mained standing in plain view. Perhaps
the 'Desert Fox' was subconsciously attempting to offset, by this theatrical (if
foolhardy) gesture, the crushing Allied air advantage that he knew was deployed
against the German forces.
On April 27, forty days before the
invasion. Admiral Ruge confided in his diary that he found the disparity between
the Luftwaffe and the Allied air forces 'humiliating.' By May 12, he was
reporting 'massive' air attacks, though troops often exaggerated the amount of
actual damage. On the 30th, with 'numerous aircraft above us, none of them
German,' Ruge narrowly missed being bombed into the Seine by a raid that dropped
the bridge at Gaillon. At 0135 on June 6, as Ruge and other senior staff
officers regaled themselves with tales of the Kaiser's army and real and
imagined conditions around the world, the German Seventh Army reported Allied
parachutists landing on the Cotentin peninsula. Overlord was underway. Time had
run out for Rommel, and the countdown to the ignominy of the bunker in Berlin
had begun.
Assembling the Allied Tactical Air Forces
As Overlord embarked upon its
preparatory phase, tactical air power increasingly came into play. Two great
tactical air forces existed to support the ground forces in the invasion-the
AAF's Ninth Air Force and the RAF's Second Tactical Air Force. Both were under
the overall command of Royal Air Force Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford
Leigh-Mallory. In addition, of course, Elsenhower and his ground commanders
could call upon strategic aviation as required, in the form of the AAF's Eighth
Air Force and Great Britain's Bomber Command.
In June 1944 the Ninth Air Force
consisted of several commands, including the IX Fighter Command. The IX Fighter
Command in turn spawned two Tactical Air Commands, the IX TAC and the XIX TAC.
IX TAC had three fighter wings, and the XIX TAC had two. Each of these fighter
wings contained at least three-and usually four-fighter groups, a group
typically consisting of three fighter squadrons. Of the two, IX TAC was the
'heavy'; it could muster no less than eleven fighter groups, while the XIX TAC
could muster seven. From late 1943 to early 1944, IX Fighter Command had served
primarily as a training headquarters, under the command of Brig. Gen. Elwood
Quesada. Eventually Quesada assumed command of the IX TAC, and Brig. Gen. Otto
P. Opie Weyland took
