What Rommel Said When American Planes Destroyed His Panzers In Africa

When American and British fighter bombers caught a German armored column on a dirt road east of Mareth in the spring of nineteen forty three, the wreckage told a story that Field Marshal Erwin Rommel had been quietly documenting for six months. In his personal papers and in letters home to his wife Lucie, the commander of the Afrika Korps wrote one of the most honest professional assessments any Second World War general ever made about his own defeat. This documentary traces how the United States Army Air Forces, working alongside the Royal Air Force, the South African Air Force, and the Royal Australian Air Force under Air Chief Marshal Arthur Tedder and Air Vice Marshal Arthur Coningham, built the tactical air doctrine that broke the Afrika Korps from above. From the Battle of Alam Halfa in August nineteen forty two through the Second Battle of El Alamein, the defeat of American forces at Kasserine Pass in February nineteen forty three, the American tank destroyer stand at El Guettar, Operation Flax in April, the Palm Sunday interception over Cape Bon, and the final Axis surrender on May thirteen, nineteen forty three, this investigation follows the men and the decisions that changed modern warfare. Features documented actions by the Fifty Seventh Fighter Group under Colonel Arthur Salisbury, the Six Hundred and First Tank Destroyer Battalion under Lieutenant Colonel Herschel Baker, the First Infantry Division under Major General Terry Allen, and pilots Roy Whittaker, James Curl, R. J. Byrne, and MacArthur Powers. Every fact, name, date, unit, and quotation has been verified against The Rommel Papers, the United States Army Center of Military History, the National World War Two Museum, and the American Battle Monuments Commission. If your father or grandfather served with any Allied unit in North Africa, we would be honored to read their name in the comments. Subscribe for the next chapter. Sources: The Rommel Papers, edited by B.H. Liddell Hart (1953) Krieg ohne Hass, edited by Lucie-Maria Rommel and Fritz Bayerlein (1950) The National WWII Museum — Operation FLAX, April 1943: https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war... The National WWII Museum — Kasserine Pass: German Offensive, American Victory: https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war... American Battle Monuments Commission — The North Africa Campaign, Remembering the Fight for El Guettar: https://www.abmc.gov/news-events/news... US Army Center of Military History — Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West, by George F. Howe: https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/... HyperWar — The Army Air Forces in World War II, Volume II (Craven and Cate): https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/II/ United States Holocaust Memorial Museum — Tunisia Campaign: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/conten... Air and Space Forces Magazine — Airpower From the Ground Up: https://www.airandspaceforces.com/art... 57th Fighter Group Association — The Palm Sunday Massacre: http://www.57thfightergroup.org/histo... Air University Press — Airpower and Ground Armies, edited by Daniel Mortensen: https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/AUPr... International Churchill Society — Erwin Rommel: https://winstonchurchill.org/publicat... Nellis Air Force Base — 57th Fighter Group's Palm Sunday Goose Shoot: https://www.nellis.af.mil/News/Articl... Tunisgrad: Victory in Africa, by Saul David (2024) An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa 1942–1943, by Rick Atkinson Coningham: A Biography, by Vincent Orange