scheduled by the Allies for late spring, diverted Eighth Air Force bombers against transportation targets in France to isolate the invasion area. In support of the invasion, Spaatz wanted to go after German oil targets to ground the Luftwaffe and force the German army to park its vehicles. Invasion commander General Dwight Eisenhower overruled him on March 25, assigning USSTAF to interdict the landing area. VIII Fighter Command under Kepner continued to strafe German airfields and other ground targets through June.
When eight Allied divisions landed in Normandy on June 6, 1944, they did so under conditions of near total Allied control of the air, courtesy of USSTAF―only two Luftwaffe fighters appeared in the area that day. In late July USSTAF bombers again proved critical to the ground campaign as they blasted a hole through German lines at St. Lô for Lieutenant General George Patton's Third Army. Allied tactical air forces, which included Major General Elwood Quesada's IX Tactical Air Command for the First Army and Major General Otto Weyland's XIX Tactical Air Command for the Third Army, provided protective cover and close air support, in line with procedures established in North Africa, for Allied armies sweeping across France toward Germany. At Argentan-Falaise in August air power plugged the gap between encircling American and Canadian armies, destroying hundreds of German armored vehicles and aiding in the capture of fifty thousand German troops. During the Battle of the Bulge in December, airlift, aerial interdiction, and close air support helped turn a near-disaster into an Allied victory.
Eighth and Fifteenth Air Force attacks on Germany's fuel industry provided immeasurable help to the ground offensives, restricting severely the ability of German ground forces to maneuver their armored and mechanized units. Allied air superiority, a product of the Eighth Air Force's aerial campaign, had permitted the landings in Europe, the Allied armies freedom of maneuver, and resupply without concern for the Luftwaffe. Germany had shown the world in 1939 and 1940 what close coordination between tactical air power and ground armies could accomplish. The USAAF repaid the favor with a vengeance in the drive from Normandy into Germany in 1944 and early 1945.
Eisenhower held first call on Spaatz's strategic bombing force through the summer of 1944, but allowed it to return to POINTBLANK objectives with an assault on Germany's oil production when it was not bombing targets in France in support of ground units. ULTRA intercepts confirmed that the USAAF had finally found a true chokepoint in the German industrial economy. German armaments minister Albert Speer predicted that continued attacks on it would have "tragic consequences."
