The Operation Overlord Planning - Essay Example

163612 Operation Overlord D Day Did the Allied over-estimations of the level of Air threat have a serious effect on the Operation Overlord planning? The following will outline and discuss the arguments for and against the notion that the Allied planner’s over- estimations of the level of Air threat had a serious effect on the Operation Overlord planning. As a starting point it must be remembered that the military planners tasked with planning Operation Overlord were not blessed with foresight and did not know whether they were under or over estimating the level of the German Air threat to the successful implementation of Operation Overlord. It is also worth remembering that the people who have analysed the Allied military planning for Operation Overlord are blessed with the gift of hindsight, they know that Operation Overlord was a success that contributed to eventual Allied victory. The Second World War was after all the conflict in which Air power came to the fore, military and naval operations launched when air superiority was held were far more likely to succeed than operations carried out whilst an enemy power held air superiority. When a combined military, naval and air operation was as large and as extensive as Operation Overlord, its planners had to consider any potential threats to its success and the Air threat could be considered to be one of the most significant single obstacle to success. It could be argued that Allied over - estimations of the Air threat posed by the Luftwaffe did have a serious effect on the Operation Overlord planning. The Allies believed that the Luftwaffe remained a formidable opponent and therefore a serious and potent Air threat to the successful execution of the plans for Operation Overlord. The Luftwaffe in numerical terms still had thousands of operational aircraft, even if before Operation Overlord was launched, the majority of those aircraft were used upon the Eastern Front and in defending the Third Reich from the Allied strategic bombing campaign.1 For the Allied military planners tasked with making Operation Overlord a successful reality it was worth ensuring that the Allied Air Forces had enough operational aircraft available to establish air superiority over the projected landing areas to avoid a disastrous repulsion of Operation Overlord. Although the warships that were tasked with protecting the troop ships would carry a large complement of anti-aircraft guns they would have found it very difficult to overcome German air strikes against the invasion fleet without their own aircraft providing cover. Besides the landing craft that were needed to ferry the Allied troops to the beaches were the parts of the invasion fleet that would have been particularly vulnerable to any German Air threat. Allied military planners were grudgingly respectful of the Luftwaffe’s fighting prowess, after all German air power had been a major contributory factor in the success of the blitzkrieg campaigns between 1939 and 1942. Those campaigns had allowed the Germans to conquer most of Western Europe, Poland and the Balkans and large areas of the Soviet Union. 2 Allied planners believed that they had to make plans that took into account worst case scenario’s in which the Germans would be able to transfer enough military and Luftwaffe units from the Eastern Front and other sectors to defeat Operation Overlord. The Germans wanted to do so without weakening the Eastern Front to such an extent that the Soviet Union could take advantage by quickening its own advance towards Germany. The over - estimation of the Air threat posed by the Luftwaffe meant Allied military planners requested that the Allied Air Forces would have an overwhelming numerical superiority in order to make successful German resistance impossible3 An over- estimation of the German Air threat by the Allied planners of Operation Overlord had the effect of delaying the invasion of France, yet the delays were arguably more serious for the Soviet Union than for the actual completion of the Operation Overlord plans. For the Soviet Union it was an imperative for the Western Allies to open a second front to force the Germans to transfer forces away from the Eastern Front. The Soviet Union had been forced to do the bulk of the fighting against the Germans on its own territory and suffering horrendous fatalities and destruction. Stalin not unsurprisingly kept requesting Churchill and Roosevelt open the second front at the first practical opportunity. For the military planners responsible for drawing up Operation Overlord to over estimate the German Air threat gave their government feasible excuses for delaying the second front.4 In the end Stalin’s lobbying for a second front paid dividends during the Teheran Conference during 1943 when Churchill and Roosevelt finally agreed to launch the second front during the summer of 1944.5 There are counter arguments that the over-estimation of the German Air threat by Allied planners did not have any serious effects on the planning of Operation Overlord. Rather it was prudent for Allied planners to assume that the German Air threat was a realistic threat to the successful outcome of Operation Overlord. That the Allied planners could believe that the German Air threat had to be considered in the planning for Operation Overlord was down to the remarkable efforts of the German armaments minister Albert Speer in increasing the levels of weapons production and supply. For instance, in 1943 Germany produced around 15,000 more combat planes than Britain did. It was only the phenomenal arms production of the United States that sustained the Allied war effort and meant that the defeat of Germany was just about inevitable. In 1944 alone the United States built well over 90,000 fighters, bombers, and transport aircraft to allow the Allies to advance on all the fronts they were fighting on. The Americans even had the capacity to fight Japan virtually by themselves as well as fighting Germany.6 Speer’s impressive efforts to increase aircraft production were not enough to turn the tide of war back on Germany’s favour or indeed enough to stop the westward advance of the Red Army.7 The potency of the German Air threat was diminished by the fact that although new aircraft could be built, it was harder to train new pilots to be effective against better equipped, better trained and more experienced Allied pilots. Germany’s best military equipment and personnel were lost in great quantities on the Eastern Front, making it much more difficult for the Germans to resist Operation Overlord whenever it was launched.8 The German Air threat was eroded in the latter part of 1943 and in the early months of 1944, which made it harder for Speer to maintain the previously impressive increases in aircraft production. Some of these developments would not have been known by the Allied planners responsible for planning Operation Overlord and that helps to explain their over - estimation of the German Air threat.9 The German Air threat to the successful carrying out of Operation Overlord was reduced by German weaknesses or mistakes, as well as successful or well designed Allied strategies. The head of the Luftwaffe, Herman Goring was more interested in advancing his personal position than ensuring that the Luftwaffe had the most effective and modern aircraft possible. Herman Goring had been largely responsible for the planning of the German economy until 1942 and had been very ineffective at gearing German industrial production to a war time footing. The measures started by Todt and his replacement Speer might have made a difference to Germany’s ability to stay in the war longer if they had been implemented from the outset of the Second World War.10 Adolf Hitler also had an impact on the level of the German Air threat to Operation Overlord, his insistence that bombers and the V1 and V2 rockets were produced as priorities took away invaluable resources from the production of fighters. The Germans were good at developing new types of aircraft such as the jet engine powered Messerschmitt Me 262 yet were unable to build them in enough quantity to challenge air superiority. It was modern fighters that would have been most effective weapons in defending Germany’s industrial infrastructure as well as repulsing the Allied invasion in the West, in combination with armoured regiments on the ground. Of course as the Allied bombing raids got increasingly destructive German arms production began to decline.11 The Allied planners responsible for planning Operation Overlord were in a very strong position of knowing that they would be able to get all the military, naval and aircraft resources or material that they requested. Once the Allies had won the Battle of the Atlantic, their planners were assured of military and aerial superiority over the German forces that were defending the coast of France. Without the U-boats being able to sink the transport ships that brought the men and equipment from the United States and Canada to Britain, all the Germans could do was wait for the invasion to be launched.12 The Germans had the un-solvable dilemma of not having enough weapons and personnel to adequately defend all the territories they had conquered, or indeed Germany itself.13 Despite the rise in the production of German military aircraft, there were still not enough squadrons to defend Germany from Allied bombing raids and to attack Allied invasion forces as soon as they landed. The German High Command decided to keep the bulk of their aircraft in Germany and transfer units to France when those units were needed to repel the Allied invasion. In the event the Germans found it very difficult to send reinforcements in to France, no doubt due to the Allied air forces attacking German reinforcements en route to Normandy.14 The American and British bombing raids on Germany had begun during 1942, yet had originally done little damage to the German war effort.15 However, from the middle of 1943 the American daylight bombing raids in particular became more effective in destroying Germany’s arms industries, transport systems and its fuel facilities. These raids badly damaged the capabilities that the Germans would need most to repulse Operation Overlord, its tank regiments, and its fighter units.16 The Allied planners that drew up the plans for Operation Overlord in a sense did not over-estimate the German Air threat, working with the Allied Air forces they came up with effective strategies to nullify it before Operation Overlord got underway.17 For the Allied planners that drew up the plans for Operation Overlord there were other factors for delaying the date of the invasion besides the over -estimation of the German Air threat. The Allied planners had to consider that Allied forces were not actually ready to launch the invasion of France before the summer of 1944 anyway. It took more than two years to assemble enough men and equipment to ensure that the Allied forces involved would establish a beachhead in to France that the Germans could not defeat.18 The Battle of the Atlantic had delayed the Allied build up for Operation Overlord, yet once the U-boats had been defeated, the Allied invasion became inevitable, its precise timing left to the planners tasked with making it a success.19 Not only did the Allies need to build up a substantial material advantage they needed to give their forces enough training and combat experience to carry out amphibious and airborne operations against formidable German coastal defences. A lack of landing craft, and the need to wait for better weather also delayed the Allies. Added to these considerations, the Allied amphibious landings in North Africa and Italy had demonstrated the effectiveness of German defences even without a sizeable Air threat. The German Army was renowned for its ability to hold on to territory against overwhelming odds, and it would do the same in defending Caen.20 To conclude, the over estimation of the German Air threat had little effect upon the over all planning and strategy of Operation Overlord. The Allied planners did not want to leave anything to chance and therefore made sure that the invading Allied forces had enough firepower to overcome the German defences. The German Air threat had been diluted by Germany’s military decline caused by un-replaceable losses on the Eastern Front, the loss of resources from Allied bombing raids and the retreat from occupied territories. German aircraft production had increased markedly between 1942 and 1944, yet still proved inadequate. The Germans did not have enough aircraft to help slow down the Soviet advances on the Eastern Front, stop the Allied bombing raids on Germany as well as providing a viable Air threat to prevent Operation Overlord succeeding. 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