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Air Power at the Battlefront: Allied Close Air Support in Europe 1943-45 (Studies in Air Power) ReviewAlthough it is universally acknowledged that overwhelming Allied air power had a major contributing role to the success of the Allies on the Western Front, there is surprisingly little written about British and American tactical air support in the European Theater during WWII.This book by Ian Gooderson is one of the few books that provide an in-depth analysis of that subject. Gooderson began this research for his PhD at King's College in London, and so the book is more heavily focused on British tactical air support. The American side is lacking in comparable detail, although it is discussed, and contrasted with the British side.
The book focuses on the organization and structure of Allied tactical air support, and goes over a number of Operation Research and other studies, mainly from the British side, conducted to assess the results of the tactical air campaign.
The results of this analysis are frequently surprising, and many details go completely against what is commonly assumed to be true about the air war in Europe.
For one thing, the famed rocket Typhoons were terribly inaccurate - one British study showed that the average Typhoon pilot firing all eight rockets had only a four percent chance of hitting a target the size of a tank (p.76). Earlier, in north Africa, the British had used 40mm cannons mounted on Hurricane fighters to attack German armor, and the 40mm cannons were highly successful at destroying tanks, but proved to be extremely costly to the fighters, as they had to fly in low and close to attack their targets and were thus extremely vulnerable to ground fire. The rockets had a longer range and so allowed for a greater stand off distance, which was why the British discontinued the use of these more lethal (to both the pilots and their targets) 40mm cannons on their fighter-bombers.
In one of the classic episodes of the tactical air war in Europe, the German panzer counterattack at Mortain is acknowledged by all participants to have been stopped and decimated by air attacks from rocket Typhoons and bomb carrying P-47s (p. 111-117). The pilots themselves claimed over two hundred German tanks destroyed. However, a British survey of the battlefield afterwards found only 46 destroyed German tanks and self-propelled guns, of which only 7 were attributable to the rockets and 2 to bombs (none to machine gun or cannon fire). Seven German tanks were found abandoned intact. Ten of the support vehicles were destroyed by rockets and 14 were destroyed by machine gun or cannon fire. Interviews with German POWs later confirmed that a number of the inexperienced tank crewmen had abandoned their intact tanks when the air attacks started, frightened by the rocket barrages. Thus, the main effect of the air attacks at Mortain appears to not have been the actual destruction of very many of the German tanks, but rather to have been to force the German tanks and support vehicles to take cover, destroy the "soft" targets of support vehicles and troops, and cause the abandonment of some of the tanks by inexperienced tank crews. The weapons used in the air attacks were simply too inaccurate to destroy the large numbers of the German tanks claimed by the pilots. The British survey showed that the great majority of the destroyed German tanks in the Battle of Mortain were actually destroyed by gunfire from the opposing U.S. Army units.
Of all the weapons available to the British and American air forces, bombs were the least accurate, followed by rockets. Machine gun or cannon fire in strafing attacks were the most accurate, but the 20mm cannon and .50 caliber machine gun shells could only penetrate parts of the engine decks of the German tanks and disable them, not destroy the tanks. Except for the brief episode of using 40mm cannons in North Africa, British and American fighter bombers did not have larger caliber cannons with which to destroy tanks.
Other fascinating details come out. The U.S. Army Ninth Air Force had a much more advanced form of close air support than the British. Tanks equipped with a Forward Air Controller and VHF radio that could communicate directly with aircraft overhead were in the spearhead of armored assaults. This method, known as "armored column cover", was introduced by IX Tactical Air Command for the breakout from Normandy. Microwave Early Warning (MEW) radar, originally intended for defensive usage, was used as air traffic control to direct or re-direct overhead flights to their targets in real time. Such tightly coordinated close air support, with the air attacks directed in real-time, would be the precursor of the way the US Army and Air Force still fight today.
The British lacked such close coordination between the Army and the RAF. Gen. Montgomery had a distinct lack of appreciation for the necessity for close air support. Also, Montgomery's personality was such that he and Air Marshals Coningham and Tedder did not get along (p. 34-36). Montgomery's failure to work closely with his tactical air commanders would be one of the reasons for the failure of Operation Market Garden (the only Allied operation on the Western Front where the Germans had air superiority), and also probably greatly contributed to the several failed British tank assaults at Caen, which were generally carried out without benefit of well-coordinated close air support.
The three main U.S. Armies- the First, Third, and Ninth, each had their own Tactical Air Commands - the IX, XIX, and XXIX. Of the three Armies, the Third Army had the most numbers of G-3 officers assigned to coordinate close air support. Although not mentioned in this book, this high level of close air support was undoubtedly one of the secrets to the success of Patton's Third Army. Other books describe how the XIX TAC flew armed reconnaissance to cover Patton's southern flank during the Third Army's rapid drive through France and continued to contribute to the Third Army's success in WWII.
Finally, a fact not generally acknowledged comes out in this book - Allied tactical air superiority in Europe was won at a great cost - casualties in all of these British and American tactical air forces were high as the Germans gave as good as they got with their flak batteries. The average survival time of a Typhoon pilot in the autumn of 1944 was only about 17 missions.
And so no wonder there are few if any of the usual war memoirs written by pilots engaged primarily in close air support missions in World War II. It was a dirty but very necessary job, the fighters used were not designed for the task of attacking ground targets, and a lot of the pilots were casualties. The high casualty rate from doing close air support would continue into the Vietnam War, until the first of the guided smart bombs and missiles made their appearance. The lessons from all these wars would finally be applied to the first USAF aircraft designed specifically for close air support, the A-10, with features to make it more survivable in the hostile low level close support environment, and the weapons for accurate tank busting.
This is a fascinating book, and a must read for WWII history buffs - it will definitely correct some common mis-perceptions about Allied tactical air support in the European Theater.Air Power at the Battlefront: Allied Close Air Support in Europe 1943-45 (Studies in Air Power) Overview
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