[dragoon500ly]

Sources are Omaha A Flawed Victory by Adrian Lewis, D-Day by Steven Ambrose and D-Day by Tute, Costello and Hughes

The role of the U.S. Army Air Forces has been studied extensively. While opinions on the effectiveness vary, in general, historians of the air war conclude that the results from the application of air power, while in the main, were satisfactory, were less then expected. It is the general belief that too much was expected from the young service and that air force leaders exaggerated the capabilities of air power and fostered the development of unrealistic expectations. One of the great ironies of air operations in the European Theater of Operations was that, when operating against a first-class adversary on a continental land mass, air units assigned or attached to ground forces proved incapable of providing effective support of ground forces.

On D-Day, the U.S. Eighth and Ninth Air Forces had three missions to perform: to continue to isolate the battlefield by destroying communications channels and interdicting the movement of reinforcements to the invasion beachheads; to destroy or neutralize the water’s edge defenses to facilitate the amphibious assault; and to provide close air support---scheduled and on-call. The battle for air supremacy had already been won.

The first mission was performed, effectively isolating the battlefield, but the remaining two missions were performed considerably less successfully.

Air Force doctrine was set forth in July 1943 with the publication of “Command and Employment of Air Power” FM 100-20. This manual was published without the occurrence of the Army Ground Forces, who viewed the manual with dismay. FM 100-20 is often described as the Army Air Forces’ Declaration of Independence.

Air Force thinking was guided by two beliefs that dominated all others. First was that the war could be won through air power using precision daylight strategic bombing. The second was that the air force must be autonomous, independent from the army’s command and control. These two views led to the concentration of air power and prevented it from being divided up to support army corps and divisions. It meant that the air force would retain operational command and control of all air resources. It also meant that the air force would not acquire the training, develop the procedures, or achieve the necessary level of integration with army units to effectively conduct on-call close air support missions in close proximity to ground force until well after the Normandy invasion.

General Montgomery, in his position as assault force commander, believed that air power, when concentrated, was a “battle winning factor”, this position was endorsed by the air force. Montgomery’s plan to win the battle for the beaches at Normandy, his plan for the breakout at Caen, and Bradley’s plan for the breakout at Saint-Lo were based on the belief that air power could achieve battlefield success cheaply. Montgomery wrote: “Nothing could be more fatal to successful results than to dissipate the air resources into small packets placed under command of Army formation commanders with each packet working on its own plan.” Montgomery called for the two services, air and ground to advance the concept that they were “independent” with a “common task”. And because the services were independent, any satisfactory solution to military problems had to be based on a “process of negotiation.” And this process of negotiation had to be based on knowledge of the strengths, limitations and capabilities of the respective services as well as on “mutual trust and honesty”. The simple fact that a high ranking commander had to take the time to write this is indicative of a problem in the command structure.

Montgomery also called for a Tactical Air Force to support the Army Group in the field. He called for a Tactical Air Force comprised of a Headquarters; Tactical Groups on the scale of one per army; a Light/Medium Bomber Group; a Strategic Reconnaissance Wing and a Base Defense Group. In essence, this was organizational structure of the U.S. Ninth Air Force after it had detached its heavy bombers to the Eighth Force. Within the Ninth Air Force, three tactical air commands (TACS) were created and assigned to each U.S. Army. Thus, the IX TAC was attached to the First Army, the XIX TAC was attached to the Third Army and the XXIX TAC was attached to the Ninth Army. All remained under the command of the Ninth Air Force which was associated with Bradley’s Twelfth Army Group.

Following its reorganization in the United Kingdom, the Ninth Air Force, in the period from October 16, 1943 until June 6 1944, increased in size from 4 to 45 tactical groups, from less than 300 to more than 1,100 bombers, from zero to more than 3,000 troop-carrier aircraft and from less than 50,000 to more than 200,000 personnel. The mission of the Ninth Air Force was not primarily to fit organized, trained and equipped units into its structure, but rather to construct these units from casual personnel, to struggle for their aircraft and other equipment and to train and retain all personnel for functions quite often entirely foreign to those for which they were originally trained and equipped.

Because of the magnitude of their problems, the Ninth Air Force found it impossible to conduct close support missions in close proximity to friendly ground forces on D-Day. Indeed, Ninth Air Force was unable to organize any training with ground troops until May 1944, by which time, the assault troops had already completed their training and had been sealed in their pre-invasion “sausages” for their final briefings.

In order to prove close air support, the Ninth Air Force assigned a air support party (ASP) to each RCT. They were equipped with VHF radios, but were not permitted to talk directly with aircraft unless given specific orders to do so. Nor were the air support parties given the authority to intervene in stopping attacks on friendly troops. In order to request air support, the ASPs had to contact a headquarters ship and the request would then be relayed to a central control facility in Uxbridge, England. There the decision would be made on whether to grant the request. This process took time. During the entire period of the D-Day landings on June 6th….Uxbridge received a total of thirteen requests, of which six came from Omaha Beach. What air support that was available to the assault troops came from pilots on station, attacking targets of opportunity, well inland.