The USAAF in North Africa - Update

[edwest2]

From the Stone & Stone site:

Mark sends this update about his upcoming The USAAF in North Africa (working title):

"I completed drafts of the introduction and prologue as of the last week of October 2021. The former explains my motivation for writing the book as well as my methodology when it comes to determining aerial combat results. The latter provides readers with an overview of the four air forces that fought in Tunisia, with emphasis on the USAAF, how it operated with the RAF, and how it fared against the Luftwaffe and to a lesser extent the Regia Aeronautica. I will start the first of the core narrative chapters before Christmas 2021. That particular chapter will set the strategic scene, deal with the planning and execution of the Allied TORCH landings in North Africa on 8 November 1942, and detail the evolving deployment/redeployment of RAF, USAAF, Luftwaffe and Regia Aeronautica forces in theater. My working core narrative outline as currently envisioned has a total of seventeen chapters, some of which will cover action in Libya where the Ninth Air Force provided support to General Bernard Law Montgomery's Eighth Army and Air Marshal Coningham's Western Desert Air Force (WDAF). Interestingly, BOTH the Ninth Air Force and Twelfth Air Force rendered support to the British in Libya, in large part because the fundamentally tactical nature of the WDAF and limited range of Supermarine Spitfires. As a result, USAAF P-38s were taking off from Algeria, flying across Tunisia, and strafing retreating Afrika Korps columns in western Libya! There were RAF Halifaxes and Liberators in theater, but the Air Staff in London initiated the process of transferring them to other theaters once they realized that the USAAF would strike targets of interest to the British."

Usual disclaimer,
Ed

[Jim Oxley]

Great news.