Bill Yenne - Operation Cobra and the Great Offensive: Sixty Days That Changed the Course of World War II

Praise for the military writing of Bill Yenne

SUPERFORTRESS:
The Story of the B-29 and American Air Power
in World War II
(with Gen. Curtis F. LeMay)

An eloquent tribute.

Publishers Weekly

This fascinating volume should be a welcome addition to any airmans library.

Air Force magazine

An invaluable statement on American airpower, as well as a fascinating history of a remarkable aircraft.

Edward Jablonski, author of America in the Air

BLACK 41:
The West Point Class of 1941 and
the American Triumph in WWII

A uniquely vivid tapestry of an American experience.

Michael J. L. Greene, Brigadier General, US Army, Retired

Sixty Days That Changed the Course of
World War II

BILL YENNE

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An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS

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Copyright 2004 by Bill Yenne

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ISBN: 0-7434-5882-6
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First Pocket Books printing January 2004

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Cover illustrations by Bill Yenne; photos from the collection of
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A good battle plan that you act on today can be better than a perfect one tomorrow. Nobody ever defended anything successfully. There is only attack and attack, and attack some more.

Field Marshal Gnther von Kluge, commander, German Army Group B

As a result of the breakthrough of the enemy armored spearheads, the whole Western Front has been ripped wide open.

General George S. Patton Jr. commander, United States Third Army

1. Official military style states that arabic numerals are used to denote all units except:

   1. Allied and German numbered armies and USAAF numbered air forces, which are spelled out.

   2. Allied and German corps and USAAF commands, which are designated with Roman numerals.

2. All Allied Infantry Divisions and Armored Divisions are identified in all references by number. All but United States divisions are identified by nationality. When reference is made to the 2nd Infantry Division or the 4th Armored Division, these are American. The 4th Canadian Armored Division is identified as being Canadian, etc. Where there is a possibility of confusion in a complex discussion of various units, United States divisions are identified as such. German Infantry Divisions are identified as such. German Armored Divisions were called Panzer Divisions, and are so named. Any reference to a Panzer Division is a reference to the German equivalent of an Allied Armored Division. To distinguish corps, we use the German spelling Korps to identify German units.

Six weeks had passed since Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Normandy that took place on D-DayJune 6, 1944. On that day, for the first time since William of Normandy became William the Conqueror in 1066, a military force had successfully crossed the English Channel and secured a foothold on the opposing shore. Overlord was rightly heraldedthen as nowas one of the greatest military achievements in the history of modern warfare.

Four years earlier, in June 1940, Germanys then-invincible Wehrmacht had stunned the world by defeating and occupying France in a matter of weeks. During the four ensuing years, German military engineers had worked tirelessly on the northern and western coasts of France to create the Atlantic Wall, the most formidable network of fortifications ever constructed. Much of the reinforced concrete poured by the Germans during those four years still survives in the twenty-first century. It is so solid that it is not economically practical to dismantle it.

The German idea was to build a wall that would make the Allies consider an invasion of northern France impractical. Adolf Hitler himself had such great confidence in the Atlantic Wall that he assuredly referred to his empire as Festung EuropaFortress Europe.

The Anglo-American Allies, of course, had other ideas.

The idea of a cross-channel invasion as the means to liberate France and defeat Germany had been agreed to in principle by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in April 1942, and it was at the Eureka Conference in November 1943 that the two Allied leaders gave the 1944 invasion priority over all other military operations that the Anglo-American Allies would undertake anywhere in Europe, the Mediterranean, or the Pacific.

On December 7, 1943, two years to the day after the United States entered World War II, US Army Chief of Staff George Marshall informed General Dwight Eisenhower that he was to be the Supreme Allied Commander for historys biggest military operation.

When Eisenhower arrived in England in mid-January 1944 to set up the Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), American supplies had been flowing into the island nation for two years, but what had initially been a trickle now became a torrent. Nevertheless, a great deal of key materiel would not arrive until May.

To insure the success of Overlord, Eisenhower had amassed the largest force of men and war machinery that would be committed to a single operation in the history of warfare.

The 175,000 men of Operation Overlord would make the trip across the English Channel aboard more than 5,000 ships and landing craft supported by 6 battleships, 2 monitors, 22 cruisers, 93 destroyers, 250 mine sweepers, and 150 smaller fighting craft, not including motor torpedo boats and mine layers.

Overhead, the British First Tactical Air Force and the American Eighth and Ninth Air Forces committed 5,000 fighters; 3,500 heavy bombers; 1,600 medium, light, and torpedo bombers; and 700 other combat aircraft. This was not to mention the 2,300 transports and 2,600 gliders that would carry paratroopers into battle.

Overlords landing zone would be a fifty-mile section of the Normandy coastline between the neck of the Cotentin Peninsula in the west and the mouth of the Orne River in the east. This region, in turn, had been divided into five zones or beaches. The westernmost, Utah and Omaha, were assigned to General Omar Bradleys United States First Army, while the othersGold, Juno, and Swordwere assigned to the British and Canadians of General Sir Miles Dempseys British Second Army.

The troops would come ashore across the beaches. Prior to these amphibious landings, under cover of darkness in the early morning hours of D-Day, paratroopers of the United States 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions would land behind the line of German coastal defenses overlooking the invasion beaches.