Red Ball Express - Overview

Overview

The French railway system had been destroyed by Allied air power before the D-Day invasion in order to deny their use to the German forces, thereby leaving trucks as the only way to move supplies. After the breakout and the race to the Seine River, there were 28 Allied divisions in the field. For offensive operations, each division would consume about 750 tons of supplies per day, a total of about 20,000 tons. At its peak the Red Ball Express operated 5,958 vehicles and carried about 12,500 tons of supplies per day. Colonel Loren Albert Ayers, known to his men as "Little Patton," was in charge of gathering two drivers for every truck, obtaining special equipment, and training port battalion personnel as drivers for long hauls. Almost 75% of Red Ball drivers were African Americans, able-bodied soldiers who had been previously attached to various units for other duties.

In order to keep the supplies flowing without delay, two routes were opened from Cherbourg to the forward logistics base at Chartres. The northern route was used for delivering supplies, the southern for returning trucks. Both roads were closed to civilian traffic.

"The highways in France are usually good, but are ordinarily not excessively wide. The needs of the rapidly advancing armies, consequently, promptly put the greatest possible demands upon them. To ease this strain, main highways leading to the front were set aside very early in the advance as "one way" roads from which all civil and local military traffic were barred. Tens of thousands of truckloads of supplies were pushed forward over these one way roads in a constant stream of traffic. Reaching the supply dumps in the forward areas, the trucks unloaded and returned empty to Arromanches, Cherbourg and the lesser landing places by way of other one way highways. Even the French railroads were, to some degree, operated similarly, with loaded trains moving forward almost nose to tail."

Convoys of no fewer than five trucks were allowed, to be escorted in front and behind by a jeep. In reality, it was not uncommon for individual trucks to depart Cherbourg as soon as they were loaded. It was also common to disable the engine governors to allow higher power for climbing hills.

The convoys were a primary target of the German Luftwaffe. By 1944, however, German air power was so reduced that even these tempting and typically easy targets were rarely attacked. The biggest problems facing the Express were maintenance, finding enough drivers, and lack of sleep for overworked truckers.