The Normandy Air War, 1944

By Anthony Tucker-Jones

The Allied air forces of WWII come dramatically alive in this photographic history of D-Day and the invasion of France.

In the months preceding the Normandy landings, Allied air forces played a vital role in blinding and isolating German forces in northern France. During the campaign, they supported the Allied armies in their push inland, most notably by hampering the march of Hitler’s panzer divisions and controversially bombing the ancient Norman cities of Caen and Rouen.

Anthony Tucker-Jones’s photographic history is a vivid introduction to the Allied air offensive, illustrating the many famous types of aircraft employed by the RAF, USAAF and Luftwaffe. Allied bombers, such as the Halifax, Lancaster, Fortress, Liberator, Havoc and Marauder; as well as fighters and fighter-bombers, such as the Lightning, Thunderbolt, Mustang, Spitfire and Typhoon, are shown in ample detail.

These images of the air war over northern France bring home in a graphic way the nature and conditions of combat flying over seventy years ago, and they emphasize the contribution of air power to the campaign.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jan 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9781526730060

Anthony Tucker-Jones

Anthony Tucker-Jones, a former intelligence officer, is a highly prolific writer and military historian with well over 50 books to his name. His work has also been published in an array of magazines and online. He regularly appears on television and radio commenting on current and historical military matters.

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CHAPTER 1

GETTING THE BARONS IN LINE

The Normandy air war was dominated by the characters in charge of the respective air forces.While there was friction and tension between the ground commanders, the air commanders took this to a whole new level. Ego and experience meant that there were competing views on how best to defeat the Germans from the air.This was especially so when it came to developing the tactical and strategic plans to support Overlord.These two very different beasts were never fully reconciled. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, was to despair at the squabbling bomber barons.

By the middle of 1944 the Allied strategic air forces, consisting of RAF Bomber Command, RAF Coastal Command and the USAAF’s 8th and 15th Air Forces, could field over 5,000 four-engined heavy bombers against Germany and the occupied territories. In addition to this mighty heavy bomber fleet, the Allied tactical air forces numbered 2,840 fighters and fighter-bombers, plus 1,520 light and medium bombers.

Germany’s war industries had to function under constant air attack by the Allies’ strategic bomber fleets, which saw the RAF striking by night and the USAAF by day. Until the German surrender they concentrated on the destruction of Germany’s industrial cities, individual factories and vital lines of communication. However, the Allies’ war against Adolf Hitler’s armaments factories up until early 1944 has been described as haphazard and uncoordinated. It was not until they concentrated on Hitler’s synthetic oil plants that his factories and armed forces began to grind to a halt with fatal results.

The British Target Committee first called for intelligence on the German ball-bearing industry as early as the autumn of 1941, which was vital for the production of not only aircraft but also tanks. The following year British intelligence assessed that a Swedish company, Svenska Kugellager Fabrik (SKF) through its German subsidiary Vereinigte Kugellager Fabrik (VKF) with two main factories in Schweinfurt provided the bulk of Germany’s needs. Helpfully VKF’s principal rival, Kugelfischer, was also located at Schweinfurt.

British intelligence identified two other major plants at Steyr in Austria and at Carstadt-Stuttgart, outside Berlin. Along with thirty-five other smaller plants they supplied 75 per cent of German industrial needs, the rest coming from Sweden, France and Italy.

Schweinfurt was clearly the key chokepoint and its two ball-bearing manufacturers were attacked on 17 August 1943. The air defences were ferocious; the USAAF’s bombers, lacking long-range escort fighters, suffered very heavy casualties and managed to halt production for only four weeks. The bombers returned on 14 October 1943 with only slightly better results, dislocating production for six weeks and inconveniencing it for six months.

Hitler, convinced he needed to centralize his panzer forces, appointed General Heinz Guderian as Inspector General of Armoured Troops in early 1943. Guderian was made responsible for the development, organization and training of all armoured forces with the Army, Waffen-SS and Luftwaffe, answerable directly to Hitler.To assess the condition of German tank production Guderian made a point of visiting Daimler-Benz in Berlin and the Alkett Company in Spandau.Their vulnerability to air attack soon became apparent.

One of Guderian’s first initiatives was to request that the tank factories be moved before they attracted the attention of the Allies’ marauding bombers. At a conference in Munich on 4 May 1943, however, Assistant Minister for Armaments and War Production, Karl Saur, opposed this, claiming the enemy was currently concentrating on destroying the Luftwaffe’s aircraft factories. Saur did not consider the tank factories at risk, even in the event of the Allied bombers succeeding in destroying the aircraft plants.

Instead Guderian had to make do with bolstering the air defences around Cassel, Friedrichshafen and Schweinfurt, Germany’s principal tank-manufacturing centres. His fears soon came to fruition on 22 October 1943 when the Henschel works at Cassel was severely bombed and all production came to a temporary halt. Guderian travelled to Cassel to offer his condolences to the workers and their families. The following month the bombers again turned their attentions on Germany’s tank factories, attacking the Berlin works of Alkett, Rheinmetall-Borsig, Wimag and the Deutsche Waffen-und Munitionsfabriken on 26 November 1943.

The vital production of Hitler’s weapons was placed in the very capable hands of Albert Speer, an architect by profession, who at the age of thirty-six was appointed Minister of Armaments and War Production in February 1942. Speer proved to be exactly the dynamic man Hitler needed. Within a year the Reich’s supply of steel, coal, oil and other raw materials reached their highest level ever.To Speer’s credit the production of weapons and munitions also reached remarkable levels. By making use of existing civilian industrial capacity he was able to double monthly output during 1943. Guderian greatly respected Speer’s abilities.

Controversy has dogged the effectiveness and morality of the Allies’ strategic bomber campaign fought over Europe. Winning the war purely through air power was impossible. Thanks to Speer, Adolf Hitler’s factories continued to churn out weapons to the very last. The growing shortage of raw materials and oil became a far greater problem, but by then the Allies ground forces were racing toward the Reich. Only once did the Allies’ bomber fleets provide direct and effective support to the ground war and that was through Operation Pointblank – even then the bomber barons chose to interpret the Pointblank directive issued in 1943 largely as they saw fit.

Up until the early months of 1944 the leaders of RAF Bomber Command and the US 8th and 15th Air Forces clung to the hope that smashing Hitler’s industries and crushing civilian morale was the way to victory.To the very end Air Marshal Arthur Harris, commander of Bomber Command, and General Carl Spaatz, commander of the US Strategic Air Forces Europe (USSAFE), remained convinced of their ability to defeat Germany by bombing alone.

However, the strategic bomber campaign had not gone well the previous year, British night bombing was notoriously inaccurate (little better than carpet bombing) and ran the gauntlet of vengeful German night-fighters. Fortunately, many of Bomber Command’s four-engine bombers, such as the Avro Lancaster, Handley Page Halifax and Short Stirling, were extremely robust and could take a lot of punishment before they fell from the sky. Many crews were thankful that the Lancaster’s predecessor, the twin-engined Avro Manchester, had been withdrawn from service. The Manchester had proved to be a death trap. Its unreliable engines had a nasty habit of catching fire, leading to an alarming loss rate of 40 per cent on operations and 25 per cent on training flights. Likewise the Stirling, which suffered from poor altitude performance (due to a reduction in its wingspan to ensure it would fit inside pre-war hangers), was withdrawn from service in the summer of 1944 and converted to a transport and glider tug.

American daylight bombing during the summer of 1943 was characterized by sheer determination and courage on the part of the US pilots and aircrews, who received a bloody mauling at the hands of the German air defences. The US 8th Air Force flew 1,547 sorties between 17 August and 30