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00:00Music
00:08Music
00:12Music
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00:22Music
00:28Tactical Aviation
00:37The use of aircraft to support
00:39an army locked in combat on the
00:42ground dates back to the First
00:44World War. Through much
00:46of the fighting on the Western Front,
00:47aircraft supported the ground troops
00:49by providing much needed reconnaissance
00:52information.
00:53Later in the war, as the stalemate
00:55in the trenches continued,
00:57both sides started attacking
00:59each other's troops with
01:01machine gun wielding aircraft.
01:03Others carried light bombs
01:05to rain down on trench
01:07positions. Once the war
01:09ended, both the British and American
01:11air advocates quickly forgot about
01:13tactical aviation as they
01:15sought to find an independent
01:17role for their air services.
01:19Music
01:21As the B-17 became the primary
01:23Army Air Corps weapon, tactical aviation
01:25operation in the United States
01:27continued to languish.
01:29Light and medium bombers were built
01:31for the role, but the Air Corps
01:33decided they would be used not in
01:35frontline attacks, but rather to hit
01:37enemy airfields and lines of
01:39communication.
01:41The chief among these medium bombers
01:43was the B-26 Marauder.
01:45The B-26 was made according
01:47to specifications to fly
01:49at a relatively high speed, carry a
01:51heavy bomb load, and deliver
01:53the bombs.
01:55And safety was a
01:57added factor that came in as
01:59time permitted.
02:01It was a great airplane.
02:03Once you got a hundred hours in it,
02:05then you didn't want to get out of it.
02:07Along with the B-26,
02:09the North American B-25
02:11would serve as a solid, steady stable
02:13mate.
02:15While not as fast as the Marauder,
02:17it was eminently adaptable.
02:19The B-25 is a real nice airplane
02:21to fly.
02:23It was kind of...
02:25You bounce around a lot
02:27because it was very rigid,
02:29and it had big propellers.
02:31And the propeller
02:33on both sides, they're only
02:35about that far from your window.
02:37So you had a lot of noise.
02:39It was a real noisy airplane.
02:41But we really enjoyed flying
02:43because it was very maneuverable
02:45and just a fun airplane.
02:49The medium bombers that the
02:51United States Army Air Force developed
02:53were really designed to placate
02:55the Army and its need for close
02:57support operations.
02:59And since the Air Force really had
03:01a thing against actual battlefield
03:03air support, what they designed
03:05the bombers to do was to attack
03:07immediately behind the lines
03:09and suppress enemy supply
03:11and communication lines.
03:13And that was known as interdiction missions.
03:15The British also developed a line of aircraft
03:17and in 1940 in France, this concept
03:21was put to the test for the first time.
03:23And the Allied doctrine was probably sound,
03:27but the British certainly couldn't execute it
03:29because they didn't have the quality
03:31of aircraft needed to do the job
03:33or the numbers.
03:35They were overwhelmed by the Luftwaffe.
03:37But if British tactical aviation
03:39failed during the Battle of France,
03:41it would come into its own
03:43through hard-won lessons in the desert
03:45only months later.
03:47The Africa Corps under Erwin Rommel got deployed
04:01into Libya and immediately
04:03undertook an offensive against
04:05the British. And this offensive
04:07was wildly successful. And out of
04:09sheer desperation, the British
04:11fighter pilots in the area began
04:13supporting their army through
04:15strafing attacks.
04:17Using their fighter aircraft as
04:19strafing platforms, they went after
04:20vehicle convoys and troop concentrations.
04:23And this proved to be wildly successful.
04:25And it was the first time really
04:27in an Allied air service or air force
04:30that close air support was actually
04:32undertaken on a large scale.
04:34For this to be actually integrated
04:36into doctrine, however, would require
04:38some major changes in RAF thought
04:42and the overcoming of many preconceptions.
04:46A major preconception that had to be
04:48overcome concerned the RAF's
04:50beloved Hurricanes.
04:52The Hawker Hurricane had entered
04:54service in the mid-1930s
04:56as the most modern British fighter
04:58aircraft. Capable of speeds
05:00over 300 miles per hour,
05:02the Hurricane was a pilot's plane,
05:04fast for its day,
05:06incredibly nimble, rugged,
05:08and fairly easy to fly.
05:10According to RAF doctrine,
05:12fighters like the Hurricane were to be
05:14used as air-to-air weapons only.
05:16Fighters were supposed to shoot down
05:18other enemy planes.
05:20Nothing more.
05:22But in the desert in 1940
05:24and early 1941,
05:26Hurricane pilots began to strafe
05:28ground targets.
05:30Armed with eight .30 caliber machine guns,
05:32these attacks turned out to be
05:34devastatingly successful against
05:36Axis troop and truck convoys.
05:39By the middle of 1941,
05:41the RAF in the desert had refined
05:43ground strafing to the point
05:45where whole fighter squadrons
05:47were dedicated to such operations.
05:49Equipped with Hurricanes
05:51or American-built Curtis P-40B tomahawks,
05:54these units scoured the front lines
05:57and the immediate rear areas
05:59looking for anything to attack.
06:01Meanwhile, light bomber squadrons,
06:06equipped with Lend-Lease Douglas A-20s
06:09and Martin, Maryland's,
06:11pounded the Africa Corps supply centers,
06:13airfields, ports, and tank loggers
06:16with bombs.
06:20In 1942, the American Army Air Force
06:23entered the desert war.
06:25Several fighter and bombardment groups
06:27reached Egypt,
06:28where they served in support
06:29of Montgomery's 8th Army.
06:34When the Anglo-American invasion
06:36of Morocco and Algeria took place
06:38on November 8th, 1942,
06:40the Army Air Force went into widespread action
06:43against German forces for the first time.
06:46Far from a strategic air war
06:49the service spent the interwar years
06:51preparing to fight,
06:52the desert air campaign
06:54was almost entirely tactical in its nature.
06:57Without factories to bomb,
06:59the American air units were forced to learn
07:01the tough and dirty work
07:03of supporting an army in battle.
07:06American medium and light bombers
07:08went into action against Axis airfields
07:11around Tunis,
07:12hit troop concentrations
07:13and vital road junctions.
07:16Bridges were also hit
07:17as the Army Air Force
07:18embarked on its first widespread
07:20interdiction campaign
07:21in its short history.
07:28Meanwhile, the fighter units
07:29were also getting into the axe.
07:31Convoy strafing became a specialty
07:33for groups such as Colonel Reynard's 79th.
07:38In a straight-out strafing
07:39we were right down on the deck.
07:41Right on the deck.
07:43I mean on the deck.
07:46Those were the most possible missions.
07:49We lost most of our people
07:51in strafing.
07:54The African Corps was
07:55an extremely disciplined outfit.
08:00And any time we attacked them strafing,
08:04they didn't just hide or run.
08:08They turned around and fought back.
08:11They were shooting at us all the time.
08:13Throwing rocks if nothing else.
08:16Literally, it was one of the more dangerous things we did.
08:21The Americans and British
08:34learned the craft of tack air in the desert,
08:36they refined it to an art form
08:38during the 1943-44 Italian campaign.
08:42P-47s roamed across German lines of communication,
08:46blasting bridges to pieces
08:48with 1,000-pound bombs
08:50or shooting up truck convoys,
08:52columns of troops, and trains.
08:54We strafed a lot of trains.
08:58And what we always did
09:00if we strafed a train,
09:01number one, hit the engine.
09:05The next people started hitting
09:07in different spots
09:08and shooting from a distance
09:10because if they're filled with ammunition
09:13or any kind of explosive,
09:19you could get yourself.
09:21So you'd hit two or three cars
09:24before you'd start strafing car by car by car.
09:27But most of the time,
09:30if you found a train,
09:31it's full of something going someplace,
09:33so you need to knock everything out.
09:38One of the ways we used to do this
09:40was get down and just straight
09:43right down the train
09:44and we could hit a half a dozen cars.
09:46And, of course, we carried tracers
09:50so that when they hit,
09:52you know where they're heading.
09:55So you could see that your line
09:57was just traveling
09:58right down the top of the train beautifully.
10:01Further behind the lines,
10:03the B-25s of the 12th Air Force
10:06hammered away at major railroad installations
10:09in northern Italy.
10:11These were some of the toughest targets
10:13in the theater.
10:15While the interdiction campaign continued,
10:18the Army Air Force began to experiment in Italy
10:21with closer cooperation with the ground forces.
10:26We had communications with the GIs,
10:29radio communications, all the time.
10:32And we had, usually we had a man
10:36with the people we're supporting primarily
10:39who was with the ground
10:41and where we get ready to go to a target,
10:43he can talk to us.
10:45We also had a small plane that usually worked around
10:48and something we found out there was
10:51that if you're color blind,
10:53you can see through camouflage.
10:55And we'd get color blind people
10:59to act as one of the observers
11:02in this light plane to help us pinpoint our target.
11:06Thunderbolt pilots became especially adept
11:09at helping out the GIs in the front lines.
11:12Veteran P-47 pilots learned to accurately hit targets
11:16less than 150 yards from American positions.
11:24I got into combat and very quickly
11:30all of our missions were supporting the Army.
11:34I took a dim view of that until we started getting
11:38a lot of personal contact with these people on the ground.
11:43We were their lifesavers forever.
11:46And it wasn't long until I didn't care
11:50whether I ever saw a plane in the air to fight with.
11:54The mission that we did for all these people on the ground
11:58was so fantastic.
12:00That's all I need.
12:03And I loved it.
12:05By mid-1944, the lessons of the Italian campaign
12:20were adopted by the other allied tactical air forces.
12:23During the invasion of France in the summer of 1944,
12:27those skills and methods soon created the most effective
12:31tactical air campaign in the history of warfare.
12:36My first job was interdiction, you know,
12:39of the rail lines and the airfields and all that kind of stuff.
12:44And canals and barges and anything that moved, you know,
12:50we clobbered, you know.
12:52And we'd go on lots of missions over next to Germany
12:57and into Germany even where we'd fly in high,
13:00escort the bombers in to be 8th Air Force bombers,
13:03and then hit the deck and come home shooting things up,
13:05see on the way home.
13:07The RAF's 2nd Tactical Air Force joined forces
13:10with the American 9th Air Force,
13:12commanded by the irrepressible Pete Quesada,
13:15to execute the pre-invasion air plan.
13:18Using hawker typhoons, the RAF ravaged German radar sites
13:23along the coast.
13:25De Havilland mosquitoes flew low-altitude pinpoint raids
13:28on key installations.
13:30Spitfires and RAF Mustangs conducted
13:33on the treetops reconnaissance,
13:35photographing the invasion beaches from as little as 25 feet.
13:39Simultaneously, the 9th Air Force undertook
13:43Operation Chattanooga Choo Choo.
13:46Hundreds of American P-38s and P-47s prowled the skies
13:51over western France searching for trains.
13:54When they found a train or locomotive,
13:57down they'd swoop to shoot them to pieces
13:59with cannon, machine guns, rockets and bombs.
14:03It was very dangerous to be in any train
14:08because I think the Allied fighters must have had orders
14:13to shoot at any train that was on any track.
14:16And I think after the war was over,
14:21the assumption proved to be true
14:24because there were locomotives standing all over the place
14:27that were all shot to pieces.
14:30In one stretch of attacks in the last week before D-Day,
14:34over 800 locomotives were destroyed by the fighter bombers.
14:43As the fighter bombers demolished the Third Reich's rolling stock,
14:46the B-26 marauders of the 9th Air Force
14:49pounded away at rail yards and bridges.
14:52Being a tactical aircraft, our targets were essentially anything
14:58that would hold up the Nazi capacity to move divisions,
15:03to move artillery, to move anything.
15:06So our missions were essentially railroad bridges,
15:10railroads, ammunition, refineries, bridges,
15:15tactically anything that could keep them.
15:18And toward the end of the war where the Germans had been able
15:21to move a division in a matter of a day or so,
15:25they couldn't move that division in two weeks.
15:29By June 1, 1944, their efforts had reaped huge rewards.
15:34Of the 27 bridges over the Seine that had been targeted,
15:3824 had been destroyed and the other three severely damaged.
15:42Rail traffic in western France had been reduced to a crawl.
15:47As Allied air power destroyed Germany's rail, sea, and river corridors,
15:52the Wehrmacht grew increasingly reliant on vehicle convoys
15:56to deliver supplies to the front.
15:58But as D-Day approached,
16:00even these would soon be ravaged by the men of attack air.
16:04On June 6, 1944, the Allies launched the greatest seaborne invasion in history.
16:23The D-Day landings were a marvel of planning and execution.
16:28And as the troops stormed the beaches,
16:31the tactical air forces were there to give them support.
16:35While the heavies and mediums pounded the coasts,
16:38behind the beaches, roving groups of fighter bombers
16:41swept down on German reinforcements and artillery
16:44racing forward to stop the Allied invasion.
16:47Moving on roads became virtual suicide for German tankers and armored infantry.
16:54Rocket launching typhoons, mustangs, and thunderbolts
16:58ravaged entire panzer formations in the days after the invasion.
17:02The experience of the Panzer-Lehr division was typical.
17:09As the largest panzer division in France,
17:12the unit received orders to march for the beaches following the Allied landing.
17:16In two days of marching, the division lost 300 vehicles to fighter bomber attack.
17:23For the next two months, the fighter bombers whittled down the panzer divisions
17:27while the marauders and Havocs choked off any hope of reinforcements
17:31by working over the French rail system again.
17:35At the end of July, the Americans finally pierced the German defenses at St. Lowe.
17:43Rushing through the gap, columns of American tanks and armored vehicles spread out behind German lines.
17:50Quesada assigned each American column a constant umbrella of four fighter bombers.
17:56These four planes would scout ahead of the American armor and clear the road of any German obstacle.
18:02At the same time, the GIs would use their new radios to talk to the pilots directly.
18:09They'd call out targets and then hunker down until the planes swooped in and took out the German positions.
18:15Often we'd go out and we'd get all kinds of notes from the ground forces.
18:25What a fantastic job we'd done.
18:28And they would tell us, this is what we found you had done away with on that particular mission.
18:34And, of course, that was our way of life.
18:41We loved to hear from the ground people, and they knew it.
18:44Anti-tank guns, artillery pieces, and even tanks were wiped out by this close coordination system.
18:54As the GIs moved forward, the signs of the fighter bombers' grisly effectiveness could be seen in the long, snake-like columns of burned and charred wreckage that cluttered the roads.
19:11Never in history had such tremendous damage been done by air power.
19:17In the end, it broke the back of the German army in Normandy.
19:36Through the fall of 1944, the Allied armies pushed the Wehrmacht back to the very ramparts of Germany.
19:43As usual, the tactical air forces were there to assist the ground pounders.
19:48The well-trained, disciplined marauder crews were among the best in the world at such work.
19:54Flying in tight combat boxes, they could plant their bombs with incredible accuracy right in front of friendly troops.
20:01As the mediums became more involved in close support operations, the fighter bombers began sweeping into Germany,
20:09shooting up trains, trucks, tanks, vehicles, and airfields.
20:14Airfields tended to be the toughest targets.
20:17Loaded with flak, it took courage and disciplined teamwork to knock out a German airbase.
20:24We were strafing an air drum, and I don't know what it was, went right through the back of my plane,
20:30right about a yard behind my head, left about a four-inch hole.
20:34But they had to set those things for a certain distance, and this one didn't explode when it hit me.
20:40It went through and then exploded beyond me, left about two four-inch holes in the plane, right behind me.
20:47It had been a little, a yard forward would blow my head off.
20:50We were going across an airdrome, and you've got to be careful going across the airdromes.
20:55You've got to be in formation, don't lag behind, or you'll get shot down.
21:04With the onset of winter in late 1944, the fighter bombers were forced to stay on the ground.
21:11Low-lying fog, driving snowstorms, and blizzards gave the Germans a respite from the incessant air attacks they had faced since the spring of 1944.
21:23And they took advantage of it.
21:25On December 16th, 1944, the Germans launched their last major offensive against the Western Allies.
21:32Codename Autumn Wind, the attack struck in the Ardennes Forest, a weak point in the American lines.
21:40Initially, the offensive, which became known as the Battle of the Bulge, drove the Americans back.
21:46With bad weather protecting them from air attack, the panzers drove on through Belgium, hoping to cross the Meuse River and capture Antwerp.
21:55During the Battle of the Bulge, we had a bunch of bad weather where we couldn't see anything on the ground and nobody got to do anything.
22:07We had one clear afternoon, and the Bulge was up in Belgium, and we killed all the tank lines right in that spot with, I think, two flights.
22:21And they couldn't get through the tanks there, and finally they split and went out in a Y.
22:28Well, this is wonderful because once they were split, they were only half-forced.
22:33They were much easier to handle, and we got them turned down in a hurry.
22:37The results were, for the Germans, horrific.
22:48Carefully hoarded vehicles, supplies, infantry battalions, and artillery guns were caught in the open and smashed to ruin.
22:56Under constant assault from the air and from three sides on the ground, Germany utterly collapsed.
23:06By early April, few worthwhile targets remained, and the Allied Air Forces gradually stood down.
23:13No one has ever doubted the success of tactical air forces.
23:17Tactical aviation helped devastate the Wehrmacht, saving thousands of GIs with their effective support.
23:25Such close cooperation blasted open the door to the Third Reich in the West.
23:31No wonder that the GIs grew to love their aerial escorts.
23:36General Eisenhower, in his autobiography, stated that the 9th Air Force activity and accuracy shortened the war by months.
23:46We knew the job we were doing, and we knew the Army loved us because we were taking care of them
23:54in such a fantastic manner.
23:56We were doing a job, and we got it done.
24:00Yet after the war, the tactical aviators were all but lost to history.
24:06Whether historians take note or not, one thing is clear.
24:10The graying soldiers of Eisenhower's armies will never forget the support they received from the loyal and dedicated men of the tactical air forces.
24:22The