1. The VCP, sited as far forward as possible, normally with a leading brigade headquarters, decides to call in an airstrike. FCPs were always sited at corps headquarters.
2. The VCP radios directly to the Army/Composite Group co-located headquarters with the airstrike request, bypassing the intermediate divisional and corps level headquarters.
3. At the Joint Battle Room of the Army/Composite Group headquarters, the request is evaluate and compared against other requests and available aircraft; a decision is made about whether to order aircraft to fulfill the request.
4. The Army/Composite Group headquarters radios the GCC to order the assignment of aircraft to fulfill the request.
6. If available aircraft on a lower priority mission happen to be in the air around the area of the requested strike, the GCC may contact them by radio and divert them to the airstrike. Otherwise, aircraft will be scrambled from a airfield.
7. Upon arrival over the target area, the aircraft check in by radio with the VCP.
If an FCP were present rather than a VCP, the system worked more-or-less the same, except that FCPs were located with corps headquarters rather than farther forward. It should be noted that in practice it was found that due to the close terrain in Normandy, in most cases VCPs could not visually observe targets, thus worked more like “mini-FCPs” at brigade level than true VCPs.
Allied airpower came into its own in Europe with the introduction of long-range escort fighters and a new philosophy that was aimed at destroying the Luftwaffe. By March 1944, the Luftwaffe had been soundly beaten; although it was occasionally able to muster strength for savage attacks, it was never again able to secure daytime air superiority. However, in the same month the Luftwaffe did defeat the RAF in its nighttime-bombing campaign against Berlin. The combined USAAF/RAF forces focused on preparing the European continent for an invasion; the 6 June 1944 D-Day operation was so successful that it was virtually unopposed by the Luftwaffe. The air battle over Germany intensified and was regarded as a “second front” by no less an observer than Albert Speer even before the D-Day landings.
On June 6, 1944, the great Anglo-American invasion of Europe began. Overhead, a cloud of Allied aircraft flew against targets across the length and breadth of France, while fighter-bombers and medium bombers hammered German positions throughout the Norman countryside. The previous evening, transport aircraft had dropped the main elements of three airborne divisions – the American 82nd and 101st on the western side of the amphibious landings, and the British 6th on the eastern side. Overall, Allied air forces flew over 14,000 sorties on D-Day in support of the invasion; the Luftwaffe barely 100. That air superiority, which bordered on air supremacy, was the result of a sustained aerial campaign against Germany’s population and its economic strength that had begun in 1940. In the end it was to make a number of contributions, direct as well as indirect, to the landings. Before World War II, air power theorists had claimed that air power would win the next war. It did not. However, OVERLORD’s success and the eventual victory of the Western Powers in World War II was inconceivable without the great effort in the air.
Generalfeldmarschall Sperrle had only 319 aircraft in total and fewer than 100 fighters. Trained pilots were in scarce supply too. The Luftwaffe flew just 309 sorties on D-Day, most of which the Allies immediately intercepted. No more than a dozen fighter-bombers reached the landing beaches. Among them was “Pips” Priller, a seasoned Focke-Wulf FW 190 fighter ace and commander of the 26th Jagdgeschwader. At 8:00a. m. Priller took off with his long-time wingman, Heinz Wodarczyk, and headed toward Normandy while hugging the terrain to avoid the Spitfires overhead. Above Le Havre they climbed into cloud cover and when they emerged the entire Allied invasion fleet was laid out below before them. Surprised British soldiers dived for cover as Priller and Wodarczyk appeared out of the cloud at over 400mph to strafe SWORD Beach on the very eastern end of the Allied lodgement. An enormous flak barrage filled the sky, as hundreds of anti-aircraft guns on the invasion fleet attacked the two planes. But masked by the coastline, they were not easy to pick out among the pall of smoke that hung over the beach. After their pass, both pilots climbed for cloud cover and headed back to base – a second run, they both knew, would be suicide. Military honor had been satisfied, yet the cold reality was apparent – that the Luftwaffe was a broken arm that could not stop the invasion.
Transportation Plan
On April 1, 1944, Eisenhower received de facto command over all Allied air forces and the transportation plan began. Obviously, the attacks could not be limited to isolating the Normandy beaches. Instead, to keep the Allied landing objective secret, Allied air forces had to attack railroad marshaling yards, repair depots, bridges, trucks and other vehicular traffic, and transportation targets from Belgium across the length and breadth of northern and western France. Not surprisingly, because of the battering that it was taking in the skies over Europe, the Luftwaffe was able to offer no support to defend the transportation network. Eighth Air Force received the tasking to attack 23 of the major transportation targets in Belgium and France, while Allied tactical air forces attacked 18. Bomber Command carried the major load by attacking 39 of the targets on the Allied list.
In the latter half of May, Allied fighter bombers began the task of striking bridges throughout France with notable success, although at considerable cost, since Luftwaffe anti-aircraft batteries were particularly accurate in hitting aircraft attacking at low level. From May 21, Allied fighter bombers – over 800 Spitfires, Typhoons, and Thunderbolts – began a locomotive-busting campaign. Over the last week of May, Allied air attacks managed to destroy 500 locomotives. By late May, just before attacks on the Seine bridges, overall rail traffic was down to 55 percent of January’s. Destruction of the bridges lowered the level to 30 percent. Attacks on the system in western France were particularly effective; by mid-June that portion of the French railroad system had entirely ceased to operate. The effect on the transportation of troops and supplies in western France was disastrous. In June, the Germans could run only 7 percent of what they had run in March. Even in the north along the Belgian frontier the drop was significant; the figure for June was only 27 percent of what the railroads had carried in March.
Nevertheless, the transportation campaign came at considerable cost. Between the beginning of April and June 5, 1944, the Allies were to lose over 2,000 aircraft and 12,000 aircrew, dead, wounded, or prisoner. Was it worth the cost? A German report of June 3 concluded:
“In Zone 1 [France and Belgium], the systematic destruction that has been carried out since March of all important junctions of the entire network – not only of the main lines – has most seriously crippled the whole transportation system (railway installations, including rolling stock). Similarly Paris has been systematically cut off from long-distance traffic, and the most important bridges over the lower Seine have been destroyed one after another. As a result, it is only by exerting the greatest efforts that purely military traffic and goods essential to the war effort, can be kept moving. The railway network is to be completely wrecked. Local and through traffic is to be made impossible, and all efforts to restore the service are to be prevented. The aim has so successfully been achieved – locally at any rate – that the Reichsbahn authorities are seriously considering whether it is not useless to attempt further repair work.”
Perhaps the greatest testimony to the transportation campaign’s success comes from the difficulties the Wehrmacht confronted in moving its formations across France to reinforce its desperately hard-pressed troops in Normandy. It took no less than five days for the 17th Panzer Grenadier Division to cover 200 miles; movement by railroad was out of the question. The SS Division Das Reich probably set the record for transportation frustration. Tracked elements of the division left Limoges on June 11, but failed to arrive in Normandy until the end of the month. The movement of divisions immediately adjacent to the beachhead was hardly easier. The Wehrmacht’s Panzer Lehr Division had to move towards the Allied landings on five separate roads, and even then its commander described one of those routes as a “fighter bomber race course.” On June 6 alone, it lost 80 halftracks, self-propelled guns, and prime movers.
The contribution made by Allied air to Normandy’s success hardly ended with the landings on June 6. Allied air power slaughtered the Luftwaffe’s formations as they moved forward to reply to the landings. It continued the terrible pressure on the roads and railroads, so that reinforcements and supplies could move forward only with the greatest difficulty. The situation for the Germans was clearly hopeless, and reinforcing the battlefront, in the eyes at least of one German, represented “a race in which conditions inevitably favor the enemy.” Allied air superiority was troublesome enough for the Germans, but when combined with ULTRA intelligence its results could prove devastating. British intercepts of high level German radio transmissions on June 9 indicated the exact location of the headquarters of Panzer Group West. An attack the next day destroyed the Panzer Group’s communications gear entirely, and killed 17 staff officers, including the chief of staff. The headquarters never became operational. ULTRA intelligence also kept Allied commanders fully informed of the difficulties their aerial attacks were causing the Germans. One decrypt on June 14 indicated: “C-in-C West report morning ninth included: In large-scale operations by thousands of bombers and fighter bombers, Allied air forces stifled German tank attacks and had harassing effect on movements.”
Falaise-Argentan Pocket
Support of ground operations and interdiction of enemy retreat during World War II. By mid-August 1944, the American breakout from the western section of the Normandy bridgehead threatened to create a massive encirclement of German forces. The British Second Army and Canadian First Army moved south in an attempt to join with the U. S. First Army and pocket up to 16 German divisions, including the primary remaining mobile forces in France. The defeated German units tried desperately to escape the developing encirclement and moved by daylight along roads and in the open. This offered pilots of the Allied tactical air forces lucrative targets that had been uncommon in recent months.
For an entire week, Allied fighter-bombers and medium bombers pounded the retreating columns at will, wreaking havoc with the German withdrawal and destroying much of the German Seventh Army. Rocket-firing Hawker Typhoons were particularly effective. The Allied advances on the ground were not as successful, however, and German forces that were not destroyed from the air largely escaped.
Scenes of the Falaise killing ground graphically show the awesome effect of airpower on exposed ground targets. Although Allied air attacks caused enormous amounts of destruction, the battle can also show the difficulty in isolating and destroying a retreating army from the air, since the German armies, using cadres that escaped from Falaise-Argentan, were soon able to reform along the German frontier.
