were marauding at will over northern France, the Americans had just 160 fighter aircraft and fifty-two heavy bombers. Since then, not only had production of aircraft in both the United States and Britain risen urgently and dramatically, the means of operating them had been transformed too, and it had been in North Africa, over the desert sands, that Allied tactical air power had been born.
Air Chief Marshal Tedder had certainly played his part. Lean, thin-faced, with dark, keen eyes and a pipe never far from his mouth, he was sharply intelligent, forward-thinking and driven by belief in the huge possibilities air power might yield. So too had Air Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham. An Australian by birth who had been brought up in New Zealand, he had arrived in Egypt in the middle of 1941 and taken over command of what became the RAF’s Desert Air Force. Known to all as ‘Mary’, derived from ‘Maori’ – a nickname that, curiously, he rather liked – he was a tough and charismatic figure, bristling with ideas and energy; he devoutly believed air power was vital not just for strategic bombing and defence but also for achieving victory on the ground.
Tedder had understood that improving technical maintenance in the field had been a first step, but had also overseen the development of new methods – or doctrine – as Army and RAF together strove for a clearer understanding of the role of close air support in a land battle. Army commanders wanted to have the air forces at their beck and call, but Tedder – and Coningham – rightly resisted this. Air commanders, they argued, were best placed to judge when and where air power should be used. An army commander would always want permanent air cover almost directly above his troops, but while an air commander would certainly help take out specific targets, he would also direct his aircraft to destroy enemy air forces or supply columns before they reached the front. Fortunately, Tedder and Coningham had Churchill’s support and a new directive, based on the concepts of air support that had been outlined by Tedder, had been issued back in September 1941.
By the early summer of 1942, Coningham had honed his tactics further, thanks to his collaboration with his number two, right-hand man and administrative chief, Air Commodore Tommy Elmhirst, a diminutive and altogether quieter fellow as well as the owner of incredibly bushy eyebrows. Coningham might have been the visionary but Elmhirst was the enabler, implementing greatly improved management of supplies and maintenance, as well as better ground control and a system of leap-frogging. Landing grounds were established all along the coast from the main airfields around Cairo to the front. Stores and supplies were built up at each, which meant forward units could keep as close to the fighting front as possible. If they needed to retreat suddenly, the aircraft could take off and the ground crew shuttle back to the next landing ground. The aircraft would then join them on their return from operations over the front. This enabled Coningham’s fighters and bombers to harry the enemy almost constantly, and after the fall of Tobruk on 21 June 1942 and with Eighth Army in full and desperate retreat, it was the Desert Air Force that very probably saved it from annihilation, hammering the pursuing Axis forces without let-up.
The pause that followed between Rommel’s defeat at Alam Halfa at the very beginning of September that year and the Battle of Alamein in the third week of October had allowed Coningham and Elmhirst to develop their forces yet further. Piecemeal units were kicked into touch and replaced by groups of fighters, divided into three wings, each with its own administrative staff. This centralization of administration allowed wing and squadron commanders to get on with the job of leading their men and fighting the enemy rather than worrying about paperwork and logistics. It also meant the pilots could train harder and better. Gunnery techniques were improved and the hours in logbooks increased. Coningham didn’t want his pilots thinking about flying; that was to be automatic. He wanted them thinking about how best to shoot down the enemy or destroy targets on the ground.
Like Tedder, Coningham also firmly believed the aim of a tactical air force should be to win air superiority over the battle area. Once that was achieved, more direct support could be provided for the troops on the ground. In other words, while the Desert Air Force could offer close air support to Eighth Army, it could do much more than that; but although it was obviously vital to form close working relations with the army command, it was also essential that the air commander be left to command his force how he, as an airman, thought fit. Sometimes, for example, he could best help troops down below not by responding to a specific target request, but by neutralizing a threat further back behind the enemy.
Coningham had also learned from the enemy, and while he had been impressed with how effective dive-bombing could be, he had also realized how vulnerable the Junkers 87 Stuka was as it emerged from its dive to any Allied fighter waiting to pounce, and that generally it was simply too slow in all forms of flight. Instead, he increasingly used fighters, especially the rugged US-built P-40 Kittyhawks, as fighter-bombers, not least because they could out-dive the latest Messerschmitt 109s and Macchi 202s. The ‘Kittybombers’ soon became an incredibly effective weapon, and increasingly so as the pilots gained in experience. Able to hurtle towards a target at speed, which made them harder to shoot down, they could drop their load and speed on out of the fray. The results were quickly felt. Not only did the RAF save Eighth Army’s bacon, it contributed to the victory at Alamein every bit as much as the troops on the ground – as Montgomery, to be fair to him, freely acknowledged. And Monty also accepted and understood the importance of working hand-in-hand with the air forces, gladly agreeing to joint tactical HQs as Coningham had proposed.
Coningham’s developments, backed up by Tedder and combined with the authority to act independently from the army commanders conferred by Churchill, transformed close air support in North Africa and laid down the basis of future doctrine not just for the RAF but for the USAAF as well – which was significant, because with the TORCH landings had arrived burgeoning US air forces, including a bevy of bright, dynamic and hugely competent airmen only too happy to learn, improve and develop the very exciting and ever-growing potential of air power.
Prominent among them was Lieutenant-General Carl ‘Tooey’ Spaatz, who had first reached North Africa soon after the TORCH landings as USAAF Theater Commander. Spaatz was fifty-one, with a resolute jaw, trim silver moustache, intelligent eyes and a natural air of charisma and authority. An experienced airman with combat experience from the First World War, he had risen up the ranks of the Air Corps during the 1930s to become Chief of Plans. A close friend and colleague of General Henry Harley ‘Hap’ Arnold, C-in-C of the USAAF, Spaatz had been at the forefront of modernizing America’s air forces. Energetic, open-minded and forward-thinking, he oozed competence and good sense from every pore. Sent to Britain in 1940 as an observer, he had swiftly – and correctly – concluded the Luftwaffe had little chance of winning the Battle of Britain. A bomber man first and foremost, he recognized that weight of numbers, both of aircraft and of bombs, counted, and that the Luftwaffe simply didn’t have enough of either. But he’d also been impressed by RAF organization, and had returned to Britain earlier in 1942 to take command of the fledgling US Eighth Air Force.
US involvement in North Africa meant that no sooner had he begun to lay foundations for the Eighth than he was needed in the Mediterranean instead. He had arrived in Algiers in November with a number of misgivings, not least the depletion of Eighth Air Force, which lost some fourteen units of fighters, bombers and transports to the Mediterranean.
There had been a further concern, however, and that was doctrinal. The Eighth was a strategic air force designed to operate on its own, and they had worked out and agreed their doctrine for daylight operations in coordination with, but separate from, RAF Bomber Command. The duties of Twelfth Air Force in North Africa, however, were very different: part strategic, part coastal and part tactical in support of ground operations. For this he had good numbers of aircraft, but inexperienced crews, an untested logistical organization and no doctrine at all for close air support. What’s more, unlike the RAF, which was an independent armed service, the US air forces were part of the army. Eighth Air Force could operate without interference from the army ground forces, and were already doing so; but North Africa was already proving a different kettle of fish.
As if to complicate matters further, there had been no unified command. The Americans
