USAAF During WWII Volume 3 - Europe Argument to V-E Day Jan 1944-May 1945 AFD-101105-007

1032 Pages·1983·23.52 MB·English

by  Wesley Frank Craven

Volume Three
EUROPE: ARGUMENT TO V-E DAY
JANUARY 1944 TO MAY 1945
THE ARMY AIR FORCES
I n World War I1
PREPARED UNDER THE EDITORSHIP OF
WESLEY F R A N K CRAVEN
Princeton University
JAMES LEA GATE
University of Chicago
New Imprint by the
Office of Air Force History
Washington, D.C., 1983
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Uovernment Printing Oface
Washington, D.C. 20402
THEU NIVERSITYOF CHICAGOP RESS,C HICAGO37
Cambridge University Press, London, N.W. 1, England
W. J. Gage & Co., Limited, Toronto 2B, Canada
Copyright 1951 by The University of Chicago. All
rights reserved. Copyright 1951 under the Interna-
tional Copyright Union. Published 1951. Composed
and printed by THEU NIVERSITOYF CHICAGPOR ESS,
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
Copyright registration renewed 1979
This work, first published by the University of Chicago Press,
is reprinted in its entirety by the Office of Air Force History.
With the exception of editing, the work is the product of the
United States government.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
The Army Air Forces in World War 11.
Vol. 1 originally prepared by the Office of Air Force
History; v. 2, by the Air Historical Group; and v. 3-7,
by the USAF Historical Division.
Reprint. Originally published : Chicago : University
of Chicago Press, 1948-1958.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
Contents: v. 1. Plans and early operations, January
1939 to August 1942-v. 2. Europe, torch to point-
blank, August 1942 to December 1943-[etc.]-v. 7.
Services around the world.
1. World War, 1939-1 945-Aerial operations,
American. 2. United States. Army Air Forces-
History-World War, 1939-1945. I. Craven, Wesley
Frank, 1905- . 11. Cate, James Lea, 1899- .
111. United States. Air Force. Office of Air Force
History. IV. United States. Air Force. Air Historical
Group. V. United States. USAF Historical Division.
D790.A89 1983 940.54’4973 83-17288
ISBN 0-912799-03-X (v. 1)
11
FOREWORD
to the New
1m prin t
I
N March 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote to the
Director of the Bureau of the Budget ordering each war
agency to prepare “an accurate and objective account” of
thar t agency’s war experience. Soon after, the Army Air Forces
began hiring professional historians so that its history could, in the
words of Brigadier General Laurence Kuter, “be recorded while
it is hot and that personnel be selected and an agency set up for
a clear historian’s job without axe to grind or defense to prepare.”
An Historical Division was established in Headquarters Army
Air Forces under Air Intelligence, in September 1942, and the
modern Air Force historical program began.
With the end of the war, Headquarters approved a plan for
writing and publishing a seven-volume history. In December 1945,
Lieutenant General Ira C. Eaker, Deputy Commander of Army
Air Forces, asked the Chancellor of the University of Chicago to
“assume the responsibility for the publication” of the history,
stressing that it must “meet the highest academic standards.”
Lieutenant Colonel Wesley Frank Craven of New York University
and Major James Lea Cate of the University of Chicago, both of
whom had been assigned to the historical program, were selected
to be editors of the volumes. Between 1948 and 1958 seven were
published. With publication of the last, the editors wrote that
the Air Force had “fulfilled in letter and spirit” the promise of
access to documents and complete freedom of historical interpre-
tation. Like all history, The Army Air Forces in World War II
reflects the era when it was conceived, researched, and written.
The strategic bombing campaigns received the primary emphasis,
not only because of a widely-shared belief in bombardment’s con-
tribution to victory, but also because of its importance in establish-
ing the United States Air Force as a military service independent
of the Army. The huge investment of men and machines and the
effectiveness of the combined Anglo-American bomber offensive
against Germany had not been subjected to the critical scrutiny
they have since received. Nor, given the personalities involved and
the immediacy of the events, did the authors question some of the
command arrangements. In the tactical area, to give another
example, the authors did not doubt the effect of aerial interdiction
on both the German withdrawal from Sicily and the allied land-
ings at Anzio.
Editors Craven and Cate insisted that the volumes present the
war through the eyes of the major commanders, and be based on
information available to them as important decisions were made.
At the time, secrecy still shrouded the Allied code-breaking effort.
While the link between decoded message traffic and combat action
occasionally emerges from these pages, the authors lacked the
knowledge to portray adequately the intelligence aspects of many
operations, such as the interdiction in 1943 of Axis supply lines
to Tunisia and the systematic bombardment, beginning in 1944,
of the German oil industry.
All historical works a generation old suffer such limitations.
New information and altered perspective inevitably change the
emphasis of an historical account. Some accounts in these volumes
have been superseded by subsequent research and other portions
will be superseded in the future. However, these books met the
highest of contemporary professional standards of quality and
comprehensiveness. They contain information and experience
that are of great value to the Air Force today and to the public.
Together they are the only comprehensive discussion of Army Air
Forces activity in the largest air war this nation has ever waged.
Until we summon the resources to take a fresh, comprehensive
look at the Army Air Forces’ experience in World War 11, these
seven volumes will continue to serve us as well for the next quarter
century as they have for the last.
RICHARD H. KOHN
Chief, Ofice of Air Force History
iv
F 0 REW 0-RD
* * * * * * * * * * *
I
N PLANNING a seven-volume history of The Army Air Forces
in World War ZZ the editors hoped to achieve a reasonable degree
of unity in a complex narrative which seemed to divide itself into
three related but sometimes disparate themes: air operations against
the European Axis; air operations against the Japanese; and those
services in the United States and in the several theaters which made
combat operations possible. To those hardy souls who get through the
seven stout volumes-and the editors hope they are legion-this unity
may be discernible; but for readers whose endurance is less rugged or
whose interests are less catholic the volumes have been so arranged
that the three themes may be found treated with some degree of com-
pleteness in, respectively, Volumes I, 11, and 111; Volumes I, IV, and
V; and Volumes I, VI, and VII. This information has been purveyed
in an earlier volume, not without an eye to its possible effect on sales;
it is repeated here to fix the present volume into the context of the
whole series. For with Volume I11 the story of the AAF’s war against
Hitler’s Germany and his satellite nations-and hence one subsection
of the series-is completed.
Volume I dealt mainly with plans and preparations; Volume I1 de-
scribed the AAF’s war against Hider which began in mid-1942 in the
skies over Libya and France. In the Mediterranean, where U.S. air
forces were part of an effective Anglo-American team, the war went
well and in a number of combined operations the Allies conquered
North Africa, Sicily, and southern Italy and by the end of 1943 were
confronting the enemy, strongly intrenched, along the Sangro and
Garigliano rivers and were planning an amphibious operation de-
signed to open the road to Rome. In northwestern Europe, however,
the AAF had scored no such obvious victories. Its only sustained oper-
ations, strategic bombardment by the Eighth Air Force as a part of the
Anglo-American Combined Bomber Offensive, had not as yet proved
V
THE ARMY AIR FORCES I N WORLD WAR I1
decisive nor had the Allies achieved that superiority over the Luft-
waffe which was prerequisite to both the strategic and the tactical air
mission. As 1943 wore out, the AAF was anxiously awaiting the spell
of clear weather which would allow a concentrated series of strikes
against the sources of German air power and thus, in respect to both
the ETO and MTO, Volume I1 ended on a note of expectancy.
The present volume begins with the winter bombardment campaign
of I 943-44 and ends with the German surrender in May I 945 : it tells
of air‘s contribution to the slow drive up the Italian peninsula; it de-
scribes the activities of the strategic bombers as they beat down the
Lufnvaffe and, turning to other targets, ruined the German war
economy; it tells how tactical forces prepared for and supported the
landings in Normandy and then spearheaded the Allied sweep across
France and, after a check and a serious counterattack, across Germany.
‘The volume contains then the climax of air operations, and the de-
nouement too-for before the armistice the strategic bombers had run
out of targets and the Eighth Air Force had begun its redeployment to
the Pacific, while tactical forces had little to do beyond policing duties.
The measure of the air victory and of the vast power which made it
possible may be seen in a typical American gesture at war’s end-a
great sight-seeing excursion in which the Eighth flew 30,000 of its
ground personnel over Europe to view the damage wrought by the
planes they had serviced.
The chapter headings and subtitles provide a working outline of the
present volume. Roughly, these may be grouped around four main
topics: (I) the air war in Italy; the strategic bombing campaign;
(2)
(3) tactical operations in support of the land armies from the Cotentin
to the Elbe; and (4) supporting operations of various sorts.
The war in Italy brought more than its share of disappointments to
the Allies. For a year after the TORCH landings the Mediterranean
had been the active theater for the Allied forces as they pushed, with
only temporary checks, from Oran and Casablanca and from Egypt to
a line well above Naples. But as this volume opens they had bogged
down, thwarted in their effort to break through to Rome by rugged
terrain, rugged weather, and a rugged German defense. With the
OVERLORD invasion of France imminent, the Mediterranean no
longer had first priority for resources; it became, and was to remain, a
secondary theater.
Nevertheless, in early 1944 the Allies in Italy enjoyed a marked
Vi
FOREWORD
superiority over the Germans in air power and this would increase in
time. The newly established Mediterranean Allied Air Forces, which
Eaker had come down from England to command, was a complex
organization in which the Twelfth and Fifteenth Air Forces were the
principal U.S. components. The Twelfth was to carry a heavy re-
sponsibility for tactical operations and the Fifteenth, though engaging
occasionally in like activities, was to find its primary role in assisting
the Eighth and RAF's Bomber Command in the Combined Bomber
Offensive.
Both forces participated in the first large-scale endeavor to break
the stalemate, the landing at Anzio. They cut communications lines
into the battle area, softened defenses, and provided-in spite of the
distance of their fighter bases from Anzio-an effective cover for the
landings. The lodgment was made but Operation SHINGLE, suc-
cessful as an amphibious assault, failed in its purpose of forcing the
Germans to withdraw from their Gustav Line, and the Anzio beach-
head became a liability whose defense put a heavy drain on air and
ground resources. Winter weather severely handicapped the air war;
its only useful function was to ease a difficult command decision in
February-whether to send the Fifteenth Air Force on the long-
awaited attacks on German aircraft factories or to use it tactically
to help protect the endangered beachhead at Anzio.
Two spectacular air operations after Anzio have attracted a degree
of attention wholly incommensurate with their military importance.
On 15 February U.S. bombers destroyed the Benedictine abbey at
Monte Cassino, hallowed throughout Christendom as the wellspring
of western monasticism. Eaker was opposed to the strike, though he
thought the monastery was being used by German troops, an assump-
tion which is still being debated. The reluctance of AAF leaders to
bomb cultural or historical monuments is sufficiently documented in
this history-witness the extreme care exercised in hitting military
targets at Rome; the tragedy in the case of Monte Cassino is made
more bitter by its futility as a military act.
The same was true at the town of Cassino which was literally razed
by U.S. bombers on 15 March in an effort to crack the*GustavL ine.
Here Eaker was flatly against a tactic which he thought more likely
to impede, by craters and rubble, than to help the advance of armor;
when ground forces moved in too slowly to take advantage of the
momentary shock the heavy pounding gave German defenders, the
vii
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR I1
operation failed as he had predicted. Criticisms of air power that came
afterward were not always fair, since the attack was clearly a misuse
of a weapon; unfortunately the lesson was not wholly absorbed and
similar errors were to be repeated later.
With the coming of spring, air operations increased in intensity as
MAAF inaugurated STRANGLE, an appropriately labeled opera-
tion designed to choke off the enemy’s communications so that his
Gustav Line might be forced when he had consumed reserve supplies
at the front. After much debate over rival suggestions-whether to
concentrate on bridges or on marshalling yards-the issue was settled
by a latitudinarian compromise which listed for simultaneous attack
all features of the railroad system: bridges, yards, tunnels, tracks, roll-
ing stock, and shops, and coastal shipping as well. Launched officially
on 19 March, STRANGLE enjoyed an early success which grew
more marked as bombers and fighter-bombers increased the accuracy
of their strikes. Severely hampered in their use of railroads, the Ger-
mans came to depend more heavily upon M/T but as trucks were di-
verted to the long north-south haul the number available for lateral
distribution shrank. Thus when a heavy ground offensive (DIADEM,
jumped off May) forced the Germans to expend more supplies at
12
the front the carefully hoarded reserves were quickly depleted and
the Allies cracked the line, linking up with the Anzio beachhead
which at last began to pay dividends. Tactical air forces rendered close
support in the assault but it was their sustained interdiction program
that turned the trick. By 4 June the Allies had reached Rome and
thereafter the German retreat became a rout which seemed to presage
an early German collapse in Italy. In the air especially the Allies en-
joyed an overwhelming superiority; the Germans came to depend
more upon heavily reinforced AA forces than upon fighter defense,
until MAAF claims of enemy planes destroyed were often less than
Allied losses. An even stronger defense for the enemy was the weather
which worsened at the end of June; by August the Germans had dug
in again along the Gothic Line. An Allied attempt to sever all com-
munications in the Po Valley (MALLORY MAJOR) achieved a con-
siderable success but it was impossible to choke off supplies in the
broad Lombard plain as it had been in the narrow peninsula and the
enemy held tenaciously to his new line.
The Allied cause in Italy was weakened by the diversion of air and
ground forces for the invasion of southern France (DRAGOON).
...
Vlll
FOREWORD
This assault, long a matter of contention among the Americans, the
British, and the Russians, was postponed until August but moved
thereafter rapidly enough. It offered little that was novel to combined
forces who had gone over half-a-dozen beaches in the MTO and in
size it was dwarfed by the recent OVERLORD landings. There had
been the familiar pattern of preparation: strikes at communications by
which enemy reinforcements might move in; attacks on German air
installation? (only light blows were required here); and bombing of
coastal defenses. Planes based in Italy and Corsica participated in these
pre-invasion activities and in providing cover for the landings. Several
successful airborne operations gave clear indication of how much had
been learned since the tragic attempts in Sicily. XI1 TAC stayed with
the Seventh Army, helped chase the Germans up the Rhone Valley
and beyond until by early September they pulled up just short of
Belfort.
In Italy, as in northwestern Europe, Allied hopes of an early victory
continued strong well into September as the Fifth Army crossed the
Arno and broke through segments of the Gothic Line and the Eighth
Army took Rimini. MAAF’s tasks were to sever escape routes, partic-
ularly at the Po, and to help ground forces thrust the enemy back on
those closed exits. But the armies, weakened by transfers and tired by
long battles, could not breach the stubborn German defense and in
October it was no longer a question of cutting the enemy’s lines of
retreat; the interdiction program continued but priorities now favored
more northerly lines in an effort to cut off supplies coming from north
of the Alps via the Brenner and other northeast passes while fighter-
bombers attempted to destroy supply dumps in the forward area.
Allied operations had been handicapped by much wet weather
which slowed the ground advance and which held back the bombers
often enough to allow the Germans to repair bridges and rail lines.
Allied air forces, weakened by diversions in favor of DRAGOON,
suffered further losses as additional bomber and fighter-bomber units
were sent to France and to the Pacific. Indeed, Throughout autumn
and winter there was much sentiment in favor of moving all AAF
forces in Italy up into France, and the Fifth Army as well. Though
this drastic step was never taken, the very threat, coupled with the
piecemeal cannibalization of Twelfth Air Force, brought to the sev-
eral MTO headquarters an air of uncertainty which lasted until the
eve of victory. Internal changes in the command structure-the estab-
ix
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR I1
lishment of XXII TAC on I 9 October and the wholesale reshuffling of
commanders when Eaker went back to the States in March 1945-
seem to have had less effect on operations than transfers of combat
and service units.
At any rate, the Italian campaign became to Allied soldiers “the for-
gotten war.” Air preparations for a winter attack on the German lines
proved abortive when a counterattack launched by Kesselring on 26
December induced MTO Headquarters to cancel the planned drive.
Thereafter the Allies went on the defensive and for three months
there was little ground activity. This threw upon air the main burden
of the theater directive to maintain constant pressure upon the enemy,
and the 280 combat squadrons of MAAF became “by far the most
potent Allied weapon in the Mediterranean.” Except for a brief period
in November when Fascist Italian air units trained in Germany gave
a futile challenge, MAAF was untroubled by enemy air opposition;
the general practice of sending out medium bombers without escort
was a taunting symbol of the impotence of the GAF.
The long-anticipated withdrawal of German divisions toward the
Reich began on January and thereafter MATAF (supported occa-
23
sionally by SAF) intensified efforts to interdict the routes toward the
Alpine passes. Other communications were cut and when the final
Allied offensive jumped off in April, XXII TAC and DAF greatly
aided the breakthrough by a tremendous effort against German posi-
tions. So thoroughly had communications been disrupted, especially
at the Po, that there was no chance of an orderly retreat to a new
line and the total surrender came on z May, just a year after the begin-
ning of the punch through the Gustav Line.
The Fifteenth had meanwhile been engaged in strategic operations
(which will be described presently) and, with the Balkan Air Force,
in supporting the Russian advance which drove the Axis powers from
Rumania, Bulgaria, Greece, Yugoslavia, and part of Hungary. Bomb-
ing airdromes, supply centers, and rail targets, MAAF forces encouti-
tered the usual difficulties in cooperating with an ally who would not
allow any real system of liaison to be established or any rationally de-
termined bomb line.
The subtitle of the present volume suggests that it begins with
January 1944. Actually the narrative reviews briefly the strategic air
operations of the last two months of 1943. The Eighth Air Force had
begun its attack against the German war machine on 17 August 1942.
X