Tactician on Top

(See Cover)

In England tactical air force men examined a piece of paper and grinned. It was a captured German instruction sheet for towing strings of bicycles behind trucks. It told them nothing new. But it was an intimate proof of how well the greatest tactical air operation in history was working.

U.S. and British flyers, under a unified command, had not only cut off the battle field of northwestern France from the rest of Europe. They had also made it a place where the Germans' rolling stock could move only by night, where by day tanks, trucks and railroad trains were so efficiently spotted and bombed that no rapid movement could be attempted, no threatened spot reinforced.

Tactical airmen, whose task is to blaze the way for troops on the ground, knew by now that they had done a job which would be a textbook model for all time. This pleased none of them more than their commander, big, brisk, breezy Air Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham, R.A.F. For three years Air Marshal Coningham had set the pace for the trade.

He was the first to break from the tight, rigid pattern set by the Germans in Poland and the first French campaign. With his U.S. opposite numbers he had widened and deepened the art of making openings for the infantry and supporting troops until it also insured them against any substantial interference from enemy air operation.

Now in France ground soldiers' eyes popped at the perfection of the job that was being done for them.

Now the Germans were learning, as their fellow sufferers had learned on the Eastern Front, that retreat for an army without air cover is an inferno, that no devils in hell could be worse than the pursuer's ground-hugging planes, stabbing and jabbing with cannon, rockets, frag mentation bombs and machine guns.

On one road a mile-long column of German vehicles traveling bumper to bump er was caught by Allied attack planes, which smashed or burned nearly every one. In Washington, Secretary Stimson declared that the amount of wrecked or abandoned German transport in some places was actually hampering Allied prog ress. Mr. Stimson added with a twinkle in his eye that this was a kind of delay "to which our ground forces could be easily reconciled."

Bow to the Heavies. The Luftwaffe was almost down & out. For that, Air Marshal Coningham and his tactical flyers were glad to yield most of the credit to Lieut. General Carl ("Tooey") Spaatz's strategic heavy bombers and their fighter escorts. The strategic crews had taken on the Luftwaffe in the air and smashed it in its factories on the ground. They had cut it down -- at considerable cost to themselves -- to the point where it could only rise intermittently and over the most vital objectives.

Coningham's Marauders and other tac tical bombers had helped by blasting Nazi airfields in France; but up to D-day the strategic forces' drumbeat of destruction all over Hitler's Europe had held the spotlight. Last week the heavies were still hammering at the inner fortress (Hanover, Madgeburg, Brunswick, Ludwigshafen, etc.) in 1,000-plus bomber raids. But, with invasion, the spotlight had shifted to the agile, swooping air forces that worked with the ground armies. The heavy bombers had softened up the Reich with body blows--now it was tactical's job to help the Allied armor and infantry deliver the knockout punch to the jaw.

A Few Chores. Before invasion, Coningham's units had some inconspicuous but important chores to do, of which one was reconnaissance. In April and May, his reconnaissance crews roamed the beaches and the Channel between Cher bourg and Le Havre, filming every land mark, prying out hidden gun positions, charting the ugly underwater obstacles which lay bare at low tide. The Nazis' radiolocation positions on the coast were ferreted out (partly, of course, through Intelligence) and smashed so thoroughly by attack bombers that the defenders were unaware of the approaching invasion fleet almost up to H-hour.

Another chore was what is called, in tactical air manuals, "isolation of the battlefield." In theory, this means cutting the enemy's communication lines around the battlefield perimeter so that he is unable to supply or reinforce his units in the combat area.

In practice, that job has never been done perfectly. The U.S. Twelfth Air Force in Italy came creditably close to perfection with the "Operation Strangle" (TIME, May 8) designed by Major General John K. ("Uncle Joe") Cannon--long since ranked by insiders as one of the world's great air tacticians. The strangle paralyzed Nazi rail transport above Rome, paved the way for breaking the Anzio and Cassino stalemates.

In France, Coningham's air forces also did a crack job of "isolation" with their bridge work on the Seine and the Loire. Among the widest and deepest in France, these two rivers are only 70 miles apart between Paris and Orleans. Diverging to the west, they form a wedge enclosing most of Normandy and all of Brittany. If General Eisenhower chose the coastal part of the wedge for his invasion--as he did--the Germans counted on some 60 rail and highway bridges across the two rivers for bringing reinforcements into the wedge from elsewhere in France.

But on D-minus-10, Allied tactical bombers (including some planes and crews borrowed from Tooey Spaatz) began a systematic working-over of the bridges, destroyed or made unserviceable about 75% of them. Though not a perfect seal-off, it made hash of Nazi plans for troop and supply movements. Making due allowance for dissension and overcaution in the Nazi command, that bridge-breaking may have been the main reason why the Germans never launched an all-out counterattack to drive the invaders into the sea.

Umbrella Switch. On Dday, Coningham expected the Luftwaffe, which had been hoarding its last ounces of strength, to throw everything it had left against the invasion fleet. The Allied air commanders had made an estimate of the amount of Luftwaffe opposition expected. When only 20% of this expected strength turned out for a fight, Coningham was surprised. He promptly switched a sizable part of his defensive umbrella to offensive operations and the Germans quickly found what it was like to fight against total air superiority.

Coningham's command responsibility on the Western Front covers two tactical air forces: the British Second, which he commands himself, and the U.S. Ninth, headed by Lieut. General Lewis H. Brereton, whose rough buccaneering spirit Coningham readily understands and approves. Brereton's Ninth is not only larger than the. Second; in number of planes and men, it is the biggest air force in Europe. This fact would make Coningham's position somewhat delicate, if he did not have a talent for friendly collaboration. He gets along famously with Brereton, who speaks his mind bluntly in conferences, and sometimes joshes Coningham on the amount of paper work which his greater responsibility entails. They work together with the easy good humor of a doubles team at tennis--now groomed for their greatest tournament.

Dark Hair to Grey. Sir Arthur Coningham has top qualifications for his command. R.A.F. crews who have fought under his guidance swear that he is the greatest tactical commander that ever pranged a Jerry; air experts generally agree that he is the best Britain has produced. Beyond all doubt he is the most experienced. For three years he has held a continuous operational command, longer than any other high-ranking British airman.

When Coningham arrived in North Africa three years ago to fight Britain's air war in the desert, his hair was still dark, almost black. Now, at 49, it is silver grey. But he has never lost an atom of his bouncing confidence, overflowing energy, infectious good humor. While ground commanders replaced one another as their fortunes ebbed & flowed along the Mediterranean shores, Coningham stayed on as the R.A.F. chief in the field.

In 1941 no British airman had a clear idea of what a tactical air force was supposed to do. Coningham, who had left a heavy-bomber post in Britain, was flexible enough to learn. He took over seven battered squadrons of Hurricanes and lumbering Blenheims from Air Vice Marshal Raymond Collishaw, whose motto had been "Let's fox 'em." That idea did not suit Coningham. He knew that Jerry had to be slugged out of the air.

Like his boss, General Montgomery, he was full of toplofty contempt for the Germans. He conceded that some German airmen in the desert were good, but considered most of them "poor stuff . . . incredible hoots." He called the then celebrated Stuka dive bomber an "overrated crate"--which it was.

But he cast no aspersions on the Nazis' courage: "No one in his senses would call the Germans cowards as long as they've got their machines." And he paid his tribute to the efficacy of their dirty fighting: "The Germans have been brought up to be nasty to people. We've been brought up to be gentlemen, and that's been a handicap to us in fighting this war. We've got to learn to give up being gentlemen for the duration."

Schooling in the Desert. Coningham learned a good deal from the desert Luftwaffe. He learned more from his own experiments. He learned something about the relation of tactics to overall strategy from the brilliant strategic mind of prim, quiet Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder (now Eisenhower's Deputy Commander in Chief), top Allied air commander in the Mediterranean theater when the Germans were finally cleared out of Africa.

Coningham invented the tactic of sending out small bomber formations with inordinately powerful fighter escorts--e.g., 80 fighters for 18 bombers. The escorts would so chew up the enemy fighter strength that smaller escorts were enough for protection thereafter, and bomber missions could be multiplied.

One thing Coningham learned in Africa was that an air force can be too air-minded. The Luftwaffe itself was ground-minded, completely controlled by Rommel, who tied it close to his artillery and tanks. On the other hand, Coningham's friendly and sometimes casual get-togethers with ground commanders were too loose. He went after closer integration (he dislikes the word "cooperation") with the ground forces, got it through Monty, with whom he ate, alongside whom he set up his quarters. It was Monty who uttered the doctrine: "We have one plan, one idea in mind. There is no army on one hand and air force on the other. We work as a unit."

Both he and Coningham soon agreed on a further principle which put them ahead of the German tactics: though a tactical air force must be integrated with the ground forces, it must not be tied in piecemeal lots to ground units. Its function was massed, theater-wide blows, deep penetrations to fill the gap between tactical and strategic operations. Tactical planes were even used to cut off the enemy's Mediterranean Sea traffic.

Completing the Alphabet. General Eisenhower took over three separate U.S. and R.A.F. tactical air forces in North Africa. He soon made them one, and put Coningham in command. Long before, grinning and folding his hairy arms on his chest, Coningham had said: "The Germans know war from A to about Y. They don't know Z." Now he proceeded to teach them something about Z.

Rommel had a concentration of guns, armor and Italians at El Hamma. Coningham turned loose nearly every medium and light bomber in North Africa on the still-cocky Nazi. For two and a half hours, sticks of bombs were continuously in the air. At the end of the breakthrough and the pursuit, Rommel had lost 300 tanks and vehicles, and his armored back was finally broken.

More light on Z followed for the Germans when Coningham again used his whole force to bomb Tunis. It was the payoff. Tunis surrendered in 48 hours. He considers this his best tactical performance up to the Normandy invasion.

"Redoubtable Warrior." Arthur Coningham is over six feet tall, and built to scale. Sleek, urbane, convivial, popular, he does not smoke, drinks practically nothing (an occasional sherry, gin-&-bitters or small whiskey with meals). Win ston Churchill once referred to him as "no mere technician but a redoubtable warrior."

Arthur's father, a keen Australian cricketer with flowing blond mustaches, walked out on his team during an England v. Australia Test Match to attend the birth of his son in 1895. Arthur was born in Brisbane, but grew up and was educated in New Zealand, prefers to be known as a New Zealander. "Lloyd George," he says, "is known as a Welshman, yet he was born in Manchester." Coningham's odd nickname, "Mary," is a corruption of Maori, which means a New Zealand aborigine. In the service of a country whose red-blooded he-men are often Cyrils, Cuthberts, Clarences and Vivians, he does not mind being called "Mary." But he strenuously objected to a newspaper article which said he was "a scholarly type." He exploded: "I'm not a scholar -- I'm an athlete." During the battle of Alamein he took a swim every morning before breakfast. He plays golf (left-handed), shoots, sails. In 1932 he married a girl who had raced sailboats against him for years. His wife is now as busy as he is; she looks after Empire troops on leave in London. They have one daughter, now eleven.

A Plane for a Horse. On the first day of World War I, Coningham enlisted as an infantryman. Later he bought a horse, joined a cavalry outfit and went to Egypt. There he caught dysentery and enteric, dropped in weight from 170 to 98 lbs., was invalided home. Well again after six months, he went to England, joined the Royal Flying Corps, won the Military Cross and the D.S.O. during a single month. He stayed on in the Royal Air Force after the war, won the Air Force Cross in 1925 for leading a 5,600-mile flight of three De Havillands from Cairo to Nigeria.

In Africa, in World War II, he lived in a trailer with red carpeting, blue doors, curtains. For a while after Tunisia was cleared of the Axis, he lived in a palatial villa, where the King and Queen visited him and Winston Churchill paddled in the pool. Now he lives and works in a London house with his aide and two staff officers. He breakfasts on a cup of tea, holds his morning conference at eight sharp.

Always interested in the next new thing, Coningham is in constant touch with aircraft designers, technicians, manufacturers. The next big thing, he says, will be jet-propelled fighters. "They are going to make our present fighters as obsolete as the monoplane made the biplane."

Some weeks ago, when the Allies were still stalled in Normandy, air-force joke-smiths circulated a cartoon entitled "This Too?"--depicting a couple of Mosquito bombers towing tanks across a wheat field. A junior officer on Coningham's staff scrutinized the cartoon, grinned, said: "We'd better not show it to the chief. He'd want to try it."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.