Chapter 4
Prelude to Operation Torch
Well before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States and Great Britain had begun planning for the eventual entry of the United States into the European war. By midsummer 1941, Anglo-American military planners had agreed on three strategic principles: that the main Allied efforts would be directed first against Germany, later against Japan; that the defeat of Germany would require an invasion in northwestern Europe; and that prior to an invasion, the German military capacity would have to be degraded through offensive actions in other regions under German control. At that time, North Africa was considered for military action, but not as a first priority.1 Allied cooperative planning efforts intensified following the Japanese attack in early December 1941, but these three strategies remained unchanged.
American military planners, in particular, Gen. George Marshall, preferred an early invasion of the Continent because it provided the shortest route to the heart of Germany and would permit the United States to concentrate and maintain the largest combat force. It would also permit the bulk of British forces to be brought into action, and significantly, the Americans believed that conditions would allow the Allies to gain the necessary air superiority. If General Marshall and his associates in the U.S. military had had it their way, it is quite likely that North Africa would never have been invaded by the United States.
Plans continued in the direction of the American strategy, and by the end of 1941, tentative plans were in place for an invasion in northwestern Europe eighteen months later, in the fall of 1943, under the code name “Roundup.” Germany’s invasion of Russia, now at a high pitch, created doubt among the Allies about the ability of Russia to defend itself and the disastrous consequences for the Allies if it collapsed. Accordingly, a smaller, even earlier invasion on the Continent—code-named “Sledgehammer”—was provisionally planned for just nine months later, in the fall of 1942, in order to drain German resources away from the Eastern Front. The buildup of forces needed to accomplish this cross-Channel strategy began under the code name “Bolero.”
Within a few months, the AAF’s preparations for the scheduled European invasion were well under way. In January 1942, three fighter groups (the 14th, 33rd, and 52nd) were activated in the United States, joining the already extant 1st Fighter Group. Two more followed in February 1942 (81st and 82nd Fighter Groups), two more in the late summer of 1942 (324th and 325th Fighter Groups), and a final group in October 1942 (the 350th).2
Initially the defense of the U.S. West Coast took priority for air force units, but following the decisive Japanese defeat at Midway in the Pacific, the U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF) felt confident that the Japanese fleet had lost momentum and would not be a threat to the West Coast. Considering the lessened West Coast threat, and reflecting the current military priorities, plans were made in the spring of 1942 to release P-38 squadrons to Britain as part of Bolero. By mid-June 1942, the AAF was on the move, with the air and ground echelons of the 1st and 31st Fighter Groups embarking for the UK.
Bolero would require a huge production, training, and logistical effort for all branches of the military. For the AAF alone, final estimates were that a total of 3,266 aircraft would be needed by April 1943 to support the invasion then planned for the following fall.
P-38s for the fighter groups were initially set for delivery to England aboard ships. But with the development of reliable drop tanks, the ferry range of the P-38s increased to 2,200 miles, making it possible to fly the Lightnings from Maine to Scotland, with intermediate stops at Labrador, Greenland, and Iceland. By August 1942, eighty-one P-38Fs of the 1st and 14th Fighter Groups had arrived in Great Britain, two squadrons remaining in Iceland to fly defensive patrols over the Atlantic. The 14th’s ground echelon had sailed on the USS West Point in early August 1942, and arrived in Liverpool on August 17, 1942.3
That fall, the P-38 pilots continued combat training from bases in England, with particular emphasis on escorting high-altitude B-17s. Practice sweeps were made across the English Channel. But even as the buildup of forces in the UK accelerated, with pilots anticipating air battles over northern Europe, war planning continued. The military authorities in the United States and Great Britain became sharply divided on the proper strategy for countering the Germans in World War II.
When and where to first engage the Axis? American planners recognized that the U.S. military was not strong enough to mount a cross-Channel invasion in northern Europe, and join the fighting alongside the Brits in a North African Campaign, and still maintain a position in the Pacific. The Combined Chiefs of Staff were faced with the daunting challenge of assigning priorities for their limited resources.
President Roosevelt grew impatient. Once the United States formally entered the war, Roosevelt pressed for early military action against Germany. He was “determined to commit the Western Allies to action against the Germans before the end of the year, somehow and somewhere.” He wanted to give the people of the United States the understanding that they were at war—a reality that was not fully appreciated given the safe distance between the United States and the war actions—and he wanted to “impress upon the Germans that they would have to face American power on their side of the Atlantic.”4
The Brits were deeply skeptical about the prospect of taking on Germany via a cross-Channel invasion as early as 1943. Great Britain and its Commonwealth allies—France, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand—had been fighting Germany since the fall of 1939, effectively going it alone for eighteen months. British forces had suffered a stinging defeat at the hands of the Germans in France earlier in the war, at Dunkirk. The Brits were already engaged in fierce fighting against the Germans in Egypt and felt that the Allies had insufficient resources to mount a successful offensive as early as 1943 in northern Europe.
Part of their opposition lay in the fact that the United Kingdom would have to bear much of the military burden for such an attempt, since the American war effort was still gaining momentum.5 Britain’s military leaders recalled the desperate fighting against the Germans in World War I that had inflicted such heavy casualties on their forces. Most of the military planners had also confronted the Wehrmacht’s formidable fighting power during the disastrous 1940 campaign in France, while the experiences of British forces in North Africa and Libya against Field Marshal Erwin Rommel had done nothing to diminish their respect for German military capabilities.
Apart from the potentially staggering human costs, Britain had deep concerns about military hardware, and the issue came down to boats. It was evident that the Allies did not have sufficient shipping to support the landings. Much of Allied shipping was dedicated to actions against the Japanese in early 1942, and with the Mediterranean unavailable for friendly convoys, Allied support of the beleaguered Egyptian campaign required shipping around Africa. Allied naval assets were simply insufficient for the invasion. Most significantly, the Allies did not have sufficient numbers of landing craft to transport troops to the beachheads.
It was estimated that at least 8,100 landing craft would be needed for the operation and would have to be available in mid-April 1943 to permit distribution and training. But navy demands in the Pacific and elsewhere made it likely that only half this number of landing craft would be available. Since the initial shock of an invasion force largely determines the success of establishing a viable beachhead, a half-strength invasion force was viewed as a poor way to start actions against Festung Europa. As late as May of 1943, just a few months before the proposed fall invasion, it was still being actively debated what kind of landing craft would be needed. The designs initially proposed appeared to be too small for the sea conditions likely to be encountered during the crossing.6
Historically, the Brits also showed a preference for peripheral campaigns, with subsequent direct attacks on the enemy only after they had been seriously weakened by attrition. This was typical of the British way of fighting wars and was “deeply imbedded in England’s military tradition.”7
Churchill began to argue strongly against beginning with a European landing, urging the Allies to first undertake an invasion of northern Africa. He believed that an Allied invasion of North Africa would prevent the Axis forces from penetrating further into French-held Morocco, Algiers, and Tunisia. A strong Allied presence there would help to secure British lines of communication through the Mediterranean, including air traffic from the western region of North Africa to the Suez. In the words of writer John Keegan, Churchill’s firmly held position was “Germany First—but not quite yet.”
The Brits made other compelling arguments for a North African landing. Resupply of British fighting forces in the deserts of Egypt was partially being accomplished via naval convoys through the Mediterranean, where they were vulnerable to Axis attack from the Gibraltar approaches all the way to Alexandria. A land operation in western Africa would challenge German supremacy in the region, might open Allied supply lines, and would provide a potential base for future land operations in the Mediterranean and southern Europe. And it would force the Germans and Italians to extend themselves beyond their capacity in reinforcing their trans-Mediterranean and southern front, potentially requiring them to withdraw some of their air assets from the Russian front. Additionally, the United States would also benefit from the ability to supply its operations in South Asia and the Philippines via the Mediterranean.
While this conversation was taking place, the Brits’ Eighth Army lost a spectacular tank battle in Libya on June 13. Tobruk fell on June 21, and Rommel’s army made a rapid advance toward Egypt and the Suez Canal. The Japanese made strong advances in Southeast Asia, the Philippines, and the Netherlands Indies. Allied shipping resources were degraded due to the stunning success of German U-boats. In the summer of 1942 the plight of the Soviet army seemed desperate, as Adolf Hitler’s panzer divisions pushed ever onward toward Stalingrad and the Caucasus.
Perhaps the final point debated by the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS) was whether a North African operation would result in Spain abandoning its neutrality and joining the Axis forces. In that case, the Strait of Gibraltar could be closed, putting an end to the Allied forces’ lines of communication and supply and worsening the Allied status in North Africa and elsewhere.
Despite the battle losses in Africa and logistical problems facing the Allies, Churchill and Roosevelt hoped to win the initiative against the Axis at relatively small cost, “[c]losing and tightening the ring around Germany, preparatory to a direct assault on northern Europe against the Germans.”8
British resistance to Allied plans for operations in northern Europe hardened, and by July 8 the British War Cabinet confirmed their opposition to the cross-Channel invasion in 1943. Bolero was stalled.
At that point, in late July of 1942, Roosevelt did something that British prime minister Winston Churchill would never do during the entire course of World War II: He intervened and overruled his military advisers. Roosevelt gave his generals a direct order to support the British proposal for landings along the coast of French North Africa—code-named “Operation Torch.”9 D-Day for Torch was November 8, 1942.
Air Forces Organization
While military planners on both sides of the Atlantic were answering the question of “where” and “when,” AAF planners faced the prospect of an almost inconceivable increase in aviation hardware. They also faced the hard truth that the policies and command structure under which the AAF would manage and apply such a huge operation were ill-defined, unclear, and heavily contested internally. The air forces had become the victim of a very slow evolution.
At the conclusion of World War I, it was evident to all military planners that strong air forces would be critically important to any future armed conflict. U.S. brass came to this understanding quickly: American air forces had operated in Europe for just seven months during that war, but even this limited experience was enough to make the point convincingly. During the interwar years, aircraft development continued at a determined pace, with new aircraft types coming off the drawing boards and American runways at a regular rate. But the parallel development of aviation tactics and strategies advanced much more slowly, and with many internecine conflicts.
Army ground commanders viewed the application of airpower primarily in a tactical sense: in direct support of ground operations. This was best expressed in a 1919 position paper from U.S. Army HQ: “When the Infantry loses, the Army loses. It is therefore the role of the Air Service . . . to aid the chief Combatant, the Infantry.”10 Pilots and aviation strategists took a much different view. It was their position that the air forces should be considered on a par with ground forces, and that aviation assets should be free to pursue a number of useful missions during armed conflicts.
Foremost in the thinking of the U.S. Army Air Forces was the critical need to secure air superiority against their adversaries, and for this to happen, the air assets needed to be used in both tactical and strategic missions. For tactical missions, this meant close air support for ground troops, reconnaissance, interception of enemy aircraft, and interdiction of enemy ground and sea forces. For strategic missions, a priority was long-range missions against aerodromes and other enemy aviation assets—assets that must be degraded in order to reach a point of air superiority.
During the twenty years prior, with American air forces being part of the U.S. Army, the field manuals and other doctrinal regulations largely reflecting the thinking of army ground officers. Many aspects related to air forces were addressed imprecisely by army staff, including the hows and whys of close air support, air superiority, and maritime operations.
During this time, while the army and air forces thinkers were debating the proper role of aviation in combat, aircraft designs were making huge advances. In the early 1920s, the maximum airspeed of a production fighter aircraft was just 150 mph, with a maximum ceiling of almost 25,000 feet and a range of 310 miles. By 1935, aircraft performance had doubled, with planes reaching speeds of 317 mph, at sustained altitudes of over 31,000 feet and a range of 715 miles. By the time Germany invaded Poland, Lockheed’s P-38 Lightning had boosted airspeed to an astonishing 414 mph, with a ceiling of almost 44,000 feet and a range of over 2,000 miles. Similar advances were seen in bomber-type aircraft, and in armaments.
Clearly, the military had been presented with vastly improved capabilities. With huge numbers of high-performance aircraft in the mobilization pipeline, there was tremendous pressure to develop corresponding doctrines governing the application of this new and formidable capability. Military planners struggled with two primary issues: How should they employ airpower, and under what organization and command structure would it operate? Judging from the tone of the debates between ground and air commanders, and the number of position papers, field manuals, and regulations that were issued in the period from 1920 to 1940,11 it is evident that there was no clear consensus on either point.
Army ground commanders held to their view that the air forces should be supportive to ground operations and under the command structure of ground commanders. Aviation planners were equally adamant that the air forces had multiple roles, particularly control of the airspace and strategic bombing, and bridled at being under the direct operational control of ground commanders.
Aviation planners pointed to the great success seen in the British campaigns in Egypt and Libya against the Axis forces and General Rommel. The British doctrine called for a centralized control of air forces, co-equity between ground and air forces commanders, and air strikes en masse on ground targets of great importance.12
Finally, just six months before the planned invasion of North Africa, Field Manual 31-35 was issued, and it was evident that the ground force commanders had once again won the argument. A few salient points from FM 31-35:
The spirit of the manual is reflected in this statement: “The most important target at a particular time will usually be that target which constitutes the most serious threat to the operations of the supported ground force.”13
AAF planners who had advocated for independent and largely strategic air forces had lost the debate, and the doctrine expressed in FM 31-35 governed the AAF during the invasion of North Africa in the fall of 1942. As will be seen, those policies resulted in an ineffective use of air forces, which some would argue led to a tragic misuse of men and materiel.
Torch and the Tunisian Campaign
Operation Torch was America’s first large-scale combat against Axis forces. The landings on November 8, 1942, involved a huge contingent of British and American forces, establishing beachheads at five widely spaced locations in French Morocco and Algeria. A relatively short-duration battle, the invading forces were secure by November 16, and ground operations continued as the American forces immediately began moving east across North Africa, against stiffening German opposition.
The American invasion of North Africa carried tremendous import for Great Britain. Just three days after D-Day, with opposition crumbling, Prime Minister Churchill’s speech in London included his now-famous statement: “The Germans have received back again that measure of fire and steel which they have so often meted out to others. Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”14
Torch was the first major operation of the war for the United States, and was unique in the demands it placed on close ground-air cooperation. This cooperative function was unfamiliar to the U.S. armed forces, whose only comparable experience was gained in the final months of World War I, more than twenty years earlier.
While ground operations proceeded well during Torch, and in the early days of fighting in what came to be called the North African Campaign, from the outset the AAF operations did not go well. The problem was not related to equipment or training, but rather in organization, leading to considerable friction among the Allies. Fundamental procedures regarding command and control of air assets had not been adequately addressed, and even the basic doctrines as to the application of airpower were still under considerable debate.15
It was becoming evident that military planners who had won the debate about who should control the air assets had gotten it wrong. Having the AAF controlled by ground task force commanders and the associated absence of unity of command prevented air planners from developing a coordinated air plan to support the entire theater of operations. While individual ground commanders agreed that gaining air superiority was essential, their overriding concern was the enemy troops directly in front of them, and they wanted air forces in their area to support them exclusively. None wanted to give up control over tactical air support for troops under their immediate responsibility.
According to the Air Force Historical Studies Agency, “The ground officers who had lain with their regiments in the hills around Tebourba had their own analysis of failure. They had seen their men dive-bombed continually, had seen this dive-bombing perfectly coordinated with tank and infantry attacks, had seen few friendly planes come to the rescue. Their favorite remedy became the uneconomical—and in the face of enemy air superiority, ineffective—air umbrella. Cries of ‘Stuka’ and parallel demands for umbrellas plagued the air commanders. Thenceforth the theory and practice of ‘air support’—the term currently in use—were much mooted in Northwest Africa.”16
As recognized in a 1953 Air Force study: After Operation Torch, “there followed many months of indecisive action in the course of which the earlier conception of air support, involving the lavish use of all available fighter aircraft as a defensive umbrella over the ground troops, was completely discredited. There were also examples of wholly unwise selection of targets for bombardment by ground officers.”17
In effect, the “air umbrella” practice placed the air forces in a primarily defensive role. “Most Army officers had come to view the airplane as a defensive weapon. They were enthusiastic supporters of military aviation, but only as a tool for observation of opposing ground forces and for keeping the enemy’s airpower off their backs. In the view of these officers, U.S. aircraft should be assigned to, and be controlled by, ground commanders down to division level or lower. Further, the aircraft should operate along and over a specific front.”18
This doctrine was diametrically opposed to that employed so effectively by the Luftwaffe since 1939: the fundamental principle of fighter action is at all times and in all places to be on the offensive. “A fighter can only carry out [a] purely defensive task by taking the initiative in the offensive. He must never wait until he is attacked because he then loses the chance of acting. The words of Richtofen expressed during world War I . . . are still valid today. ‘The fighter pilots have to rove in the area allotted to them in any way they like, and when they spot an enemy they attack and shoot him down; anything else is rubbish.’ ”19
The point was further reinforced in the writings of German general Hellmuth Felmy, a noted air force commander and strategist:
Ground forces fighting without air superiority on their side have no choice but to take such exceptional precautionary measures against intervention by enemy air forces that the freedom of action and the striking power they need to destroy the enemy on the ground are jeopardized to a dangerous degree.
For this reason, the air force must be employed primarily against the enemy air forces until such time as air superiority has been achieved. The mobility inherent in an air force is its most valuable asset.
The command of all the available air units must be concentrated in the hands of the air commander if their inherent elasticity and striking power is to be fully exploited in a decisive offensive.20
In fairness to ground commanders, it should also be noted that the air force itself lacked the necessary experience, equipment, and tactics to perform well in a ground-support role. Close support bombers, like the A-20, proved to be vulnerable to ground fire, and pilots lacked adequate training in the tactics of strafing or dive-bombing. Applying U.S. air assets to a ground-support role proved to be a costly mistake. In pursuing its assigned mission of ground support, the American air forces did not degrade the offensive air assets of the German opposition, and the Allies were constantly confronted over the battle lines by proven aircraft piloted by officers with years of tactical combat experience. Allied pilots and aircraft were being lost in North Africa at a fearsome rate.
The result, seen in the early months of Operation Torch, was an overall failure to use the primary attributes of air forces—mobility and flexibility. Most significantly, its defensive employment prevented the air forces of the United States from gaining air superiority in North Africa—a well-accepted prerequisite for successful ground operations. In the winter of 1942–1943, the Luftwaffe controlled the skies in the Central Mediterranean.
At the beginning of 1943, when German aircraft were contesting the skies in North Africa, the ratio of losses per sortie for fighter aircraft was four times the average for the war, as high as 5 percent in February 1943. At this rate, a pilot would be lucky to survive twenty missions out of a fifty-mission tour. Later, as the Axis forces began to be attrited by Allied forces, the risk associated with combat operations decreased to the average observed for the war, about 1 percent. Ernie Pyle, famous World War II correspondent, noted: “[Fighter pilots] are the sponge that is absorbing the fury of the Luftwaffe over here. They are taking it, and taking it, and taking it.”21
The 14th Fighter Group had been hard hit. Entering combat as part of the 12th Air Force during Operation Torch, the 14th Fighter Group had moved into northwest Africa in mid-November 1942, occupying the airfield at Tafaraoui, Algeria, initially with the primary mission of escorting heavy bombers in the coming campaign in Tunisia. Over the next two months, the group would move three times: first to Maison Blanche, then to Youks-les-Bains, and finally to Berteaux—all bases in northern Algeria, each move keeping the group close to the advancing battle line.22
By late January, after sixty-nine days of combat, the 14th had lost nineteen pilots killed due to enemy action, and five others were taken as POWs. Of the original fifty-four pilots who had arrived from England at the start of combat operations in North Africa, just thirty-eight remained.23
The inventory of aircraft had also taken a beating: Air forces commander Gen. Jimmy Doolittle was forced to move aircraft from one group to another in order to maintain combat-readiness. Instead of the seventy-five aircraft normally allocated to an AAF fighter group, just a dozen worn P-38s remained in the 14th. The 1st and 82nd Fighter Groups had suffered similarly high losses, and at times the combined strength of all three P-38 groups was as low as ninety aircraft.
For the 14th, the worst came on January 23. Sixteen aircraft of the 48th Fighter Squadron left their base at Berteaux, Algeria, at 0715 on a mission to strafe Rommel’s forces near Medinine in Tunisia. Their route was hampered by ground fog, and when the formation emerged to clear air, it found itself directly over a new and unreported Axis aerodrome. Flak over the field was intense, and the German pilots were ready for a fight. Desperate, swirling combat ensued, and the 48th was badly mauled, losing five pilots and six aircraft, a terrible blow to the squadron.
The group’s pilots assembled three days later for what has been referred to as a “big squadron powwow”: “The pilots were angry after the mission of the 23rd . . . and made some pretty blunt statements regarding it.”24 Group commander Col. Thayer Olds, who had been the group’s commander since April 1941, guiding them during their recent heavy losses, listened to the heated discussion. He decided to have the commanders of the 48th and 49th squadrons join him for a meeting with his superior, General Cannon, at the 12th Air Force headquarters in Constantine.
The meeting took place on January 27. To his credit, the general understood that the 14th had ceased to be an effective combat unit, and the next day the group was relieved of duty. Pilots who had completed their tours of duty were sent home; others were sent to other squadrons; staff officers and enlisted personnel were sent to the rear to rest and recuperate.
A similar fate awaited the 33rd Fighter Group. After flying many close air-support and ground-attack missions, it was down to just thirteen aircraft. Two weeks after the 14th stood down, the 33rd was also withdrawn from the theater for reconstitution.
AAF headquarters quickly began the process of reequipping and rebuilding the fighter groups in North Africa, including the 14th, but the extensive losses that began with Torch were symptomatic of a huge problem for air forces headquarters. This was in stark contrast to the experience of the Royal Air Force (RAF) in the eastern desert campaign against the Axis forces. This was due in part to the fact that the RAF was independent and co-equal to the British Army and Royal Navy; the partnership between General Montgomery’s British Eighth Army with the RAF produced a high level of tactical and strategic successes.
Efforts to produce a similar organizational arrangement in the U.S. Army met with harsh resistance. Notably, Gen. George Patton—commander of ground forces in North Africa—complained that a “total lack of air cover for our units” in North Africa “has allowed the German Air Force to operate almost at will.”25 Vice Air Marshal Coningham, leader of RAF forces in the eastern desert, did not back down, questioning whether the complaints about American air cover might be a disguise for the possibility that Patton’s II Corps was “not battle-worthy in terms of present operations.” The fight was on, but the stakes were too high to permit the argument from becoming intractable.
As early as December 1942, just one month after launching the North African offensive, Eisenhower had become increasing frustrated with attempts to coordinate the efforts of the 12th Air Force with ground forces. He recognized the poor results and great sacrifices of the AAF and was cognizant that the coming Tunisian Campaign would rely even more on a strong and well-managed air force. In January he issued directions calling for a single air commander, and in an interim measure, Gen. Carl A. Spaatz was appointed air commander in chief of the Allied Air Forces.
Concurrent with this provisional appointment, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill met at Casablanca to discuss future operations, once North Africa had been secured. The reorganization of the air forces was of prime importance to the Allied leaders during the meeting in Casablanca, and a new unified command structure and functional organization was quickly adopted. The new organization was closely modeled after the RAF/Eighth Army experience in the eastern desert. The plan was designed to take fuller advantage of the primary attributes of air forces—flexibility, mobility, and concentration of airpower—through the establishment of centralized control of all airpower in the MTO.
A new administrative structure was created, the Mediterranean Air Command (MAC), with an implementation date of February 18, 1943. As if to emphasize the intent, British air chief marshal Sir Arthur Tedder was named air commander in chief of MAC. The reorganization created five new commands under Tedder, including the North African Air Force (NAAF), which would include the great majority of American units then in North Africa. It was within NAAF that the functional reorganization became evident, most notably with the creation of the North African Tactical Air Force (NATAF) and the North African Strategic Air Force (NASAF).
Again in a nod to the tactical successes Britain had achieved in the eastern desert, NATAF’s command was given to acting air marshal Sir Arthur Coningham. NATAF’s air assets included shorter-range fighters, fighter-bombers, and light bombers—the sorts of aircraft that would be needed for tactical missions, including close air support.26
Coningham had paid his dues in the air. He flew with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force in Gallipoli during World War I, later joining the Royal Flying Corps, where he became an ace. Coming to Egypt in July 1941 and operating under extremely adverse conditions, Coningham’s team achieved air superiority in the North African Campaign and was instrumental in halting the German offensive at El Alamein in July 1942. His threefold principles of air superiority, centralized command, and innovation in air tactics were well proven in North Africa, and it was hoped that he would bring the same success to the combined Allied tactical operations in the Mediterranean Theater.
Coningham immediately issued orders to abandon the use of air umbrellas and directed all air assets under his command to operate in a fully offensive mode at all times. He explained to his peers in the ground commands that an offensive approach put the enemy on the defensive and automatically protected ground troops.
And with the belief that American air forces had led the way in terms of aircraft and doctrine regarding strategic bombing, the command of NASAF was given to Maj. Gen. James Doolittle. NASAF’s air assets included heavy and medium bombers for daylight operations, British bombers for night operations, supported by fighter groups operating P-40s, and three fighter groups equipped with P-38s—among them, the 14th Fighter Group and its three squadrons.27
Also created within NAAF were four additional units: The third major combined combat command created under MAC with this reorganization was the North African Coastal Air Force (NACAF) which like the NATAF, was equipped with a wide variety of medium and light bombers and fighters.28 Its primary mission was air defense of North Africa, sea/air reconnaissance, antisubmarine operations, air protection of Allied shipping, and air interdiction of enemy shipping.
Four support commands were also included in the new MAC organizational structure:
The Northwest African Troop Carrier Command (NATCC) was equipped with C-47 aircraft and was responsible for delivery of troops and materiel to the war zone, including air drops of paratroops and the return of damaged equipment and injured personnel back to base.
The Northwest African Training Command (NATC) was to provide pre-combat flight training for new pilots and crews—both fighters and bombers. NATC provided brief but highly effective training prior to assignment to their final combat assignments.
The Northwest African Air Service Command (NAASC) was responsible for logistics and support functions.
In addition to these four main units, Northwest African Photo Reconnaissance Wing was responsible for providing air intelligence photographs to the NAAF military planners and was equipped primarily with fighter-type aircraft, in which guns had been replaced with cameras.
Also factoring into the reorganization of the air forces was the 9th Air Force, then based at Cairo. The origins of the 9th AF in the MTO date to June 1942, when twenty-four B-24s with hand-picked crews arrived in Egypt to support the desperate ground war then being waged by British and Axis forces in the eastern desert. Within six months, the 9th was equipped with 370 aircraft of all kinds, including heavy and medium bombers, transports, and three P-40 Fighter Groups, and had become an integral element in the campaign that led to the defeat of Axis forces in North Africa.
With the reorganization that led to the NAAF, some assets of the 9th AF were transferred to NATAF and NACAF, but the 9th still retained a powerful capability, which included B-25 medium bombers, and P-40 fighters. Air forces planners in the MTO assigned responsibility for the western Mediterranean to NASAF and for the eastern Mediterranean to the 9th Air Force, which conducted extensive strategic operations throughout the region, including during the coming campaign on Sicily. Later in the war, the 9th would be transferred to England to resume tactical operations.
This new structure appeared to clarify missions and responsibilities for Coningham and Doolittle, a clarity that was greatly in demand, but had been generally lacking.
The groundwork for a new set of AAF doctrines had been laid. The document that resulted—Field Manual 100-20, entitled “Command and Employment of Air Power,” stated that “Land power and air power are co-equal and interdependent forces: neither is an auxiliary of the other.” Mediterranean Theater commanders would exercise control of air forces through an air force commander and ground forces through a ground force commander. The directive assigned air superiority as the first priority for the air forces; second priority was air interdiction, and third was close support of ground troops.29
This new field manual would not be released for six months, but the new NAAF commanders were already implementing its key components. NASAF commanders, to whom all P-38 units reported, immediately issued new orders, stating: “The first objective is to gain air superiority,” with a campaign against enemy radar installations, air forces, and airfields. The next mission was interdiction of enemy rear area movements and vehicles and troop concentrations.
The change in direction began to pay quick dividends, and by March the pendulum had begun to swing in the direction of the Allies. With the increased aircraft deliveries, new pilots, and a new set of doctrines and tactics, the combined Allied forces were beginning to outnumber the Axis air forces.
Included in the rebuilding effort was the 14th Fighter Group, newly reorganized under the command of Col. Troy Keith. A core of experienced pilots had been reassigned from the 1st Fighter Group to function as commanders, operations officers, and combat pilots of the 14th Group Headquarters, and its three squadrons, the 37th, 48th, and 49th. Newly assigned pilots began to arrive from the States in the early spring of 1943, and by mid-April the group was approaching full strength, undergoing combat training under the guidance of the “old hands” from the 1st. They were a new group, operating under a new organization, with new aircraft and pilots, and with a fresh set of marching orders: Get and maintain air superiority. By early May, the group was ready to rejoin the fight.
Although the army’s doctrinal debates had been conducted at a level far above the 49th Fighter Squadron, the conclusions reached at Casablanca, the subsequent reorganization of air assets, and the resultant development of the North African Strategic Air Force, were to have a profound impact on the missions the pilots of the 49th would fly for the rest of the war. It was the 49th, and all the other air force squadrons within the NAAF, that would undertake to master the learning curve associated with this new doctrine, and who would learn how costly the lessons would be.