In the early days of the Tunisian Campaign Allied air
commanders had tried to attack enemy merchantmen in port. They soon found that
the turnaround time of the B-17s was too slow. Poor though the facilities of
the Tunisian ports were, many convoys unloaded and put to sea before a strike
could be mounted. Occasionally, B-17s attacked shipping at sea, but their slow
turnarounds and inaccurate bombing thwarted attempts to catch convoys in
midpassage. B-26 medium bombers attached to the Coastal Air Force therefore
became the chief weapon of the aerial antishipping campaign. The airfields to
support their operations were ready by February 1, 1943, but three weeks of bad
weather over the Strait of Sicily delayed operations. The Marauders almost
always attacked ships at sea because they had suffered heavy losses earlier
when they braved the heavy antiaircraft defenses of Tunis and Bizerte. At first
they employed a skip-bombing technique developed in the Pacific: The flyers
approached their prey abeam and at low altitude, releasing their bombs so that
they caromed from the surface of the sea into the sides of the targeted
vessels. The tactic was at first highly effective, but was defeated when
heavier antiaircraft armament on the merchantmen forced the bombers to attack
from about 10,000 feet. From this altitude bombing accuracy was abysmal. The
aviators then resorted to attacking in staggered flights at low and medium
altitudes in an attempt to divide and confuse the antiaircraft gunners. These
attacks, one pilot recalled, were “never entirely successful.” Toward the close
of the campaign a weakening of antiaircraft fire permitted a return to skip
bombing; at this stage, the weakness of the Luftwaffe permitted employing as
dive bombers the P-38s originally detailed to escort the B-26s. The B- 26s were
aided by British aircraft from Malta, which now used against Tunisia-bound
convoys the deadly skills they had honed attacking the Libyan convoys. Royal
Air Force Malta, which had been placed under Tedder’s operational control, used
two kinds of aircraft for antishipping operations: the Albacore torpedo-bomber
and the versatile Beaufighter.
Despite the difficulties posed by antiaircraft fire and a
late start, the antishipping campaign was eminently successful in reducing the
flow of supplies to Heeresgruppe Afrika. The Allies learned from ULTRA that of
all the merchantmen that set sail for Tunisia in March, nearly half had been
sunk-but a fifth had been lost in February. Because of the shortage of ships
and general derangement of its logistical system, during the critical months of
March and April the Axis was able to load only 140,572 tons of supplies for
Tunisia. This equates to a barely adequate average monthly shipment of 70,286
tons, which was then subjected to a frightful loss rate. In April, 41.5 percent
of all cargos were lost. This was slightly less than the percentage lost in
March, but in April only 29,233 tons of supplies reached Tunisia-March’s figure
had been 43,125. Of the vessels lost in these months, aircraft claimed about
two-thirds. By the end of April, Admiral Friedrich Ruge, sent to Rome to
expedite the flow of supplies to Africa, had come to agree with the conclusion
reached some time before by the Italian Navy-that the losses on the run to
Tunisia had become so great that they could no longer be justified by
Heeresgruppe Afrika’s slim chance for survival. Berlin, however, continued to
insist on throwing good money after bad.
The effect of the curtailed flow of supplies on the German
and Italian forces in Tunisia was great. Even before the interdiction campaign
became effective, their logistical position was weak. On February 13, Rommel’s
quartermaster reported that he had not received enough supplies to cover
consumption; the shortage of ammunition was critical when the attack through
the Kasserine Pass began the next day. With the beginning of serious
interdiction in late February, the logistical position of the Axis’ armies grew
steadily worse. In early March, Rommel was still able to mount the Axis’ last
offensive of the campaign. He struck at the advancing Eighth Army near
Medenine, only to be repelled with heavy losses in tanks. Thereafter, the
fortunes of Heeresgruppe Afrika declined rapidly. By the end of March,
Montgomery had outflanked the Mareth Line, forcing the Germans to retreat north
up the coast and to yield the ports of Sousse and Sfax. At this point the
ailing Rommel left Africa, never to return. Von Arnim succeeded him as
commaqder of Heeresgruppe Afrika. On the western front the First Army began a
sustained offensive that by March 17 succeeded in capturing Gafsa. Not far from
there, the two Allied armies linked up on April 7; four days later the First
Italian Army joined the Fifth Panzerarmee. As the Tunisian Campaign entered its
last month the forces of the Axis were completely hemmed in a small bridgehead
defined by a front that stretched 100 miles from Cape Serrat just west of
Bizerte to Enfidaville southeast of Tunis.
Heeresgruppe Afrika lacked the fuel and ammunition to
counter the final Allied offensive. It reported on March 28 that it had
entirely depleted its reserves of both commodities. On April 1 the
quartermaster described the logistical situation as “very bad.” On April 10 the
Allies intercepted a message that told of an armored division that for want of
fuel had abandoned its equipment and retreated on foot.
From the earliest days of the Tunisian Campaign, the Germans
had attempted to compensate for their inadequate supply of shipping by the
extensive use of air transport. Nine groups of Ju 52 transports-468 aircraft-
carried urgently needed supplies, particularly fuel and ammunition. They were
aided by thirty large six-engine Me 323 transports. On some days as many as 585
tons were ferried across the Strait of Sicily, although the average appears to
have been close to 172 tons a day. The Allies knew the details of the airlift
from ULTRA, but the same problems that delayed antishipping operations stayed
action against the German airlift. Strategic considerations dictated further
delay. The assault upon the aerial convoys, Operation FLAX, was planned in
early February but not implemented until April. FLAX was a card that could not
be played more than a few times, as shown by the relative impunity with which
the surviving Axis transports operated at night after the trap had been sprung.
The flight time across the Strait of Sicily was so short that interception
could be made only with precise intelligence. The Germans, understanding this
but not knowing that their codes had been compromised, operated by day. Since
their enemy had the option of flying by night, the Allies delayed
implementation of FLAX until the most German transport aircraft were in
operation so that the blow would be as decisive as possible. They also wanted
to destroy the transports when they were most needed, and therefore timed FLAX
to coincide with both a high point of the antishipping campaign and the final
assault on Tunis.
The transport aircraft were mostly based at fields near
Naples and Palermo; a few staged from Bari and Reggio di Calabria. Flights
usually began at Naples and proceeded after stops in Sicily to the main
Tunisian terminals, Sidi Ahmed and El Aouina. Occasional flights went directly
to Tunisia, picking up their escorting fighters over Sicily.68 FLAX called for
fighters to intercept the aerial convoys over the strait. There were also
bombing attacks on the overcrowded staging fields in Sicily and unusually ambitious
antishipping sweeps. On April 6 P-38s intercepted a large formation of Ju 52s a
few miles from the Tunisian coast while bombers attacked airfields in Sicily
and Tunisia. Further attacks on aerial convoys followed on April 10, 11, 18,
and 19. These resulted in the destruction of about 123 Ju 52s and 4 Italian SM
82s. On April 22 an entire convoy of twenty-one Me 323s was destroyed; two of
these giants had been destroyed earlier for a total loss of twenty-three.
Thereafter reduced numbers of Ju 52s flew at night. FLAX dealt the German air
transport fleet a blow from which it never recovered-and ended Heeresgruppe
Afrikds last chance for any significant resupply of its rapidly dwindling
supply of fuel.
Having been prevented by logistical problems from employing
the strategy that might have permitted a prolonged stand in Africa,
Heeresgruppe Afrika was in its last days hard put to defend itself at all
because of crippling shortages of ammunition and, especially, of fuel. Near the
end, von Arnim had been able to move his headquarters only because of the
providential discovery of a drum of aviation gasoline on a beach flotsam,
presumably, from one of FLAX’S victims. He surrendered himself and his army on
May 12, having with his own hands set fire to his headquarters caravan.
The Tunisian Campaign affords a clear example of the
decisive importance of logistics in modern warfare. In Tunisia, and North
Africa generally, the Axis had usually prevailed when it met its foes on
anything like equal terms. Heeresgruppe Afrika was neither outfought nor
outgeneraled; starved of supplies, it yielded at length to the superior numbers
of a lavishly equipped enemy. “The final decision was fought out on the
ground,” a German study concluded, “but the effect of the air war on supplies
and morale had already determined the outcome of the battle.” As Kesselring had
foreseen, supply had indeed been “everything.”
The great success of the Allies in Tunisia had several
consequences. It represented a triumph for the three-stage concept of aerial
operations that the British had developed in the eastern desert. For the rest
of the war, the basic pattern for Allied combined arms offensives remained air
superiority, interdiction, and close air support for the ground forces. Tunisia
also saw final acceptance of the idea that the control of air power in a
theater of operations should reside in a single commander, equal in authority
to the ground commander with whom he worked closely in executing the plans of
the theater commander. This organizational conception, together with the
three-stage concept of aerial operations, was in the summer of 1943 written
into FM 100-20, Command and Employment of Air Power, which many airmen regarded
as a virtual charter of independence from the ground forces.
So powerful an argument was the victory in Tunisia for the
centralization of air power and the coequal status of air commanders with those
of the ground forces, that some American airmen came perilously close to
attributing the Allied victory in Northwest Africa entirely to the triumph of
their views in the reorganizations of December 1942 through February 1943. But
however fruitful the organizational changes of February 1943 might have been,
the primary reasons for the success of Allied interdiction are to be found
elsewhere. The material advantage of the Allied air forces was ultimately so
crushing that it is difficult to see how the Anglo-Americans could have failed
once they dealt with their problems of inadequate supply and improved their
airfields. The Axis’ logistical system was inherently inadequate. Too few
suitable ships remained to Italy by 1943 to support Tunisia adequately; the
loss of a comparatively small number of vessels therefore quickly pitched
Heeresgruppe Afrika into logistical crisis. There was, moreover, a strategic
asymmetry between belligerents that greatly favored the Allied side: The Axis’
supply lines were open to attack while those of the Allies were virtually
exempt because of Germany’s lack of strategic bombers. The Anglo-Americans were
therefore able to go on the offensive even before they had general air
superiority over Tunisia. The Luftwaffe was forced to divide and redivide its
aircraft in an ultimately futile attempt to protect convoys, ports, and
airfields from a foe who could usually concentrate his aircraft to win local
air superiority. From ULTRA, finally, Tedder and his colleagues had essentially
complete information about the movements of the enemy’s convoys through the
constricted channels in the minefields of the Strait of Sicily.
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