Combined Bomber Offensive - Overlord Air Plan

Overlord Air Plan

During the "winter campaign against the German aircraft industry … January 11 February 22, 1944", review began on the initial "Overlord air plan" which omitted the requirement "to seek air superiority before the landings were attempted." Instead, the plan was to bomb communications targets (primary) and rail yards and repair facilities (secondary). Air Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory, who would command the tactical element of the invasion air forces had been assigned the responsibility on June 26, 1943, for drafting the plan, and at the February 14, 1944, meeting regarding the Overlord air plan, he claimed German fighters would defend and be defeated during the attacks on rail yards, and if not, air superiority would instead be won over the D-Day beaches. Harris rebutted that even after the planned rail attacks, German rail traffic would be sufficient to supply invasion defenses; and Spaatz proposed attacks on industry in Germany to require fighters to be moved away from the Overlord beaches to defend the plants. Tedder concluded that a committee needed to study the pre-Overlord targeting, but when the committee met in March, no consensus was reached.

On March 25, 1944 Portal chaired a meeting of the generals and restated the Pointblank objective of air superiority was still the highest CBO priority. Although the "Joint Chiefs of Staff" had previously argued that it was impossible to impede German military rail traffic due to the large reserve capacity, for the secondary priority Portal identified that pre-invasion railyard attacks only needed to reduce traffic so tactical airpower could inhibit enemy defenses during the first 5 weeks of OVERLORD. Sir John Kennedy and Andrew Noble countered that the military fraction of rail traffic was so small that no amount of railyard bombing would significantly impact operations. As endorsed on March 6 by the M.E.W. and the U.S. Mission for Economic Affairs, Spaatz again proposed that "execution of the oil plan would force the enemy to reduce oil consumption … and … fighting power" during Overlord.^19.50 Although "concerned that military transportation experts of the British Army had not been consulted" about the Transportation Plan, Eisenhower decided that "apart from the attack on the GAF the transportation plan was the only one which offered a reasonable chance of the air forces making an important contribution to the land battle during the first vital weeks of Overlord". Control of all air operations was transferred to Eisenhower on April 14 at noon.

General Carl Spaatz had been insistent—and correct. The enemy would fight for oil, and the enemy would lose his fighters, his crews, and his fuel.

However, after "very few German fighters rose to contest the early attacks on French rail yards" and the Ninth (tactical) AAF in England had dropped 33,000 tons of bombs through April on French railway targets, Churchill wrote to Roosevelt in May 1944 that he was not "convinced of the wisdom of this plan" Although Tedder's original Overlord air directive in mid-April listed no oil targets, Eisenhower permitted Spaatz to test that the Luftwaffe would defend oil targets more heavily. During the trial raids of May 12 and May 28, German fighters heavily defended the oil targets, and after the invasion hadn't begun during the good weather of May, Luftwaffe fighters in France were recalled to defend Reich industry. The German plan was to await the invasion and then, "on the cue words 'Threatening Danger West'," redeploy fighter strength back to unused French air bases when needed against the invasion. The last two Jagdgeschwader 26 Fw 190As, piloted by Josef Priller and his wingman, that were to be recalled conducted the only Luftwaffe day sorties over the Normandy beaches on D-day, and on June 7/8 the Luftwaffe began redeploying c. 600 aircraft to France for attacking the Normandy bridgehead.

Pointblank operations ended on the fifth day of the Invasion. and the highest priority of the Combined Bomber Offensive became operations against the German rocket weapons in June 1944 and the Oil Campaign in September. Tedder's proposal to keep oil targets as the highest priority and place "Germany's rail system in second priority" was appproved by the CSTC on November 1. On April 12, 1945, Strategic Bombing Directive No. 4 ended the strategic bombing campaign in Europe.