June 14 marked the entry into combat of our air OPs.
These had been on the Division Artillery airstrip since they flew across the
channels in formation, guided by an Air Force airplane. Since there had been
fairly low clouds the day of the movement to Carentan, somebody at the
division artillery airstrip decided our planes could not join us. This was
one of the characteristic mistakes which occurs when the airplanes are under
the control of someone other than the man who is going to use them.
If the airplanes had been with us for the second
attack on the afternoon of the thirteenth, it might have been possible to
have detected any rearward movement of the enemy after he had felt the full
force of the attack. On the fourteenth the air observers had fine shooting,
especially since the Germans were not yet accustomed to seeing the airplanes
in the air, and measuring their effectiveness by the artillery fire which
fell upon them when they exposed themselves. At any rate, from this time on
I struggled to have my airplanes with me, although not always with success…
June 17: The air
OPs had proven their effectiveness and their ability to observe
counter-battery fire, as well as to detect other targets in the Bocage
country…
June 3: (Diary
Entry) "Thank God for the Cubs. Keep Jerry down"
July 1-18: (Caumont)
Our air OPs were again proving their worth. The air sections located their
landing strip perhaps a mile in rear of the command post. Because of the
conformation of the front, however, (we occupied the front left-hand corner
of a sharp salient) they were not very far from the enemy. In spite of low
approaches which they made to the landing field, they were occasionally
shelled. On one occasion, Lieutenant Fein and Sergeant Pechar, becoming
irritated at this discourtesy, took off under shell fire and did some fine
shooting back. The good which the airplanes did was not limited to the
negative benefit of holding down hostile fire. Again and again they proved
their worth in locating hostile guns. At dusk, this was especially easy
since the flashes of the guns were very distinct…
July 4: I flew an
air mission over the front to check on the work of the observers. After
seeing the enemy side of the lines from the air, I tended to put more faith
than ever in the air OPs. They were really looking right down the enemy’s
throat. No big movement could have taken place close to the enemy lines in
the daytime without it being detected from the air. After repeated missions
over the same front, the observers became so familiar with the front that
adjustments on targets were frequently unnecessary. They could tell the
coordinates with remarkable exactness…
July 5: (Diary
Entry) "Good air observation from 2200 to 2300…"
July 18-19: An
incident during the relief from the Caumont front convinced me that my
airplanes were justified. The whole relief was an echelon affair, with the
14th Field Artillery moving out last. Division artillery moved
out during the day and the air officer took my air section with him.
Although this was simply a misunderstanding, it demonstrated the possibility
of a misunderstanding, and I of course did not fail to point out to Colonel
Roberts that I did not like it. He agreed, and always from then until his
death, made a point of letting me have my own airplanes...
July 25: (St. Lo
Breakthrough) The air OPs were to operate independently under each battalion
commander since we were again limited by the lack of interchangeability of
the radios…
July 26- August 1: (Tessy-Sur-Vire) The air OPs in
this fight gave us about the only real observed fire we had. The forward
observers were hemmed in by the trees and hedgerows and could not see beyond
their immediate front. The German artillery was behind the ridge and with
observation all along the line of our attack. The air observers did a fine
job, in spite of almost constant sniping at them by 88mm antiaircraft guns.
On one occasion, we managed to save General Rose,
who was pinned down by artillery fire, by the efforts of Lieutenant Fein and
Sergeant Pechar. Toward dusk on this day, they were having wonderful
shooting at the hostile artillery, but they reported they were about out of
gasoline, and would have to come down. Of course, I told them to stay up and
keep up the shooting. Finally, it got too dark for them to see, and they
headed for the airstrip. They ran out of gasoline on their final approach,
and had to make a night forced landing.
During part of the battle, Captain Dyson was acting
as observer with the 1st Battalion, 66th. He switched
his radio to the battalion air channel, and by talking back and forth with
the air observer, managed to get effective fire on his front. As far as I
know, this was the first time this obvious and effective coordination
between the air OPs and forward observers was used. It was an excellent
scheme.
It had the disadvantage of focusing the attention
of the air observer on this small part of the front to the exclusion of the
others. It worked out so well that we soon started the same system with all
our observers, under the control of the S-3, to prevent one observer from
hogging all of the observation…
