Turning the Tide

 When you think about the USAAF in WW2, you rarely think about the Mediterranean. However, it was here that many American pilots learned their trade and played a vital, yet often overlooked, role in the campaign. I have therefore been looking forward to this new Osprey book by Thomas Cleaver on the USAAF in North Africa and Sicily. It is a complete-length book, not an Osprey MAA or similar.

The early deployment of USAAF B-24 bombers to Palestine enabled the bombing of the Romanian oilfields. It wasn't a great success, mainly due to poor weather, and four returning aircraft were forced down in Turkey, three near the capital at Ankara and one at Izmir, due to fuel shortage and battle damage. You can see the remains of a later USAAF bomber (fished out of the sea) in an Istanbul museum today (see below). The Turkish Air Force eventually acquired enough US bombers to create their own Squadron.

Operation Torch brought significant USAAF assets to the Mediterranean despite differences between Churchill and the US leadership over his 'soft underbelly' strategy. The USAAF also regarded this theatre as a diversion from building up their strength in Britain for the bombing offensive. However, Roosevelt issued a direct order, and various fighters were deployed, including P-38s and P-40s. Two fighter groups also used the Spitfire in a reverse lend-lease operation. 

The author covers each of the operations in some detail. It is challenging to write operational air war history in a way that keeps the reader's attention. However, pilot memoirs are effective in breaking up the text. American air units arrived just before El Alamein, helping the Western Desert Air Force to victory. For example, the 65th Squadron had its baptism of air combat when it got into a fight with 20 Bf-109s over El Alamein. First Lieutenant Arnold D. Jaquan, in a P-40F, made the Squadron's first claims for one Bf-109 destroyed and a second damaged.

While the book focuses on the USAAF, its opponents are addressed. There is a good chapter on the Italian Air Force's shortcomings and the regular deployments of high-quality Luftwaffe units. The Vichy aircraft are not ignored.

There is an interesting discussion about the deployment of air support. The US Field manual held that air support must be subordinated to ground force needs. A headquarters memo issued in October 1942, stating a policy that aircraft should not be “frittered away” on unimportant targets but rather “reserved for concentration in overwhelming attack upon important objectives,” had not solved the problem. At Kasserine, there was a shift from tank-busting missions to more effective missions against airfields, infantry concentrations, and soft-skinned vehicles. Eisenhower eventually embraced the new philosophy, partly because he had lost confidence in Fredendall, who had been the leading proponent of tying the air forces to specific ground forces.

The USAAF learned to walk and then to run in the Mediterranean. The success of Operation Overlord would not have been possible without the lessons learned in battle over the North African desert and Sicily during the 12 months when the tide turned in World War II.

Slightly outside the timescale of this book, the use of US airpower in this theatre was also the cause of a major bust-up between Churchill and Eisenhower. This was over the deployment of long-range P38 fighters to support Churchill's folly, the Dodecanese adventure. It is a pity he stopped at Sicily, as it would have been interesting to get his take on this controversy. 

No P-38s but here is the opposition for Blood Red Skies