat more numerous and its fighters even carried out some ag- gressive actions. But the Axis sea and air forces in the area, if not able to knock out the island, dealt violently with its reinforcement. From the heavily escorted supply convoy which passed Gibraltar eastwards on the night of 9/10 August, nine merchant vessels were lost plus the carrier Eagle and three other warships.^^ The loss of the Eagle directly affected the calculations for TORCH, which by then was in its initial planning stages.^®
For the Egypt-based bombers, Tobruk and Bengasi remained lucra- tive targets, so vital that the Middle East forces even sent commandos
31
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
on a vain attempt to block their harbors on the night of 13/14 Sep- tember. After Alam Haifa, the RAF turned the full weight of its mediums back on Tobruk, scarcely a night passing without twenty or thirty Wellingtons over the port; and when on 14 October three USAMEAF B-17's reportedly sank a lighter and hit a large motor vessel in its harbor, it had been already so badly mauled that Axis ship- ping had been largely diverted to Bengasi. The long-range bombers followed. A feature of the combined assault on Bengasi, of which the U.S. B-24's carried the brunt, was the raid of 22/23 September. The B-24's blew up an 8,ooo-ton ammunition ship lying alongside one of the main piers, the explosion appreciably reducing the harbor's un- loading for several weeks.^^
Strikes at shipping at sea and in ports to the north continued when reconnaissance picked up profitable targets. On 3 September an Axis convoy of three destroyer-escorted merchantmen was attacked in the Mediterranean by elements of the Royal Navy, the RAF, and the USAAF, and the one surviving merchantman was left ablaze."^^ A few days afterward, in Candia harbor, Crete, the 98th Group scored direct hits on a power station and left fires in the dock area.'^^ The effec- tiveness of the naval and air campaign can be illustrated by the career of thirty tanks which were loaded for Africa in three shipments of ten each. One vessel was beached off Corfu, one was sent to the bottom, the third reached Bengasi only to be partially sunk in the harbor.'^^ To reinforce his troops and maintain his supplies, particularly of fuel, the enemy used air transports, which flew down by night from Crete. By the end of October, when the Alamein battle was on, this traffic, main- tained chiefly by Ju-52's, had precipitated a series of U.S. bomber raids on Maleme airdrome, whence the transports took off ."^^
On the administrative side, events of August and September 1942 put an end to the anomaly whereby a large number of officers and men fighting in the Middle East remained assigned to the Tenth Air Force. The Tenth's new commander, Brig. Gen. Clayton L. Bissell,"^® feeling keenly the loss of the key staff officers and combat crews who had gone to USAFIME in June and July, pressed for a clarification of their status."^® The upshot was that Brereton was assigned to the Middle East on 16 September, as were the staff officers in question.'^^ The Tenth Air Force had already got back most of its transports and it was arranged that it would also retrieve the greater part of the ground echelon which had originally accompanied its B-17's from India.'^®
32
CRISIS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
A development of some importance in the career of USAMEAF manifested itself administratively on 1 2 October when orders were cut assigning nine officers to the IX Bomber Command, which organiza- tion was then and for a month afterwards unofficial. This command had its roots in a discussion on 5 September between Tedder's senior air staff officer, Air Vice Marshal H. E. P. Wigglesworth, and G-3 officers of USAMEAF, during which Wigglesworth asserted that he had control, delegated by Tedder, over the target selection for the U.S. heavy bombers. Col. Patrick W. Timberlake, G-3 of Brereton's st^fF, took a serious view of this assertion in that it violated the Arnold- Portal-Towers agreement that American combat units assigned to theaters of British strategic responsibility were to be organized in "homogeneous American formations" under the "strategic control'' of the appropriate British commander in chief. In a memo of 7 September, Timberlake granted that this canon might be justifiably violated in the case of the 12th Bombardment (M) and 57th Fighter Groups, but he could see no reason why operational control of the ist Provisional and 98th Groups, comprising four-fifths of the heavy bomber force in the Middle East, should not be vested in American hands. Subsequent ne- gotiations carried the point with the British, who even turned over their 160 Squadron (Liberators) to the operational control of IX Bomber Command.
On 12 October a small staff moved into Grey Pillars, RAF head- quarters at Cairo, and thenceforth USAMEAF's bombers operated only under the "strategic" direction of the British. Timberlake headed the organization, with Kalberer as his A-3 and Lt. Cpl. Donald M. Keiser as his chief of staff .^^
El Alamein
Now the time was ripening for the second British attempt to eject Rommel from his menacing proximity to the Delta, the first having been Auchinleck's July attacks. Across the thirty-two-mile neck be- tween the Qattara Depression and the sea the Eighth Army faced Axis positions which were naturally stronger than its own and which had been considerably improved by three months and more of artifice. Triple belts of mine fields and defended localities were known to adorn the northern sector while the southern defenses, if not so formi- dable, were sited to canalize penetration. No practicable way offered to take this line in flank as it was anchored on the south by the forbidding
33
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
Qattara quicksands. Hard fighting into heavy defenses would be nec- essary before the customary desert mobility could be regained; in a long-drawn battle, however, it was expected that the enemy's dis- advantageous supply position would tell against him.^^
Montgomery's original conception envisioned strokes against both extremities of the fortifications, pushing the British armored divisions athwart the enemy supply line in the north and destroying the enemy armor in detail. His final plan was novel, if less ambitious. It preserved the multiple attack designed to keep the enemy armor dispersed, but contemplated as first priority the destruction of the enemy infantry while the British armor stood off the Panzers whose axes of approach would be restricted by their own mine fields. The offensive could not open before the full moon of 24 October, for, if semidarkness was required to clear a path through the enemy mine fields, some light was necessary for infantry operations.^^
As early as 21 September, Coningham had outlined the air force's role in the impending operation to a meeting of all group captains and wing commanders. Stepped-up counter-air force action would com- mence 20 October to gain the high degree of air superiority without which Montgomery would not move. The enemy air dislocated, WDAF could intervene freely in the ground battle and, it was hoped, insure a certain initial tactical surprise by denying the enemy air re- connaissance. The period preceding 20 October was to be utilized in preparation— training and the repair of vehicles and of aircraft.^^
Various administrative preparations were also put in hand by the RAF and USAAF. An advanced American air headquarters was at- tached to Advanced Air Headquarters, Western Desert, to gain experience in handling air forces in the field and to look out for Amer- ican interests.^^ For instance, it was arranged that night missions by the B-25's could not be flown except in extreme emergencies without direct authorization of the commanding general of USAMEAF (four B-25's had been lost on a night mission against Sidi Hanaish airdrome on 13/14 September) .^^ This American advanced headquarters became on 22 October the Desert Air Task Force Headquarters, with Brereton in direct command and Adler attached with the advanced headquarters of the service command. Chief of staff for the new organization was Brig. Gen. Auby C Strickland, commander since 17 August of IX Fighter Command, who had arrived in the Middle East in July and overseen the training of the 57th Group. The Desert Air Task Force
34
CRISIS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
continued under that name until February 1943 as the administrative control over the American units operating as an integral part of WDAF.^*^ Although the arrangement did not conform to the terms of the Arnold-Portal-Towers agreement, the letter of that agreement could not have been efficiently applied in operations with WDAF, as the following battle assignments illustrate.
No. 2 1 1 Group, RAF, was prepared to go forward with the ad- vance, and to its 239 Wing (Kittyhawks) the 57th Group's 66th Squadron was attached. The 66th, regarded as the best trained of the 57th's squadrons, all now ready for combat as units, arrived at LG 91 on 6 October. The 57th's other squadrons came under operational con- trol of 2 1 2 Group, which had been set up to give WDAF a second fighter control formation, and continued to operate from LG 174 in conjunction with 233 Wing, RAF. The 12th Group with the addition of a Baltimore squadron made up 232 Wing and operated under the bomber control of 3 Wing (SAAF). In the middle of October the 1 2th's squadrons, reduced for mobility to essential operational strength, moved to LG 88, about fifty miles behind the front line, leaving administrative work to be done at the Delta bases.^^
WDAF did not hesitate to interrupt training when opportunity offered for a blow at the opposing air force. Photo reconnaissance of 6-8 October revealed that the Axis forward landing grounds in the Daba and Qotaifya areas had been waterlogged by heavy rains. On the 9th, therefore, USAMEAF's B-25's contributed 16 sorties to a 292- sortie attack on the mudded-in aircraft of which 10 were assessed as destroyed and 22 damaged.*'^
Of the Axis air forces, the Italian Air Force, despite some recent aggressiveness with its Mc-202's, was not assessed as particularly for- midable; it was disposed rearward to protect shipping. What was more, the condition of the Luftwaffe, disposed forward and expected to pro- vide the main opposition, had fallen so low as to cause concern in Berlin. Maj. Gen. Adolf Galland, General der Jagdflieger* had flown into Fuka in September, interviewed Von Waldau, the commander, and looked over the situation. Kesselring was supposed to have re- sented Galland's inspection and, according to the latter's possibly apoc- ryphal story, Goering dismissed as dummies half of the 800 aircraft
* The duties of this headquarters position changed from time to time and with the incumbent. In fighter matters, Galland was variously adviser, consultant, administrator, inspector, formulator of doctrine, and operational authority.
35
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
shov/n to be on RAF fields. Rommel, not on good terms with his sup- porting air, neglected to ask for reinforcements until too late.®®
Goering would have done better to have taken the photos seriously. On 1 6 October the RAF, ME had a total of 1,098 aircraft, of which 813 were in commission: 628 fighters, 383 bombers of all types, and 87 sea reconnaissance types. The USAAF could muster 56 P-40's, 46 B-25's, 10 B-17's, and 53 B-24's; of these were operational, respec- tively, 49, 35, 6, and 40. The Axis air forces, on the other hand, boasted only 218 Italian and 165 German fighters, about 150 bombers, 75 Ital- ian CR-42 attack planes, and smaller numbers of seaplanes and recon- naissance aircraft. Serviceability was estimated at not over 50 per cent because of the severe shortage of materiel and spare parts. The Allied air forces, therefore, enjoyed superiority before the air offensive started, for which they could thank in part then: own efforts against the German-Italian supply lines.^^
On 19/20 October the preliminary air offensive began. Calls from the ground forces were answered, reconnaissance flown, M/T and artillery emplacements attacked, but the main emphasis was put on the destruction of the enemy air force: patrols were kept over its landing grounds which the bombers hammered day and night. At least 800 counterman: force sorties had been flown before the infantry moved to its assault positions on the night of 22/23 October, and as a result the British concentrations were riot molested from the air at a time when the roads were clogged with their transport.^^
The Eighth Army commanded such numerical and logistical supe- riority in all categories that it was appreciated that it could not fail to win if properly handled in the forthcoming battle. In manpower, it had almost a 2 to I advantage, 165,000 to 93,500, and if the quality of its troops was uneven the same could be said for the Axis. Of medium tanks the Eighth Army mustered 600 against 470 for the opposition; of guns of all types, 2,275 to 1,450. The German troops-"i5th and 21st Panzer Divisions, 90th Light and 164th Infantry Divisions, plus miscel- laneous units— had been disposed so as to stiffen the Italian forces, which consisted, in the forward area, of six infantry and two armored divisions. In the folrenodn of 23 October, Montgomery's message to his troops, "The Lord mighty in battle will give us the victory," was read to all hands and that night the battle got under way.®^
The assault troops had spent the day of 23 October unobserved in trenches beyond the British forward positions. At 2140 hours massed
36
CRISIS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
artillery opened on known locations of enemy batteries. Twenty minutes later the infantry started a westward trek that would lead it in time to Tunisia. In the important northern sector where two cor- ridors were to be forced through the enemy defenses, substantial, if uneven, progress resulted from the first two days of fighting, but the British did not succeed in pushing their armor into the open.®^ They had undertaken elaborate deception measures to convince the enemy that the main assault would be in the southern sector and this delusion they fostered by heavy but costly attacks. On the 25 th, Montgomery ordered the pressure in this area eased to preserve 7 Armoured Divi- sion's strength; as the division pinned down the 21st and Ariete ar- mored divisions opposite, it was not, however, withdrawn. By that date the British tanks had got forward through the northern gaps and were in position to beat off and punish armored counterattacks. Behind this armored shield, Montgomery began the methodical destruction of the enemy infantry and cast about for a way to pass his tanks through to the Rahman area, key point of the enemy supply system. His drive, however, began to lose momentum in the deep enemy defenses, which contained in the north nine, not three, mine fields, and on the 26th he decided to regroup for further action.^^
The hitherto comparatively inactive GAF and lAF apparently chose the 26th to challenge the Allied air. In this endeavor they lost by RAF calculations six Me-109's, eight Mc-202's, and three Ju-87's against Allied losses of four fighters. Moreover, an Axis ground concentration was prevented from forming for attack by the light-bomber shuttle service which the WDAF reserved for worthwhile targets and in which the B-25's joined.®^ The 57th Fighter Group was showing up well in battle: on the 26th its claims ran to four Mc-202*s, and reports credited it with a like number of Me-109's the previous day. Preday- light of the 27 th found the P-40's taking off by the glare of truck headlights for a surprise dawn fighter-bomber raid on one of the Fuka landing grounds, carried out at minimum altitude to avoid enemy radar detection, and later in the day a P-40 contingent came off victorious in a battle with assorted CR-42's, Ju-87's, Mc-202's, and Me-109's— the Italian fighter units involved admitted to four Mc-202's downed.®^ The main ground action on the 27 th consisted of sharp attacks on Kidney Ridge by the 15 th and 21st Panzer Divisions, the latter having come north during the previous night. These assaults were thrown back,
37
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
and on the 28th the WDAF light bombers and USAMEAF's B-25's succeeded in preventing preparations for their resumption.^*^
At this point Montgomery envisioned a breakout northward to the sea and a push along the coastal roads and railway to cripple the enemy's supply. Montgomery was now matching wits with Rommel, who had been in Berlin when the battle opened. That the Axis com- mand no longer credited the feints in the southern sector had been demonstrated by the transfer of the 21st Panzer on the night of 26/27 October; accordingly, Montgomery moved his 7 Armoured north to promote designs of his own. On 28-29 October he attacked with 9 Australian Division, aiming to pinch off the coastal salient formed by earlier British gains in the north.®^ During the renewal of this attack on the 30th occurred one of the finest examples of tactical air force action in the whole campaign. The Australians were attempting to push their wedge to the coast. The air force shouldered the responsi- bility of preventing sizable counterattacks from Thompson's Post, within the enemy pocket to the east. Despite a bomb line that shifted constantly in an extremely restricted (nine-mile square) area, over 300 sorties were laid on, no sizable counterattacks developed, and none of the 95 tons of bombs fell on friendly troops.^®
Rommel sensed that the Eighth Army now meant to concentrate on the coastal sector. He brought the weight of his German formations to bear, and fierce fighting resulted from his attempts to extricate the defenders of Thompson's Post. When on the morning of 29 October Montgomery learned that the famous 90th Light had moved into the Rahman area, he realized that the enemy had fathomed his intentions and so he changed his plans for the last time— for a drive against the Italians farther south which would break his 10 Corps (armored) into the open.®®
The decisive phase of El Alamein then ensued. While Australian pres- sure on Thompson's Post evoked furious counterattacks, 2 New Zealand Division moved forward at 0100 hours on 2 November and cleared a new path across the Axis mine fields through which 9 Armoured Brigade had passed by first light. Although the brigade was subse- quently severely punished by an antitank screen, i Armoured Division also came through and gave as good as it got in a savage tank battle near Tel el Aqqaqir. Behind the antitank screen the crumbling Axis forces began to withdraw along the coastal road. On the night of 3 /4 November the infantry (including 4 Indian Division) turned the anti-
38
CRISIS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
tank screen and let the British armor loose. El Alamein was over.^^^ The air force was already scourging the traffic on the coastal road, over 400 sorties being delivered on the jd/^^
Montgomery hoped to cut off and destroy Rommel at Fuka or Matruh. On the 4th the rear guard stood briefly at Ghazal; by then the landing grounds east of Fuka were reported vacant. On the 5th there was a brief stand at Fuka escarpment, terminated after a short, sharp engagement. At this point, on the 7th, the rains characteristic of the season cheated Montgomery of his opportunity, immobilizing his armor's supporting M/T in the desert and miring WDAF on the newly occupied Daba landing grounds, on one of which A party of the 57th Group had already arrived. In the southern sector of the former Alamein line the air forces were dropping food and water to groups of prisoners which the Eighth Army had not had time to round up. Four Italian divisions had been entirely abandoned by the Germans.^^^
IX Bomber Command had not been inactive during the stubborn land battle. Besides its raids on Maleme, it combined with RAF Liber- ators and Beauforts to sink a tanker and a merchantman just off Tobruk harbor on the night of 25/26 October; these were the Terges- tia and the Proserpina, which the Italians subsequently admitted were lost on this occasion. It sent five B-17's over Tobruk on 2 November to score hits on two medium-sized merchant vessels and start fires in harbor installations which were seen blazing two days later. Reflecting the rapid advance of the army, after 6 November no more USAAF heavy bombers went to Tobruk; Bengasi, and then Tripoli, became the principal targets.^^^
While Rommel was being cleared out of Egypt, the nomenclature of the American air forces in the Middle East was at last regularized. On 8 November, Lt. Gen. Frank M. Andrews took over the USAFIME command; an airman fresh from the Caribbean, where he had intro- duced a type of air force organization widely adopted by the overseas air forces, he was a logical choice to succeed Maxwell. On 12 No- vember, by general order, he established the Ninth Air Force. On the same day, accordingly, Brereton was able to activate Headquarters Squadron, Ninth Air Force, and IX Air Service Command. IX Bomber Command was finally set up on 27 November, utilizing the Head- quarters and Headquarters Squadron of the 19th Bombardment
39
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
Wing which had sailed into Port Tewfik on the Mauretania on 12 November.^*^^
As all things are added to the victors, the Middle East's strategic ob- jectives, which Brereton had stated back in August, grew suddenly nearer accomplishment with the flight of the Axis armies. On 1 5 No- vember the Martuba airfields, beyond Tobruk and Gazala, were in the Eighth Army's hands, in time to cover a convoy which sailed next evening out of Port Said for Maltai No merchant vessels were lost on the passage. By then, IX Bomber Command's heavies had moved their bases from Palestine to the Delta; and on the night of 2 1 November, staging out of Gambut, they raided Tripoli. Moreover, on 8 No- vember, TORCH had materialized on the beaches of Northwest Africa.^*^^
40
CHAPTER 2
TORCH AND THE TWELFTH AIR FORCE
WORLD WAR II was to see larger operations than the Anglo-American invasion of Northwest Africa, but none surpassed it in complexity, in daring— and the prominence of hazard involved— or in the degree of strategic surprise achieved. The most important attribute of TORCH, however, is the most obvious. It was the first fruit of the combined strategy. Once it had been under- taken, other great operations followed as its corollaries; competing strategies receded or went into abeyance until its course had been run. In short, the TORCH operation, and the lessons learned in Africa, imposed a pattern on the war.
America's military interest in Northwest Africa, as indeed its appre- ciation of the menacing trend of the European war, goes back to the collapse of the Allied armies in France and the Low Countries in the summer of 1940. The Germans adopted the ingenious plan of splitting France into two parts, allowing the more southerly to be governed by the aged Marshal Petain at Vichy. The degree of independence exer- cised by Petain was a moot question, but there was never any hin- drance to the assumption of full control of France by the Germans, oiice they chose such a course.
North Africa, with those portions of the French Empire not declar- ing for De Gaulle, assumed a politico-military complexion similar to that of unoccupied France; and like Syria, Madagascar, and Indo- China, it eventually became a vacuum into which one or the other active military force would flow when circumstances proved suitable. Agents of both sides abounded in the area. The Axis, by the terms of the armistice with France, had left the Vichy French with African
41
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
forces considerable enough to maintain their ascendancy against in- ternal revolt and to discourage a British invader; it kept a German- Italian armistice commission in North Africa. An Axis incursion in one form or another was appreciated as a constant possibility.
The strategic implications of the situation were important. To the United States, at uneasy peace, Nazi occupation of Vichy Africa would mean a threat to the Western Hemisphere from Dakar. For Great Britain it would mean the certain interdiction of the sea route through the Mediterranean, exposure of the sea route around Africa to attacks by U-boat and bomber, and a threat to the fledgling air route across central Africa to the Middle East. British or American opera- tions in Northwest Africa were, therefore, in the first Instance defen- sive, with the purpose of blocking the extension of Axis forces.
Genesis aiid Develop?nent of TORCH
By August 1 94 1 the United States had developed the Joint plan JPB-BLACK^ against the possibility of having to seize Dakar. Follow- ing Pearl Harbor, with the arrival of Churchill and his military and naval advisers, the so-called ARCADIA conference (23 December-14 Jan- uary) was convened in Washington to refurbish and implement Anglo- American war plans. At this conference was presented GYMNAST, a plan which had been under study in the United States for some months, involving a landing at Casablanca. The British, for their part, had previ- ously explored the feasibility of a landing on the Mediterranean coast of French Africa. These plans were combined as SUPER-GYMNAST, usually spoken of as simply GYMNAST. By 1 3 January 1 942 the Com- bined Chiefs of Staff (CCS) had agreed that GYMNAST was the project of first strategic importance in the Atlantic area,^ consonant with that part of the combined basic strategy which aimed to close and tighten the ring around Germany— a ring drawn from Archangel along the western coasts of Europe and the northern seaboard of the Medi- terranean to Anatolia and the Black Sea.^
GYMNAST envisaged putting into French North Africa approx- imately 180,000 Allied troops, about equally divided between British and Americans. The Americans were to enter through Casablanca and the British either through Oran or Algiers, the plans changing some- what in the latter regard.^ From the lodgments in Morocco and Algeria, Allied control was to be extended over North Africa with an eye to the destruction of Rommel's forces, which were currently engaged
42
TORCH AND THE TWELFTH AIR FORCE
in the ''accordion war" with the British, consisting of drive and counter- drive between Agheila, at the entrance to Tripolitania, and Gazala, beyond the Cyrenaican hump.**
GYMNAST offered the following advantages: providing a counter- move to a German entry into Spain; sealing off and neutralizing Dakar, thus accomplishing the principal objective of JPB-BLACK; forestalling Axis occupation of French North Africa; opening the Mediterranean to a limited degree; securing bases for land and air operations against Italy and for air attack on Germany if longer-range bombers became available.® The paucity of Allied shipping, however, effectively crippled GYMNAST: first, by limiting the size of the planned force and thereby forcing the planners to gamble; finally, by causing the enterprise to be altogether abandoned.
Because the Allies together could not transport in the initial con- voys more than 24,000 men to Africa ( 1 3 January figures) / the opera- tion had to be based on assumptions which were none too secure. Twenty-four thousand men could not break into French North Africa; therefore, the initial nonresistance and subsequent wholehearted co- operation of the French were essential. In fact, a French invitation was considered the sine qua non of GYMNAST, although the weight of British and American military opinion and of British civil opinion was extremely skeptical of the possibility of receiving a trustworthy invita- tion. Equally equivocal were the other major assumptions: (i) that Spanish resistance to a German incursion into Spain would delay for three months a German attack from Spain against Morocco; (2) that in case of a German invasion of Spain the garrisons in Spanish Morocco would admit the Allies. Moreover, if the line of communications through Gibraltar were cut, and it was anticipated that it would be, the Allied forces within the Mediterranean would have to be supplied and reinforced wholly through Casablanca and thence overland. In view of the limitations of Casablanca's port and the shortage of naval escort, it was estimated late in February that it would take six or seven months to land the entire force.®
A few of the other factors that plagued GYMNAST may be men- tioned. It was not considered possible for an Allied army, beaten in Morocco and Algeria, upon its withdrawal to assault Dakar with any prospect of success.^ Moreover, the expected early denial of the naval base at Gibraltar made possession of the Canaries essential, but if the Spanish did not acquiesce in their occupation, the Allies could
43
TORCH AND THE TWELFTH AIR FORCE
not immediately find the means to take the islands by force.^^ The GYMNAST commanders, who included at various times Lt. Gen. Joseph W, Stilwell and Maj. Gen. Lloyd Fredendall for the Americans and General Alexander for the British, had also to wrestle with the problem of combating the German and Italian air reaction with their own limited land-based aviation.^^
Whatever the possibilities offered by GYMNAST, by late February 1942 it was recognized that the operation could not in any case be mounted, as a goodly part of the required shipping was far away in the Pacific.^^ On 3 March the Combined Staff Planners termed planning for GYMNAST an "academic study" and recommended that no forces be held in readiness for a North African expedition,^®
By mid- April 1942, America and Great Britain had turned to and apparently agreed on a firm strategy for the extinction of the European Axis: cross-Channel invasion following a preparatory day-and-night air offensive * Target date for ROUNDUP, the full-scale adventure, was set for spring 1943, but provision existed for a lesser attack in the fall of 1942. The latter, designated SLEDGEHAMMER, was intended either to exploit a German setback or to ease German pressure on the Soviet front. The American forces needed to accomplish this cross- Channel strategy were set in motion towards the United Kingdom under a build-up plan coded BOLERO.**
The BOLERO-SLEDGEHAMMER-ROUNDUP strategy was at bottom an American conception, passionately cleaved to by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which envisioned operating with overwhelming force against the European Axis in the logistically most-favored area. The major strategic decisions of June and July 1942 represented the pro- gressive attrition and final eclipse of that strategy, principally by the hard fortunes of war in Libya and the U.S.S.R. together with the shortage of landing craft— to some degree by the British distaste for continental landings. The BOLERO concentration plan withstood the examination which resulted from Churchill's Washington visit in June, but a slightly different view was taken of its virtues. It was stressed that BOLERO was flexible enough to provide against any develop- ments on the controlling eastern front: if the U.S.S.R. collapsed, Eng- land, the next threatened area, was reinforced; if the U.S.S.R. con- tinued in the war, large-scale operations on the continent were possible out of the English concentration. Nor did it preclude the undertaking of GYMNAST or minor operations against the continent,^*^
• See Vol. I, chap. 16.
45
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
This reaffirmation of the soundness of the BOLERO plan was ac- cepted by the Combined Chiefs on 20 June. In the same paper, the GYMNAST operation, revived in Allied thinking by the prospect of encountering on the western front the major part of a Wehrmacht victorious in the east, was condemned because it depended upon un- certain political reactions and, opening a new front, it would spread the already strained Allied resources.^® Pursuant to a White House conference on the 21st, however, it was directed that careful study be given to GYMNAST as an alternative to continental operations.^^ Marshall nevertheless commented on 29 June that the only diversions from BOLERO conceded in the June conferences were the Amer- ican reinforcements to the Middle East, which amounted after all to speeding air reinforcements already contemplated.^®
The feasibility of SLEDGEHAMMER, which by then had become a "sacrifice play" to aid the sorely beset Russians, was called in question by Churchill on 8 July.^^ The British had pointed out in June that the shortage of landing craft would limit to six divisions the initial force to be thrown on the continent; it was not thought that this would materially ease the pressure on the eastern front. The Americans, on the other hand, convinced that the collapse of the U.S.S.R. was the worst of all possible catastrophes threatening the United Nations at the moment, were inclined to assume risks. On 17 July, Marshall, King, and Harry Hopkins, among others, arrived in the United King- dom to press the case for SLEDGEHAMMER.^** On 22 July came the final British refusal, and two days later GYMNAST was in effect rehabilitated by the Combined Chiefs.^^
The arrangements reached on 24 July were not altogether final. Matters stood as follows: the plan for ROUNDUP, the 1943 conti- nental invasion, was to be pushed so long as there existed a reason- able chance of its successful execution before July 1943; if by 15 September 1942, Soviet deterioration made ROUNDUP imprac- ticable, GYMNAST should be launched before i December 1942.^^ It was soon agreed, however, that the urgency of mounting TORCH, as GYMNAST had been renamed, before i December would not permit a delay until 1 5 September, when the outcome of the German campaign in the east supposedly would be apparent. At the Com- bined Chiefs' meeting on 30 July in Washington, Admiral Leahy stated that in his opinion the President and the Prime Minister had already cast the die for TORCH.^^ That evening at the White House, pre-
46
TORCH AND THE TWELFTH AIR FORCE
sumably on being put the question by Leahy, the President stated very positively that he, as commander in chief, had made the decision in favor of the African expedition.^* Since the Prime Minister was a known partisan of Mediterranean operations, 30 July may be taken as the date when TORCH was definitely on. It may also be taken as the date on which large-scale cross-Channel operations were "in all probability"— to use the Combined Chiefs' phrasing— put off until 1944.^^
In the few days during which ROUNDUP and TORCH were, on paper, alternatives, the latter had taken form rapidly. By 25 July the CCS had approved the command setup; to lessen French resistance TORCH was to have an American complexion, headed by an Amer- ican commander with American troops as the first wave of the assault. Planning for the landings in Morocco was to be done in Washington, while London was to prepare the Mediterranean assaults.^^ By the 26th, Eisenhower, as commanding general of the European Theater of Oper- ations, was definitely slated for the post of TORCH commander. Un- fortunately, most of August was to be taken up by what he called a "transatlantic essay contest" as to the nature and even the feasibility of TORCH.27
The transatlantic essay contest was occasioned by a shortage of naval escorts, combat loaders, and aircraft carriers which threatened to re- duce the striking forces that could be carried to Africa. The planners were forced then to consider the abandonment of one or another of the projected landings and found that with TORCH, unfortunately, abandoning any of the landings jeopardized the strategic success of the whole operation.
Eisenhower, who had commenced planning late in July, began on the theory of practically simultaneous assaults at Casablanca, at Oran, and in the region of Algiers; on 10 August he submitted informally to the British chiefs of staff a draft outline of TORCH agreeable to this conception.^® Moreover, this general scheme was theoretically made binding by the CCS directive for TORCH, dated 13 August,^^ which required landings in the neighborhood of the three named ports and as far as practicable up the Algerian coast towards Tunis. At this juncture, however, the British and American navies insisted that it was impossible to escort convoys for operations within the Mediter- ranean and without (Casablanca) at the same time. Consequently, Eisenhower was compelled to shift his calculations. The securing of
47
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
Casablanca was left to a force backtracking overland from seized Oran. When word of this reached Marshall, he was disturbed enough to ask Eisenhower, on 15 August, for his completely frank estimate of the probable success of the operation; and when the Norfolk Group Plan, named for Eisenhower's planners at Norfolk House, reached Wash- ington for presentation to the CCS, the central dilemma of TORCH received a thorough airing/'*^
The Norfolk Group Plan, in brief, differed from the CCS direc- tive by omitting any landings on the Atlantic coast of French Morocco. Simultaneous predawn assaults were outlined at Oran, Algiers, and Bone, but of the thirteen divisions to be employed seven (American) were allotted to the tasks of cutting across to Casablanca and, subse- quently, preparing for an attack on Spanish Morocco, should Spain find herself in the Axis camp. To provide additional insurance for the vital line of communications (LOC) through the Strait of Gibraltar, the plan indicated that studies were in progress for a further thrust at Spanish Morocco from the sea, to be mounted from England, if action were required before the Oran forces could consolidate on the landward side.
In light of later developments, there is interesting reasoning in the letter Eisenhower wrote under date of 23 August to explain the work of his planners.^^ He stated frankly that although he believed the Norfolk Group Plan made the best possible use of the resources available to him he did not believe those resources, however used, were sufficiently powerful to accomplish the tasks set forth by the CCS. If the French military, reported friendly to the Allies at Algiers and Bone but hostile in Tunisia and at Oran, resisted in determined fashion, there was little hope of gaining Tunisia overland ahead of the Axis forces— which once in Tunisia could be built up more rapidly than Allied armies. (After the fate of the August Malta convoy, it was appreciated that no assault convoy could sail directly for Bizerte or Tunis in the teeth of the Axis air forces in Sardinia and Sicily.) If the Spaniards moved against TORCH, an eventuality particularly likely if they were advised beforehand of the operation,^^ they could cut the LOC through Gibraltar and knock out the latter's naval base and airdrome. The Gibraltar airdrome, which was to be relied on heavily as a springboard from which land-based Allied fighters could be quickly passed into captured African fields, was at the mercy of emplaced Spanish artillery.
48
TORCH AND THE TWELFTH AIR FORCE
Personally, Eisenhower believed that if the two governments could find the resources a vigorous assault at Casablanca would greatly in- crease the chances of success.^^ As a demonstration of Allied power it would lessen the hazard of French resistance and Spanish inter- vention, more quickly establish an auxiliary land LOG, and aid in Allied deployment to thwart a German surge through Spain against the vital strait.
Whereupon, the two governments and their military staffs began the task of cutting the suit to fit the cloth. The U.S. chiefs of staff ini- tially contended that if any landings were to be scrapped they should be those east of the Oran region, not those around Casablanca. The British chiefs, on the other hand, asserted that such an alteration would almost certainly deliver Tunisia to the Axis, and Tunisia was the key to Rommel's supplies. The British were particularly uneasy about the notorious weather of the Atlantic coast of Morocco, where, it was predicted, on four days out of five the surf would make am- phibious operations impossible. Their readiness to forego the Casa- blanca landing indicated that they were willing to accept the risk as to whether Spain would remain neutral and defend her neutrality. The American chiefs of staff took no such optimistic view, insisting that the line of communications be made secure by an Allied thrust at Casablanca.
The controversy lasted into the first week of September and was finally settled after the intervention of the two chiefs of state, both eager that TORCH be undertaken. According to one account, Roose- velt was willing to dispense with British assistance, except for RAF and Royal Navy contingents, and indorsed the capture of Casablanca and Oran with an "All-American" team, so anxious were he and Marshall that American troops gain combat experience in 1942. By 6 September the TORCH design had hardened. A few days later Eisenhower and his chief of staff were puzzling over another question— this one of an enigmatic quality: what was to be the Anglo-American strategy after TORCH?^^
The TORCH outline plan appeared on 20 September.^^ It was identical in salient points with the CCS directive of 13 August and preserved the old GYMNAST conception whereby British forces predominated east of Oran and American in the western Algerian and Moroccan operations. Three task forces were initially to descend on French North Africa— D-day, 8 November. The Eastern Assault
49
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
Force, mixed British and American and staging out of England, was to take Algiers, whereupon the British First Army would be brought in to secure Tunisia and operate eastward against Rommel. American troops of the Center (Oran) Task Force, also sailing from England, and the Western (Casablanca) Task Force, sailing from the United States, were to link after the attainment of their initial objectives and prepare, as the Fifth Army,^^ for a possible thrust into Spanish Morocco. A feature of the Norfolk Group Plan was preserved by the organization in England of a Northern Task Force with the mission of attacking the Tangier-Ceuta area before D plus 60, should action be required before the Western and Center task forces could be readied.^^ The organization of this force was begun by General Eisen- hower in late October;^® on 4 November the CCS approved the plans,^** and under the code name BACKBONE the project was active until 6 February 1943/^
All things considered, the TORCH operation was the purest gamble America and Britain undertook during the war, largely because success depended so greatly on political rather than military assumptions. In this connection, security transcended its ordinary importance, for its breach threatened to convert into active enemies substantial forces in Spain and Africa which might acquiesce if surprised. No certainty would exist that the secret had been kept before TORCH had been irrevocably committed; no preliminary bombardment would soften the African beaches; the risk of trap or ambush was considerable. No one could guarantee, in view of the special hazards of the coast of Morocco, that the important Western Task Force would hit the beaches within a fortnight after the Algerian landings had taken place; elaborate alternate plans had to be prepared for that armada.^^ TORCH, unlike GYMNAST, was prepared to fight its way ashore, yet it could not afford prolonged French resistance if it was to keep its date with Tunis and Bizerte. Probably the greatest weakness of the plan, how- ever, was that it faced both east and west, Spanish Morocco and Tunisia. That weakness had cost three weeks of precious time in the planning days of August; later, some thought it cost Tunisia.^^
Organization of the Tivelfth Air Force
It had been obvious from the outset that the preponderance of American strength for the invasion of North Africa had to be found from resources previously allotted to the general purpose of cross-
50
TORCH AND THE TWELFTH AIR FORCE
Channel invasion. In terms of air force deployment, this meant that Maj. Gen. Carl Spaatz' Eighth Air Force, then preparing to test the American doctrine of high-altitude, precision daylight bombing from the United Kingdom,* would furnish the core of the air striking force for TORCH.^^ The Eighth began by furnishing the commander. Gen- eral Doolittle had been assigned, after his Tokyo raid, to ready the 4th Bombardment Wing (M) for service with the Eighth; on 30 July, Marshall and Arnold agreed that he would head the USAAF con- tingent for TORCH, subject to the approval of Eisenhower and Spaatz. Their approval being forthcoming, Doolittle arrived in Eng- land on 6 August to take up his considerable task/*
The Eighth not only held the principal AAF resources at hand for service in Africa but its personnel, albeit in August 1942 with almost no combat experience, were the most highly trained available. Eisen- hower, after conferences with Doolittle and Spaatz, built his plan around that fact; on 1 3 August he announced that he meant to build the TORCH air force around a nucleus taken from the Eighth with additional units dravni directly from the United States.^^ Utilization of Eighth Air Force heavies and fighters would capitalize on the superior training of their crews. Medium and light bomber units previously scheduled for the Eighth would proceed to England for indoctrination, processing, and most important, initiation into combat; moreover, the Eighth would be able to furnish experienced personnel for key positions in the fighter, bomber, and service commands.
The initial combat force comprised two heavy bombardment groups, two P-38 and two Spitfire fighter groups, one light and three medium bombardment groups, and one troop carrier group. The plan was sound and appeared workable, but as it happened it presumed too much on the readiness of the medium and light groups; furthermore, because of weather and the haste of mounting TORCH even some of the Eighth Air Force groups already in England in August did not get the amount of combat experience which might have been reasonably expected in the interval before the African campaign began.*®
The impact of TORCH on USAAF resources was revealed when the Plans Division of the Air Staff reviewed the possibilities of furnish- ing the units required to complete the air task force, which units Eisen- hower desired in England by 15 September.*'^ The heavy bombard- ment and fighter groups, already in the United Kingdom, presented no
• See Vol, I, chaps. 17 and 18.
51
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
problem, but the equipment of the medium and light bombardment groups was far from complete, and headquarters units for fighter, bomber, and service commands would have to be furnished by those in training for the Ninth Air Force. Similarly, the complement of signal companies (aviation) and signal construction battalions could be made up only at the price of diversions from the South Pacific. The assistant chief of Air Staff, Plans emphasized that the satisfaction of Eisenhower's requirements entailed the utilization of partially trained personnel in many categories. The mid-September deadline could in no case be met.*^
The plan meanwhile went forward in England where, by i8 August, the Eighth had been charged with the organization, training, and planning of the new air force, whose code name, appropriately enough, became JUNIOR; Doolittle, for the time being in the capacity of a staff officer of the Eighth, became directly responsible to Spaatz for these functions. Headquarters of the Eighth Air Force and its bomber, fighter, and service commands were each to sponsor the creation of a corresponding organization for JUNIOR.^^ Most of the Twelfth's commands, however, were activated in the United States, from units previously designated for Brereton, and then shipped to England. Headquarters and Headquarters Squadron, Twelfth Air Force, came into existence at Boiling Field, D.C., on zo August. XII Fighter Com- mand was activated at Drew Field, Florida, on the 24th and XII Air Force Service Command at MacDill Field, Florida, two days later. All three organizations were rushed across on the Queen Mary^ which sailed from New York on 5 September, and were attached to their opposite numbers in the Eighth. XII Bomber Command was activated at Camp Lynn, High Wycombe, on 2 September by order of General Spaatz, its personnel being drawn from VIII Bomber Command and, later, from 4th Bombardment Wing,^^
On 8 September, Spaatz announced to his staff that JUNIOR would soon be organized as a proper air force. Thereafter the Twelfth took shape rapidly, receiving its initial assignment of tactical and service units from the Eighth four days later.^^ On the 23 d, Doolittle assumed command and announced Col. Hoyt S. Vandenberg as his chief of staff. Definite assignments to the subordinate comniands followed on the 27th: Col. Claude E. Duncan to XII Bomber Command, Col Thomas W. Blackburn to XII Fighter Command, and Brig. Gen. Delmar Dunton to XII AFSC®'
52
TORCH AND THE TWELFTH AIR FORCE
The air force requirements which Eisenhower had oudlned on 13 August^^ were evidently predicated on the Norfoik Group Plan^^^ which omitted the assault on Casablanca, for on i September, Doolittle, once more in Washington, met with Arnold and they proceeded to initiate the organization of a second U.S. air task force, which would cooperate with General Patton's troops striking at the west coast port. What was planned was in effect another full-scale air force with bomber and fighter wings instead of bomber and fighter commands.^^ Although it was afterwards reduced, its paper strength was initially as great as that of the Twelfth Air Force proper,**® which was designed to function in an equivalent role at the Oran landings.
After his meeting with Arnold, Doolittle radioed Vandenberg that he was staying in the States until the new organization got under way. XII Ground-Air Support Command was activated from the former headquarters and staff of III Ground- Air Support Command on 1 7 Sep- tember; its name was shortened to XII Air Support Command ( ASC) * by redesignation on i October. By then Brig. Gen. John K. Cannon had succeeded CoL Rosenham Beam as its commander.^^ Of necessity the command was very hastily organized, though only a httle more so than had been TORCH itself, and one mistake occurred in the tardy provision of a service command detachment. Not until 4 October was the Detachment, XII Air Force Service Command, activated, of which Col. Harold A. Bartron became head.^*^
The TORCH air plan, issued 20 September, reflected the central weakness of the entire operation. Although Eisenhower had a naval commander— Admiral Cunningham, with a briUiant record in the Middle East— and had wanted an air force commander, Allied Force ended with two separate air commands. These commands were sep- arate as to nationality, tasks, and areas of responsibility and opera- tions, corresponding in general to the projected division of the ground forces into the American Fifth and the British First Armies. They were directly responsible to Eisenhower, whose staff included an as- sistant and deputy assistant chief of staff for air. Air Cdre. A. P. M. Sanders and Brig. Gen. Howard A. Craig, to ''coordinate" air plan- ning. With Allied Force Headquarters, or AFHQ as it was gen- erally known, then, lay the responsibilities of reinforcing one command from another as need arose and of insuring centralized direction of the air procection for convoys. Whatever ensued, the
• Not to be confused with Air Service Command.
53
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
naval commander could not be expected to negotiate separately with each air command/^'^
The British components of the TORCH air force comprised the Eastern Air Command (EAC) under Air Marshal Sir William Welsh. Welsh drew the definite assignment of cooperating with the Eastern Assault Force and the Eastern Task Force (First Army) in the seizure of Algiers and the subsequent advance to Tunis and beyond. His fighters were responsible for the air defense of the Mediterranean coast line eastward from Cap Tenes, loo miles west of EAC's prospective headquarters at Algiers, and he was vested with the task of making arrangements for land-based air cooperation with the navies. Welsh was also the middleman for Eisenhower's relations with the RAF out- side North Africa— with the Air Ministry and the AOC-in-C Middle East. If urgent help from Malta were required, it was further provided that AFHQ, through Welsh, could communicate directly with RAF, Malta, simultaneously notifying the Middle East. Such arrangements were part of the generally loose integration of the Allied Force in Northwest Africa with the Middle East command.®**
Doolittle's Twelfth Air Force was almost three times as large as the Eastern Air Command (1,244 to 454 aircraft)/'^ Its role, after the assault phase, was by no means as clear, Spaatz being constrained to remark to Doolittle on 30 October that he had never understood "what, when, and where" the Twelfth was to do,^^ Should the Western and Center task forces move on Spanish Morocco, the Twelfth would sup- port their operations.**^ Should BACKBONE land near Tangier, the Twelfth was in support.**^ Should the Germans begin penetration of Spain, the Twelfth's B-17's— based at the Gran airdromes— would strike the peninsula.^^ Plans had, of course, been laid to move the Twelfth eastward for operations against Rommel or for an air offensive against Italy, but such a movement had to wait on the clearing of Tunisia and, to some extent, on the clarification of Allied strategy.^®
During the assault phase of TORCH, Doolittle was to remain with Eisenhower at the command post in the tunnels of Gibraltar while his Air Corps units at Oran functioned under his A- 3, Col. Lauris Norstad, and the XII Air Support Command operated at Casablanca under Cannon, both directly responsible to the ground commanders of the respective task forces. Doolittle would subsequently establish his headquarters at Oran and take over command, first, of Norstad's force, then of XII ASC, and await Eisenhower s directive for the
54
TORCH AND THE TWELFTH AIR FORCE
further employment of the Twelfth. The actual landings in Africa were to proceed, in the first instance, with the support of carrier- borne naval aviation until the capture of airdromes permitted opera- tions by the Eastern Air Command and the Twelfth.®^
Not only was a great weight of Allied air power to be brought to bear in the actions against the three ports— to give the French de- fenders the impression of force majeure under which they could honorably lay down their arms— but AFHQ hoped afterward to meet enemy air reaction on a strength basis of two to one. Nevertheless, the rate of build-up was subject, during the early days when the heavy losses were to be expected, to well-defined limitations. First of all, airdromes had to be captured, and the total French African airdrome resources were far from adequate. If Gibraltar were subjected to heavy and persistent Axis air attack, great execution could be wrought among the short-range Spitfires and Hurricanes being erected there for flight to the theater. The employment of all types of aircraft, whether mov- ing to Africa by ship or under their own power, was limited, of course, in the logistical situation by what supplies could be brought in the early convoys, unloaded at possibly damaged ports, and transported over the limited African road and rail network. The Eastern Air Com- mand faced a nice problem in this regard: it had to be heavy with motor transport to insure its mobility in the dash for Tunis, but the bulky motor transport cut into the number of squadrons which could be employed— precisely in the region where the heaviest Axis air reaction, from Sardinia and Sicily, could be expected.®®
Tied in with the vast TORCH design were the RAF home com- mands and the Eighth Air Force. Specifically the Eighth was directed to strike the submarine pens on the Biscay coast, with the object of easing the passage of the TORCH convoys, and with a vigorous air offensive to pin the GAF in northwest Europe.^® Air reinforcement of Africa was always possible out of either United Kingdom or Middle East resources, the limitation here being whether Eisenhower, with his straitened maintenance, could profitably utilize additional squadrons.'^ He had stated, however, that if necessary to the success of his enterprise he would use the whole of the Eighth Air Force in TORCH," and two of the Eighth's heavy groups (91st and 303d) were earmarked for service in Africa; as well, the P-38's of the 78th Group were to be held in England as a general fighter reserve.''^^
The tactical plans for the landings assigned the Twelfth Air Force
55
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
important roles at both Oran and Casablanca. The original arrange- ments for Oran called for the dropping of parachutists by the 6oth Troop Carrier Group at the two most important airdromes in the vicinity— at La Senia to destroy the French aircraft concentrated there and at Tafaraoui to hold its paved runway until relieved by troops from beachheads east and west of the city. With Tafaraoui in American hands, USAAF Spitfires waiting at Gibraltar were to fly in upon call from the Oran air task force commander on board the Center Task Force headquarters ship.*^^
Air Corps troops arriving in the Oran region on D-day and in sub- sequent convoys were to prepare for the reception of additional units flying in from England. Detailed schedules were drawn up for air- craft movement but were not in the end adhered to— because of lack of readiness in the case of some units and on account of tactical con- siderations with others.'^* According to plans of 4 October, prior to the time they would be consolidated with the Morocco-based XII Air Support Command, the units flown into the Oran area would comprise up to four fighter groups under XII Fighter Command and up to one light, two medium, and four heavy bombing groups under XII Bomber Command/*^ AFHQ indicated that once the French in Morocco had been subdued, the Oran area might expect additional fighter reinforce- ments from XII ASC, in view of the greater likelihood of GAF or lAF reaction on the northern coast. The heavy bombers were to be based in the Oran area on the theory that they could be used against either Spain or Tunisia.''® The plans, however, which underwent the many inevitable changes, at one time indicated that two heavy groups might also go to General Cannon.'^'^
The use of paratroops constituted a vital part of Allied Force's ar- rangements for prompt seizure of Algeria and the subsequent dash to Tunisia, and two of the three groups in Col. Paul L. Williams' 51st Troop Carrier Wing were assigned for lift. The 60th, charged with the operations at Oran, was organized on 12 September with Col. Edson D. Raff's 2d Battalion, 503d U.S. Parachute Infantry, into the Paratroop Task Force under Col. William C. Bentley, Jr., familiar with the African area by reason of his former post of military and air attache at Tangier. Jump-off points for the operation had to be as close as possible to the objective, for a trip of over 1,200 miles was in prospect: the fields at St. Eval and Predannack in Cornwall were chosen on this account. The Paratroop Task Force arranged to home
56
TORCH AND THE TWELFTH AIR FORCE
on Royal Navy warships in the assault fleet and on a radio which an American operative was to smuggle ashore/®
The 64th Group was to furnish lift for 400 men— two parachute company groups of the British 3 Paratroop Battalion—the plan evi- dently being to fly them into Algiers after its capture and then jump them at points farther east. The planes and passengers were to be as- sembled at Hum in Cornwall for a D-day take-offj® Patton had asked that paratroops from England also be used in his operations in French Morocco, against the Rabat airfield and later, as his assault plans changed, against the Port Lyautey airfield, but Eisenhower rejected his plea for various reasons, among which was the fact that a definite day for the Moroccan landings could not be set. The enterprise was abandoned early in October.®^
The employment of Colonel Bentley's Paratroop Task Force under- went a change after Maj. Gen. Mark W. Clark's famous submarine visit to Africa in the third week of October, during which Brig. Gen. Charles Mast and other pro-Allied Frenchmen assured Clark and Robert Murphy that American troop carrier aircraft could land unopposed at Oran airdromes and that French forces in the Bone area would offer no resistance. As these assurances offered the attractive opportunity of a rapid Allied movement toward the east, AFHQ prepared to exploit the situation. Alternate plans were drawn: * Var" plan which assumed French resistance and provided for a night drop at H-hour, D-day, to capture the airdromes; and "peace" plan by which the planes were to be welcomed at La Senia during daylight on D-day and be immediately available for operations eastward. On D minus i, Eisenhower would communicate from Gibraltar the decision as to which plan was to be used."
Back in July, Sir Charles Portal had remarked that the projected Casablanca landings might be assisted from Gibraltar, where, as he put it, the presence of British aircraft would raise less suspicion of "im- pending operations in the neighborhood."®^ It was determined in September that 220 fighters— 130 AAF Spits and 90 RAF Spits and Hurricanes— could be erected, tested, and passed through to captured African airdromes by D plus 2, and the D-day arrangements provided that they could be sent to Oran, Algiers, or Casablanca, the decision, again, to be made by AFHQ in accordance with the tactical situation. To service any Spitfires which might be dispatched to the Western Task Force area, sixteen mechanics from the U.S. 3 ist Fighter Group
57
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
were sent to the United States from England and subsequently sailed back across the Atlantic with Patton's force. The ground echelons of the 3 1 St and 5 2d U.S. Spitfire groups were to come in with the Oran convoy. All the pilots, USAAF and RAF, left Glasgow on the same boat and debarked at Gibraltar on the night of 5/6 November.^^
USAAF participation in the assault on the Casablanca area hinged largely on the seizure of the Port Lyautey airdrome, to which the P-40's of the 33d Group would be flown after being catapulted from an auxihary aircraft carrier accompanying the assault convoy. Air Corps troops of XII Air Support Command, coming in with the ground forces on D-day, would act in the first instance as assault troops and, as additional airdromes were captured, prepare them for operation and the reception of additional units; as many as three fighter groups, two medium bombardment groups, and one of light bombardment might arrive.^'* The Port Lyautey field, with its hard-surfaced run- ways, ranked as the most valuable by far in the area. It constituted the main objective of subtask force GOALPOST, landing at the mouth of the shallow, winding Sebou River. Not without difficulty, the authorities at Newport News finally provided a vessel drawing little enough water to negotiate the Sebou with a cargo of gasoline, oil, and bombs for the Port Lyautey field; the Contessa, an old 5 ,500-ton fruit boat.^^
It had taken a decision by the CCS (19 September) to assign the 33d Group to the Twelfth Air Force,* and other hurdles had to be surmounted before the group finally sailed for Africa. The U.S. Navy was suffering from a shortage of carriers for its own role in the Casa- blanca assault and begrudged the use of a flattop for fighters whose employment might be frustrated if GOALPOST encountered diffi- culty ashore. Polite doubts were voiced as to whether P-4oF's could stand the strain of catapulting. The Navy, however, cooperated by training Army pilots at the naval aircraft factory at Philadelphia and assigned the Chenango to carry the group to Africa.®^ As advance replacements for the 33 d, thirty-five planes and pilots sailed in the British auxiliary carrier Archer on the first follow-up convoy to Morocco.®'^
The Twelfth Air Force, on the eve of its commitment to TORCH, was a very unevenly trained command, especially in regard to signal units, as Doolittle pointed out in a progress report to Eisenhower on
* See above, p. 25.
58
TORCH AND THE TWELFTH AIR FORCE
4 October (later, on 21 December, he estimated that "at least'' 75 per cent of his air force's personnel had been either untrained or partially trained). Allowances were made for this fact in the plans. Doolittle meant to commit his best-trained combat units first and continue operational training in the theater; moreover, the TORCH air plans provided against an anticipated greater rate of aircraft wastage for the American flyers.^® In point of training and experience the Twelfth's combat units could be divided into rough categories: those Eighth Air Force units which had already arrived in England before being assigned to the Twelfth; those units intended for the Eighth but di- verted to TORCH before arrival in the theater; and those specifically activated for TORCH or assigned to it in the United States.
In the first category lay a number of units which bore the brunt of the early air fighting in North Africa: the 97th and 301st Bom- bardment Groups (H); the 31st and 5 2d (Spitfires) and ist and 14th (P-38's) Fighter Groups; and the 15th Bombardment Squadron (L). The heavy groups were the pioneers of daylight precision bombing in the European theater and had run a goodly number of missions be- fore they began packing up for TORCH.^® Of the Spitfire groups, only the 31st had had significant combat experience, notably on the Dieppe raid in August; however, both had trained with the RAF.®** One of the ist Group's squadrons had been stationed for a time in Iceland, but despite the best efforts of the Eighth Air Force, egged on by impatient communications from Arnold, it had been impossible to introduce the P-38 to combat. On the eve of TORCH, except for tests against a captured FW-190, there was no indication of how the P-38 would stand up to the Luftwaffe.®^ The 15th had been sent to England with the intention of converting it to a night fighter squadron. When the plan was abandoned, its DB-7's began operating as light bombardment under the aegis of VIII Bomber Command and had several missions against occupied Europe to their credit.^^
The difficulties in readying the medium and the rest of the light bombardment for TORCH proved considerably greater than had been anticipated, even by the gloomy initial estimate AC/AS, Plans had prepared in August.®^ It was intended that the original four groups- three medium and one light— fly to England across the North Atlantic ferry route, Presque Isle, Goose Bay, BLUIE (Greenland), and Reykjavik. Those echelons which got off during September or early October negotiated the route without great trouble; thereafter weather
59
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
marooned increasing numbers of aircraft. The 310th Group (B-25's) managed fairly well, but the 319th Group, which had been unduly- delayed waiting for its B-26's at Baer Field, Indiana, and the 47th Group (A-2o's) left planes and equipment strewn all along the route and experienced some casualties. Under these circumstances the "training and initiation into combat" from England mentioned by the August plans was impossible. The northern route was finally closed to twin- engine aircraft and the remaining mediums allocated to the Twelfth— the 17th and 320th (B-26's) and the 321st (B-25's)— eventually came by way of the southern ferry route.**^
Ill fortune also dogged the P-39 components of the Twelfth— two squadrons of the 68th Observation Group and the 8ist and 350th Fighter Groups. Their aircraft, diverted from a Soviet consignment, were of the P-39D-1 and P-400 vintage, types currently proving in- ferior against the Japanese in the Solomons. VIII Air Force Service Command, without spare parts or mechanics familiar therewith, lagged far behind the schedule for their erection and modification, and pilot training was hence foreshortened. Moreover, when the comparatively short-range P-39's began moving to TORCH in December and Janu- ary, a large number were grounded, chiefly in Portugal, by reason of contrary winds and mechanical failure and were interned.^^ The suc- cessive difficulties encountered in the training and preparation of its medium and P-39 squadrons help to explain why several months passed before the Twelfth was able to deploy in Africa anything resembling its assigned strength. It was planned that most of the TORCH aircraft would proceed to Africa from England under their own power. Be- cause of the magnitude of the fly-out and the fact that USAAF and RAF participation would make a coordinated program necessary, over- all plans were set forth by AFHQ late in October. The movement was based on a group of airdromes in southwest England under control of 44 Group, RAF.««
The Theater Air Force The rehabilitation in London in July 1942 of the GYMNAST con- ception was not at the insistence of American strategists. Marshall had distrusted the African operation; Eisenhower, who was charged with carrying it out, reportedly considered 22 July, when SLEDGE- HAMMER had been scuttled and the British made the proposals which resulted in TORCH, as a candidate for "the blackest day in history."®^
60
TORCH AND THE TWELFTH AIR FORCE
Adm. Ernest J. King worried over the effect on the Pacific war of TORCH'S requirements in shipping, escorts, and carriers.^* For a number of reasons, the USAAF shared this general lack of enthusiasm.
In the first place, although the strategic air offensive against Germany, which the AAF regarded as its main European objective, was not a project strictly contingent upon the BOLERO-ROUNDUP strategy, as U.S. Navy sources later alleged,*® it had enjoyed an unimpeach- able status so long as ROUNDUP remained the No. i Anglo-Amer- ican effort. When TORCH was erected, formally, into an alternative to ROUNDUP on 24 July, the Eighth fell from the first priority posi- tion among the air forces; its heavy and medium units were designated as "available" for TORCH, and fifteen combat groups formerly destined for England were diverted to the Pacific.^^^ Potentially more ominous was the fact that U.S. Navy quarters began to hail the eclipse of ROUNDUP as implying a more thoroughgoing shift in strategy— towards an offensive against Japan.^^^ In these circumstances, the con- temporaneous CCS assurance that resources would be made available to the RAF and the USAAF for a "constantly increasing intensity of air attack"^^^ on Germany left something to be desired.
If TORCH had certain deficiencies from the point of view of over-all AAF strategy, it was nevertheless preferable to any reorienta- tion of Allied strategy towards the Pacific or to any diversion of AAF units thereto; for with TORCH, AAF units at least moved, geograph- ically, in the right direction, and since there was no predetermined Allied strategy for the post-TORCH period,^®^ any suitable air re- sources which could be got to the European theater might in the end find their way into the air offensive against Germany. TORCH was, after all, an approved operation, entitled to the best efforts of all the services; it was not long before USAAF headquarters at Washington perceived that the overriding priority accorded the African venture logically extended to organizations in general support of TORCH, i.e., the Eighth Air Force— and that by embracing the lesser evil the greater might be mitigated.
Thus, when on 20 August, Admiral King called for the air units promised by the CCS at London— which units the admiral planned to use in the Pacific— General Arnold countered with a memorandum setting forth the superior claims of Africa.^^^ Warning that to disperse air resources meant wasting them, he stated that TORCH, combined of course with a bombing offensive out of England, alone of the pend-
61
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
ing Allied operations gave promise of decisive results. In his opinion, as the first Anglo-American offensive and an extremely hazardous one, it should be supported with all available resources; instead, he found that insufficient air forces had been assigned. The aircraft strength assigned to TORCH was not adequate for any of its phases: the land- ings, the conquest of the area, or the subsequent bomber effort from African bases, which Arnold felt to be necessary if the operation was to be exploited as a genuine offensive. His policy of building a formi- dable air force for Africa evidently bore fruit within a fortnight, when, with Doolittle, he organized XII Air Support Command.
By the end of August, the Eighth Air Force was preparing the Twelfth as a matter of first priority and clearly getting more and more involved in TORCH.^^^ Spaatz successfully protested Eisen- hower's orders that the Eighth, better to help with the African prepara- tions, cease operations entirely,^*^® but he realized that the endeavor to reopen the Mediterranean might ''suck in" his whole combat estab- lishment.^^'^ Eisenhower was backing Spaatz' requests for greater strength, but primarily on the ground that the Eighth could both furnish convenient short-term reinforcements for Africa and con- duct intensive operations to fix the GAF in northwestern Europe.^**® The TORCH commander's power and expressed intention to use all of the Eighth in Africa if necessary made the choice of his air advisers or air commanders vital for the AAF.^*'*' Under the TORCH design, well formed by this time, the commander in chief had no over-all air commander.
Eisenhower's indorsement of Spaatz' arguments for reinforcing the Eighth strengthened General Arnold's position. He used it to support a memo of lo September^^^ to the Joint Chiefs, in which he advanced as a fundamental principle that TORCH could not stand alone, that the operations in the Middle East and the United Kingdom were com- plementary to it in that they drew off the Luftwaffe. He warned that the North African area could initially support the operations of only a limited number of aircraft and that no object would be served by piling in units impossible to employ by default of supplies or air- dromes. Therefore, Arnold contended, why not concentrate them in England, where facilities were comparatively abundant and whence pressure could be maintained on Germany and reinforcements could flow to Africa as needed? Perfectly consistent, Arnold on the same 62
TORCH AND THE TWELFTH AIR FORCE
grounds had opposed the diversion from USAMEAF of the 33d Fighter Group.^^^
Not long afterwards, Arnold departed on an inspection of the Pacific to see for himself whether facilities in that area were adequate to the number of planes the naval and local army commanders were demand- ing.^^^ Before he left he held a conference with Maj. Gen. George E. Stratemeyer, chief of the Air Staff, which the latter duly reported to Spaatz on 17 September. Arnold suggested that Spaatz leave his bomber commander, Ma). Gen. Ira C. Eaker, in charge of the Eighth Air Force and accompany Eisenhower to Africa. '^You really should be designated CG AAF in Europe," read Stratemeyer's letter.^^^ This suggestion was the logical culmination of the AAF contention that Africa and England constituted a single air theater, and it represented the hope that the strategic bombing effort could be protected by securing for one of its outstanding exponents a command position at theater headquarters.
Spaatz' answer on the 25th,^^^ cleared with Eisenhower, was cautious. He pointed out that as commanding general of the Eighth Air Force he already exercised control over the formation of the Twelfth and that after the Twelfth got to Africa it would need no strategic direc- tion by an air officer; Eisenhower could direct it. Under the pro- visions of an order of 21 August, Spaatz was already the air officer of ETOUSA, with the function of advising the commander in chief.* Therefore he could be ordered to Africa by Eisenhower if the situation warranted. For himself, he thought he would be more useful with an Eighth Air Force "increasing in size and importance."
If Eisenhower had been rather cool to the idea of an over-all air force, he nevertheless appreciated the usefulness of an over-all air theater wherein air units could be shifted as the situation demanded, and in communications with Marshall he spoke highly of current Eighth Air Force daylight operations, although he mentioned that they were extremely dependent on weather.^^^ On 21 October,^^^ as TORCH drew near, he told Spaatz that he did not wish the Eighth to be disturbed in its operations while he was out of England and that he would in all probability, after TORCH was complete, return for the ROUNDUP operation, to which prospect he looked forward with satisfaction."^ Here the commander in chief was perhaps reflecting
* See Vol, 1, 591,
63
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
War Department hopes, for no Allied decision had charted any strategic course subsequent to TORCH.
On 29 October, Eisenhower proceeded to approve the theater air force project, about which by all outward signs he had previously entertained misgivings. Whether he did so in anticipation of a future ROUNDUP, or of future Mediterranean operations, is not apparent; he may have simply perceived that the theater air force, capitalizing on the mobility of air power, could be a most valuable aid in any situation brought on by or subsequent to TORCH. In some ways, it was a device ideally suited to the strategic fogs of late 1942, in which Eisenhower was feeling his way along without any directive as to post-TORCH operations."^
As outlined by Spaatz to his chief of staff immediately after his conversation with Eisenhower on the 29th, the gist of the plan was as follows: assuming the possession of the North African littoral, Eisen- hower hoped to place a single command over all U.S. air units oper- ating against the European Axis and promised to advocate the in- clusion thereunder of Brereton's units, as well as the Eighth and Twelfth, This force, making use of bases "from Iceland to Iraq,""^ could exploit the strategic mobility of the flight echelons of the air force. Spaatz mentioned that such a unified command could expect to be more favored by the CCS than two or three separate commands competing for resources to destroy Germany—in this way more effec- tive arguments could be brought against diversions to the Pacific. Eisen- hower had been explicit in his instructions. He informed Spaatz that he intended to name him to the over-all command, and anticipating that the success of TORCH might permit the matter to be put for- ward in a month's time, he specified that Spaatz be prepared to bring to him in thirty days, wherever he might be, a plan in the form of a cablegram to the CCS.
Spaatz accordingly made his arrangements. He counted on moving Eaker up from the command of VIII Bomber Command to that of the Eighth Air Force and on utilizing the Eighth Air Force staff as the nucleus of the theater air force staff; he directed that plans to achieve the required mobility be immediately undertaken, and to Brig. Gen. Haywood S. Hansell, Jr., he gave the responsibility of preparing the cablegram called for by Eisenhower. On 30 October he conferred with Doohttle and briefed him on the prospect,^^^ emphasizing the importance of getting the African airdromes equipped to service heavy
64
TORCH AND THE TWELFTH AIR FORCE
bombers moving in for short periods and reminding him that, if either Sardinia or Italy were taken, shuttle bombing between these points and the United Kingdom would be possible, which would put operational planning on the basis of bomber range rather than tactical radius. On 3 1 October he reported the development to Arnold,^^^ pointing out that it was quite possible that Eighth Air Force heavies could be better operated from Africa during the winter— October had brought miser- able weather in England— and that the setup operated both ways: bombers could be shifted back into England for the main effort.
On 2 November, not long before he left for Gibraltar, Eisenhower reiterated his support of the plan,"^ asking that the theater air force be stressed in Spaatz' communications with Arnold and informing the Eighth Air Force commander that as soon as he had established what could be accomplished from the various air base areas in England and Africa he should proceed to AFHQ. Studies of the capabihties of air power in the Mediterranean were undertaken*^^ and the organiza- tional implications of a theater air force put under scrutiny, a hitch developing in this latter regard on 1 2 November when Bedell Smith, Eisenhower's chief of staff, chose to regard the theater air commander as merely chief of the air section of the general staff . However, this mat- ter was left for later determination, and on the same day Spaatz' staff drew up a draft memo on a subject very dear to his heart: the reassign- ment of the Twelfth's two B-i 7 groups to the Eighth Air Force.^^*
Since August the Eighth had contributed much to the forwarding of TORCH, and at considerable cost to itself. That it would continue to be levied upon long after 8 November had been made abundantly clear. To mention two factors, the assembly and modification of the Twelfth's aircraft, with which the Eighth was charged, lagged behind schedule, and secondly, Eisenhower required that Eighth Air Force units be prepared for operations in Africa. A further subordination of the Eighth to the Twelfth's needs came with supply arrangements reached on 3 1 October, whereby it was provided that if the Twelfth in Africa did not get its supplies satisfactorily from the United States on an "automatic" basis, VIII Air Force Service Command would stand ready to make up the deficiency. This later resulted in a tremendous depletion of the Eighth's stocks, an officer of VIII AFSC estimating that "75 per cent at least" of its supplies went to Africa when the Twelfth moved down.*^'' Lower-echelon personnel of the Eighth, not unnaturally, tended to resent the progressive loss of their weapons and equipment
65
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
to an upstart organization of whose mission they were entirely ignorant. But even such men as Spaatz, Eaker, and Sir Charles Portal, who knew what was afoot with the Twelfth, had been dismayed by the diversion of the 97th and 301st, the most practiced and until October (with the exception of the 9 2d) the only heavy groups operational in the whole Eighth Air Force.^^®
The memo for Eisenhower, drafted on 12 November /^"^ was in- tended to be worked up for use within a week or two. It assumed that Rommel had been smashed and that his line of communications and rear were no longer targets. Therefore, the 97th and 301st should be reassigned to the Eighth to bolster its small bomber force'^s efforts against Germany. The memo did admit that perhaps all the heavies might be brought to Africa if the weather over northwestern Europe did not improve, but the units would go as Eighth Air Force units, the Ninth and the Twelfth to furnish the base facilities.
While Spaatz had been busying himself with the theater air force, TORCH, whose engrossing of the North African coast would give the plan reality, had svrang into action. Eisenhower and his staff flew down to Gibraltar on 5 November, his 6-17 being forced to circle the Rock for an hour because of the congestion on the runway. Doolittle, whose B-I7 had been delayed in getting off from Hurn, came in the next day only after a brush with four Ju-88's off Cape Finisterre.^^^ By then the assault convoys from England and the United States had been under way for over a week. There would soon be an answer to the questions that had agonized the TORCH planners: Would the French resist and how seriously? Had the secret been kept? Would the Span- iards join in? Would the weathermen's predictions get the Western Task Force ashore?
66
CHAPTER 3
T//£ LANDINGS AND THE RACE FOR TUNIS
THE Twelfth Air Force's role in the assault phase of the TORCH operation was, in the aggregate, a minor one. At Algiers, the RAF, which had Spitfires and Hurricanes from Gibraltar operating out of Maison Blanche by noon of D-day, shared with the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm the responsibility of cooperating with Maj. Gen. Charles W. Ryder's Eastern Assault Force, to which the city was surrendered by nightfall.^ In the more stiffly contested actions at Oran and Casablanca, carrierborne aviation furnished a major part of the air offensive. The Twelfth did, however, contribute sub- stantially to the discomfiture of the defenders of Oran.
Oran lies about 230 miles east of Gibraltar, where the Mediterranean is still narrow. The town enjoys considerable natural protection in the steepness of the adjacent coast and in the chain of salt rharshes in its hinterland. Allied estimates put the potential daily intake of its port at upwards of 4,000 tons, not counting the naval base at Mers-el-Kebir, three miles to the westward across Oran bay. Besides Tafaraoui and La Senia, there were several landing grounds in the area which figured in Twelfth Air Force plans: Oggaz, Fleurus, Saint-Denis-du-Sig, and Lourmel.
Because of the state of its arms and morale, the French army in the Oran area was not expected to put up a prolonged resistance, although it could bring about 21,000 troops to bear by D plus 2. On the other hand, the coastal batteries, manned by naval personnel nursing distaste for the British, were likely to resist in determined fashion.^ The local air force, supposed to cherish substantial pro-Allied sentiments, mus- tered about fifty-five fighters (Dewoitine 520's) and about forty obso-
67
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
lescent bombers, the majority of the force being based at La Senia.^ The Allies did not know prior to D-day what naval units would be in port; as it turned out, there were an escort vessel, four destroyers, and a number of submarines.*
Against the French establishment at Oran was pitted the Center Task Force, which included British naval elements under Cdre. Thomas Troubridge and American ground and air force troops under General Fredendall, once the old GYMNAST commander. Troubridge's fleet comprised the headquarters ship Largs, the battleship Rodney, the car- rier Furious^ the auxiliary carriers Biter and Dasher, the AA ships Delhi and Alynbank, the light cruisers Aurora and Jamaica, besides various destroyers, corvettes, mine sweepers, trawlers, and other craft. The Furious carried twenty-four Seafires and nine Albacores; the Biter, fif- teen Hurricanes; the Dasher, nine Hurricanes. Fredendall commanded II Corps troops: ist Infantry Division, ist Ranger Battalion, and Com- bat Command B of the ist Armored Division.^
The Center Task Force's directive specified that it was to assault and capture Oran and its airdromes and prepare, in conjunction with the Western Task Force, land and air striking forces to secure Spanish Morocco, if this proved necessary. It was responsible for the establish- ment and maintenance of communications with the Western and East- ern task forces. Once command had passed from Troubridge, Fredendall had control of all ground, air, and service units of the task force; the command channel would then be from CTF to ist Infantry Division, to Combat Command B of ist Armored Division, to Oran air force under Col. Lauris Norstad, Doolittle's A-3.®
The tactical plan envisioned the investment of Oran by a double en- velopment from beaches east and west of the city, the advance from the beachheads to be supported by the guns of the British fleet. Two regi- mental combat teams of the ist Infantry Division were to land at Z beach, the little town of Arzeu east of Oran; a third RCT at Y beach (Les Andalouses) west of the city. One column of Combat Command B's tanks would come in through the Arzeu beachhead; another de- tachment was to land at X beach, the cove of Mersat bou Zed jar, to the west of Les Andalouses. Tafaraoui and La Senia constituted the first objectives of the armor; upon their capture Combat Command B would attack Oran from the south."^
The Fleet Air Arm, responsible for the protection of the convoys and the landings and for cooperation with the ground forces until such
68
•"5
ALGIERS
TAN e I E R ^.....^ CASAB tANCA^^: . . .
CASABLANCA AREA
Port Lyootey Robot
El Hank ^•fedhala
CASABLAHpAlKlztS AIRDROME ^^T^:- •Mediouno
FRENCH
MOROCCO
R
A
^rSFAX
■'■^^^fe^. ^TRIPOLI
ORAN AREA
Mers el Kej)ir Les An do louses
Cop Flgolo Mlsserghin^si^/^^
i? ;: " ' St.Deni
Mostaganem/
.••■^'♦Saiint Leu";; •SlCloud^iMocto
• La Semo
TIelat
St.Denisdu Sig Mascara <
.*Beni Sof ALGERIA
«Sidi Bet Abbes
f on i to Lonier
19 4 8
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
time as the Twelfth put in an appearance, planned strikes at first light on D-day against La Senia, hoping to break the back of the French air force if it did not turn out friendly to the Allies.® A feature of the Oran attack added early in October was a commando-type raid on the har- bor. HMS Walney and Hartland, former U.S. Coast Guard cutters, flying the American flag above the Union Jack, were to land personnel to overcome the harbor forts and batteries and prevent sabotage of the wharves and shipping.^
Oran
The Oran convoy passed through the Gibraltar Strait at 1700 hours, 6 November, after an uneventful passage from the United Kingdom— the Atlantic U-boat pack had taken off after a small England-bound convoy out of Sierra Leone and left clear the sea paths to Gibraltar and Morocco. TORCH was beginning to enjoy more good fortune than the ordinary military operation had any right to expect. Despite the fact that Vichy and Berlin had been anticipating an Allied stroke against French North or West Africa for months, the Germans, get- ting their first inkling that something was afoot when the convoys were reported at Gibraltar, mistook the movement for another attempt to provision Malta or a landing somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean to hem in the late invaders of Egypt. The Italians, on the other hand, perhaps because of their natural nervousness at the possibility of such a development, correctly interpreted the Allied strategy. As the Algiers and Oran convoys, in that order, came on through the narrow sea on the Malta course, dive-bomber and fighter squadrons began gathering in Sicily and Sardinia. The convoys did not alter course until dusk fell on 7 November. At Oran, the military establishment had been alerted on the morning of the 7th by aerial reconnaissance, but the alert was abandoned as the convoys passed eastward. Troubridge slipped back through the moonless night to take position. H-hour at Oran and Algiers was 0100.^**
At five minutes before H-hour, two companies of Rangers were put into Arzeu. They diminished resistance sufficiently so that the ist In- fantry Division occupied the town in force by 0745. The French, how- ever, blocked further progress on the road to Oran at the village of Saint-Cloud. The western arms of the envelopment had meanwhile got ashore. The 26th RCT came in unopposed at Les Andalouses, but French artillery denied it the height of Djebel Mourdjadjo, command-
70
LANDINGS AND THE RACE FOR TUNIS
ing Mers-el-Kebir and Oran. The western column of Combat Com- mand B, after considerable difficulty in finding X beach, carried out a rapid advance which took Lourmel and had rolled on to the vicinity of Misserghin by the afternoon. Already the gallant W alney and Hart- landy victims of the expectation that the French might offer only token resistance, had met disaster in Oran harbor. During the day Vichy de- stroyers issued in hopeless sorties against Troubridge's fleet. Stubborn coastal batteries engaged the Rodney in frequent duels/^
On the afternoon of D minus i, 7 November, Eisenhower had sent off his ADVANCE NiVPOLEON, the code message which meant that Bentley's C-47's would take off for Oran around 2200 hours with a peaceful daylight landing at La Senia in prospect. During the next two days he worried intermittently over the fate of the paratroop force, which he intended, once it had landed at La Senia, to send on to Maison Blanche, Bone, and possibly to Tunis itself, as part of a series of rapid advances to forestall the Germans and Italians. As it turned out, it took several days for the Paratroop Task Force to collect itself after its initial experiences in TORCH.^^
The C-47's took off on schedule from Predannack and St. Eval, while RAF Spitfires and Beaufighters patrolled overhead, and assembled over Portreath, the flights intermingling to some extent before course for the first leg was set for the Scilly Islands. On the way south, because of the burning out of formation lights and because of the inability of the air- craft to home on squadron commanders, the formations disintegrated amid increasingly bad weather, many aircraft proceeding individually across Spain and over the Mediterranean. Nor could the secret radio or the fleet off Oran reassemble the C-47's: the operator of the former had destroyed his radio when no aircraft were in evidence at the earlier time of arrival specified by "war plan^'— he had not been informed that "peace plan'' was on; the homing ship transmitted on 460 kilocycles in- stead of the planned 440.
Some of the unarmed troop carriers reached the vicinity of Oran shortly after daylight and found the French at La Senia and their Dewoitines not as friendly as forecast. Bentley, accompanied by a group of his transports, discovered to his disgust that he had been hom- ing on a lighthouse near Melilla in Spanish Morocco; he finally got to Oran to find a dozen C-47's down on a dry part of the bed of the Sebkra d'Oran, the largest of the salt lakes ringing the port. While rec- onnoitering La Senia, he himself was forced down by motor trouble
71
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
and taken prisoner. Not without further mishap, Colonel Raff finally brought the bulk of his paratroops into Tafaraoui late in the afternoon, where American armor was enjoying what seemed to be a very uncer- tain tenure. The paratroop force had suffered some casualties from the Dewoitines, however, and C-47's were scattered from Gibraltar all through the northwestern shoulder of Africa, with three interned in Spanish Morocco.^^
Tafaraoui had been captured by the eastern column of Combat Com- mand B which had passed, as planned, through the ist Division beach- head at Arzeu, turned south, and dashed through Sainte-Barbe-du- Tlelat. It took Tafaraoui towards noon, after a short, sharp fight. The way was now open for land-based aerial reinforcements for the Center Task Force, heretofore relying on the Fleet Air Arm. The Largs noti- fied Gibraltar.^*
At about 1520 hours Doolittle arrived on the Gibraltar airdrome from the command post and ordered Col. John R. Hawkins to take his 31st Group fighters into Tafaraoui. The 31st had been scheduled for the Casablanca area, where the more strenuous resistance was antici- pated, and was parked on the crowded airstrip in front of Col. Dixon M. Allison's 5 2d Group, which was to go into Oran. As any other ar- rangement meant delay, Doolittle ordered Hawkins' pilots to take off, which they did inside of twenty minutes— two squadrons of Spitfires— flying around thundershowers on the way to Oran and trying vainly to contact the fighter control which according to their briefing would have been set up at Tafaraoui, They arrived at 1700 hours. Hawkins found a section of the runway without holes and led his pilots in for a landing. French artillery was registering on the airdrome and some of the Spits still airborne temporarily silenced it by a strafing attack. Four Dewoitines, mistaken for Hurricanes, had been doing lazy eights over the field as the squadrons arrived; when the last four Spits were in a landing circle with wheels down the Dewoitines came in for an attack and shot down and killed one pilots only to lose three of their number.^^ The ubiquitous Dewoitines to the contrary, the French air strength had already been largely crippled by the Fleet Air Arm's strikes at the La Senia hangars.^^
On the morning of 9 November, after the African night had echoed to sniper fire and rung to the ingenious American challenge *'Heigh-ho Silver"— reply, "Awa-a-y"— the French air force made a farewell ges- ture when a single bomber dropped a lone bomb on Tafaraoui, damag-
72
LANDINGS AND THE RACE FOR TUNIS
ing one of the C-47's wluch had flown in from the Sebkra the previous day. The 3 ist had a patrol up, but darkness and lack of radio equipment permitted the bomber's escape. Before noon the remainder of the French aircraft at La Senia left for the comparative safety of Morocco. Shortly after daylight, as the field was being shelled by the everlasting 75's, a motor convoy containing ground personnel of the 31st rolled into Taf araoui from Arzeu. By dint of improvisation and use of French ammunition and gas, they kept the Spitfires in the air thereaf ter.^^
The 3 1 St rendered important aid in the stubborn battle for Oran, Shortly after dawn on the 9th, three of its Spits on reconnaissance southward discovered a large hostile force moving up from Sidi-bel- Abbes. Continuing attacks, enduring four to five hours, were main- tained against the column, which turned out to be the famous Foreign Legion. The light French tanks offered pitiful opposition to the Spits' 20-mm. guns, and the discouraged Legion eventually turned back, after which it was not further molested. Hawkins, using the radio in the armored force's command tank and later those in the Spits, had estab- lished communications with the Largs, The command ship assigned several missions: one against coastal guns too heavily protected for effective strafing, another against what proved to be an American unit, which promptly shot down two of the offending Spits— the command ship had identified the target as west of La Macta when it had meant to say east. Flights of the 3 ist, however, were able to silence the trouble- some 75's which had intermittently shelled Taf araoui. During the afternoon Doolittle arrived in a B- 17 with Spitfire escort from the 5 2d Group. Altogether, seventeen missions, totaling forty-five sorties, were flown during the day.^®
Meanwhile, the ground forces had been making progress. The ist Division began to bypass the French hedgehog at Saint-Cloud, but its 1 8th RCT was still pinned against the mountains west of Mers-el- Kebir. The western armored column bypassed Misserghin by routing its armor through the soft ground at the edge of the Sebkra, and the de- fenses of La Senia were finally cracked with the aid of strafing Spitfires. Once junction had been made between the armored wings, the fall of Oran was a foregone conclusion, failing a resort to the barricades in the city itself. The French perceived this towards noon of the next day and got armistice negotiations under way.^®
While the fighting lasted on the loth, the Taf araoui Spitfires con- tinued to exert themselves in various roles, but the French were paying
73
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
more attention to dispersal and concealment and few profitable targets were to be found. The general performance of the airmen earned the adjective "splendid" from Doolittle and a letter of commendation from Maj. Gen. Terry Allen, commanding the ist Infantry Division. Losses since 8 November included one in combat, four from ground fire, and two in taxiing. Six of the 52d's aircraft had run out of gas on the way in from Gibraltar and came down in various places; only twenty of the 6oth Group's C-47's were operational on the loth.^^ But Algeria was now secure— the door open for aerial reinforcement for the campaign developing in the east. On the iith and 12 th the 31st put reconnais- sance flights over Spanish Morocco, but despite rumors to the contrary, there was nothing tangible to indicate that the Spaniards there intended any hostile move.^^
Casablanca
Patton's Western Task Force succeeded in effecting a landing on a coast where a respectable body of military opinion held a successful landing highly improbable. The Moroccan rivers are shallow; the Moroccan beaches long and shelving; there is an abundance of rocky outcrops. High surf and swell are common even in good weather, and good weather is generally rare in the autumn. Yet Patton's men reached the beaches over what was reportedly the calmest sea in sixty-eight years.^^ Once ashore, on the other hand, their operations were more protracted than had been expected; the fierce resistance put up at Mehdia and the approaches to the Port Lyautey airdrome did not allow XII Air Support Command's aircraft to fly in in time to join the action against the French.
Algiers capitulated on D-day itself; Oran gave in on D plus 2. On the west coast where the resident-general, Auguste Nogues, was fore- warned by American sympathizers who attempted to convince him that resistance was futile, Casablanca held out until D plus 3. Because of an almost complete failure of communications, the anxious Eisenhower at Gibraltar heard very little from Patton during the early stages of his landing, and as late as 10 November many of Patton's own officers were reported pessimistic as to the prospects. But the operation, like the singed cat, was better than it looked. The fall of Oran really sealed Casablanca's fate, as the French could not have withstood an additional attack coming overland from Algeria. There was ample scope for guerrilla resistance in Morocco, however, as there was any-
74
LANDINGS AND THE RACE FOR TUNIS
where in North Africa. Fortunately, Darlan persuaded Nogues to give up early on the morning of 1 1 November.^^
The defenses of Morocco were formidable enough. The French had added numerous batteries to the inhospitable coast, and moored in Casa- blanca harbor was the unfinished battleship Jean Bart whose four 15-inchers had to be reckoned with. The 55,000 troops allowed Morocco by the 1940 armistice were supposed to be better equipped than their colleagues in Algeria and Tunisia, as Nogues had found ways and means of circumventing the armistice commission. The French air force in the area, however, possessed only about 1 30 combat aircraft— Curtiss and Dewoitine fighters and an assortment of middle-aged bomb- ers—whose rate of employment, as at Oran, was certain to diminish be- cause of lack of gasoline and service facilities. Again, no friendly recep- tion was to be expected from the embittered French navy. Whatever forces Vice Adm. Frix Michelier could bring to bear would probably fight with intelligence and determination. In the event, these included the light cruiser Primauguet, the flotilla leaders Milan^ Albatros, Le Maliriy seven destroyers, eleven submarines, and three sloops.^'*
The U.S. Navy, which was responsible for air as well as naval co- operation until XII Air Support Command could relieve it, brought over an armada huge by 1942 standards, partly in the expectation of a sally by the heavily armed Richelieu^ reported at Dakar. The battle- ships Massachusetts, New York, and Texas and the cruisers Augusta (flagship), Wichita, Tuscaloosa, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, and Savannah, with attendant destroyers, oilers, and minelayers, sailed in Task Force 34, under Rear Adm. Henry K. Hewitt. Task Force 34's air group was commanded by Rear Adm. Ernest D. McWhorter. It in- cluded the Ranger, carrying fifty-four F4F-4's and eighteen SBD's; the Sangamon, carrying nine TBF's, nine SBD's, and twelve F4F-4's; the Santee, carrying an equivalent complement; and the Suwannee, with nine TBF's and thirty F4F-4's. In the convoy sailed the Chenango with the P-40's of the 3 3d Fighter Group. The Contessa, with its cargo of gas and munitions and a crew derived partly from a Norfolk naval prison, sailed independently from Hampton Roads on 26 October.^*
Patton commanded 37,000 ground and air force troops— the 3d In- fantry Division and the 2d Armored Division fresh from landing prac- tice at Solomons Island in Chesapeake Bay to bear the brunt of the attack. His mission was the occupation of the ports and airdromes in the Casablanca region, the establishment and maintenance of communica-
75
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR 11
tions with Oran, and the build-up of air and land striking forces for possible use against Spanish Morocco. The scheme of maneuver was as follows: three surprise landings— supported after daylight by naval gunfire; elimination of the enemy air force by surprise dawn attacks; and the securing by the end of D-day of at least one airdrome for land- based planes. The main assault would strike at Fedhala, a pleasure resort thirteen miles north of Casablanca; it was to be coordinated with a landing at Safi 130 miles to the south. The most northerly attack, at Mehdia, eighty miles up the coast, had as its chief objective the Port Lyautey airdrome, to be captured it was hoped by the end of D-day.^^
On 23 October, Task Force 34 began to put to sea out of Hampton Roads. The covering group, intended to contain the French naval forces at Casablanca and the Richelieu at Dakar, joined in mid- Atlantic from Casco Bay. The carriers joined on 28 October from Bermuda. The armada zigzagged across the Atlantic, feinting at Dakar and avoid- ing sea searches from the Canaries and the Azores. After 6 November, the weather began to clear and the task force prepared for battle. H-hour was 0400, three hours later than at Oran and Algiers.^^
The main assault at Fedhala occasioned considerable confusion: many units landed at the wrong beaches; two boats strayed into Casa- blanca harbor, where they were unluckily discovered by a French patrol vessel. Ashore, however, the French mainly fought a delaying action, while they fortified the nearer approaches to Casablanca. At Safi, the landing, aided by some superior fleet gunnery, went fairly smoothly. By 1500 hours the sea train Lakehurst was unloading Sher- mans in the harbor. The Santee's aircraft helping disperse French rein- forcements coming from Marrakech, by 1 1 November the Safi force had reached Mazagan and was poised for a coordinated attack barely forestalled by Nogues' surrender.^® True to form, the French fleet units spent themselves in desperate sorties against Hewitt's warships. The Jean Bart and the coastal batteries, however, were harder nuts to crack and the former, despite naval gunfire and bombing, was still able to fire at the time of the armistice. On 10 November the Augusta nar- rowly escaped hits from her 1 5 -inch shells. On the nights of 11/12 and 12/13 November, four transports were torpedoed and sunk off Fedhala, whether by U-boats or French submarines out of Casablanca was unknown.^®
Mehdia brought the most severe fighting of the entire operation. There, landings had been planned on both sides of the mouth of the
76
LANDINGS AND THE RACE FOR TUNIS
Sebou, while the destroyer Dallas^ guided by a pro- Allied Frenchman, formerly a pilot on the river, was to proceed upstream to Port Lyautey. The main landing, immediately south of the estuary, encountered stiff resistance, French batteries driving the transports out of range and hostile fighters strafing the beaches, which necessitated calls to the carriers. The Dallas could not run the Sebou in the face of the fire from the walled Kasba at Mehdia, where Foreign Legion elements not only maintained themselves but on the morning of the loth counterattacked and captured an American detachment which had penetrated their positions.
On the loth, however, both Port Lyautey and Mehdia were finally cleared. After a Navy crew in a small boat had cut the net across the Sebou the night before, the Dallas scraped her way up the shallow, winding river and by 0800 landed a Ranger detachment at the airfield, which the French were contesting with a company of American in- fantry. Later the Army took the Kasba in an action reminiscent of Beau Geste.^^
Headquarters of XII Air Support Command was first established on the beach and subsequently at the Miramar Hotel at Fedhala. When it was learned that the Port Lyautey field had been finally secured, Lt. Col. William W. Momyer's P-40's were ordered in from the Chenango. Despite misgivings of the Navy, the catapulting itself was fairly successful, planes eventually being launched at as little as two- or three-minute intervals. However, Navy shells and dive bombers had badly damaged the main runway at Port Lyautey and the rest of the field was soft. The catapulting, begun on 10 November, had to be dis- continued and was not completed until two days later, some of the P-4o*s evidently going into Cazes airdrome at Casablanca. Of the seventy-seven P-40*s launched from the Chenango^ one crashed into the sea, one flew off into the fog and was never heard from, and seven- teen were damaged in landing. None, apparently, got into action. Not long afterward, thirty-five more P-40's, the "advance attrition" of the 33d Group, arrived off Morocco on the British carrier Archer in the D plus 5 convoy. These planes were also catapulted and came down at Port Lyautey, four cracking up on landing primarily because of pilot inexperience.^^
Thus the U.S. Navy's carrier aircraft had assumed the whole burden of air cooperation with the Western Task Force. They performed creditably by all accounts, ranging as far afield as Marrakech and
77
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II
Rabat-Sale to attack the French air force, quickly responding to calls from the ground forces, and making effective attacks against the lighter French naval units sortieing out of Casablanca. During the hostilities, although it did not furnish air support against the French, XII ASC had taken on a variety of tasks. Its air support parties performed effectively; many of its units participated as assault infantry, a rare employment for Air Corps troops. Its service command personnel were running a gas- laden truck convoy into Cazes airdrome almost before the last shots in defense of the field had died away.^^
Prehide to Tunisia
Speed was the essence of the plan to seize Tunisia, for a bare hundred miles from the big prizes of Bizerte and Tunis lay the great Axis base of Sicily. And from Sicily, on 9 November, the morrow of the Allies* D-day, the Germans made their own invasion of French Africa— to get