The Air-Armor Partnership

Normandy's most noteworthy tactical air support development, however, was the close partnership between air and armored forces, typified by the "armored column cover" missions perfected by the IX TAC under Quesada. During the Italian campaign, the British had begun operating so-called contact cars that served as mobile air-ground control posts with armored forces. Now, at Normandy, 83 Group under Broadhurst placed "contact cars" with leading British armored forces so that tactical air units would always know the precise location of friendly and enemy forces. The contact cars functioned in close cooperation with tactical reconnaissance aircraft, reducing the time necessary to set up immediate support strikes. This scheme proved its value particularly during the German retreat out of the Falaise Pocket.

Quesada developed a similar system for the American forces in Normandy-an outgrowth of his commitment to the Army's mission and his relationship with Omar Bradley, then commander of the First Army. Bradley admired Quesada's willingness to regard air support "as a vast new frontier waiting to be explored." Because of this, these two strong-willed commanders got along exceptionally well and felt confident enough to express frank opinions. Shortly before the Saint-Lo breakout, Quesada became convinced that Bradley was reluctant to concentrate his armored forces because of the magnitude of German defensive forces along the front. So Quesada made a deal: if Bradley would concentrate his armor, IX TAC would furnish an aviator and an aircraft radio for the lead tank so that it could communicate with fighter-bombers that Quesada would have operating over the column from dawn until dark. Bradley immediately agreed, and a pair of M4 Sherman tanks duly arrived at IX TAC headquarters in Normandy (only a hedgerow away from Bradley's own command post) for trial modification. The modification worked and became a standard element of First Army-and subsequently 12th Army Group as a whole-operations.

By the end of July 1944, Quesada's armored column cover operations were receiving enthusiastic support from armor and air forces personnel alike. The 2d Armored Division, for example, had three air support parties: one with the division commander, and one with each of its two Combat Commands. Combat Command A (CCA) found the system particularly useful; their air liaison officer (from the armored forces) rode in a Sherman tank whose crew was entirely AAF except for the tank commander. The tank commander could communicate with his fellow tankers via a SCR-528 radio, while the air liaison officer had a SCR-522 to communicate with the column cover flight. Column cover consisted of four P47s relieved by another flight every thirty minutes. CCA's liaison officer reported:

The planes worked quite close to us, generally with excellent results ....

Our best air (reconnaissance) information came from the column cover. On occasions G-2 asked me for specific information, and I asked the planes to get it. In most cases the pilots furnished information to me without request, especially that of enemy motor movements. Before leaving,the flight leader would report to me on likely prospective targets, and I would pass the information on to the incoming flight commander.

On one occasion we made an unexpected move for which no air cover had been provided. Information was received of a group of hostile tanks in some woods three or four miles away. I called direct to a plane operating in the zone of another corps and asked him to relay a request to fighter control center for some fighters. Within 15 minutes about 12 planes reported in to me. I located my tank for the plane commander by telling him of the yellow panel [used for identification of friendly forces, and located on the back deck of the tank], then vectored him on to the woods where the enemy was reported. When he seemed to be over the target, I told him to circle and check the woods under him. He located the tanks, and they were attacked successfully.

In a study done immediately after the war for the United States Strategic Bombing Survey, the Air Effects Committee of the 12th Army Group (a committee composed entirely of ground officers, and thus free of the kinds of built-in bias that might have afflicted a committee composed of AAF personnel) assessed the role of tactical air power in the European campaign. They examined a number of issues, generating a report (which Bradley signed) that endorsed the air support system the AAF employed in assistance to the ground forces. From such document one would hardly imagine that only two years earlier the AAF and Army Ground Forces had been at virtual swords' points over the entire air support issue. The USSBS report stated:

Armored column cover . . . was of particular value in protecting the unit from enemy air attack and in running interference for the spearhead of the column by destroying or neutralizing ground opposition that might slow it down or stop it ....

The decision of the Ninth Air Force to give high priority to armored column cover in a fast-moving or fluid situation from the break-out in Normandy to the final drive across Central Europe made a successful contribution to the success of the ground units in breaking through and encircling the various elements of the German armies .... [After addressing immediate support needs] the flight leader patrolled ahead of the armored column, as deep as thirty miles along its axis of advance, in an intensive search for enemy vehicles, troops or artillery. This effort permitted our armor far greater freedom of action than would have been otherwise possible.

Normandy operations, typified by Quesada's armored column cover and Broadhurst's contact cars, thus fulfilled a concept born a quarter-century earlier, amid the mud of Flanders: the notion of the airplane as a partner of the tank, as a "counter antitank" weapon. In that war, then-Colonel J.F.C. Fuller, Great Britain's greatest armor advocate, had recognized that cooperation between air and armor forces was "of incalculable importance." Coincidentally, Leigh- Mallory, the commander of Allied tactical air forces in Normandy, had commanded a squadron of tank-cooperation aircraft in the Great War. Perhaps this controversial, gifted airman (who died in a flying accident in November 1944) reflected back in his own mind, as the Normandy campaign unfolded, to those early days of open- cockpit biplanes and awkward, ungainly tanks and the progression of both air and land warfare technology since that time.