Allied Air Strategy

This chapter begins with an analysis of the American bombing strategy that focused upon oil production and then proceeds to evaluate the role of Operation Pointblank — the attempt to destroy the Luftwaffe before D-Day. In this, the strategy of the Allies was to fight and win a war of attrition — the boxer’s approach — and it was remarkably successful if very expensive in Allied air crew. We then consider the effectiveness of the Transportation Plan design to disrupt the French rail and road system and how aerial and naval bombardments were supposed to destroy German coastal defences. The latter task was much less successful and can be attributed, in part, to the tardy nature of the political decision-making by strategic leaders and to the inability of commanders to recognize the limits of aerial bombing against fortified gun emplacements. Finally, the campaign to provide aerial cover for the invasion itself is reviewed. Once again it is often difficult to trace ‘effects’ back to individual strategic decisions made by leaders and, more than anything else, success can be traced back to the individual and collective decisions of thousands of pilots and air crew to do what they considered best at the time and in the space that they found themselves inhabiting.