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The record · Tunisia, 1942–1943
The Luftwaffe in Tunisia
The German air units in Tunisia, under Field Marshal Albert Kesselring’s Luftflotte 2, held local air superiority over the front through the winter of 1942–43. American soldiers at Sidi Bou Zid and Kasserine felt that superiority from below. By May 1943 the Luftwaffe had lost its transport fleet over the Sicilian Strait and left hundreds of wrecks on the Tunisian airfields.
Illustration A neutral marker made for this site, not a unit emblem.
The air bridge
The Luftwaffe was the first German force into Tunisia. On 9 November 1942, the day after the Allied landings in Morocco and Algeria, Vichy told the Germans that the Tunisian air bases were open to them. That day German fighters, dive bombers and transports began landing at El Aouina, the airfield of Tunis, carrying paratroopers and Kesselring’s own headquarters guard. French troops ringed the field and did nothing. Within days Ju 52 transports were averaging about fifty landings a day at Bizerte, and by 17 November about 150 German fighters and dive bombers were based at the Tunis and Bizerte fields, with long-range bombers flying from Sicily and Sardinia (Howe; Craven and Cate; Chapter 1; Chapter 7).
The airlift, by one summary of the published figures, carried more than 15,000 men and 581 tons of supplies into Tunisia in its first weeks, while ships brought the tanks, guns and vehicles. That air bridge, with the shipping, carried the troops who won the race for Tunis in November and December 1942 (Wikipedia, “Tunisian campaign”).
Close to the front
Geography gave the Germans their advantage. They had all-weather airfields at Sidi Ahmed near Bizerte and at El Aouina, with hard runways built before the war, and coastal fields at Sfax, Sousse and Gabès. Stukas at El Aouina could reach the fighting at Djedeida, about 20 miles away, and answer a call for support within five to ten minutes. The Allies flew from Bône, about 120 miles from the front, from Youks-les-Bains, about 150, and from fields that turned to mud in the winter rains (Craven and Cate, vol. II, ch. 3).
The Luftwaffe brought some of its best units. II. Gruppe of Jagdgeschwader 2, with Fw 190s, flew from Kairouan from November 1942 to May 1943; Jagdgeschwader 53 flew Bf 109Gs from Tunis and Bizerte; and Jagdgeschwader 77 came west with Rommel’s army from Libya. Fw 190 fighter-bombers of Schnellkampfgeschwader 10 attacked airfields, ports and columns; Ju 87s of Sturzkampfgeschwader 3 and Hs 129s flew close support; Ju 88s struck Bône, Algiers and the convoys. The Italian air force added Macchi C.202 fighters, bombers and transports (Luftwaffe Resource Center; Craven and Cate). The fields were not safe from the ground, either: on 25 November 1942 American light tanks raided the Djedeida airfield and destroyed twenty or more aircraft, by one account including most of a group of Stukas of Sturzkampfgeschwader 3 (Howe; Ford, as cited in Wikipedia).
Over the American lines
American soldiers remembered the Stukas. At Sened Station on 1 February 1943 eight dive bombers struck at 1:30 p.m. and 24 more just before 5 p.m.; Brig. Gen. Laurence S. Kuter, who studied the air-support problem that winter, judged it the one time German dive bombers inflicted really heavy casualties on American troops, a judgment the soldiers who had been strafed on the roads would not have shared (Howe; Craven and Cate; Chapter 2). At Sidi Bou Zid on 14 February dive bombers and fighter-bombers attacked the American positions between 10 and 11 a.m., and the 2d Battalion, 17th Field Artillery, caught on the move, was struck again and again until it was destroyed as a fighting unit. The next day Stukas knocked out a tank destroyer platoon in the counterattack, and six Bf 109s strafed the American field at Thelepte (Howe; Chapter 3; Chapter 7).
At Kasserine the weather took the air out of the battle. A sirocco and dust grounded the American air command on 19 February, and rain and fog limited flying on the 20th and 21st. Howe notes that the German infantry attacking the pass on 20 February lacked the air support to which they had become accustomed. On 22 February Stukas attacked at Thala, though most of the Axis air effort went against Allied columns moving up behind the town, and one Ju 87, by its Signal Corps caption, was shot down on 21 February by 2nd Lt. T. A. Frincke. When the skies cleared on 23 February the Allied air forces attacked the withdrawing Axis columns heavily (Howe; Craven and Cate; Chapter 6; Chapter 7).
The transport fleet destroyed
By March 1943 the Axis armies in Tunisia depended on supplies flown and shipped across the Sicilian Strait. In late March about 500 Axis transports were in use on the route: Ju 52s, Italian SM.82s and the six-engined Me 323 “Gigant,” flying in large formations low over the water from Naples and Palermo. The Allied operation against them, Flax, began on 5 April (Craven and Cate, vol. II, ch. 6; Chapter 7).
The losses were heavy, and the claims were heavier. For 5 April German records list 14 Ju 52s shot down, 11 transports destroyed on the ground and 67 damaged, against an Allied claim of 201 aircraft. On 18 April, Palm Sunday, American P-40s and British Spitfires caught a large Ju 52 formation over the Gulf of Tunis; the figures most often cited from German records are 24 Ju 52s, nine Bf 109s and one Bf 110 shot down and 35 Ju 52s damaged and crash-landed, against first American claims of 146. On 22 April a formation of Me 323s carrying fuel lost 16 or 17 aircraft by later accounts. Over the whole operation, by published summaries, the Axis lost 123 to 157 Ju 52s and 21 Me 323s, with many of their crews (Levine; Murawski; as cited in Wikipedia).
The end, and the record
By the final Allied offensive in May the Luftwaffe had lost control of the air over Tunisia. It evacuated most of its serviceable aircraft and pilots to Sicily, but more than 600 Axis aircraft were left wrecked or abandoned on the fields around Tunis, Bizerte and Cap Bon. Maj. Gen. Karl Koechy, who commanded the Tunisian air district, and four other air generals were taken prisoner (Craven and Cate, vol. II, ch. 6).
The Luftwaffe in Tunisia fought a conventional air war, and its record there is one of skill and then of exhaustion. It served a regime whose security police were at the same time persecuting the Jews of Tunisia, many of whom were put to forced labor at the ports and airfields the air force used (Yad Vashem; The Jews of Tunisia and the SS Einsatzkommando).
Timeline
- German aircraft begin landing at El Aouina, Tunis; French troops do not resist.
- About 150 German fighters and dive bombers are based at Tunis and Bizerte.
- American tanks raid the Djedeida airfield and destroy twenty or more aircraft.
- Stukas strike American troops at Sened Station.
- Dive bombers destroy the 2d Battalion, 17th Field Artillery, at Sidi Bou Zid.
- Weather limits flying on both sides during the battle for the Kasserine Pass.
- Operation Flax begins against the Axis transport fleet.
- The “Palm Sunday” interception of Ju 52s over the Gulf of Tunis.
- A formation of Me 323 transports is destroyed over the Gulf of Tunis.
- The Luftwaffe withdraws to Sicily; Koechy is captured; more than 600 Axis aircraft are left behind.
Read the full story
- Chapter 7: The Air War over Tunisia
- Chapter 1: Torch and the Race for Tunis: The Americans Come to North Africa
- Chapter 3: Sidi Bou Zid: The Destruction of Combat Command A
- Chapter 6: Thala and Djebel el Hamra: Where Rommel Was Stopped
- The Jews of Tunisia and the SS Einsatzkommando
- The Kasserine Pass collection and atlas
By the numbers
The Luftwaffe in Tunisia by the numbers
Operation Flax: claims against German records
Transport-route aircraft; “recorded” means destroyed in German records (5 April: 14 shot down and 11 on the ground; 18 April: 24 Ju 52s, 9 Bf 109s and 1 Bf 110)
Source: Levine (2008) and Murawski (2009), as cited in “Operation Flax,” Wikipedia; Craven and Cate, The Army Air Forces in World War II, vol. II, ch. 6.
How far from the fighting
Approximate miles from airfield to the front, winter 1942–43
Source: Craven and Cate, The Army Air Forces in World War II, vol. II, ch. 3; George F. Howe, Northwest Africa (CMH, 1957). Stukas at El Aouina could answer a call in five to ten minutes.
In pictures
More photographs
In the art of World War II
Insignia, posters and art
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Sources
- Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate, eds., The Army Air Forces in World War II, vol. II, Europe: Torch to Pointblank (University of Chicago Press, 1949), chapters 3–6.
- George F. Howe, Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West, United States Army in World War II (Washington: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1957), chapters XIV–XVII, XXI and XXIII–XXIV.
- Luftwaffe Resource Center, “Focke-Wulf Fw 190 in North Africa.”
- Levine (2008), Murawski (2009) and Thomas (2005), as cited in Wikipedia, “Operation Flax”; Wikipedia, “Tunisian campaign.”
- I. S. O. Playfair et al., The Mediterranean and Middle East, vol. IV, The Destruction of the Axis Forces in Africa (HMSO, 1966), p. 302; Daniel R. Mortensen, A Pattern for Joint Operations: World War II Close Air Support, North Africa (1987).