Citizen Soldiers_ The U.S. Army from the - Stephen E. Ambrose [19]
July 25 was clear. At 0938 some 550 fighter-bombers were guided in by radio messages from air controllers riding in tanks at the head of armoured columns. P-47s fired rockets and machine guns on German positions just south of the road and dropped 500-pound bombs that could be placed within 300 metres of the American lines.
Reporter Ernie Pyle wrote, "The dive bombers hit it just right. We stood in the barnyard of a French farm and watched them barrel nearly straight down out of the sky. They were bombing less than a half-a-mile ahead of where we stood. They came in groups, diving from every direction, perfectly timed, one after another."
After twenty minutes the P-47s gave way to 1,800 B-17s. Their appearance left men groping for words to describe it. Pyle did it this way: "A new sound gradually droned into our ears-a gigantic faraway surge of doomlike sound. It was the heavies. They came on in flights of twelve, three flights to a group and in groups stretched out across the sky. Their march across the sky was slow and studied. I've never known anything that had about it the aura of such a ghastly relentlessness."
They were 12,000 feet high. Captain Belton Cooper was on the ground.
"Once they started, it was like some giant prehistoric dragon snake forming a long great continuum across the sky with its tail extended over the horizon." For a full hour their strike saturated the area just south of the road to a depth of 2,500 metres. The results for the Germans were near-catastrophic.
The bombed area looked like the surface of the moon. Entire hedgerows were blasted away. German general Fritz Bayerlein reported that he lost "at least seventy per cent of my troops, out of action-dead, wounded, crazed, or numbed."
During the second half hour of the bombardment the bombline moved north. Dust and debris raised by the first waves were drifting on a south wind. The CO of Company B, 8th Infantry, 4th Division, described what happened: "The dive bombers came in beautifully, dropped their bombs right in front of us just where they belonged. Then the first group of heavies dropped theirs. The next wave came in closer, the next one closer, still closer. Then they came right on top of us. The shock was awful."
There were 111 GIs killed and 490 wounded by the shorts. Among the dead was General Lesley McNair, chief of the army ground forces, who was in the front line to witness the attack.
This bombardment was supplemented by artillery fire-1,000 guns in all. The gunners' initial task was to suppress German antiaircraft fire. When the first wave of bombers appeared, 88s knocked three of them out of the sky. But little Piper Cubs were flying near enough to the German lines to spot the flashes and call in German positions to American artillery.
When the shells started coming down on them, the German artillerymen dove into their bunkers and the antiaircraft fire ceased. Then, in a general hour-long barrage, the GIs fired 50,000 artillery shells. Overhead, as the B-17s departed, 350 P-47s swooped in for another twenty-minute strike against the narrow strip just south of the road, dropping napalmfilled drums. Their departure was the signal for the infantry and tanks to begin the ground attack. As they did so, 396 Marauders hit the rear of the German front line.
Altogether some 16,000 tons of bombs hit the Germans, supplemented by the artillery barrage. It was the greatest expenditure of explosives for a single attack in the army's history. Private Herbert Meier, a radioman, recalled, "So many planes over so little space, and the bombs rained down. I saw the bombs being