D Day: Cobra: Key to Breakout

Cobra: Key to Breakout

The main weight of the Cobra bombings fell opposite Maj. Gen. J. Lawton Collins's VII Corps, on Lieutenant General Fritz Bayer-lein's already battered Panzer-Lehr Division. The initial confusion of the July 24 strikes had misled the German defenders into thinking that they had withstood and repulsed an American attack. They were not prepared for the whirlwind that descended on the 25th. The bombing, Collins recollected, "raised havoc on the enemy side." Though VII Corps, hurting from the accumulated short bombings of two days, did not make great progress in its ground attack on the 25th, Collins shrewdly realized that the German command and control structure had been badly disrupted by the air attack, and he planned a full-scale assault for the next morning. There began the genuine breakthrough. Combat Command A of the 2d Armored Division, ably supported by Quesada's IX TAC and building on the accomplishment of the 30th Infantry Division (which had taken the brunt of the short-bombings), cut through enemy defenses. Breakthrough now became breakout. The stage was set for the drive across Northern Europe.

Bayerlein left a remarkable account of the effects of the Cobra bombing and ground assault on his already war-weary command. In response to postwar interrogation he wrote:

We had the main losses by pattern bombing, less by artillery, still less by tanks and smaller arms.

The actual losses of dead and wounded were approximately:
by bombing 50%

by artillery 30%

by other weapons 20%

The digging in of the infantry was useless and did not protect against bombing .... Dugouts and foxholes were smashed, the men buried, and we were unable to save them. The same happened to guns and tanks . . . . it seems to me, that a number of men who survived the pattern bombing . . . surrendered soon to the attacking infantry or escaped to the rear.

The actual losses of dead and wounded were approximately:
by bombing	50%
by artillery	30%
by other weapons	20%

The first line has [sic] been annihilated by the bombing.... The three-hour bombardment on 25.7-after the smaller one a day before-had extermi- nating morale effect on the troops physically and morally weakened by continual hard fighting for 45 days. The long duration of the bombing, without any possibility for opposition, created depressions and a feeling of helplessness, weakness and inferiority. Therefore the morale attitude of a great number of men grew so bad that they, feeling the uselessness of fighting, surrendered, deserted to the enemy or escaped to the rear, as far as they survived the bombing. Only particularly strong nerved and brave men could endure this strain.

The shock effect was nearly as strong as the physical effect (dead and wounded). During the bombardment. . . some of the men got crazy and were unable to carry out anything. I have been personally on 24.7 and 25.7 in the center of the bombardment and could experience the tremendous effect. For me, who during this war was in every theater committed at the points of the main efforts, this was the worst I ever saw.

The well-dug-in infantry was smashed by the heavy bombs in their foxholes and dugouts or killed and buried by blast. The positions of infantry and artillery were blown up. The whole bombed area was transformed into fields covered with craters, in which no human being was alive. Tanks and guns were destroyed and overturned and could not be recovered, because all roads and passages were blocked ....

Very soon after the beginning of the bombardment every kind of telephone communication was eliminated. As nearly all C.P.'s [Command Posts] were situated in the bombed area, radio was almost impossible. The communication was limited to [motorcycle] messen-gers, but this was also rather difficult because many roads were interrupted and driving during the bombardment was very dangerous and required a lot of time.

By any standard, the Cobra bombing had an extraordinary effect on the German defenders, and as the official Army history of the Normandy campaign acknowledges, the Cobra bombing constituted the "best example in the European theater of 'carpet bombing."' This, of course, does not mean that the subsequent campaign on land was a pushover, for throughout the war, the decimated Panzer-Lehr Division and many other battered Nazi units showed an amazing resiliency, reforming, recuperating, and continuing to fight. Nevertheless, the Cobra operation did put the German army in France on the skids. Ironically, it would be a Nazi command decision which would set the stage for total German destruction in Northern France.