XII Air Support Command

The ground soldiers’ air force

XII Air Support Command was the part of the U.S. Twelfth Air Force charged with working directly with the Army’s ground forces. In the Torch landings of November 1942 it supported Maj. Gen. George S. Patton Jr.’s Western Task Force in Morocco. As the campaign moved east into Tunisia, the Americans of II Corps took over the southern half of the Allied front, and they needed air support of their own. A detachment of the command was set up for them on 6 January 1943 under Col. Rosenham Beam. Brig. Gen. Howard A. Craig took command on 10 January, and when Craig came down with pneumonia, Col. Paul L. Williams succeeded him on 21 January (Craven and Cate; Chapter 4).

Williams was a bomber officer who had gone to England with the first Eighth Air Force staff in May 1942. What he inherited in central Tunisia was a mixed bag of aircraft. On 26 January he had 52 Curtiss P-40 Warhawks, 23 Bell P-39 Airacobras, 27 Douglas A-20 Havoc light bombers and eight DB-7s, the export version of the A-20: 110 aircraft in all. The P-40 was rugged and heavily armed but outclassed at altitude by the Messerschmitt Bf 109G and the Focke-Wulf Fw 190; the P-39 was a poor fighter but useful for strafing. In February the 31st Fighter Group brought British-built Spitfires to the command’s forward field (Craven and Cate; Chapter 7).

Thelepte and the air umbrella

Geography shaped everything. The Luftwaffe flew from all-weather fields at Tunis, Bizerte, Kairouan, Sfax and Gabès, minutes from the battle. The Americans had Youks-les-Bains, near Tébessa in Algeria, about 150 miles from the front and often mired, and Thelepte, a few miles from Fériana in the semidesert country of west-central Tunisia. The official air force history calls Thelepte “a good dry-weather field,” roomy and less likely to flood than Youks. The P-40Fs of the 33rd Fighter Group, under Col. William W. Momyer, arrived there from Telergma on 7 January. The men lived in dugouts and tents, much of the time in a ravine about forty minutes’ walk from the dispersed aircraft (Craven and Cate; Chapters 4 and 7).

The command and II Corps disagreed from the start about how its aircraft should be used. The Army’s doctrine of the day, Field Manual 31-35 of April 1942, allowed air units to be allotted to ground commanders and was vague about who controlled them. Soldiers who had been strafed and dive-bombed wanted fighters circling overhead, an “air umbrella.” Airmen answered that standing patrols over the troops wasted aircraft and pilots, could not be kept up from distant fields, and left the German airfields untouched. Brig. Gen. Laurence S. Kuter, who studied the problem that winter, judged that German dive bombers had inflicted really heavy casualties on American troops only once, at Sened on 1 February. The soldiers on the roads would not have agreed (Craven and Cate).

The fighter pilots paid for the winter. On 31 January eight of the 33rd’s P-40s met four to seven Bf 109s and lost two for one; on 2 February five P-40s were lost covering the troops at Sened Station and two more escorting A-20s. The group had given 25 of its aircraft to re-equip the French Lafayette Escadrille, and by 1 February it was down to thirteen. It was relieved about 8 February and went back to Morocco to rebuild, and the 31st Fighter Group’s Spitfires took its place at Thelepte (Craven and Cate; Chapter 4).

17 February: the evacuation of Thelepte

When the German offensive opened at Sidi Bou Zid on 14 February, the command flew strafing and bombing missions, and its A-20s bombed a tank column in the Faïd Pass. The next day began with six Bf 109s strafing Thelepte; Spitfires and P-39s patrolled and strafed over Sidi Bou Zid all day. The command had issued its evacuation plan, Plan A, on 10 February, and the withdrawal from Gafsa on the night of 14–15 February set it in motion; the air units at Sbeitla moved back at 22:00 that night (Craven and Cate).

Thelepte lay in the path of Rommel’s Afrika Korps group coming up from Gafsa. On the night of 16 February Fredendall told Williams that II Corps expected to hold the Sbeitla–Fériana line, then summoned him again when a German night attack at Sbeitla made the situation serious. After First Army authorized the withdrawal early on 17 February, Fredendall warned Williams that his aircraft had to be off at daybreak. The A-20s of the 47th Bombardment Group were already at Youks. The last mission took off from Thelepte at 10:30, and the 31st Fighter Group’s Spitfires and the 81st’s P-39s flew out to Tébessa and Le Kouif with, by the official air history’s count, “altogether 124 operational aircraft.” About 3,000 men drove out by road (Craven and Cate; Howe).

What could not be moved was destroyed. The air history counts eighteen aircraft burned, five of them beyond repair in any case, and about 60,000 gallons of aviation gasoline poured out on the ground. Howe, citing an engineer officer’s report, gives 34 aircraft demolished; the two counts may describe different things, and neither source reconciles them. A German radio message reported 20 tons of aviation gasoline and 30 tons of lubricants salvaged at the fuel depot. The field itself, Howe concluded, was left with little of military value (Chapter 4).

Grounded, then back over the pass

The weather took over at the worst moment. On 19 February, the day the Germans attacked the Kasserine Pass, dust from a sirocco kept the command on the ground. The 20th was also poor, and on the 21st rain and fog limited flying. The absence of air power cut both ways: Howe notes that the German infantry attacking the pass on the 20th lacked the air support they were used to. In the middle of the crisis the Allied air forces were reorganized. On 18 February the Northwest African Air Forces were activated under Maj. Gen. Carl Spaatz, and XII Air Support Command came under Air Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham’s Northwest African Tactical Air Force. That day Coningham ordered that umbrellas be abandoned unless his headquarters specifically authorized them (Craven and Cate).

On 22 February, with the Axis attack stalling at Thala and Djebel el Hamra, Youks opened under a low ceiling with showers until midmorning. The first bombers took off at 11:35. By the end of the day the command had flown what the official history calls “the creditable total of 23 missions—114 sorties.” The A-20 crews could rarely see their bombs burst, and one A-20 crash-landed after a brush with three Bf 109s. Spitfires of the 31st Fighter Group, under Col. Fred M. Dean, shot down a Stuka and a Ju 88, and P-39s strafed Axis traffic in the pass alongside P-38s. At about 16:30 fighter-bombers attacked German infantry, guns and tanks south of Thala (Craven and Cate; Howe). The day had its costs at home too: American antiaircraft gunners, bombed for a week, shot up five P-38s that day despite orders (Howe; Chapter 6).

On 23 February the weather cleared, and the air forces concentrated on what the official history calls the “backtracking columns” on the far side of the Western Dorsal. Observers counted 104 Allied aircraft over the Kasserine area in a single fifteen-minute period. The British official history records that XII Air Support Command “got back into its stride,” and B-17s made a heavy attack on Kasserine that day (Playfair). Rommel, whose columns were under the bombs, recorded it in his own account.

…hammer-blow air attacks by the U.S. air force in the Feriana–Kasserine area, of a weight and concentration hardly surpassed by those we had suffered at Alamein.

Rommel had his own reasons to stress Allied air power when explaining a withdrawal. The air forces did not decide Kasserine; the ground battle at Thala, Sbiba and Djebel el Hamra did. But once the weather lifted they made the Axis retreat through the passes costly. The official air historians judged that “in its air phase the battle had given hopeful signs of a new cooperation” (Craven and Cate).

El Guettar and after

Under Coningham the command supported Patton’s II Corps in the March offensive at Gafsa, El Guettar and Maknassy, and Bradley’s drive on Bizerte in April and May. The rebuilt 33rd Fighter Group came back to the front in March; on 31 March near El Guettar Momyer attacked a formation of Ju 87s with German and Italian fighter escort and was credited with four aircraft in one mission, part of the record that won him the Distinguished Service Cross. The air-ground quarrel did not end. On 1 April, after a morning of German air attacks, a II Corps situation report complained of a “total lack of air cover”; Coningham’s intemperate reply had to be withdrawn on Tedder’s orders, and Coningham apologized to Patton in person (Mortensen; Chapter 7).

Williams was promoted brigadier general on 18 March 1943. He went on to command the troop carrier aircraft that dropped the paratroopers into Sicily, and as head of IX Troop Carrier Command he dropped the American airborne divisions in Normandy and Holland. The lessons the airmen drew from the winter, that air power should be controlled by an airman and used first to win control of the air, went into War Department Field Manual 100-20 on 21 July 1943 (Chapter 7).

The insignia, rendered

Illustration Original insignia-style artwork made for the Lake Norman Brief. It is not the unit’s official emblem. The command’s aircraft carried the national star, ringed in chrome yellow for the Torch landings so that French and Allied gunners would recognize them.

Timeline

1. 8 November 1942Operation Torch: the command supports Patton’s Western Task Force in Morocco.
2. 6 January 1943A detachment of the command is set up to support II Corps in central Tunisia.
3. 7 JanuaryThe 33rd Fighter Group’s P-40Fs arrive at Thelepte.
4. 21 JanuaryCol. Paul L. Williams takes command.
5. 26 JanuaryWilliams has 110 aircraft: P-40s, P-39s, A-20s and DB-7s.
6. About 8 FebruaryThe worn-out 33rd Fighter Group is relieved; the 31st’s Spitfires take its place.
7. 17 February, 10:30Last mission from Thelepte; about 124 aircraft fly out and the field is abandoned.
8. 18 FebruaryThe command passes to Coningham’s Northwest African Tactical Air Force.
9. 19–21 FebruarySirocco dust, rain and fog keep most aircraft on the ground.
10. 22–23 February23 missions and 114 sorties from Youks; then heavy attacks on the Axis columns leaving the pass.

People of the unit

Read the full story

• Chapter 7: The Air War over Tunisia
• Chapter 4: Sbeitla, Gafsa, Fériana and Thelepte: The Long Retreat
• Chapter 6: Thala and Djebel el Hamra: Where Rommel Was Stopped
• The Kasserine Pass collection and atlas

By the numbers

XII Air Support Command by the numbers

110aircraft on 26 January 1943: P-40s, P-39s, A-20s and DB-7s

13P-40s left in the 33rd Fighter Group by 1 February, after combat and a transfer of 25 to the French

124operational aircraft flown out of Thelepte on 17 February ahead of the Afrika Korps

60,000gallons of aviation gasoline poured out on the ground at Thelepte

114sorties in 23 missions on 22 February, the first good flying day of the crisis

104Allied aircraft counted over the Kasserine area in one fifteen-minute period on 23 February

What the command flew, 26 January 1943

Aircraft on hand, by type

Curtiss P-40 Warhawk

52

Douglas A-20 Havoc

27

Bell P-39 Airacobra

23

Douglas DB-7

8

Source: Craven and Cate, eds., The Army Air Forces in World War II, vol. II (1949), via HyperWar.

Leaving Thelepte, 17 February 1943

Aircraft flown out and aircraft destroyed on the ground. Howe, citing an engineer report, gives 34 demolished; the counts may measure different things.

Operational aircraft flown out

124

Aircraft burned on the field (air history)

18, 5 already beyond repair

Aircraft demolished (Howe)

34

Source: Craven and Cate, eds., The Army Air Forces in World War II, vol. II (1949), via HyperWar; Howe, Northwest Africa (1957).

In pictures

More photographs

In the art of World War II

Insignia, posters and art

Twelfth Air Force 81st Fighter Group: dragon and boll weevil 308th Fighter Squadron Rush Tanks Immediately: A Message from North Africa

Explore the Art of World War II →

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), chs. 3–6.
• George F. Howe, Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West (Office of the Chief of Military History, 1957), chs. XXII–XXIV.
• I. S. O. Playfair et al., The Mediterranean and Middle East, vol. IV (HMSO, 1966), p. 302; B. H. Liddell Hart, ed., The Rommel Papers (1953).
• Daniel R. Mortensen, ed., Airpower and Ground Armies (Air University Press, 1998); Daniel R. Mortensen, A Pattern for Joint Operations: World War II Close Air Support, North Africa (1987).
• War Department, FM 31-35, Aviation in Support of Ground Forces (April 1942); FM 100-20, Command and Employment of Air Power (21 July 1943).
• U.S. Air Force biographies of Maj. Gen. Paul L. Williams and Gen. William W. Momyer; Maurer Maurer, Air Force Combat Units of World War II (1983).
• Further reading: Rebecca Grant, “Up From Kasserine Pass,” Air Force Magazine, September 2007; Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn (2002); Christopher Shores, Hans Ring and William N. Hess, Fighters over Tunisia (1975).