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| General Dwight D. Eisenhower and General George C. Marshall meet in North Africa in 1943. |
OCS
GCM
10 February 1944
My dear Eisenhower:
Up to the present time I have not felt that we have properly exploited air power as regards its combination with ground troops. We have lacked planes, of course, in which to transport men and supplies, but our most serious deficiency I think has been a lack of conception. Our procedure has been a piecemeal proposition with each commander grabbing at a piece to assist his particular phase of the operation, very much as they did with tanks and as they tried to do with the airplane itself. It is my opinion that we now possess the means to give a proper application to this phase of air power in a combined operation.
I might say that it was my determination in the event I went to England to do this, even to the extent that should the British be in opposition I would carry it out exclusively with American troops. I am not mentioning this as pressure on you but merely to give you some idea of my own conclusions in the matter.
With the foregoing in mind and seeing the proposed plan for OVERLORD in Airborne troops, Gen. Arnold had Brig. Gen. Fred Evans, Commanding General of the Troop Carrier Command, and Col. Bruce Bidwell, the OPD Airborne Consultant, make a study of the proposition for OVERLORD.
They first presented to us Plan A, which utilizes the airborne troops in three major groups with mission to block the movement of hostile reserve divisions as now located. This was not acceptable to me. On paper it was fine; but on the ground it would be too few men at the critical points with almost the certainty that the Germans would circumvent them in vicious fighting. I saw exactly this happen in the great German offensives of March 1918. In preparation for the attack the Allies organized their forces in depth, the various points of resistance being staggered. On a map it was a perfect pin-ball setup to disrupt the enemy’s effort. On the ground it was a series of quick collapses where small groups of lonely men were cut off and surrendered.
I then had them reconsider the plan more in accordance with my conception of the application of airborne troops on a large scale. This resulted in two plans.
Plan B—This establishes an airhead in the general Argentan area approximately thirty miles inland from Caen, with missions to seize two airfields, and restrict the movement of hostile reserves that threaten the beach landing area from the east and southeast.
This plan is not satisfactory to me because the airfields are small and not capable of rapid expansion and we could not take heavy planes in to provide quick build-up. Moreover, holding this particular locality would not pose a major strategic threat to the Germans.
Plan C—Establishes an airhead in keeping with my ideas on the subject, one that can be quickly established and developed to great strength in forty-eight hours. The area generally south of Evreux has been selected because of four excellent airfields.
This plan appeals to me because I feel that it is a true vertical envelopment and would create such a strategic threat to the Germans that it would call for a major revision of their defensive plans. It should be a complete surprise, an invaluable asset of any such plan. It would directly threaten the crossings of the Seine as well as the city of Paris. It should serve as a rallying point for considerable elements of the French underground.
In effect, we would be opening another front in France and your build-up would be tremendously increased in rapidity.
The trouble with this plan is that we have never done anything like this before, and frankly, that reaction makes me tired. Therefore I should like you to give these young men an opportunity to present the matter to you personally before your Staff tears it to ribbons. Please believe that, as usual, I do not want to embarrass you with undue pressure. I merely wish to be certain that you have viewed this possibility on a definite planning basis.
Faithfully yours,
—G. C. Marshall
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SHAEF
19 February 1944
Dear General:
This is a long letter, in tentative answer to yours of 10 February on the subject of Airborne operations. General Evans and Col. Bidwell have presented their plan to me and are now working with others, pending opportunity to hold a meeting to be attended by Montgomery. If you are pushed for time I suggest that you have the Operations Division brief the following for your convenience.
You will recall that more than a year ago in Algiers, you talked to me on the idea that in the proper development of airborne operations lies one field in which we have a real opportunity and capability to get ahead of the enemy. Obviously, it is only by getting definitely ahead of him in some important method of operations that we can expect to accomplish his defeat. Since that time this has been one of my favorite subjects for contemplation.
My initial reaction to the specific proposal is that I agree thoroughly with the conception but disagree with the timing. Mass in vertical envelopments is sound—but since this kind of an enveloping force is immobile on the ground the collaborating force must be strategically and tactically mobile. So the time for the mass vertical envelopment is after the beachhead has been gained and a striking force built up! The reasons on which I base these conclusions are discussed below.
As I see it the first requisite is for the Expeditionary Force to gain a firm and solid footing on the Continent and to secure at least one really good sheltered harbor. All of our anxiety concerning Mulberries, Gooseberries, and other forms of artificial aids in landing supplies and troops for assault and build-up are merely an indication of the great concern that everyone feels toward this problem of establishing and maintaining ground forces on the Continent. This means that the initial crisis of the campaign will be the struggle to break through the beach defenses, exploit quickly to include a port and be solidly based for further operations. To meet this first tactical crisis I intend to devote everything that can be profitably used, including airborne troops.
The second consideration that enters my thinking on this problem is expressed in the very first sentence of your letter, in the phrase “air power as regards its combination with ground troops.” Whatever the conditions in other Theaters of War, the one here that we must never forget is the enemy’s highly efficient facilities for concentration of ground troops at any particular point. This is especially true in the whole of France and in the Low Countries. Our bombers will delay movement, but I cannot conceive of enough air power to prohibit movement on the network of roads throughout northwest France. For the past five days there has been good weather in Italy and our reports show an average of 1,000 sorties per day. Yet with only two main roads and a railway on which to concentrate, our reports show a steady stream of traffic by night to the south and southeast from Rome. We must arrange all our operations so that no significant part of our forces can be isolated and defeated in detail. There must exist either the definite capability of both forces to combine tactically, or the probability that each force can operate independently without danger of defeat.
The German has shown time and again that he does not particularly fear what we used to refer to as “strategic threat of envelopment.” Any military man that might have been required to analyze, before the war, the situation that existed in Italy on about January 24, would have said that the only hope of the German was to begin the instant and rapid withdrawal of his troops in front of the Fifth Army. The situation was almost a model for the classical picture for initiating a battle of destruction. But the German decided that the thrust could not be immediately translated into mobile tactical action, and himself began attacking. The Nettuno landing, due to the incidence of bad weather, was really not much heavier in scale than an airborne landing would have been during those critical days when time was all-important. The force was immobile and could not carry out the promise that was implicit in the situation then existing. But from our standpoint the situation was saved by the fact that our complete command of the sea allowed us to continue to supply and maintain and reinforce the beachhead. I am convinced it will turn out all right in the end, but there will be no great destruction of German divisions as a result thereof. An airborne landing carried out at too great a distance from other forces which will also be immobile for some time, will result in a much worse situation.
The resistance to be expected by our landing forces at the beaches is far greater than anything we have yet encountered in the European War and I have felt that carefully planned airborne operations offer us an important means of increasing our chances in this regard. The American Division, which has first priority, dropping in the Cherbourg Peninsula, gives us a reasonable expectation of preventing reinforcement of that area and seizing exits from the great flooded area that separates, in that region, our only practicable landing beach from the interior of the Peninsula. Unless we throw a very strong force in this vicinity, the division attempting to land there will be in a bad spot. The British Airborne Forces have the Caen area to seize. Subsequent airborne operations are planned to be as bold and in as large a mass as resources and the air situation then existing will permit. I do not agree with Bidwell that large-scale, mass use of airborne troops will thereafter be impracticable.
To a certain extent the conduct of airborne operations must be planned in accordance with technicians’ ideas of feasibility. Even under the most favorable circumstances the air people anticipate quite large losses among troop carrier craft because of the high efficiency of hostile radar coverage and the impossibility of preventing enemy fighters from getting into such formations. I hope soon to have here a man that Arnold is sending me from Kenny’s command. Possibly he can show us wherein we may have been too conservative.
All of the above factors tend to compel the visualization of airborne operations as an immediate tactical rather than a long-range strategical adjunct of landing operations.
If we were not planning so definitely upon the bombardment effect of our bombers to help us both tactically and strategically, there would be available a greatly increased force to support and maintain airborne operations, but present plans call for an all-out effort on the part of both day and night bombers for a very considerable period both preceding and following D-Day.
I instinctively dislike ever to uphold the conservative as opposed to the bold. You may be sure that I will earnestly study the ideas presented by the two officers because on one point of your letter I am in almost fanatical agreement—I believe we can lick the Hun only by being ahead of him in ideas as well as in material resources.
—Dwight D.
Eisenhower
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| Marshall and Eisenhower on Omaha beach on 12 June 1944. |
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