Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Piercing the Fog
buildup to contest OVERLORD. Contributing to the German failure to reinforce
the Normandy battlefront was a successful deception effort that completely
misled German intelligence as to the possibility of another landing. Considerable
squabbling between the airmen and those advocating landing on the
continent centered on the question of how best to isolate the battlefield. Should
the brunt of attack be on marshaling yards or on bridges and other choke points?
The benefits accrued by either approach are still not entirely clear today. What
is clear is that Allied air forces possessed sufficient strength and knowledge to
pursue both. By late May, the railroads in the west of France were in a state of
complete collapse,53 leading to the Germans’ difficulty in building up to meet
the invasion and support the battle of attrition. Throughout the period, ULTRA
decrypts indicated to Allied air commanders the extent of damage to the French
railways.54 Photoreconnaissance also revealed the extent to which tactical and
strategic air attacks had closed supply routes. The aerial interdiction effort in
Normandy succeeded far beyond a similar effort in Italy because of the
enormous battle of attrition that occurred with the relentless pressure exercised
by the Allied armies seeking a breakout.
In early fall, the success of the Normandy interdiction effort led Eisenhower’s
deputy, Air Marshal Tedder, to suggest an equivalent campaign to
destroy the Reich’s transportation system. Tedder ran into substantial
opposition from both Air Marshal Arthur T. “Bomber” Harris and Spaatz.
Nevertheless, some of the strategic bombing effort bled over into the transportation
plan. Bomber Command’s main targets were the German population
centers, and in the heart of most German cities were located the railway stations
and marshaling yards for theReichsbahn (the German railways). Spaatz agreed
to support Tedder’s plan when bad weather obscured the oil targets and the
Eighth could not execute precision bombing attacks.
While considerable information was available on the impact that Allied air
attacks had on the French transportation system, air intelligence underutilized
ULTRA. In February 1945, a review of ULTRA information, initiated by Air Vice
Marshal Norman H. Bottomley, the FUF’s Deputy Chief of Air Staff, indicated
that the Combined Strategic Targets Committee had systematically suppressed
ULTRA data on the Reichsbahn and on the German economy, intelligence that
underlined the extent of the enemy’s diffi~ulties.~~ One relevant message,
unused since its decryption in October 1944, indicated that by that date, due to
transportation destruction and bottlenecks, “from 30 to 50 percent of all
[factories] in West Germany were at a ~tandstill.”~~ As one historian of the
attack on the German transportation network has suggested:
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Only when the weather improved in January 1945, when it was realized
that ULTRA had unlocked important secrets, when Upper Silesia was
overrun . . . only then were the paralysis of the Reichsbahn and the coal
famine perceived and a new consensus formed behind the transportation
campaign. Ultimately, after much misunderstanding, segments of the