Rommel Could Not Be Allowed to Mass His Forces at Normandy
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Rommel could not be allowed to mass his forces at Normandy. Eisenhower took a gamble—and won. The War on the Rails By Rebecca Grant alt US and British bomber War II air war decision was more B, with orders to push the Allies back attacks on German strategic complex or caused more bitterness than into the sea should they manage to put targets. ... Divert these air- Ike’s move to attack the French railway forces ashore. planes to strike railways and system in advance of the June 6, 1944 After years of war with Soviet forces in Hbridges in occupied but allied France. Allied landings in Normandy. the east, German forces comprised only ... Accept in the process up to 160,000 Top Allied leaders called it simply 59 divisions in the west. Many of them French casualties. ... “the transportation plan.” Because both were of inferior quality, but a few—no- That, in the spring of 1944, was what attacker and defender were in a race tably, the Panzer divisions— were filled Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme against time, the outcome of the Nor- with Eastern Front veterans and were Commander Allied Expeditionary Force mandy invasion hinged upon it. fearsome. They were the key to German in Europe, chose to do. Across the English Channel in France planning; with his forces spread out Eisenhower’s verdict was epic in its waited Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, across France, Rommel had no choice consequences. Except for Truman’s nicknamed “Desert Fox.” Hitler person- but to stake everything on a quick coun- resolve to strike Hiroshima, no World ally put him in charge of Army Group terattack with his best units. 52 AIR FORCE Magazine / August 2007 The War on the Rails By Rebecca Grant Contrary to popular belief, Eisen- hower saw no problem in getting his forces ashore. Even the German gener- als acknowledged this would be man- ageable. The so-called “impregnable” Atlantic Wall fortifications of German called for defeating Germany’s air ordered his generals to concentrate to propaganda were “sheer humbug,” ac- force and then using Allied airpower to oppose the invasion. That done, the cording to Field Marshal Karl R. Gerd hinder transportation so that Rommel Germans would move swiftly, so the von Rundstedt, who was commander in could not maneuver rapidly and get his Allies’ reaction time was sure to be chief in the west and Rommel’s puta- forces in position to oppose the landing limited. tive superior. in strength. Since February 1943, the air of- The real test would come with Rom- Ike and his deputy, RAF Air Marshal fensive in Europe had been focused on mel’s counterattack, and Eisenhower Arthur W. Tedder, formulated plans in pushing back the German Luftwaffe. wanted to stop it before it even got which Allied fighters and bombers would Air superiority remained everyone’s started. pick off German forces moving by road top goal. However, as 1944 began, the In this, airpower was the key. Eisen- toward the Normandy area. Of course, new question was this: What else could hower’s whole premise for Normandy those forces wouldn’t move until Hitler the air forces do before the landings to ensure the success of the Normandy invasion? Enter one Solly Zuckerman with his plan for attacking France’s railway system. Zuckerman was an unlikely architect of airpower. One contemporary de- scribed him as “a small, mysterious man in an unpressed tweed suit.” In 1943, this 39-year-old South African-born Oxford professor of zoology was best Success at Normandy de- known for his book The Social Life of pended on hampering a German counterattack by Monkeys and Apes. Some, like RAF Air cutting road and rail Marshal Arthur T. Harris, never warmed links. Opposite, Allied to Zuckerman, whom he derided as “a bombers wrecked this civilian professor whose peacetime forte bridge over the Rhone River near Toulon, France. is the study of the sexual aberrations of Rommel, at left, was the higher apes.” counting on railways to Tedder had a different view. He saw rapidly deploy his limited real insight in Zuckerman’s detailed high-quality forces analyses. Trained as an anatomist, Zuck- against the Allied inva- sion. Above, Eisenhower erman first worked with colleagues on offers encouragement assessing air raid casualties in London to paratroopers before and then moved on to evaluating air D-Day. operations in North Africa. There he won both Tedder’s confidence and the Cambridge-educated airman’s friend- ship as the two bonded over arcane discussions of history. Next, Zuckerman helped Tedder pre- pare and execute coordinated attacks on the rail and road lines of commu- AIR FORCE Magazine / August 2007 53 plies in the Normandy area, so there was no point in targeting that. What Eisenhower and Tedder wanted this time was to choke down the rail transport and force the German forces onto the roads. This would leave them exposed and vulnerable; hundreds of Allied fighters and bombers would rove the skies above the main highways, break- ing up German maneuvers with timely and unexpected attacks. The idea was to make sure that Rommel, unlike Kes- selring, would never get the chance to concentrate and then counterattack with numerically superior forces. American bombers such as the B-17G shown here bombed rail centers, repair By early 1944, France’s rail system yards, and tunnels, while fighters attacked rolling stock and repair crews. was a ripe target. It was already suffering from the effects of four years of Ger- nication crisscrossing the key island launched a massive counterattack. He man occupation and neglect. Investment of Pantelleria, which the Allies during attacked with 125,000 troops, compared was minimal, and Germany had taken mid-1943 took in preparation for the to the Allies’ 100,000. a third of the locomotives and rolling invasion of Sicily. Kesselring’s assault nearly worked. stock out of France for use elsewhere Despite the professor’s quirks, Ted- Two German counterattacks pushed in Europe. der had complete confidence in his salients deeply into Allied-held territory, Targeting methodology for the rail knowledge and judgment, which he put but the Allies hung grimly on. At length, attacks was selective. The unique aspect to good use. Allied soldiers—supported by intense of Zuckerman’s plan was that it sought air attacks and naval gunfire—succeeded to knock out only specific, high-value Unique Knowledge in pushing back the Germans. railway centers and heavy repair facili- In January 1944, Tedder sent Zuck- It was a close call. Everyone knew ties in order to achieve maximum effect. erman home to London to join in the that, at Normandy in a few months, the “Only in special circumstances,” noted secret Overlord planning work that was Allies would have to do much better. Tedder, “was it thought worthwhile to then under way at Norfolk House in the Heeding the lessons of North Africa and bomb tunnels or isolated stretches of British capital. “His knowledge of bomb Italy, Eisenhower and Tedder crafted a railway line.” That is because it was damage gathered in North Africa and sophisticated plan of attack, taking into easy to rebuild tracks. Moreover, attacks Italy was unique and was occasionally consideration the shocks and surprises on rolling stock, while valuable, were to confuse those who imagined that they of those earlier campaigns. time-consuming and dangerous. When alone could know anything of bomb First, they reshuffled their priorities. it came to bridges, the story was much damage,” said RAF Air Vice Marshal The Germans already had fuel and sup- the same. E.J. Kingston-McCloughry, who was already at work on D-Day air plans when Zuckerman arrived. Making the debate on air plans all the more urgent were lessons learned from many bloody setbacks at the Anzio beachhead during the Italian campaign. RAF Air Marshal On Jan. 22, 1944, Allied forces landed Arthur Tedder (right), shown here with Mar- north of the German lines at Anzio. At shal of the RAF Hugh first they met only light resistance. The Trenchard, got Ike to back Mediterranean Army Air Forces had his proposed campaign bombed rail lines steadily, producing against rail rather than Lt. the impression that rail traffic was Gen. “Tooey” Spaatz’s plan to target German stopped and the battle area could be oil supplies as a first sealed off. priority. It worked: Those impressions could not have German rail traffic slow- been more wrong. “The air forces re- ed to a near-standstill. ported that their preliminary bombings had disrupted all rail and road commu- nications in central Italy,” wrote naval historian Samuel E. Morison after the war, “but they had not done so.” Soon, 14 divisions from as far away as Yugoslavia and southern France were closing off the Anzio beachhead. On Feb. 16, 1944, German Field Marshal Albert Kesselring 54 AIR FORCE Magazine / August 2007 The final plan specified rail center targets across the length and breadth of France, Belgium, and western Germany. Initial attacks began in early March. Few were as enthusiastic about the transportation plan as Eisenhower and Tedder. As the clock began ticking in February and March, Lt. Gen. Carl A. “Tooey” Spaatz, commander of US Strategic Air Forces in Europe, feared that attacks on the transport system would not bring up the German fighters, whereas “we believe they will defend oil to their last fighter plane.” Eisenhower was well aware of the controversy among his commanders. He was determined not to let their squabbles stand in the way of the two things he had to have: command of all air assets for the invasion and an immediate start Bridges, such as this one over the Loire River in Tours, were not part of the to the transport plan.