The Twelfth Air Force in the Landing Operations

Impatience had reached its peak. the Soviet Union was loudly demanding that the Western Allies open a second front. British and American military leaders were harriedly explaining that they wanted to be sure of sufficient strength before committing forces to such a task. Small but vociferous groups on both sides of the Atlantic were clamoring for aid to the hard pressed Soviet forces. Everywhere the question was being asked, "When?"

It was thus all the more electrifying when, on 8 November 1942, the word was flashed that Allied forces had landed in Northwest Africa. The war was being brought, if not immediately to Fortress Europe, then to its most vulnerable approaches.

Of great importance and effectiveness was the part in that invasion and in the later battle for Tunisia of the United States Twelfth Army Air Force. This booklet relates the role of that organization from the time the initial assault was made on the Axis buffer territory of Africa to the time when the Herrenvolk, beaten and disillusioned, were compelled to withdraw to Europe itself, there to find little comfort in the certainty that the forces they had set in motion could not be halted.

There were four chief purposes in undertaking the invasion:

1. To open the Mediterranean to Allied shipping. This would shorten the haul from the North Atlantic to India and, by making unnecessary the longer route around the Cape of Good Hope, vitally increase the number of round trips which Allied shipping could make to the Orient.
2. The opening of the Mediterranean would be an effective counter to the Axis Drand nach Osten, which was in danger of reaching out to meet the Japanese push toward India, and the success of which would have split the United Nations into two segments.
3. Allied control of the Mediterranean would make it possible to invade Europe through Italy, the "soft underbelly" of the Axis. Italy would thus afford a springboard for further invasions, would draw part of the German strength from the Russian front, and would give strategic bombers a base within effective distance of hitherto inaccessible Axis installations.
4. Last, and not by any means least, the movement would deal a serious blow to the morale of Germany and her satellites, would raise Allied morale, and would encourage those elements in the Axis-occupied countries which were working as best they could toward the defeat of the Axis.

It was planned to strike simultaneously at Casablanca, Oran, and Algiers. It was also planned that at about the same time the British Eighth Army would break Rommel's El Alamein line and advance into Tripolitania to meet the spearhead of invasion which would sweep eastward from Algiers.