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Drawing upon experience ranging from the Western Desert and Tunisia through the Sicilian and Italian campaigns, Allied tactical air control in Normandy and during the subsequent European campaign was generally excellent. Fundamental to this success was the wartime evolution of radar. The Allied air forces had radar available to them from the very first day of Normandy operations, and it was soon incorporated into tactical air control as well as for early warning and air defense purposes. Radar had first been used for tactical air support control during the Sicilian and Italian campaigns, and now, in Normandy and the subsequent breakout, it reached new levels of refinement. Each TAC had a radar control group built around a Tactical Control Center (also called a Fighter Control Center), a microwave early warning radar (dubbed a MEW), three Forward Director Posts, three or four SCR-584 Close Control Units (the SCR-584 being a particularly fine precision radar used for positioning data and antiaircraft gun laying), and, finally four Direction Finding stations, dubbed Fixer stations. The MEW, considered the heart of the system, would be located within ten to thirty miles of the front.
Originally developed for air defense purposes, this radar network now took on added importance for the control of tactical air strikes. For example, when an Air-Ground Coordination Party sent in a request for immediate air support, that request went directly to a Combined Operations Center functioning between the TAC and the Army. There, the Army S2 and G-3 and the TAC A-2 and A-3 evaluated the request. Assuming it was considered legitimate, the Army G-3 and Air A-3 would each approve it, and the Air A-3 would relay it to the Tactical Control Center with a recommended course of action. Typically, the TCC would relay the request to airborne fighter-bombers, and a geographically appropriate Forward Director Post would furnish precise radar guidance and navigation information from the MEW and SCR-584 radars to the strike flight, vectoring them to the target area. Once in the target area, of course, the strike flight leader would communicate with the Air-Ground Coordination Party that had sent in the request for final details. For its part, the Air-Ground Coordination Party would arrange for artillery to mark the target with colored smoke and also, if possible, to undertake suppressive artillery fire against known enemy antiaircraft defenses. Radar was also used for so-called blind bombing in conditions of reduced visibility. SCR-584 control eventually enabled blind bombing strikes with accuracies on the order of 400-yards from the predetermined aiming point, notably during the Battle of the Bulge in winter 1944-45.
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