Page:A Concise History of the U.S. Air Force.djvu/29

 an eventual landing on the continent followed by a victorious march to Berlin. After December 1941, however, events worked to modify this strategy. First, the U.S. Navy successfully bid for higher priority in the Pacific in an early two-pronged assault on Japan, one from Australia and New Guinea through the Philippines, the other through the islands of the South and Central Pacific. Second, in Europe, British demands for action in the Mediterranean and the immediate need for a reduction of German pressure on the Soviet Union diverted British and American forces to fight in North Africa. These developments left only the England-based Allied air forces to attack the German homeland through a strategic bombing campaign.

On June 12, 1942, the USAAF inaugurated operations in the Mediterranean, striking against the Ploeşti, Romania, oil fields, a target American airmen would come to know well. Large-scale action began with Operation TORCH―the invasion of North Africa―six months later on November 8. American doctrinal and organizational problems allowed the German Luftwaffe to achieve early domination in the air. Allied ground commanders demanded that air units maintain continuous air cover over Army formations. Their firepower thus diluted, "penny packets" patrolled the skies constantly, rarely finding the enemy, and were therefore not available in sufficient numbers when the Luftwaffe made concentrated attacks. German pilots achieved a three-to-one advantage in aerial victories. At the Casablanca Conference, in late January 1943, the United States adopted a tactical doctrine formulated by British commanders Arthur Coningham and Bernard Montgomery after bloody fighting against Germany's Afrika Korps. Air superiority became their first objective for the air arm, including deep sweeps against enemy airfields, followed by interdiction to isolate battlefields, and then close air support to assist ground units in their movements against the enemy. Air and ground commanders would work together, neither auxiliary to the other.

Codified as Field Manual 31-35, this new doctrine of tactical warfare served the USAAF well. With their air forces organized into an independent Northwestern African Air Forces under General Carl Spaatz, including a Strategic Air Force under General Jimmy Doolittle and a Tactical Air Force under Coningham, the Allies achieved air superiority in the spring of 1943 and cut the flow of supplies and reinforcements to Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's army in North Africa. Allied commanders had the assistance of ULTRA intercepts, the top secret code-breaking operation, that provided detailed information about German ship and aircraft schedules. Axis armies in Tunisia, numbering 270,000 men, surrendered in May. 24