[tcolvin]

Sorry for the delay (due to travelling) in replying to the many interesting comments and questions. This will attempt to cover all outstandings.

1. Igor stated that VVS ground controllers were assigned at the infantry/tank corps level. A 1944 Russian Mechanised Corps contained 16,438 personnel and 246 tanks, equivalent to an Anglo-Canadian armoured division of 14,964 personnel and 290 tanks. Like the VVS Ground Controllers, 2TAF's FCPs (Forward Control Posts) were also assigned to corps HQs, but remember XXX Corps in Operation Veritable had 6 divisions and 3 Armoured Brigades under command and was the same as a Soviet Front. However, 2TAF provided Contact Cars to divisions with visual control posts which were allotted aircraft and sometimes a cab rank. There was therefore no difference between the modi operandi of the VVS and 2TAF.
2. Igor stated that it was only in the end phase of front operations that the VVS became detached from the forces it supported due to the distances advanced. With the exception of the Normandy breakout, this was not a factor in the West because of the much slower rate of advance. Had the advance been faster, 2TAF would have had a problem because the Typhoon, unlike the Il-2, could not operate from open fields. It required hardened runways, minimally PSP/Marsden Matting but usually reinforced concrete or brick.
3. Glider asked about the attacks on the Wesel bridges by BC. The task was in fact given by SHAEF to 3 Air Division of the US 8th Army Air Force. They attacked on five days with 377 sorties dropping 887 tons of bombs, as follows; 1 February (139 a/c dropped 381 tons); 14 Feb (37 a/c and 110 tons), 16 Feb (63 a/c and 189 tons); 19 Feb (68 a/c and 184 tons); and 24 Feb (70 a/c and 23 tons). They succeeded on 14 February in bringing down a span of the Wesel road bridge, leaving two bridges that survived to the end.
4. Glider doubted whether any fighter bomber could hit a bridge. 2TAF normally used mediums for attacking bridges. They flew above the FLAK and were notoriously inaccurate. I believe bridges were targets for the Il-2, but certainly benefited from the accuracy of dive-bombing. It was so normal for the GAF to attack bridges that the Soviets invented a method (unique AFAIK) of underwater bridging. That the famed Norden bomb sight with the claimed ability of placing a bomb in a pickle barrel from 17,000 ft was obviously the wrong tool at Wesel was neatly demonstrated by the GAF when on 24 February they destroyed at night two American bridges over the Roer (Operation Grenade). In a post-war analysis of the Wesel bridge fiasco, the RAF concluded that Mediums should have been used, which confirms they lacked the right equipment.
5. Glider's priority in a CAS aircraft is safety from enemy fighters. This was the RAF's reasoning for not operating dive bombers (Ju-87B, Pe-2, Mustang, Vengeance), armoured bombers (Il-2, He-129B) lightly-armoured bombers (Fw 190F) or large-gun carriers (Ju-87G, He-129B-3, or even Hurricane IIE which was rejected by 2TAF). However this policy threw the baby out with the bath-water. Because on most of the occasions when aircraft with dive-bombing or big-gun accuracy, or with resistance to FLAK, were desperately needed, there was little risk of GAF fighter interception. I will give just one example; the Hillman strong-point above the landing beach of La Breche held up 3 British Infantry Division all day on D-Day due to the inability of 2TAF to destroy it. The measurable consequences of Caen not being taken on D-Day, was due almost entirely, IMHO, to the absence of the Vengeance dive-bomber which could have destroyed Hillman. The Vengeances were on target-tug duties in Devon because they refused to operate dive-bombers.
6. The answer requested by Simon E as why 2TAF was ineffective is that it refused to operate the correct equipment for its assigned tasks. From the time in 1939 when ordered to France, the Army demanded its own air force equipped over time with dive-bombers, armoured aircraft, and aircraft equipped with heavy guns. The RAF's reply was that the Army need not worry, because if ever it got into difficulties the RAF would drop everything and devote its strategic bomber force to the Army. The RAF regarded specialised CAS aircraft as coming at the cost of strategic bomber numbers. But, as we have seen, strategic bombers were not the right equipment to take out the Wesel bridges. The RAF equipped 2TAF, with botched up air superiority fighters that could not deliver bombs vertically and accurately, and were equipped with unreliable RP (which suffered gravity drop when leaving the rails). Furthermore, since the RAF insisted on its independence and on delivering support to the Army only on its own terms (and Churchill let them get away with it), 2TAF's ineffective support was not always provided in a timely fashion.
7. Finally Giles believes the RAF is being condemned here retrospectively and presumably unfairly. But these matters were thrashed out at the time amid anger and recrimination. The Army nearly got its own air force (Brooke persuaded Churchill), and there was even IIRC discussion about producing the Il-2 in Britain. Martel reported on its use in Russia after discussions with Shaposhnikov; “The discussion on armoured forces ended this series of conferences with the Russians. Certain points stood out. First of all, it was clear that the Russians set great store by the Sturmovik aeroplane. No other nation had developed an aircraft which was armoured in this way. Were they all wrong and the Russians right? We made further enquiries as regards casualties in these aircraft from flak. This was not very easy to assess. The troops on the Russian front were not nearly so well equipped for producing flak. This question of using armoured aircraft was clearly very important, and we decided that we must take every opportunity of studying this matter and obtaining further information”. Dive bombers were bought from the USA by Beaverbrook at the demand of the Army, but never used in Europe and reports of their good performance in Burma were deliberately suppressed by the RAF. The very possibility of a long-range fighter that would protect the bomber was dismissed from first principles by Portal, leaving the Americans to develop the Thunderbolt and Mustang in that role and to destroy the GAF. That situation should have prompted the RAF to release the Vengeance for CAS use in NW Europe. But the RAF could never abandon Trenchard's article of faith (strategic bombing could win the war by destroying enemy morale without the need to engage the enemy forces), nor the Royal Tank Corps that of Hobart's (mobility with firing on the move). RAF and RTC thus showed themselves to be cults oblivious to reason, and wrapped up in their own illusions.

Tony