De Havilland Mosquitos as night
battlefield interdiction aircraft, sometimes having the 'Mossies' bomb and
strafe under the light of flares dropped from North American Mitchell medium
bombers. Later in the European campaign, when the German night air attack menace
had largely disappeared, the AAF used Northrop P-61 Black Widow night fighters
in a similar role. Overall, however, their inability to successfully prosecute
night attacks to the same degree as daytime attacks frustrated air and ground
commanders alike. Bradley's air effects committee noted that there was 'never
enough' night activity to meet the Army's needs.
Intelligence information from Ultra set
up a particularly effective air strike on June 10. German message traffic had
given away the location of the headquarters of Panzergruppe West on June 9, and
the next evening a mixed force of forty rocket-armed Typhoons and sixty-one
Mitchells from 2 TAF struck at the headquarters, located in the Chateau of La
Caine, killing the unit's chief of staff and many of its personnel and
destroying fully 75 percent of its communications equipment as well as numerous
vehicles. At a most critical point in the Normandy battle, then, the Panzer
group, which served as a vital nexus between operating armored forces, was
knocked out of the command, control, and communications loop; indeed, it had to
return to Paris to be reconstituted before resuming its duties a month later.
A Dispirited Rommel
Field Marshal Rommel's reaction to
being pinned to the ground by Allied tactical air was a repetition of the
feelings he had expressed during the dark days of 1942, when scourged by the
Desert Air Force. Already by June 9, Admiral Ruge was writing that 'the air
superiority of the enemy is having the effect the Field Marshal had expected and
predicted: our movements are extremely slow.' The next day, Rommel wrote to his
wife: 'The enemy's air superiority has a very grave effect on our movements.
There's simply no answer to it.' In walks with Ruge, Rommel continued to
complain about the invasion situation, 'especially the lack of air support.'
Ruge concluded that 'utilization of the Anglo-American air force is the modern
type of warfare, turning the flank not from the side but from above.' The
situation turned increasingly bleak. By July 6, during a dinner party, a
'colonel of a propaganda battalion' remarked that soldiers were constantly
asking 'Where is the
