ISBN 0-7864-1465-0
186 pages

Acknowledgments; Preface; Introduction; photos; maps; Glossary; Notes; Bibliography; Index

   Air Support for Patton's Third Army turned out to be a big disappointment. Expectations were not extremely high, but I wanted to like it and hoped to learn a lot from it. Didn't work out that way.
   The Introduction explains the organization and chain of command of the Allied invasion forces for the umpteenth time, with an emphasis on the convoluted structure of the air forces where Arthur Tedder, Trafford Leigh-Mallory, Tooey Spaatz, and Bomber Harris ("one of [Eisenhower's] most loyal subordinates") proved especially interested in protecting their own turf. Sullivan writes about each of those commanders along with Lewis Brereton, Hoyt Vandenberg, and Pete Quesada. Then he spends a few pages tracing the early stages of the campaign up to the activation of George Patton's Third Army.
   In Chapter One, Sullivan reviews the fundamental organizational concepts of armies, corps, and divisions. Most of the chapter involves Third Army's attack into Brittany and the capture of St Malo. The chapter devotes only a couple of paragraphs to air support, which soon becomes the pattern for the whole book.

   The Ninth Bomber Command had sent B-26 medium bombers to attack St. Malo's fortifications. The B-26 was a single-winged, two-engined aircraft with a crew of six. It was effective against air fields, bridges, flying-bomb installations, railroad centers, troop concentrations, supply storage sites, and vehicle parks. It did little decisive damage, however, to fortified positions such as St. Malo. On missions to cut transportation facilities behind German lines, medium bombers usually flew at altitudes between 10,000 and 14,000 feet, where flak was less deadly than at lower altitudes. If the target was important enough, mediums sometimes attacked under cloud cover, usually at about 4000 feet, sometimes even lower. Often the mediums were escorted by fighters. Medium bombers could carry four 1000-pound bombs, two 2000-pound bombs or a variety of bomb loads made up of smaller bombs. To give a reasonable probability of hitting relatively small targets, medium bomb groups had to employ formations of at least 18 aircraft. The Ninth Air Force guidelines warned: "To employ this weapon against targets too heavy to be damaged or too light to justify 36 tons of bombs is a waste of power." The B-26 was vulnerable to fighters and flak.

   The second chapter discusses the basics of air support in very general terms and explains how General Otto P. Weyland, commander of XIX Tactical Air Command under Hoyt Vandenberg's Ninth Air Force, worked with George Patton. Chapter Three describes the P-47, P-51, and P-38 in the support role and then turns to somewhat more specific information about close air support.

   The basic unit of fighter-bomber formations was the four-plane flight made up of two elements. The element leaders flew 75 to 100 yards apart, and each had a wing man off to the side 50 to 75 yards. In a sixteen-plane squadron formation, four flights were divided into two sections. The two flights in the "red" section flew in a line abreast, from 200 to 300 yards apart; the two flights of the "blue" section flew 300 yards behind and 500 to 1000 feet higher.
   Among the principal advantages of fighter-bombers were their rapid turnarounds, assuming their airfields were not too far from the front. Because of their speed and the short time required for refueling and rearming, a fighter could execute as many as five sorties a day.
   The bomb load of fighter-bombers compared favorably with that of light and medium bombers. One man in one airplane could deliver two thousand pounds of bombs. The medium bomber with a crew of six usually carried about four thousand pounds. Fighter-bombers required less manpower for maintenance and service than medium bombers. Fighters could operate from short runways or even grass surfaces, something larger aircraft could not always do.
   Medium bomber groups preferred to have at least twenty-four hours to plan a mission, whereas fighter-bombers often responded to calls for help in less than an hour. Bombing accuracy of fighter-bombers was far better than that of heavy and medium bombers, despite simplicity of sighting methods. They could release bombs close to targets.

   Next Sullivan devotes almost four pages to the German counterattack at Mortain, of which two brief paragraphs cover air support. The remainder of "Drive to the Loire" attends to tactical reconnaissance missions, "armed recce," aerial photography missions, and interdiction missions to protect the Third Army's open flanks. While not especially stunning material, some parts of this chapter are where Sullivan's book comes closest to living up to its promise.
   The chapter on airfields and aviation engineers also offers more information directly related to the book's main topic—including descriptions and comparisons of runway surfaces such as SMT (square mesh track), PHS (pre-fabricated Hessian surfacing), and PSP (pierced steel plank)—but it still has some shortcomings. Despite throwing out some raw numbers and praising the ability of the engineers to rehabilitate captured airfields and build new ones, the author never identifies specific bases and never lists which units operated from which locations on which dates. Much of the text, as happens too often, ends up being disjointed and hard to follow. On page 62, for example, Sullivan reports "XIX TAC's advanced headquarters moved five times in August to remain near Patton's headquarters." Not until ten pages later does the author add the remainder of the equation: "In August, Third Army headquarters moved eight times."
   Chapter Six backtracks to the Falaise Pocket and Sullivan backslides into mostly ignoring air operations while writing an unimpressive account of the battle focusing mainly on the French 2nd Armored Division. A few pages discuss the effect of tactical air on German columns attempting to escape the pocket, but Sullivan lets slip this perfect opportunity to delve deeply into the effectiveness of that kind of air support and the varying interpretations that have been published over the years. Most of the remaining chapters continue the same pattern of providing a broad outline of ground operations with a paragraph or two about air support. Two chapters explore logistics and air supply of ground forces. These are far more useful than the weak recitations of Allied ground ops, but still fail to get to the heart of the subject. Too often the author lapses into sentences and paragraphs like these:

   When tanks were hit, the entire crew often became casualties. Incendiary shells set gasoline and ammunition ablaze. A serious shortage of tank crews developed in American armored units.
   Many tank maintenance soldiers came from farms. They were experienced in working with machinery and often devised mechanical improvements on equipment. Many of them had received special training in ordnance.

   The author seems to be quite knowledgeable in the field of air support for ground forces. Unfortunately, he fails to take full advantage of that knowledge. Too much of his material is vague, unspecific, or off-topic. Far too many pages are expended reciting the most basic facts about Allied operations, forces, and equipment in France in 1944. In fact, in most chapters air support seems like an after-thought, so that the largest part of Sullivan's work serves as nothing more than an unsophisticated primer about the campaign in Northwest Europe.
   This book is not written well enough to be read strictly for pleasure, nor does it measure up as a useful general account of the campaign. Readers searching for hard data about air support won't come away empty-handed—there's some good stuff here—but the hunt might not be worth the effort. That's especially true because better books about this topic already exist. In particular, readers might want to have a look at Patton's Air Force: Forging a Legendary Air-Ground Team by David Spires.
   As to Air Support for Patton's Third Army, from the Introduction onward, even as disappointing chapter followed disappointing chapter, I kept expecting Sullivan to finally dig into his subject matter and pull a successful book out of his hat. Didn't work out that way.
   Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from McFarland & Company.
   Thanks to McFarland for providing this review copy.