Opinions please (impact Allied fighter bombers on D-day)

[Juha]

Hello Jon
I agree, and one important contribution of air power, if we include also the all kinds of fire direction/control a/c, was that it made difficult for Germans to concentrate their forces for decisive counterattacks.

Josh Osborne in his message on 1st Feb. summed the effects on Germans tactical/operational freedom well. The effect was not so decisive before the situation became more fluid, after that the bombers and especially fighter bombers made German timely responses to Allied moves very difficult, sometimes impossible. Even retreats became difficult and costly.

So we are not so far away in this question. But I maybe stress more the contribution of ground troops. You are right that the timing of the Ardennes offensive in Dec. 44 was decided by weather forecast in order to neutralize the Allied tactical airpower. But it was the tanks and combat engineers that stopped the German spearheads. Firstly a US combat engineer coy diverted KG (Kampfgruppe) Peiper at Trois Ponts by blowing up the bridge just front of the point Panther and IIRC the point of KG Peiper was stopped for good by a M4 Sherman platoon which destroyed the 3 point Panthers of the KG a day or two later elsewhere. And the point of the 2. PzD, which got farthest to west was stopped by a lonely British Firefly in do or die ambush mission on the eastern bank of Meuse. That almost the whole vanguard part of the 2nd Pz was soon afterwards wiped out by US 2nd Armored Div was partly made possible by air power but partly the 2nd Pz's vulnerable situation was consequency of time and place. Ardennes in wintertime was not a good place for heavy motorized units which had many inexperienced drivers.