Units and Organization of the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces in
January 1944.
By the beginning of May, the US General Ira Eaker, commander
of the Mediterranean Allied Air Force, (MAAF), could call on no fewer than
3,960 operational aircraft in Italy alone, a formidable air force. In sharp
contrast, his counterpart, Feldmarschall Wolfram von Richtofen, had just a
little over three hundred. How the tables had turned. In the first two years of
the war in the Mediterranean, the Luftwaffe, along with their Italian partners,
the Regia Aeronautica, had all too often ruled the skies. Their fighter planes,
especially, had frequently overwhelmed the tired and battered Hurricanes and
Kittyhawks of the RAF. Since then, however, better aircraft, increased
production, and the arrival of the Americans in the theatre had coincided with
lessening German production and shortages of fuel. All aspects of the German
war machine were now being hugely stretched and the Luftwaffe were among the
hardest hit. Those aircraft destroyed in the air or on the ground by the Allied
air forces were no longer being replaced in kind.
So it was that every time Leutnant Willi Holtfreter took to
the skies, he invariably found himself surrounded by hordes of Allied fighters.
Rather as the beleaguered RAF pilots had discovered two years before over
Malta, Willi found that instead of actually shooting down any enemy planes, he
was doing well just to get back to base safely.
Just turned twenty-one, Willi was from the village of
Abtshagen, near Stralsund on the Baltic coast. Before the war, the village had
been dominated by the timber works, renowned for its manufacture of parquet
flooring, and Willi’s father was a foreman there. The third child of a family
of two boys and two girls, he had a sheltered but happy upbringing. Like most
children, he left school at fourteen and immediately went to work at the timber
factory as an apprentice. But while he was quite content with this line of
work, he developed a passion for aircraft. Not far from his home was an
airfield and he and his friends would often watch planes there. Then, with the
Hitler Youth, he learned to fly gliders. ‘It was incredible that you could do
this for free,’ he says. ‘To have that opportunity was very exciting.’
At the outbreak of war he was studying woodwork technology
in Dresden, but returned home to register for the Luftwaffe before he was due
to be conscripted into the army. ‘You had to volunteer to fly,’ he explains.
‘And I was happy to do so. Like most people, I wanted to do my bit for the
Fatherland.’ On registering he stated his desire to become a fighter pilot, but
as with the RAF or US Army Air Force, whether a potential pilot ended up flying
single- or multiple-engine aircraft tended to be decided on as flying training
progressed. As it turned out, however, he was indeed singled out to fly
fighters, and after more than a year of ‘pretty thorough’ training, he was
posted to the Fighter Reserve in France in November 1943, before being sent to
join the celebrated fighter group, JG 53, in Italy at the end of March.
Jagdgeschwader 53 was one of the oldest Luftwaffe fighter
groups. Known as the ‘Pik As’ – the Ace of Spades – the group had become one of
the top-scoring fighter units, having served in France, over Britain, in
Russia, North Africa and over Malta. Like all German fighter groups, it was
divided into gruppen – or wings, and was, by the spring of 1944, split up, with
just III Gruppe left in southern Italy. By the beginning of May they had just
over thirty single-engine Messerschmitt 109s left.
One of these had been lost by Willi on 1 May. Flying over
the Cassino front, he and his three other colleagues had soon been pounced on
by hordes of Spitfires. Badly hit, he had been forced to bail out for the
second time in eight days. He was not alone. Since the beginning of March,
III/JG 53 had lost no less than thirty-eight aircraft, destroyed either in the
air or on the ground.
But with such a dearth of resources, all the Luftwaffe in
Italy could do was send up men like Willi Holtfreter on a fool’s errand in the
vain hope that they might achieve something, however slight.
This was not the case for the Allies, however, who spent
much time and soul-searching trying to master the opportunities offered by air
power. Mediterranean Allied Air Forces was now a vast behemoth of an organisation,
with British and Commonwealth units operating hand-in-hand with American. By
May 1944, it was the biggest air force the world had ever seen, with more than
12,500 aircraft throughout the Mediterranean theatre. To ease potential clashes
of nationality, the system of commander and deputy commander that had been
implemented by the Allies in all theatres extended to the air forces too. Thus
the American, General Eaker, was commander of MAAF, with Air Marshal Sir John
Slessor, British, as his deputy. Defining these roles, however, was no easy
matter, because in the case of Slessor, his responsibilities extended beyond
those of MAAF, since he was also Commander-in-Chief, Royal Air Force
Mediterranean and Middle East, and therefore in charge of subordinate commands
in Egypt, East Africa, the Levant, Iraq and Persia, which meant that west of
Greece he was responsible, through Eaker, to the Supreme Allied Commander
Mediterranean, and east of Greece to the British Chiefs of Staff only.
It was an odd and potentially fraught set-up but happily for
the Allies it caused few difficulties. ‘It worked all right,’ wrote Slessor,
‘because I had in Ira Eaker an Allied Commander-in-Chief who was not only an
old friend but a great airman and a splendid chap who stood on no dignities,
trusted me to serve him loyally in the sphere where he was responsible and left
me to get on with it – and gave me all the help he could – where he was not
permitted by his directive from Washington to have a direct interest.’ Eaker
was every bit as warm in his praise of Slessor. ‘Nothing could have pleased me
more,’ he told Charles Portal, the British Chief of the Air Staff on hearing of
Slessor’s appointment in January. ‘I also wish to assure you that without
question he and I will work together in perfect harmony.’
That these two men were able to operate so well together was
enormously fortunate because both were experienced and highly able commanders,
whose close partnership was much needed in Italy – a theatre where air power
was able to give the Allies an essential and decisive edge. Although both had
started their careers as fighter pilots – Slessor had made the first ever
aerial attack on a Zeppelin during the First World War – more recently their
backgrounds had been with bombers. Eaker had commanded the US Eighth Air Force
in Britain, overseeing the daylight strategic bombing of Germany, until getting
the top job in the Mediterranean. Slessor, on the other hand, had commanded 5
Group, RAF Bomber Command, in England, and had then taken charge of Coastal
Command where he had played no small part in the destruction of the U-boat
threat in the Atlantic.
Although both men had been hoping to play major parts in the
upcoming invasion of France, they recognised that a considerable challenge
faced them in Italy. With such an enormous force, spread over such a wide area,
theirs was a massive responsibility. The two biggest components were the
Mediterranean Allied Strategic Air Force – MASAF – and the Mediterranean Allied
Tactical Air Force – or MATAF. The former consisted of one group of RAF heavy
four-engine bombers and the US Fifteenth Air Force, predominantly made up of
heavy long-range bombers but also a fighter component largely used for
escorting the bombers. Their task was to continue the strategic bombing
campaign both within and outside Italy. In contrast, MATAF’s role was more
directly to support the ground forces. This consisted of the US 57th
Bombardment Wing of twin-engine bombers; of the US 12th Tactical Air Command;
and of the Desert Air Force, the battle-hardened force that had fought
throughout the North African campaign, and which was a polyglot mixture of RAF,
South African Air Force, Royal Australian Air Force, and Polish bomber and
fighter wings. In addition were the Mediterranean Allied Coastal Air Force, the
Mediterranean Allied Photographic Reconnaissance Wing, and the US 51st Troop
Carrier Wing. The guiding principle was to have joint operational staffs but
separate administrative staffs. In other words, at MAAF headquarters, in
matters of operations, signals and intelligence, the staffs were mixed, but
otherwise American and British forces were left to get on with their tasks on
their own. For example, the 12th Tactical Air Command was a purely US Army Air
Force show, while the Desert Air Force remained entirely in the hands of the
RAF.
In 1944, air power was in many ways still in its infancy
and, despite their overwhelming numerical superiority, the Allies were still
feeling their way with regard to its use, both in terms of its potential as a
means of long-range strategic bombing, and in the way it could support troops
on the ground.
Fortunately, however, there were not only extremely
experienced and capable men at the top, but also a wealth of young, dynamic,
and operationally seasoned men at both squadron and wing levels of command.
This was especially true of the Desert Air Force, whose headquarters and flying
units were liberally sprinkled with men who had been combat flying almost since
the beginning of the war.
One of these men was Wing Commander Hugh ‘Cocky’ Dundas who,
despite being only twenty-three, had seen action over Dunkirk back in May 1940,
and then had subsequently flown throughout the Battle of Britain. So, too, had
his adored older brother, John, a young man who had seemed destined for great
things. He had been killed in October 1940, having shot down and killed the
great German ace, Helmut Wick. It had thus been left to Cocky to fly the family
colours, and it seemed the gods had decided to shine on him. By the age of
twenty, he was commanding 56 Squadron at Duxford, Cambridgeshire, before being
given the task of forming the first Typhoon fighter-bomber wing. He had then
been posted to Tunisia in January 1943 to lead 324 Wing, which included five
squadrons of Spitfire; and when still aged only twenty-two, had led the wing to
Sicily, and then to the Salerno beachhead, before finally, in January 1944,
joining the Desert Air Force Staff.
Standing well over six foot, with a mass of blond hair and a
somewhat goofy expression, he cut an unlikely and gangly picture as a fighter
pilot, yet he had repeatedly risen to every challenge. Working directly for Air
Vice-Marshal William Dickson, the CO of the Desert Air Force, Cocky acted as
his eyes and ears in all the fighter and fighter-bomber wings. Young,
experienced men like Cocky were also there to help bring new ideas and
innovations into the operations of the Desert Air Force (DAF) and to create an
atmosphere where opportunities for improvement were always encouraged.
Great steps had already been made in recent times,
especially in the North African campaign with the development of army – air
co-operation. This meant positioning air force and army headquarters next to
each other, respective commanders working closely together, and using an entire
air force – known as a tactical air force – in direct support of the army.
However, with almost no aerial opposition whatsoever over
Italy, this level of co-operation had recently been taken a step further with
the development of what was known as the ‘Cab-Rank’ and ‘Rover David’ systems,
enabling the air forces to reduce the time it took to respond to a request by
the army for air support. These had been the brainchild of another young
fighter commander, a South African, Group Captain David Heysham. The systems
were simple. On the ground, an RAF officer would act as the controller,
directing aircraft on to a target using a VHF radio transmitter. Assisting him
with a clear picture of the situation on the ground and helping to establish
the target would be an officer of the Army Air Staff. These ‘Rover Davids’
would drive around a given area of the front in an armoured car, or truck and
jeep, in what was termed a Mobile Observation Room Unit. Meanwhile, up above
would be six or more bomb-laden fighter aircraft circling the same pre-arranged
area, gridded maps and aerial photographs stuffed down their flying boots,
waiting to be directed onto a target by the Rover David. This was the Cab Rank,
and it enabled pilots to bomb and strafe with machine-gun and cannon fire
moving or static targets in a matter of minutes after being detected. ‘This
“Rover” technique was tremendously successful,‘noted Cocky Dundas. ‘It not only
achieved very much more effective tangible results than the old system, when
all targets had to be selected before the aircraft left the ground; it was also
a wonderful thing for the morale of the soldiers fighting on the ground.’
On the broader, more strategic view of how air power should
be employed, there remained, however, notable differences of opinion,
especially with regard to the campaign in Italy. Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur
Tedder, previously C-in-C Mediterranean Air Command before it evolved into
MAAF, had been a proponent of his scientific adviser, Professor Solly
Zuckerman, who believed that the best way to stop enemy rail movement was by
destroying marshalling yards and the rolling stock based at big railway
centres. But a new theory had more recently developed, known as ‘interdiction’
– which meant blowing up bridges, blocking tunnels and cutting tracks, and
keeping them cut.
On the face of it, Slessor was a supporter of Zuckerman’s
views because he had written as much in a book on the subject of air power that
had been published in 1936. However, it also occurred to him that it wasn’t
really a question of favouring one view over the other, or following a rigid
operational doctrine. Following on from further discussions with Eaker, Slessor
drew up a new bombing directive, in which the heavy bombers of MASAF would
concentrate on bombing marshalling yards, while the medium bombers and
fighter-bombers would make every effort to fulfil the interdiction policy.
Where Slessor now took exception was to the idea of using air power to bombard
the enemy’s defensive positions. ‘It was perhaps memories of the old Western
Front many years before,’ he wrote, ‘where bombardments really were bombardments,
going on for days and weeks on end and blasting almost every identifiable
feature of the landscape out of recognition that led me to doubt whether a
concentrated air bombardment, however heavy, would prove to be the key to
unlock a strongly prepared position in the face of resolute and skilful
resistance.’
The bombing of Monte Cassino and Cassino town underlined
this belief. The two attacks, on the monastery in February and on the town in
March, had certainly pulverised the targets but had hardly helped the Allied
troops on the ground. Rather, the Germans had found defending amongst the
rubble easier than when the buildings had still been standing. The failure of
these attacks did, however, enable Eaker and Slessor instead to launch
Operation STRANGLE on 19 March. This was a direct preparation for the DIADEM
offensive, but rather than trying to obliterate the Gustav Line, its object was
to destroy German supply lines and thus throttle them where they stood.
While the medium bombers and fighter-bombers concentrated on
this ‘simultaneous interdiction’ policy, the heavy bombers of MASAF pounded
marshalling yards in northern Italy, but also, throughout April, attacked
targets in the Balkans with particular ferocity, the aim being to continue
their strategic bombing work, interrupting the flow of oil and other materiel
into all parts of the Reich. By taking the strategic bombing campaign into
Romania and other areas of Eastern Europe as well as enemy-controlled ports
around the Eastern Mediterranean, the Allies hoped to debilitate the German war
effort in general, which included that in Italy.
Amongst those taking part in Operation STRANGLE were the
pilots of the single-engine aircraft of the US 27th Fighter-Bomber Group.
Operating from airfields around Caserta, the men of the 27th FBG were now
highly experienced in the art of dropping bombs on specific targets, having
been one of the first US outfits to be designated specifically in the role of
fighter-bombers.
Lieutenant Charles Dills flew his forty-sixth combat mission
the day Operation STRANGLE was launched, and in the weeks that followed was
flying almost daily – sometimes twice daily – hitting German columns of
vehicles, enemy supply dumps, railway lines, railway viaducts and bridges. He
and his colleagues might not have had to worry too much about the likes of
Willi Holtfreter, but low-level combat flying was extremely hazardous. There
was always plenty of small-arms fire and flakj to contend with. And at such low
heights there was little chance of bailing out. If a plane came down, then more
often than not, the pilot came down too, and very few survived.
It had taken a while for Charles to realise this. ‘To begin
with it was all kind of a lark and I didn’t really think of the dangers,’ he
admits. But back in early February, Charles had been flying as wingman to his
flight leader. They were flying at around 300 mph, just 200 feet above the
ground looking for anything to strafe. Charles had been looking around – behind
him and either side, and then suddenly had turned back and seen his flight
leader in a steep dive. A second later he had exploded on the ground. ‘It was a
shock,’ admits Charles. ‘I just couldn’t believe it.’ In a state of numbed
confusion, he had circled over several times, calling for him on his radio, but
then there had been flak all around him and he had managed to pull himself
together and head home. Later, it had been concluded that the flight leader had
been hit in the head by a freak rifle shot. ‘That’s when you realise this is a
pretty serious business,’ says Charles, ‘and you start getting a bit mad and
you realise you’re only going to survive if there’s nothing else alive to shoot
at you.’
From La Moure, in north Dakota, Charles had had, like many
of those growing up in the 1920s and ’30s, a tough childhood. He was the third
of four children, two girls and two boys, although his younger brother had
tragically died at birth. Despite this, the 1920s were his family’s ‘happy
time’, with father and uncle running a successful drugstore business and the
family living comfortably. The tide would soon change, however. In 1930, his
father died of cancer; the business had to be sold and Charles and his mother
and sisters moved to Fargo. For the next few years, with America in the throes
of the Depression, she did her best to keep the family by running a small
lingerie business, but then she also contracted cancer and died. An orphan at
fourteen, Charles was sent to live with his uncle, who looked after him and
ensured he went to good schools. It paid off because after leaving high school,
he went to North Dakota Agricultural College.
Charles had, however, always had a passion for aircraft, and
in his second year at college, in 1941, he was given the chance to learn to
fly. This was thanks to Roosevelt’s Civilian Training Program, a scheme
designed to speed up the rate at which pilots could be prepared for war, and
Charles enrolled even though he was against America joining the war. By January
1942, he had his civil pilot’s licence; six months later he had joined the US
Army Air Force. A little over a year later, he was on his way to Italy.
Charles had joined the 27th Fighter-Bomber Group the
previous November and since then had become one of the most experienced pilots
in his squadron, although he was yet to lead a mission himself. ‘I was
relatively small,’ he says, ‘and I looked like I was perhaps nineteen. I always
looked younger than my real age. The senior guys in the squadron always used to
think of me as a bit of a kid brother.’
His part in Operation STRANGLE came to an end on 24 April.
Loaded with fuel and armed with six 20lb fragmentation bombs and a 500-pounder
strapped underneath, he taxied his P-40 Kittyhawk over to the runway as normal.
But there was a strong crosswind and as he sped down the runway a heavy gust
blew him sideways towards the left of the runway where a trench had been dug.
Giving the engine some emergency boost he felt the undercarriage lift off the
ground, but unfortunately his tail wheel had snagged into the ditch as the
front of his plane lifted into the air – and this took away just enough speed
to prevent him from climbing further. In a trice, his Kittyhawk began roll to
the left. ‘It’s amazing how quickly you think in an emergency like this,’ says
Charles. ‘I remember thinking, if my left wing-tip clears the ground, I’ll land
on my back. If it doesn’t, I’ll cartwheel. Either of these seemed a sure death.
So I pulled back the mixture control and killed the engine. The plane
straightened up and slammed to the ground, wiping out the landing gear.’
It was nonetheless a heart-stopping moment, especially with
seven live bombs strapped underneath. The aircraft tilted to the right, tearing
off much of the wing as it dug into the ground. As the plane slewed heavily,
the bombs fortunately rolled away from underneath him, but the pierced-steel
plating runway bowed upwards with the force of the crash and slammed against
the rear of his fuselage, knocking the tail ninety degrees from the cockpit.
Incredibly, Charles walked away with nothing more than a scratched thumb, but
his commanding officer felt the time had come to give him a break. The next day
he was sent to the American rest camp on Capri for a week.
By that time, however, Eaker and Slessor had realised that
Operation STRANGLE had not fulfilled its objective of making it impossible for
the Germans to remain south of Rome. On paper the interdiction policy was
sound, because the railway system in Italy was highly vulnerable to aerial
attack, with its multitude of tunnels, bridges, viaducts and embankments. The
limiting Italian terrain also meant the Germans were predominantly using only
three main rail routes – the western, central and eastern – all running roughly
north – south down the leg of the country.
Early results had been promising. By 4 April, Kesselring’s
Army Group was receiving just 1,357 tons of supplies per day, rather than their
minimum daily requirement of 2,261 tons. From 22 March, the eastern route was
almost entirely impassable, while large parts of the central and western routes
were also almost continuously blocked. By the end of April, the central route
was cut in sixty-nine places, and by the end of the first week of May, 155 more
had been added. When STRANGLE officially ended on the eve of the battle on 11
May, 22,500 tons of bombs had been dropped – more than during the entire London
Blitz.
Yet despite this the Germans had not withdrawn. With the
kind of efficiency and improvisation that prompted awe from the Allies, the
Germans managed to repair large parts of track and numerous bridges, while also
making good use of lesser roundabout routes and moving goods between trains
across damaged parts of track. Overseeing this work was a ‘General with Special
Responsibility for the Maintenance of Rail Communications in Italy’ newly
appointed by Kesselring. German engineers provided the skills; the Organisation
Todt, the German military labour force made up of mostly press-ganged Italians,
provided the workers. It also helped that Kesselring had ensured that considerable
stocks had been built up at the front during the winter, and that, with a
stagnant front, he was using up little of his stocks of fuel and ammunition. As
Slessor recognised, German troops seemed to be hardier than many of the Allies.
‘He doesn’t worry about ENSA shows or V cigarettes,’ he noted, ‘Coca-Cola or
chewing gum, the masses of motor vehicles, or all the luxuries without which it
is assumed that the modern British and American soldier cannot wage war.’
Germans, it appeared, could survive four or five days on the same tonnage the
Allies consumed in a day. Furthermore, they had managed by moving greater
volumes of traffic by road and by sea, using coast-hugging lighters at night,
and taking what they could from the land. ‘The fact is,’ noted Slessor in a
report written on 16 April 1944, ‘if you don’t care a damn about the civilian
population and are prepared to use all the transportation resources to hand
(and, incidentally, forced civilian labour) for purely military purposes,’ then
only a small proportion of a transport potential needed to be used to achieve a
minimum requirement.
These were important lessons and were duly noted – both in
Italy and by those preparing for D-Day. Air power alone could not destroy the
enemy in the field. Alexander, on the other hand, was delighted by the efforts
of the air forces in the weeks before his offensive had been launched. ‘I never
felt,’ he said, ‘that these air attacks would force the Germans to withdraw.’
Rather, he had hoped they would be able seriously to hamper German supply and
reinforcement. In this aim, STRANGLE had been an unquestionable success.
Air power had played an integral part in the Allies’ success
in both North Africa and Sicily. It would continue to do so in Italy – but it
could never do the job of the men on the ground.
