Top Photo: P-47 fighter-bomber pilots at a rough airstrip near St. Mere Eglise on June 15, 1944. By the end of August, all 18 of the 9th Air Force’s fighter-bomber and four of its medium bomber groups were based on the continent. U.S. Air Force photo 091002-F-1234S-012

From the landings in Normandy through the liberation of France and Belgium, to the repulse of the German counteroffensive in the Ardennes, the Western Allies benefited from a unique and overwhelming capability in their arsenal: the employment of tactical fighter and bomber aircraft. This tactical force maintained air superiority, interdicted the flow of supplies and reinforcements to the Axis forces, and provided close air support to troops on the front lines. From the hedgerows of Normandy across the rivers of northern France and into the dense forests of the Hürtgen and the Ardennes, Royal Air Force (RAF) and US Army Air Forces (USAAF) aircraft cleared the way for the advance of the Allied ground armies. While the contributions of heavy bombers have garnered more attention in the postwar years, in part because they reflected service preferences for the employment of airpower, the tactical air forces languished in partial obscurity despite their substantial contributions to eventual victory. 

Strategic and Tactical Airpower Divisions

The artificial division of airpower into “strategic” and “tactical” formations had long roots in the interwar period. Dating back to World War I, both the newly independent RAF and German Luftstreitkräfte sought to segregate the heavy bombers and zeppelins capable of strikes on homelands from the smaller biplanes and triplanes focused on collecting intelligence and denying that capability to the adversary. The RAF continued the distinction into the interwar period, establishing Bomber Command as a separate organization with strategic mission, while other organizations, such as Fighter Command, Coastal Command, and Army Cooperation Command focused on air defense, naval, and ground cooperation, respectively. In the USAAF, each numbered air force initially contained a similar establishment, with a Fighter Command, Bomber Command, and Air Support Command, in an attempt to insulate the new heavy bombers just entering the inventory from the demands of other missions. Eventually, the Eighth Air Force in Great Britain and the Fifteenth Air Force in Italy specialized in strategic attack with heavy bombers (while still retaining their Fighter Commands for escort fighters), while Ninth Air Force in Northwest Europe and Twelfth Air Force in the Mediterranean fielded smaller medium bombers and dual-mission capable fighter-bombers focused on ground support. Commonwealth Forces mirrored this establishment, with the RAF’s heavy bombers remaining in Bomber Command, while tactical fighters and light bombers served in the Second Tactical Air Force (2 TAF).

The Normandy Campaign and Breakout Across France

In Normandy, Ninth Air Force and 2 TAF provided the bulk of air support to Montgomery’s 21st and Bradley’s 12th Army Groups, respectively. The Supreme Allied Commander could and did direct the heavy bombers to directly support the ground campaign when required, as in the attempted breakout from the beachhead in Operation Goodwood in early July 1944 and the successful Operation Cobra later that month. Fighters and medium bombers from the Ninth and 2 TAF provided the bulk of the interdiction and close support missions, while also screening the ground forces from the few Luftwaffe sorties that still appeared over the battlefield. Both organizations moved onto the continent in early June, as soon as rudimentary airstrips could be carved out of the Norman countryside, shortening response times. Digging German defenders out of the hedgerows proved to be a difficult task, and the tactical air forces saw their greatest successes in the interdiction mission, dropping bridges and breaking rail lines to prevent German reinforcements and supplies from reaching the battle area.

Two Marauder medium bombers of the Ninth Air Force leaving a road and rail junction behind the German lines battered by bomb bursts. U.S. National Archives NAID: 204894251

This all changed in August, when the breakout facilitated by Operation Cobra restored movement to the battlefield. As German forces amassed for a counterattack at Mortain, then tried to escape the encirclement of the resulting Falaise Pocket, Allied aircraft inflicted heavy casualties on the road-bound columns. At Falaise in particular, the RAF’s Hawker Typhoons armed with rockets inflicted heavy damage on German vehicles, though the exact number of tanks destroyed remains a matter of dispute. American fighter-bombers, primarily the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt, mounting eight .50-caliber machine guns and capable of carrying 500- and 1,000-pound bombs, ranged in front of tank formations in what became known as “armored column cover.” Taking lessons from their experiences in the Mediterranean, pilots designated “air liaison officers” riding in tanks equipped with VHF radios could communicate with aircraft overhead, requesting attacks on targets and receiving reports of enemy forces ahead. Together, the air-ground team, particularly in Lieutenant General George S. Patton’s Third Army and Brigadier General Otto Weyland’s XIX Tactical Air Command (XIX TAC) formed a model of air-ground cooperation, with the XIX TAC screening Patton’s right flank along the Loire Valley as they raced deeper into France. 

The rapid breakout from the Normandy beachhead and subsequent drive across France created massive logistical headaches for both the ground and air forces alike. Aviation Engineers rushed to rehabilitate captured airfields and build new ones in the French countryside while flying squadrons leapfrogged ahead as soon as the mud could be covered with either wire mesh and burlap sheets known as Prefabricated Bituminous Surfacing (PBS), or the sturdier but heavier Perforated Steel Planking (PSP). While the “Red Ball Express” raced fuel forward in a vain effort to keep the gas tanks from running dry, Ninth Air Force pressed its C-47 transport aircraft, assigned to IX Troop Carrier Command, into service flying fuel to the forward formations. But Operation Market Garden, launched on September 17, 1944, pulled these aircraft back to their primary mission of delivering paratroopers in the failed effort to jump the Rhine and break out onto the North German Plain. The failed operation meant the Allied armies were bogged down along the German frontier while engineer troops struggled to clear the badly sabotaged channel ports and reopen them to shipping. 

A Line Of Republic P-47S Is Refueled On An Emergency Landing Strip Built In Record Time By 9Th Air Force Engineers After The Invasion Of France In June 1944. National Archives NAID: 204894455

The autumn pause gave the airmen an opportunity to improve their primitive Advanced Landing Grounds (ALGs) and get the aircrews and maintainers into more permanent quarters as the temperatures dropped and the fall rains returned. But the pause also gave the Wehrmacht an opportunity to reconstitute behind the concrete pillboxes and antitank obstacles of the Westwall. The British and American tactical air forces attempted to interdict this buildup by hitting bridges and railroad marshalling yards as far back as the Rhine. However, poor flying weather and shorter days provided fewer opportunities with the Germans proving much more adept at managing and repairing their own rail network than the French one they had inherited. In late November and early December, tactical reconnaissance aircraft began reporting columns of vehicles and trains loaded with tanks headed toward the front lines. Allied intelligence specialists dismissed the movements as reinforcement intended to stop advances by the First and Ninth Armies in the Hurtgen Forest (Operation Queen) and the Third Army’s assault past Metz and into Lorraine to the south (Operation Thunderbolt). Only the crash of German artillery and the rumble of panzers into the Ardennes on December 16 revealed the errors of their analysis. 

Tactical Air Forces in the Battle of the Bulge

The sustained aerial campaign by the strategic air forces in the summer and fall of 1944 had already shaped the planning for what the Germans called Operation Wacht Am Rhein, better known as the Battle of the Bulge. Heavy bombers had ripped the heart out of the Luftwaffe’s fighter force and destroyed so much German petroleum production and refining capacity that the panzers had to depend on captured stocks in order to reach their objectives. Without air superiority, the Germans could not hope to cover their armored formations with fighters and dive bombers, as they had in their successful drive through the same woods four years earlier, and therefore waited for a lengthy period of bad weather to screen their advance from any Allied aircraft above. The first week, the German forces ran rampant, overrunning overstretched ground forces sent to a “quiet sector” of the line to either recuperate from their losses or, for the new formations, gain some combat experience before commitment elsewhere. But the bad weather could not last forever, and when the skies cleared on December 23, the Allied air forces were ready. The fighters sought out the road-bound German columns and destroyed hundreds of vehicles, including a devastating attack on the German 2nd Panzer Division that halted it short of the Meuse River. But the attacks came with an increasing price. In one engagement on December 27, near a crossroads in Luxembourg named Schumann’s Eck, where troops of Patton’s Third Army were pushing the stubborn German defenders back, one P-47 pilot on his 70th mission pressed his advantage on a German column in the dwindling twilight. German anti-aircraft gunners finally hit First Lieutenant William Nellis’s Thunderbolt and brought it down. A native of Sparks, Nevada, today his name and memory live on at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, known across the US Air Force as the “Home of the Fighter Pilot.”

Medium bombers made their contribution as well, plastering German rail centers with bombs, including a raid on the German town of Bitburg on Christmas Eve that was its worst of the entire war. Ninth Air Force’s C-47s took advantage of the lull to drop critical supplies into the surrounded Bastogne perimeter. And the heavies ranged farther afield, hitting bridges and marshalling yards well back from the front lines. The weakened Luftwaffe was almost powerless in the assault. It belatedly launched an all-out attack on Allied airfields the morning of January 1, thinking it would catch the hungover pilots still in their bunks. However, strong opposition cost both sides roughly 200 aircraft each, losses the Allies could afford but the Germans could not. Even as the Germans attempted to withdraw from the Bulge and redeploy to meet the Soviet January offensive in Poland, Allied aircraft dropped bridges in their path, such as the one at Dasburg on January 22, 1945, that backed up a retreating German column for miles, making it easy prey for the prowling fighter-bombers. 

A Douglas C-47 Of The 9Th Troop Carrier Command Wings Its Way Over Bastogne, Belgium, Drooping Parachutes Containing Supplies To Troops. National Archives NAID: 204841221

Throughout the summer and fall of 1944, British and American tactical aircraft proved to be a critical force multiplier for the Allied ground armies, helping them break out from the Normandy beachhead, liberate northern France, and repulse the German counterattack in the Bulge, facilitating the final victory in 1945. But the development of the B-29 Superfortress and the atomic bomb caused airmen to think that tactical airpower had outlived its usefulness, and that the nuclear deterrent would suffice in future conflicts, lessons proved wrong on multiple future battlefields, including in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq. Tactical airpower remains vital in modern conflicts, when strategic targets are either unavailable or off limits to attack, and it remains a powerful arbiter of victory or defeat. The western Allies reaped large dividends from the heavy investments they made in developing and employing highly proficient tactical air forces in the latter half of 1944, and the efforts and sacrifices of those airmen continue to provide a model for emulation today.