Abstract
On 8 November 1942, a week after the victory at El Alamein, Anglo-American forces, commanded by General Dwight Eisenhower, invaded Northwest Africa in operation ‘Torch’. Planning by a combined British-American staff began in London during July 1942, but air support did not receive proper attention.1 Neither the ground nor air forces from the United States or Britain received much air support training. The 33 U.S. Fighter Group that landed at Port Lyautey, for example, was trained for the air defence of the United States.2 More importantly, neither the RAF nor the USAAF had adopted the air support system developed in the desert, nor developed an effective one of their own. Thus, Allied air forces failed to provide air support with any effect during the first four months following ‘Torch’.
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Notes
David R. Mets, “A Glider in the Propwash of the Royal Air Force?”, Daniel Mortensen (ed.), Airpower and Ground Armies, (Maxwell AFB Alabama: Air University Press, 1998), 48.
H.H. Arnold, Global Mission, (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949), 379;
Daniel R. Mortensen, A Pattern For Joint Operations: World War II Close Air Support North Africa, (Washington D.C., Office of Air Force History, 1989).
David Ian Hall, “The Birth of the Tactical Air Force: British Theory and Practice of Air Support in the West, 1939–1943”, D.Phil. thesis from the University of Oxford, 1996, Chapter 9, 28–9.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, (New York: Doubleday, 1948), 27,
also Martin Blumenson, The Patton Papers, Volume II, 1940–1945, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974), 79.
George C. Marshall, The Papers of George Catlett Marshall, Vol.3, ed. Larry I. Bland, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1991), 158.
J.R.M. Butler, Grand Strategy, Vol.3, Part II, (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1964), 675.
Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance, (Boston: Houghton, 1950), 646.
Maurice Matloff and Edwin M. Snell, Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1941–1942, (Washington: Department of the Army, 1953), 196.
J.C. Masterman, The Double Cross System in the War of 1939–1945, (New Haven: 1972), pp.109–10, also see Denis Smyth, “Screening ‘Torch’: Allied Counterintelligence and the Spanish Threat to the Secrecy of the Allied Invasion of North Africa in November 1942”, Intelligence and National Security, Vol.4, No.2, (1989), and John C. Beam, “The Intelligence Back-ground to Operation Torch”, Parameters: The Journal of the U.S. Army War College, Vo1.XIII, No.4, December 1983.
George F. Howe, Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West, Vol.II, Part 1 of The United States Anny in World War II, (Washington D.C., Department of the Army, 1957), 40; LHCMA Papers of Major General F. Davidson File No.50 Visit by DMI Section VI, undated.
Lieutenant Colonel Chandler and Colonel R.W. Robb, Front-Line Intelligence, (Washington: Infantry Journal Press, 1946), 145.
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© 2009 Brad William Gladman
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Gladman, B.W. (2009). Air Support during Operation ‘Torch’. In: Intelligence and Anglo-American Air Support in World War Two. Studies in Military and Strategic History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230595125_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230595125_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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