Second Phase of the Operation

The trap begins to close, 6-12 August.--Between 6 and 12 August, the trap began to close around the German Seventh Army. Rennes fell to General Patton's forces without a struggle; all Brittany was overrun except for the ports; the Third Army began an encircling movement to strike the rear of the enemy forces facing the First Army and the British near Mortain and Vire. Within a couple of days the Third secured Laval Mayenne and was fanning out to the east and south of Le Mans. As this 6-day period ended, the Third Army's big push to trap the Germans in the Mortain-Falaise-Argentan pocket was underway.

Weather was better in those 6 days, and XIX TAC flew more than 3,500 sorties, averaging almost 600 a day. On the clearest days, some groups flew as many as five separate missions daily, and many pilots put in a working day of almost 12 hours of continuous fighter-bombing. The air arm was being put to maximum use.

On 7 August XIX TAC grew to its greatest stature--nine groups of fighters. Later in the week it took the wraps off its secret weapon, a picked P-47 squadron which carried and fired 5-inch rockets as well as the standard load of 500 pounds of general purpose bombs and .50 caliber machine gun bullets.

As General Patton put more and more distance between his army and the XIX TAC flying fields in Normandy, General Weyland's headquarters came up sharply against its most vexatious problem--communications. On 7 August, Third Army moved to a new camp site near St. James, well below the Avranches corridor. As usual, XIX TAC went along. However, while General Patton's communications were made easier by keeping headquarters close to his advance units, XIX TAC's communications question was seriously complicated by moving away from the airfields in the rear. Nightly, enemy saboteurs cut the extended lines between the combat operations tent of the command and the landing strips. XIX TAC had to leave a small operating echelon behind at Beauchamps to maintain contact with the groups and to control operations.

XIX TAC never overtook Third Army headquarters during August. The Army sometimes moved 20 miles a day. As long as there were no available airfields near the front lines XIX TAC had to stay behind and send an advanced echelon up with the Third Army. General Weyland got into the habit of flying forward every other day to confer with General Patton or his chief of staff.

The enemy made XIX TAC's job as difficult as he could, but every one of his tricks was frustrated by the ingenuity of American fighter pilots. At first the Germans tried picking up our call signs, broadcasting as General Ernest's task force or as the 4th Armored Division, in an effort to catch our aircraft in traps or to send them barging off on wild-goose chases. But the pilots spotted the enemy's clumsiness and unfamiliarity with our terms, challenged him to authenticate, and quickly distinguished true orders from bogus ones.

In the 6 days up to 11 August, fighter-bombers of XIX TAC took care of five separate major assignments:

1. Guarding General Patton's flank along the Loire
2. Neutralizing enemy air power
3. Flying armed reconnaissance
4. Giving the ground forces close cooperation
5. Continuing operations against Brest, Lorient, St. Malo, and the Ile de Cezembre

Loire flank.--Never in military history had a ground commander entrusted the defense of a flank to tactical aircraft. But early in August General Patton had only small forces available to man his southern flank along the Loire River. On the other side of the river, G-2 told him, there were enough Germans to cause a lot of trouble if they massed and made a big crossing.

General Patton asked XIX TAC to guard that right flank for him. He said he was confident that General Weyland's aircraft could discover any danger by armed and tactical reconnaissance, and could prevent any concentration or large movement by fighter-bomber attacks. Then the Third Army drove eastward, seizing the principal cities on the north bank of the Loire and leaving only small garrisons behind to hold them.

XIX TAC shifted the main weight of its armed reconnaissance southward to the Loire. Roads, railway lines, and marshalling yards on the enemy side of the river were kept under constant surveillance. Judicious dive bombing and strafing attacks dissuaded the Germans from trying to cross the Loire in force. No real threat ever developed, and by 1 September XIX TAC could look back on a new, difficult job competently taken care of, the look back on a new, difficult job competently taken care of, the defense of the long, sensitive right side of General Patton's eastward bound columns.

Enemy air defeats--prelude to destruction.--The first major flare-up of enemy air power against the Third Army and XIX TAC began on 7 August and continued sporadically for 4 days. The Luftwaffe was defeated in nearly every large and small engagement. On the fifth day no enemy aircraft appeared.

On the 7th, German aircraft suddenly became aggressive, made a last-ditch attempt to check the encirclement of von Kluge's armies south of the Seine. Early in the morning German bombers carried out a damaging attack on an American supply column southwest of Mortain. At break of day XIX TAC aircraft took off as usual, knowing they might meet the Luftwaffe. Before dusk, 33 German planes were destroyed, 14 in the air and 19 on the ground.

First blood was drawn when the XIX TAC operations room vectored 12 Thunderbolts, which were covering an armored column, to attack the rich Luftwaffe airfield at Chartres. Veering toward the field, the fighter-bombers dropped 8 economical bombs, destroying 6 German aircraft and damaging 3 others. Then Mustangs of the pioneer 354th Group shot up 12 Me-109's and 1 Ju-88 parked on a well-camouflaged GAF airdrome 6 miles to the east. Finally, other Mustangs sweeping the Mayenne area were directed to a new course to intercept 12 aggressive Me-109's. They destroyed 5 and damaged 2.

The next day, as General Patton's leading elements began to burst open the wasp's nest of airdromes between the Loire and the Seine, the Germans flew in groups of 20 to 40 aircraft, and attacked only when they had local superiority in numbers and could count on the advantage of surprise. They tried desperately to break up the widespread rail- and road-wrecking tactics of the American airmen, but by the end of the day five enemy aircraft were down and armed reconnaissance was progressing more punishing than ever. German single-engine fighters based on the superb flying fields around Paris were now forced to fight defensively to protect their bases, and the Luftwaffe had to make extraordinary efforts to put an offensive patrol into the air.

On 9 August Thunderbolts covering the XV Corps were frequently vectored off course to meet enemy fighters. "Vectored to hostile aircraft by 79th Division," reported 12 pilots of the 362d Fighter Group. "Two Me-109's observed 1000 hours at 700 feet. One destroyed; one evaded combat. Losses: None."

Far to the east of the battle line, beyond Paris, P-51s of the 354th Group Saw long rows of Ju-88's on the Reims-Champagne airfield, and flew down the muzzles of German antiaircraft guns to machinegun the base from 6,000 feet to the "deck." They destroyed 6 German aircraft, 2 light flak guns, and a flak tower. Nearer the fighting front, scores of American planes engaged large numbers of German aircraft in combat. results for the day: 13 enemy planes destroyed in the air, 6 on the ground.

German activity died down on 10 August, when only four enemy planes were shot down. On 11 August none appeared. Costly to the foe though they had been, those 4 days had been only a prelude to the defeat of the Luftwaffe in France.

Armed reconnaissance, 6-12 August.--The statistical story of armed reconnaissance for this period is a follows:

• More than 75 locomotives
• Almost 1,000 freight cars
• Almost 1,000 motor transport vehicles
• More than 125 horse drawn vehicles
• Seven bridges
• Eight marshalling yards
• Eight supply, fuel, and ammunition dumps

--destroyed by XIX TAC Thunderbolts and Mustangs on armed reconnaissance in 6 violent days.

From the beginning of this phase XIX TAC sent its armed reconnaissance planes far south of the Loire. The campaign had a focal point; in wide railroad reconnaissance sweeps north, east, and south of Paris the fighter=bombers sought to isolate the eastern battlefield, to strangle the rail lines entering Paris from every direction. Around Paris P-47's and P-51's spotted, bombed, strafed, and destroyed long, loaded oil tankers, fuel dumps, and all types of transport.

One morning the 362d Group sent out a 40-plane armed reconnaissance sweep north and east of Paris. This patrol, one of hundreds in those 6 days, returned to its landing strip after a few hours of field-day flying with this report: four 500-pound bombs dropped on enemy guns--guns silenced; 8 fragmentation clusters, two 500's dropped on marshalling yard--40 boxcars and 1 locomotive destroyed; 8 railway cars damaged at another marshalling yard, 25 damaged at a third; 2 fragmentation clusters on a hostile airdrome; 7 miscellaneous motor transport vehicles raked and destroyed on the roads; 15 freight cars loaded with 155-millimeter German guns strafed and damaged.

The same afternoon, on its third mission of the day, this same group planted 26 bombs on 7 Tiger tanks, 16 on a marshalling yard, and, in a deck-strafing sweep, machine-gunned 2 armored cars, 2 ammunition trucks, and 1 gasoline truck.

With one group wreaking such destruction in one day it was small wonder that as the infantry and tanks advanced, they found the roads cluttered with the twisted wreckage of German trucks, half-tracks, tanks, and guns.

Close cooperation--closing the jaws.--As the trap began to form, tank hunting was good. squadrons covering the advance of the XV Corps' armored divisions between Laval and Mayenne found plenty of enemy armor. P-47's and P-51's entered tank battles around Mortain and Vire. When the Germans swung about at Alencon to meet the Third Army's threat to their rear, American fighter-bombers and artillery found the roads and the fields full of targets to attack:

XIX TAC's statistical record for 6-12 August:

• More than 150 tanks and armored cars destroyed
• More than 30 field guns or mobile flak posts wiped out
• Three troop concentrations scattered
• One German headquarters strafed and dispersed

Communications along the standard channel, tactical reconnaissance to ground to TAC headquarters to aircraft in the air, improved immensely, as did the simpler thick-of-battle communication between fighters and tanks beneath them. With swifter communications, fighter-bombers began to figure more and more prominently in tank battles and armored thrusts as they were going on. The tanks that entered Morlaix had an extremely helpful flight of Mustangs circling constantly overhead. The 79th Infantry Division asked for an air attack on a camouflaged house and tower; the doughboys watched five hits with 500-pounders tear the German position apart. Enemy tanks stopped the Third Army momentarily northeast of Alencon. Fifteen general-purpose bombs--and the Third Army resumed its offensive.

When fighter-bombers were not right there, the ground forces knew that they could be summoned and would arrive within the hour. The Fifth Infantry Division requested bombardment of some railway gun positions which were holding up their progress near Angers. Forty minutes later, Fighter Control and Combat Operations vectored a Thunderbolt squadron to the area and the enemy guns were shattered by two direct hits.

Reports of spur-of-the-moment tasks performed for the ground forces began to flood XIX TAC headquarters. From 8 Thunderbolts: "Targets assigned by Eggcup. Two direct hits with 500-pound bombs on small buildings. Completely destroyed." From 7 Mustangs: "Vectored by Grandchap Able road. Destroyed 50 motor transport, damaged 80. Destroyed 25 horse-drawn vehicles. Killed 200 troops."

Along the boundary between the First and the Third Armies' zones of operations, aircraft of XIX TAC frequently were radioed emergency requests. One report read: "Position destroyed." Murphy was the code name of a First Army combat command.

Perhaps the surest indication of the effectiveness of the fighter-bomber attacks was the unprecedented surrender of German troops to air power. One day 8 Mustangs flashed a report that they had "strafed a column of more that 100 motor transport and animal-drawn vehicles and continued until the Germans put up a white flag and our troops closed in to take them from the southwest and east."

Brest, Lorient, St. Malo, and the Ile de Cezembre.--Fighter-bombers were obviously not the planes with which to storm citadels. When General Patton's divisions were stumped around the forts of Brest, Lorient, and St. Malo, and the nearby Ile de Cezembre, requests for air cooperation were transmitted to the heavy bombers of the Eighth Air Force and the mediums of the Ninth.

Yet Thunderbolts and Mustangs did all they could. On 10 August 8 courageous P-47 pilots asked the Fourth Armored Division for permission to dive-bomb the marshalling yards at Lorient, the concrete walled submarine base below Brest. Told to go ahead, they flew down into intense, accurate, heavy and light flak to destroy 42 railway cars and a flak batter. Every Thunderbolt returned. Meanwhile, over Brest and St. Malo, two Mustang teams on tactical reconnaissance planes found important targets, armed and bombed-up Thunderbolts and Mustangs were sent to them immediately.