strafed him, killing his driver,
wounding a passenger, and causing their car to plunge off the road, out of
control. Rommel, thrown out, narrowly escaped death from a fractured skull. With
that, the Desert Fox's war effectively ended. He returned to Germany for
treatment and recuperation, dying by his own hand that October when
implicated-rightly or wrongly-in the officers' plot to assassinate Hitler, a
plot that tragically went awry. Allied tactical air had removed from command the
German commander best suited by experience and leadership to oppose the ground
forces building up to the breakout from the Normandy lodgement area.
The Heavy Bomber in Air Support
Once ashore at Normandy, the Allies
experienced a serious setback from the terrain. Farmers' fields were bordered by
thick hedgerows, a bocage that proved a natural boon to German defenders,
affording them cover while forcing the Allies to follow predictable paths of
advance around it. One of the most difficult problems of hedgerow fighting was
preventing tanks from riding up over the hedge and exposing their vulnerable
undersides to antitank fire. The solution was disarmingly simple. An inventive
sergeant fitted 'tusks' to the prow of a tank, which pinned the tank to the
hedge and held it in place as the engine punched it through in a shower of dirt.
This 'absurdly simple' device (in Bradley's words) freed the Army's armored
forces for a fast-moving mobile breakout across France.
Any breakout from the lodgement area
would require the insightful and creative use of air power, including bomber
aircraft such as the American B-17 and B-24 and the British Halifax and
Lancaster operating in a troop-support role. Altogether there were six major
raids by heavy bombers in support of breakout operations in Normandy. The first
of these involved 457 Halifax and Lancaster bombers from RAF Bomber Command on
July 7, in support of Montgomery's assault on Caen. The second was an even
larger raid by 1,676 heavy bombers and 343 light and medium bombers on July 18.
On the 25th, American bombers of the Eighth and Ninth Air Forces struck at
Saint-Lo, preparatory to the First Army's breakout. A fourth attack on the 30th
supported the Second British Army south of Caumont. Then an Anglo-American raid
on August 7-8 supported the attack of the First Canadian Army toward Falaise
