Under the OVERLORD plan, the Allies had hoped to hold all of Normandy west of the Seine and Brittany within ninety days of the invasion, but, as of 25 July, they were well short of that goal. Given the condition of Cherbourg and the lack of other major ports in the beachhead, possession of the Breton ports appeared critical to the ongoing buildup. Although the capacity of the invasion beaches had exceeded expectations, a major storm had wreaked havoc on ship-to-shore operations in late June, underlining the risk of relying on over-the-beach supply for too long. Within the relatively narrow lodgment, the one million American troops—including thirteen infantry and four armored divisions with their equipment and supplies—were encountering severe problems of congestion, and a serious shortage of artillery ammunition existed. Nevertheless, enemy resistance showed no signs of weakening on the battlefield.
Actually, the enemy situation was deteriorating, as the top Allied commanders knew from ULTRA intercepts of German radio traffic. Since D-day, the Germans had lost 250 tanks, 200 assault and antitank guns, and over 200,000 men in Normandy. Few of the lost men and equipment could be replaced quickly. Nor could the Germans match the Allied buildup in gasoline, ammunition, and other materiel, and the German Air Force, the famed Luftwaffe, had become almost invisible. Finally, unrest had shaken the German High Command. Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, the able theater commander, had already resigned, and the charismatic Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, head of Army Group B, had been seriously injured when his staff car was strafed by an Allied plane. Having narrowly survived a coup attempt on 20 July, Adolf Hitler directed Rundstedt’s successor, Field Marshal Guenther von Kluge, to stand firm, and Kluge had done his best to strengthen his lines, especially in the Caen area. Hitler wanted to continue to take advantage of the favorable defensive terrain in Normandy and avoid a disheartening retreat across an area with few defensible positions. Yet, as Kluge well knew, his troops would face a serious predicament in the event of a breakthrough, for they could not match Allied mobility. He and his chief subordinates—General Heinrich Eberbach, whose Panzer Group West faced the British, and General Paul Hausser, whose Seventh Army opposed the Americans—could only hope that the Allied will would finally begin to weaken in the face of the stubborn German defense.
Operations
In the command truck and an adjacent tent at First Army headquarters, Generals Bradley and Collins drew boundaries, set objectives, allotted troops, and otherwise prepared a plan to break through the German defenses. The Allies had already considered airborne or amphibious landings in Brittany but had rejected the notion as too risky and a distraction from the main effort. Instead, Bradley turned to Operation COBRA, a major thrust south by Collins’ VII Corps in the American center immediately following a heavy air bombardment to destroy the German defenses. Using the Periers–St. Lo road as a starting point, the 83d and 9th Infantry Divisions in the west, the 4th Infantry Division in the center, and the 30th Infantry Division in the east would seal the flanks of the penetration. After that, the motorized 1st Infantry Division, with an attached combat command from the 3d Armored Division, would then drive four miles south through the penetration to Marigny and then turn west ten miles to Coutances, cutting off most of the German LXXXIV Corps. The 3d Armored would guard the southern flank of this drive, while the 2d Armored Division, after exploiting through the gap, would establish more blocking positions to the southeast. Further east, XIX Corps, under Corlett, and V Corps, under Gerow, would launch smaller offensives to tie down German forces in their areas and prevent them from interfering with the main thrust.
First Army would rely heavily on preliminary strikes by the heavy and medium bombers of the Eighth and Ninth Air Forces to destroy defenses, disrupt communications and reserves, and reduce the enemy’s will to fight. Although the “heavies” usually did not perform in a tactical role, Bradley wanted the overwhelming force which they could provide, and on 19 July he flew to Great Britain to work out the details with the air chiefs. To provide a margin of safety, the assembled generals agreed that the ground troops, just before the air strikes, would withdraw about 1,200 yards from their positions along the Periers–St. Lo road, which would represent a dividing line between friend and foe. They disagreed, however, over the attack route that the aircraft would use. The air chiefs wanted a perpendicular approach, less exposed to antiaircraft fire and better able to hit simultaneously all the objectives in the target area. Bradley, however, favored a parallel approach to minimize the danger of bombs accidentally hitting his troops. Both parties apparently thought the other had accepted their views—a misunderstanding that would have dire consequences.
While the generals conferred, their subordinates were making their own preparations for the coming attack. After over a month in the hedgerows, American troops had become more aggressive, combat- wise, and skillful in their use of combined arms. One cavalry sergeant, using steel from German beach obstacles, welded prongs onto the nose of a tank, enabling the “rhinoceros” tank to plow straight through a hedgerow rather than climb the embankment and thereby expose its underbelly to German antitank weapons. An impressed Bradley directed the installment of the device on as many tanks as possible before COBRA. American soldiers and airmen were also working to improve coordination and communication among infantry, tanks, and planes. Maj. Gen. Elwood R. Quesada, the affable chief of IX Tactical Air Command, which provided close air support to First Army, had taken a personal interest in air support of ground troops. He encouraged close cooperation between his staff and Bradley’s, experimented with heavier bombloads for his fighterbombers, and positioned airfields as close as 400 yards behind the front lines. At Quesada’s suggestion, First Army had its armored units install high-frequency Air Forces radios in selected tanks, enabling direct contact between tank teams and planes flying overhead.
Despite the general progress, air-ground cooperation at the start of Operation COBRA proved tragically inadequate. After a week-long wait for the weather to clear, six groups of fighter-bombers and three bombardment divisions of heavies took off from bases in Great Britain on the morning of 24 July. Thick clouds over the target area caused the Allied air commander, Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory, to call off the attack, but word did not reach the heavy B–17s and B–24s. Approaching perpendicular to the front, over 300 planes dropped about 700 tons of bombs. Some of the bombs landed on the 30th Infantry Division when a faulty release mechanism caused a bomber to drop its load prematurely. The resulting 150 casualties shocked and angered Bradley and his generals, but, not wishing to give the alerted Germans any time to respond, they approved an attack for the next day with only a few changes in procedures. Once again, disaster struck. The 1,500 heavy bombers, 380 medium bombers, and 550 fighter-bombers could barely see the Periers–St. Lo road due to dust, and bombardiers again experienced difficulty in spotting targets and judging release points. “Short bombings” killed 111 American soldiers, including the visiting chief of Army Ground Forces, Lt. Gen. Lesley J. McNair, who had done so much to organize and train the Army prior to its deployment overseas.
Stunned by the short bombings, American troops made little initial progress. The westernmost unit in the attack, the 330th Infantry of the 83d Infantry Division, encountered fierce opposition from German paratroopers dug into the hedgerows. In the center, despite the saturation bombing, scattered groups of enemy soldiers fought hard against the 9th Infantry Division, and the lead regiment of the 4th Infantry Division found its advance delayed by German defenders in an orchard. To the east, the 30th Infantry Division recovered enough from the short bombing to advance one mile to the town of Hebecrevon. Still, overall progress toward the close of the first day was disappointing, with many ground commanders believing that the air strikes had done as much damage to their own soldiers as to the enemy. At VII Corps headquarters, Collins faced a decision whether or not to commit his exploitation force. If a penetration existed, he would not want to give the Germans time to recover. If the German line remained unbroken, however, commitment of his armor and motorized infantry would be premature, create congestion and confusion, and leave the Americans open for a counterblow. Noting an absence of coordination in the German defense, he decided to gamble. On the afternoon of 25 July, Collins directed his mechanized reserves to attack the following morning.
He had made the right decision. As American infantry and armor advanced on the morning of 26 July, the extent of damage to the Germans became clear. The air strikes had thoroughly demoralized several units and so disrupted communications that the German High Command lacked a clear picture of the situation. At the center of the penetration, the Panzer Lehr Division had virtually ceased to exist as a fighting force. While the 330th Infantry was still encountering stiff resistance, the 9th, 4th, and 30th Infantry Divisions reported impressive gains through the morning of the 26th, and American armor had moved through the gap and headed south. At Marigny, the 1st Infantry Division had a tough fight with the 353d Infantry Division. By the afternoon of 27 July, though, 1st Division had cleared the town and, along with Combat Command B of the 3d Armored Division, driven five miles west toward Coutances in an effort to trap the German LXXXIV Corps along the west coast of the Cotentin. The rest of the 3d Armored managed to push south and west through bomb craters, wrecked vehicles, and traffic to cover the flank of the 1st Division’s drive, while, on VII Corps’ eastern flank, the 2d Armored Division advanced through weak opposition to reach its COBRA objectives by the morning of 28 July. Despite VIII Corps’ efforts to pin down the Germans in the western Cotentin, most of LXXXIV Corps escaped the closing trap, but it left behind a vast store of equipment.
Notwithstanding the escape by LXXXIV Corps, the magnitude of First Army’s breakthrough created opportunities unforeseen in the original COBRA plan—opportunities which Bradley moved quickly to exploit. On the evening of 27 July, he turned the attack to the south in the direction of Avranches, the gateway to Brittany. He ordered his corps chiefs to maintain unrelenting pressure, allowing the enemy no time to regroup his forces. Given the rapid pace of operations, Bradley phrased his orders in rather general terms, specifying only that Corlett’s XIX Corps take Vire, an old, fortified town and critical transportation center slightly over twenty miles southeast of St. Lo.
