1,300 Lancaster and Halifax bombers were incapable of neutralizing ten coastal artillery batteries on Jun. 6, 1944. 1,400 Liberators and Fortresses were incapable of inflicting any damage on 45 defensive positions
Most historians have largely overlooked what the Allied air forces did on June 6, 1944. Apart from examining the Transportation Plan—the Allied Expeditionary Air Force’s (AEAF) effort to destroy rail yards in France and Belgium—there is relatively little written about how bombers contributed to the invasion itself. As Stephen Bourque explains in his book D-Day 1944: The deadly failure of Allied heavy bombing on June 6, for more than three quarters of a century the main histories of the Normandy landings have tended to dismiss the Eighth Air Force’s role with brief remarks that its bombers simply overshot their targets. Some historians also mention that planners altered the bombing strategy to reduce casualties, a change that General Eisenhower is said to have endorsed.
At the same time, aviation historians often focus on dramatic statistics from the largest bombing raids of the war—for example, RAF Bomber Command’s attack on Cologne in May 1942 with 1,046 aircraft; the Eighth Air Force’s strike on Berlin in March 1945 with 1,221 heavy bombers; or the combined US and British assault on Dresden in February 1945, involving 1,296 aircraft. However, these massive operations were still modest compared with what the US Army Air Forces and the RAF carried out on D-Day itself.
The first joint air attack that morning on the coastal defenses—carried out by more than 2,800 aircraft from Bomber Command and the US Eighth and Ninth Air Forces—was, by any standard, the largest of the entire war. For each service individually, Bomber Command’s 1,300 planes and the Eighth Air Force’s 1,350 bombers represented their biggest single operations of the conflict. This extraordinary show of Allied air power did not stop with that initial wave. Between the evening of June 5/6 and the following night, over 5,000 heavy bombers struck targets in direct support of the ground troops coming ashore on the Normandy beaches. Throughout the day, thousands of Allied bombers continued to attack towns, bridges, and rail yards across France.
One example came at 1330 hours, when 56 B-24s from Hodges’s 2nd Division flew over Caen. With no advance warning, they dropped their bombs on the city center, where residents were shopping in the market before retreating to their shelters. In mere moments, more than 400 people were killed and another thousand injured or psychologically shattered. Ninth Air Force bombers returned at 1630 hours, and Bomber Command joined in later that night. Caen alone suffered over 1,741 fatalities, thousands more wounded, and many additional civilians forced to flee as refugees. Over the next week, Allied bombing continued to devastate French cities in order to keep German forces from using the transportation network. Given this enormous aerial effort, why has it attracted so little attention from historians?
To begin with, the mission did not align with the doctrines of Harris, Spaatz, and Doolittle. Because of this, American and British air force historians and publicists have tended to minimize their role in this phase of the conflict. Working within the strategic theories of Douhet, Trenchard, and Mitchell, these leaders aimed to strike directly at German industry and the civilian population. The heavy bomber commanders genuinely believed they could win the war without committing large Allied ground forces to France, aside from troops who would move in after Hitler’s regime collapsed. From their perspective, providing support for the invasion was an unwelcome distraction—especially for the American commanders, who were intent on establishing an independent air force after the war. Their role in the Joint Fire Plan was exactly the kind of task they wished to avoid: acting as long-range artillery for the Army.
Another reason the bombing campaign in Normandy is rarely celebrated is that it killed large numbers of French civilians—the very people the Allies were trying to free. As already noted, the opening bombardment alone caused the deaths of hundreds of noncombatants, injured many more, and destroyed much of their homes and possessions. By nightfall, Allied air attacks had killed more than 1,300 civilians in the département of Calvados and another 725 in the Nord while supporting Operation Fortitude. The material destruction was immense: the historic centers of towns such as Caen, Lisieux, Falaise, St-Lô, and Coutances were reduced to ruins, while villages like Norrey-en-Bessin, Aunay-sur-Odon, and Condé-sur-Noireau were effectively wiped out. By the time the Allies broke out of Normandy in July, over 8,000 civilians had been killed, most of them by Allied bombing. In many cases, there were few German troops in the areas being hit, since the heavy bombers targeted locations behind the front lines. It is therefore unsurprising that the Allied air campaign in support of Operation Neptune has attracted so little official recognition.
In its formal evaluation, Colonel Walter Todd, deputy chief of operations for the Eighth Air Force, observed:
“The immediate beach areas showed only limited evidence of bombing damage, as was to be expected in view of the extra precautionary measures taken to avoid short bomb falls when the overcast bombing technique was used. [Those precautions included the arbitrary time delays on bomb releases.] Areas behind the beachhead, ranging from 300 to 400 yards to three miles, revealed extensive evidence of concentrated bombing patterns. The principal contribution made by this bombing effort was the demoralization of enemy troops and the disruption of signal and transport communications, which hindered the deployment of immediate reserves.”
Yet, despite remarks like these, that was not the actual objective; the bombers were meant to neutralize the beach defenses. The final reason this enormous use of airpower has been downplayed in official accounts is that, overall, it fell short of its goal. Only on Utah Beach—where IX Bomber Command flew at low altitude and hit its targets accurately—did airpower achieve what the ground commanders had hoped for. Elsewhere, 1,300 Lancaster and Halifax bombers failed to silence just ten coastal artillery batteries that morning. Allied naval vessels spent much of June 6 exchanging fire with German gun crews who had survived the bombing, and in the end, it was the guns of the US and Royal Navies that finally knocked these positions out. At the same time, 1,400 Liberators and Flying Fortresses were unable to destroy 45 defensive strongpoints. Very few German soldiers were killed or wounded by the nearly 3,000 tons of bombs dropped by the Eighth Air Force along the Normandy coast—an extraordinary measure of how unsuccessful the effort was. Although the bombardment did leave many Germans dazed or disoriented, enough gunners and infantry remained capable of operating their weapons, inflicting avoidable losses on the assault troops. Much of the responsibility for this failure lies with a small group of colonels at Eighth Air Force headquarters. In planning the operation, they did not adequately account for what the infantry commanders needed or for the danger facing the men coming ashore. Despite what they later claimed, the staff altered the plan not for sound operational reasons but to head off possible negative publicity. Trying to justify this choice by suggesting that the Supreme Commander had approved it only deepens the sense of contempt for such a reckless decision.
Historians have largely neglected the story of how American and British air forces bombed France. Instead of letting the discussion stop with the D-Day attacks, we should treat them as the starting point for a deeper inquiry into what occurred and the reasons behind it.
D-Day 1944: The deadly failure of Allied heavy bombing on June 6 is published by Osprey Publishing and is available to order here.
Photo by Edouard A. Groult, U.S. Air Force, Royal Air Force
