chambers and bomb shackles, dropped his
belly tank on 12 trucks and left them all in flames.
All told, on 13 August, XIX TAC
fighter-bombers destroyed or damaged more than 1,000 road and rail vehicles, 45
tanks and armored vehicles, and 12 locomotives. Inside the pocket they reduced
10 enemy delaying-action strong points to rubble.
Four days later another Thunderbolt
squadron, below-strength, flew over a huge traffic jam, radioed for assistance,
'and soon the sky was so full of British and American fighter-bombers that they
had to form up in queues to make their bomb runs.' The next day, 36th Group
Thunderbolts spotted another large German formation, marked out by yellow
artillery smoke. Since the vehicles were in a zone designated as a British
responsibility, XIX TAC sat back 'disconsolately' while 2 TAF launched a series
of strikes that claimed almost 3,000 vehicles damaged or destroyed. On August
19, one Spitfire wing put in a claim for 500 vehicles destroyed or damaged in a
single day; that same day, another Spitfire wing claimed 700.
The Corridor of Death
Nothing and no one was
immune from attack. Colonel Heinz-Gunther Guderian, son of the victor of Sedan,
was seriously wounded when his Volkswagen was strafed and set ablaze by an
Allied fighter. Major General von Gersdorff was strafed and slightly wounded by
a P-38 Lightning at Chambois, and he subsequently reported that 'The very strong
low flying attacks . . . caused high losses .... units of the Army were almost
entirely destroyed by low flying attacks and artillery.' One country road
eastward from Moissy earned the grim sobriquet Ie Couloir de la Mort: the
Corridor of Death. At night, intruder aircraft attacked river crossings and
ferries over the Dives. At least 10,000 German soldiers died, and 50,000 fell
prisoner. Nearly 350 tanks and self-propelled guns, nearly 2,500 other vehicles,
and over 250 artillery pieces had been lost in the northern section alone of the
Falaise pocket. Von Gersdorff stated that armored divisions that did withdraw
from the gap had 'extremely low' strength. For example, the 1 SS Panzer had only
'weak infantry' and no tanks or artillery; the 2 Panzer had one battalion, no
tanks, and no artillery; the 12 SS Panzer had 300 troops and no tanks; the 116
Panzer had two battalions, twelve tanks, and two artillery batteries; and the 21
