D-Day 1944 - Air Power Over The Normandy Beaches And Beyond [Illustrated Edition]
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Operation Overlord, the Normandy invasion-like William the Conqueror's before it or the Inchon landing afterwards-will long be studied as a classic in military planning, logistics, and operations. OVERLORD depended to a remarkable degree upon the use of air power in virtually all its forms. A half-century ago, aircraft were primitive vehicles of war compared to the modern attackers of the Gulf War era, with their precision weapons, advanced navigational, sensor systems, and communications. Yet, the airplane still had a profound impact upon the success of the invasion. Simply stated, without air power, Normandy would have been impossible.
Richard P. Hallion
Richard P. Hallion holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Maryland, and has completed specialized governmental and national security programs at the Federal Executive Institute, and the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He has been a Curator at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum; a Historian with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the U.S. Air Force; the Harold Keith Johnson Chair of Military History at the Army War College; the Charles Lindbergh Professor at the National Air and Space Museum; a Senior Issues and Policy Analyst for the Secretary of the Air Force; the Air Force Historian; a Senior Advisor for Air and Space Issues for the Air Force's Directorate for Security, Counterintelligence, and Special Programs; a Special Advisor for Aerospace Technology for the Air Force Chief Scientist; a Senior Advisor to the Science and Technology Policy Institute of the Institute for Defense Analyses; a Research Associate in Aeronautics for the National Air and Space Museum; and a Trustee of Florida Polytechnic University. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the Royal Aeronautical Society, and the Royal Historical Society, and an Honorary Member of the Order of Daedalians who has flown as a mission observer in a wide range of military aircraft. He lives in Florida.
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D-Day 1944 - Air Power Over The Normandy Beaches And Beyond [Illustrated Edition] - Richard P. Hallion
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Text originally published in 1994 under the same title.
© Pickle Partners Publishing 2014, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.
Publisher’s Note
Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.
We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.
The U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II
D-Day 1944 — Air Power Over the Normandy Beaches and Beyond
Richard P. Hallion Air Force Historian
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS 3
D-Day 1944 — Air Power Over the Normandy Beaches and Beyond 4
June 6, 1944 4
Planning for OVERLORD 4
Air Power: Critical to Success on D-Day 5
The Desert Fox
on the Beaches 6
Assembling the Allied Tactical Air Forces 6
Air Support on the Beaches 9
Radar Adapted to the Battlefield 10
The Air-Armor Partnership 11
The Tank's Formidable Enemies 14
Allied Air over the Battlefield 17
A Dispirited Rommel 18
The Heavy Bomber in Air Support 19
The Price of Victory 20
COBRA: Key to Breakout 24
TacAir Omnipotent: Mortain and the Falaise-Argentan Pocket 26
Closing the Gap at Falaise 30
The Falaise-Argentan Pocket 31
The Corridor of Death 33
The Legacy of Air Power at Normandy 34
Suggested Readings 38
REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 41
D-Day 1944 — Air Power Over the Normandy Beaches and Beyond
June 6, 1944
Operation Overlord, the Normandy invasion—like William the Conqueror's before it or the Inchon landing afterwards—will long be studied as a classic in military planning, logistics, and operations. OVERLORD depended to a remarkable degree upon the use of air power in virtually all its forms. A half-century ago, aircraft were primitive vehicles of war compared to the modern attackers of the Gulf War era, with their precision weapons, advanced navigational, sensor systems, and communications. Yet, the airplane still had a profound impact upon the success of the invasion. Simply stated, without air power, Normandy would have been impossible.
Planning for OVERLORD
By D-Day, June 6, 1944, the Allies had been planning for the invasion of Europe for more than two years. In August 1943, the Combined Chiefs of Staff had approved the general tactical plan for the invasion, dubbed OVERLORD. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Commander of the European theater since February 1944, would be responsible for carrying off this bold gambit. The Allies' main strategy, in Eisenhower's words, was to
. . . land amphibious and airborne forces on the Normandy coast between Le Havre and the Cotentin Peninsula and, with the successful establishment of a beachhead with adequate ports, to drive along the lines of the Loire and the Seine rivers into the heart of France, destroying the German strength and freeing France.
The Allies believed that the enemy would resist strongly on the line of the Seine and later on the Somme, but surprisingly, once ground forces had broken through the relatively static lines of the bridgehead at Saint-Lô and inflicted heavy casualties on enemy troops in the Falaise Pocket, Nazi resistance in France disappeared. British and American armies swept east and north in an unimpeded advance which brought them to the German frontier and the defenses of the Siegfried Line.
Air Power: Critical to Success on D-Day
From the beginning Eisenhower and the rest of the combined forces planners recognized that air power would be critical to success of OVERLORD. Experience had taught planners to avoid facing hostile air power over the battlefront. This meant that the Luftwaffe would have to be destroyed, but not at the price of sacrificing vitally needed air support