He added that he was blessed with too much imagination and that it was fortunate for the British Army that he never rose above the level of Corps Commander. His overriding objective was to save British lives. This was the same argument used for the destruction of Caen and Winnekendonk. His rationalisation was that he was in a race to the Nutterden feature, and destroying Cleve might give him an advantage by slowing up the German reserves.
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Horrocks wrote in 'Corps Commander' that he felt almost physically sick when he saw the bombers do another Caen. Horrocks was never happy with his decision to use heavies to 'take out Cleve', as Crerar described it. Their genesis can be traced to events earlier in the month. On the questions of Horrocks' banning all air support including Mediums, and the restrictions placed on CAS, I will quote from my draft book if you don't mind Īt this time (February 28) stresses long in the building came to a head. If the answer was no, then 2TAF had to find another way from its own resources.Ģ. If 2TAF wanted Heavies, then they put the request either to the BC LO at 2TAF, who passed it on to Harris, or to SHAEF who passed it on to VIIIUSAAF. All air support of 21 Army Group was the sole responsibility of 2TAF, and the only place 1Cdn Army could address its requests. In the planning of Veritable, 1 Canadian Army asked for the destruction of the Wesel bridges by air attack. On the Wesel bridges' question, 2TAF was asked to destroy the bridges. I say this as on the last day of the war Spits and Typhoons were attacking ships and airfields both of which were amongst the most heavily defended targets you could find."ġ. Spitfire, because we had planty of them, and as time went on the Mk IX could carry a respectable payload but not as much as the Typhoon or P47, whilst the XIV became the fighter to give top cover.įinally can I ask where you get the information that the Typhoon and Spitfires were withdrawn from attacking defended targets? Typhoon because it was fast, robust, well protected, exceptionally well armed and capable of carrying a heavy payload plus, by RAF standards it had a good range. Typhoons were well armoured for a fighter and if he hadn't hit the radiator, the german would not have done much apart from knock a couple of holes in the plane.Īs has been pointed out a large number of IL2's were shot down but the Finns who were on the receiving end of the IL2 noted that against pin point targets they were pretty ineffective due to a lack of accuracy.Īs for why the Spitfire and Typhoon were chosen for GA I believe there are two different reasons. However I would still argue that its smaller size, higher speed and better maneouverability would balance the additional vulnerability.
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No one would deny that the achilles heal of the Typhoon was its radiator, the same wen for the Tempest and P40, all of which performed well in the GA role. I didn't know about Gen Horricks decision to ban mediums but I do know that 38 Brigade prepared a detailed report on the fighting and no problems with the air support were mentioned. How can you blame the 2TAF for not knocking it out when no one asked for it to be attacked? Had they been asked to so, then they would have attacked, flack or no flack. Its a similar situation re the Hillmen strongpoint. It wasn't a case of the 2ATF passing the buck, they never had the buck to pass over in the first place. According to the records I have seen (which are not conclusive I admit) the 2 TAF were never asked, tasked or ever planned to attack the bridges. I still don't see how you can blame the 2 TAF for not attacking the bridges when they were not asked to attack them in the first place.