At 2200 hours on August 6th, 1944, General Derpanza trooper Hans Eberbach stood in his command post near Morta, France, and prepared to launch the largest German armored counterattack since D-Day.
Eberbach commanded Panzer Group West, the collective designation for all German armored forces in Normandy.
Under his direct control for Operation Lutk were four Panzer divisions.
Second SS Panzer Division, Das, First SS Panzer Division, Liandarta Adolf Hitler.
Second Panser Division and 116th Panser Division.
Total strength 185 operational tanks, 32,000 soldiers.
Objective 40 km west to the coastal town of Avranches.
The plan was simple.
Drive west through Morta.
Cut the American corridor at Avanches.
Trap General Patton’s third army south of the breakthrough.
Restore the front.
Eberbach was a professional.
He had commanded armored units since 1940.
Poland, France, Russia.
He understood combined arms warfare, logistics, tactical mobility.
But he also understood something else.
This attack was launching in daylight.
Hitler had ordered the offensive personally.
The Furer demanded immediate action.
No delays, no waiting for darkness, no consideration of Allied air superiority.
Eberbach protested.
His intelligence officers reported clear weather forecast for August 7th.
Clear weather meant Allied fighter bombers.
Fighter bombers meant disaster.
Hitler overruled him.
The attack would proceed at dawn, August 7th, 1944.
At 700 hours as the first Panther tanks rolled west through Morta’s narrow streets.
Eberbach watched the sky.
It was perfectly clear.
Not a single cloud from horizon to horizon.
He knew what was coming.
The German advance made good progress initially.
By 0800 hours, led elements of second Panzer Division had penetrated 8 km west of Morta.
American forces, primarily the 30th Infantry Division, were caught off guard, falling back in disorder.
Then at 0836 hours, the first RAF Typhoons appeared.
Squadron leader Jr.
Baldwin commanding 245 Squadron RAF spotted the German column from 3,000 m altitude.
He counted 47 tanks and 120 support vehicles stretched along a single road west of Morta.
Baldwin radioed his wingmen.
Taliho armor below.
Going in.
The Hawker Typhoon was Britain’s dedicated ground attack aircraft.
It carried eight RP3 rockets, 60 lb warheads on 3-in solid fuel motors.
Velocity at impact 1,000 ft pers.
Penetration 5 in of armor plate at a 30° angle.
German Panther tanks had 80 mm frontal armor, 45 mm side armor, 40 mm rear armor.
Typhoon rockets could penetrate side and rear armor with direct hits.
Baldwin squadron dove from 3,000 m to 600 m, fired 64 rockets in two passes, climbed away.
Attack duration 4 minutes.
Pilots claimed 11 tanks destroyed, 23 vehicles burning.
Ground verification later confirmed six tanks hit, 18 trucks destroyed.
The rocket’s 60 lb warhead created massive blast effects, even with near misses.
Tracks blown off, engines disabled, crews killed by concussion.
But the real impact wasn’t the kills.
It was the disruption.
The German column stopped.
Tanks dispersed off-road seeking cover.
Infantry scattered into hedge.
The advance halted for 37 minutes while crews assessed damage and reorganized.
At Panzer Group West headquarters, Eberbach received the first reports at 912 hours.
One squadron, 4 minutes, advance stopped.
He checked the weather forecast again.
Clear skies predicted until 1900 hours, 11 hours of daylight remaining.
What Eberbach didn’t know, couldn’t know, was that squadron leader Baldwin’s attack had triggered a massive response system.
RAF Second Tactical Air Force commanded by Air Marshal Arthur Cunningham had been waiting for exactly this moment.
Ultra Intelligence decrypted German communications had warned of the Morta attack 18 hours earlier.
Cunningham had prepositioned his squadrons.
Typhoon units at Forward airfields in Normandy were armed, fueled, pilots briefed.
When Baldwin’s contact report arrived at 0838 hours, the response was immediate.
By hours, 83 typhoons from six squadrons were airborne, converging on Morta.
The operational system was industrial in scale.
Each Typhoon squadron had 18 aircraft.
Each aircraft carried eight rockets plus four 20 mm cannons with 800 rounds total ammunition.
Each squadron could launch, attack, return, rearm, and launch again in 47 minutes.
RAF2 TAFF had 27 Typhoon squadrons operational in Normandy on August 7th, 1944.
Total available aircraft, 486 Typhoons.
The mathematics were overwhelming.
If each squadron flew three sorties per day, conservative estimate, that meant 81 squadron sorties, 1,458 individual aircraft sorties, 11,664 rockets fired in a single day.
Against 185 German tanks, the ratio was 63 rockets per tank.
At hours, the second wave hit.
12 squadrons, 216 Typhoons, attacked German positions across a 15 km front west of Morta.
Eberbach’s operations officer reported, “All forward movement ceased.
Units requesting permission to withdraw to covered positions.” Eberbach denied the request.
Hitler’s orders were explicit.
Advance regardless of casualties.
Reach of ranches by nightfall.
The tank stayed on the roads.
The typhoons kept coming.
Between and 1523 hours, a span of 3 hours and 36 minutes, RAF’s second tactical air force flew 294 Typhoon sorties over the Morta battlefield.
This wasn’t random harassment.
It was systematic destruction coordinated by forward air controllers embedded with American ground units.
Captain James Crawford, 30th Infantry Division, was positioned on Hill 314, overlooking Mortaine.
From his vantage point, 200 meters above the valley, he had direct line of sight to German tank formations.
Crawford radioed target coordinates to RAF control every 8 to 12 minutes.
The typhoons adjusted their attack runs based on his real-time updates.
The result was devastating precision.
German tanks couldn’t hide.
Crawford spotted every movement, every repositioning, every attempt to advance.
At hours, 18 typhoons attacked second SS Panzer Division column.
144 rockets fired, nine tanks claimed destroyed.
At hours, 24 typhoons hit first SS Panzer Division assembly area.
192 rockets plus 14 tons of bombs.
12 tanks claimed destroyed.
At 1308 hours, 30 typhoons struck second Panzer Division near St.
Bartholomew.
240 rockets, 15 tanks claimed destroyed.
The pattern repeated every 20 to 30 minutes.
Typhoons attacked, returned to base, rearmed in 47 minutes, attacked again.
German crews tried everything.
They dispersed into Bokeh Hedger, but the hedgeros trapped them, making reverse movement impossible.
They camouflaged tanks with foliage, but movement gave away positions instantly.
At hours, Eberbach received a report from second Panzer division commander.
Further advance impossible.
Losses from air attack 40%.
Request permission to consolidate positions.
Eberbach again denied.
Hitler’s orders advanced to avanches.
At 1523 hours, the largest single attack of the day hit.
48 Typhoons, four full squadrons concentrated on a 2 km section of road where 116th Panzer Division was attempting to bypass Mortaine to the south.
384 rockets fired in 6 minutes.
Pilots claimed 23 tanks destroyed, 47 vehicles burning.
Ground verification later confirmed 11 tanks destroyed, eight disabled, 34 trucks, and halftracks destroyed.
But again, the real damage was operational paralysis.
The 116th Panzer Division stopped moving.
It never advanced another meter that day.
By 1800 hours on August 7th, 1944, Operation Lutk had failed completely.
German forces had advanced a maximum of 12 km, less than 1/3 of the 40 km objective to Aanches.
The casualty reports told the story, German tank losses, August 7th, 1944.
Second SS Panzer Division, 31 tanks destroyed or disabled, 42% of starting strength.
First SS Panzer Division, 28 tanks destroyed or disabled, 39%.
Second Panzer Division, 41 tanks destroyed or disabled, 51%.
116th Panzer Division, 23 tanks destroyed or disabled, 35%.
Total 123 tanks out of 185 destroyed or disabled in one day.
Loss rate 66%.
RAF Second Tactical Air Force flew 294 Typhoon sorties, fired 2,88 rockets, dropped 73 tons of bombs.
Pilots claimed 140 tanks destroyed.
Post battle analysis confirmed 81 tanks destroyed directly by air attack.
42 additional tanks disabled by near misses.
Tracks destroyed, engines damaged, crews killed.
The discrepancy between pilot claims 140 and confirmed kills 81 was typical.
Rocket attacks created massive explosions and smoke.
Pilots often counted the same tank multiple times or mistook disabled vehicles for destroyed ones, but the numbers told only part of the story.
The real devastation was in supporting vehicles.
247 trucks destroyed, 89 halftracks destroyed, 34 fuel tankers destroyed, 52 ammunition carriers destroyed, 18 command vehicles destroyed, total soft-skinned vehicle losses, 440 vehicles in 7 hours.
These losses were catastrophic.
Tanks without fuel trucks couldn’t advance.
Tanks without ammunition carriers couldn’t fight.
Infantry without halftracks couldn’t keep pace with armor.
Ebach Panza Group West had been transformed from a mobile offensive force into a collection of isolated immobile strong points.
At 1923 hours, 77 minutes after sunset, Eberbach received the order he had expected all day.
Suspend offensive operations, consolidate positions, prepare defensive lines.
Operation Lutic was over.
It had lasted 12 hours and 23 minutes.
What destroyed Eberbach’s counterattack wasn’t just the typhoons.
It was the system behind them.
RAF’s second tactical air force operated 18 forward airfields in Normandy by August 1944.
Average distance from airfield to front line, 35 km.
Flight time 8 minutes.
This proximity was decisive.
Typhoons could respond to target requests in under 15 minutes from initial radio call to rockets on target.
The system worked like this.
Step one, detection forward.
Air controllers with American ground units spotted German movements.
Radioed coordinates to RAF control centers.
Step two.
Coordination.
RAF control centers matched available squadrons to targets based on location, priority, aircraft availability.
Average response time, 4 minutes.
Step three, execution.
Typhoon squadrons launched.
Received updated coordinates via radio during flight.
Attacked within 15 minutes of initial request.
Step four, assessment pilots reported results immediately after attack.
Forward air controllers confirmed kills, requested follow-up strikes if needed.
The cycle repeated continuously from dawn to dusk.
On August 7th, RAF second TAF maintained an average of 47 typhoons over the Mortain battlefield at any given moment between and 1,800 hours.
German forces had no equivalent system.
Luftwafa units in Normandy were scattered across airfields in eastern France, 150 to 200 km from the front.
Response time to ground support requests, 90 plus minutes, if aircraft were available at all.
On August 7th, the Luftwaffer flew 23 sorties over Normandy.
The RAF flew 294 Typhoon sorties plus 412 additional fighter and bomber sorties.
Total Allied air sorties that day 706.
Total German air sorties 23.
Ratio 31 to1.
But even these numbers understated the disparity.
Allied aircraft operated with complete freedom.
No German fighters contested them.
No flack batteries survived long enough to matter.
German aircraft operated under constant threat.
Allied fighters patrolled German airfields, shot down Luftvafa planes during takeoff and landing, destroyed aircraft on the ground.
The sky belonged to the allies completely.
The Mortine counterattack failed because Eberbach had 185 tanks facing a system that could deploy 486 typhoons in a single day.
But why did that disparity exist? The answer was industrial capacity.
Specifically, the ability to mass-produce complex weapons at scale.
In 1944, Britain produced 26,461 aircraft.
Germany produced 39,87 aircraft, 50% more than Britain.
But Germany was fighting a three-front war.
Eastern front against the Soviet Union, Western Front against Britain and America, Mediterranean against Allied forces in Italy.
German aircraft production had to be divided across three theaters.
In Normandy, the Luftvafa could concentrate only 570 operational aircraft by August 1944.
Britain, by contrast, faced only one front, Western Europe.
RAF’s second tactical air force alone had 2,847 operational aircraft in Normandy on August 7th, 1944.
The ratio was 5:1 in favor of the Allies.
Not because Germany couldn’t build planes, but because Germany couldn’t concentrate them.
But the real disparity became clear when American production entered the equation.
In 1944, the United States produced 96,318 aircraft, more than twice Germany’s total output.
American factories delivered 16,331 fighters, 35,743 bombers, 21,772 transport aircraft, 22,472 trainers.
Combined Allied production 122,779 aircraft in 1944.
German production 39,87 aircraft ratio 3.1 to1.
The numbers became even more stark when examining specific aircraft types.
Hawker aircraft lied produced 3,317 Typhoons in 1944, an average of nine aircraft per day.
Production time per aircraft 2,847 man hours.
Germany’s closest equivalent, the Fauler Wolf FW190 fighter bomber required 4,200 man-h hours per aircraft.
German factories produced 13,367 FW190 in 1944, an average of 37 per day.
Germany was producing more fighters than Britain, but Germany was also losing them faster.
Luftwafa lost rates in 1944, 28% per month on the Eastern Front, 31% per month on the Western Front.
At those rates, the entire Luftvafa fighter force had to be replaced every 3.5 months.
RAF loss rates in 1944, 4.2% per month.
At that rate, the RAF fighter force needed replacement every 24 months.
The mathematics were brutal.
Germany had to produce 7.4 four times more fighters than Britain just to maintain force levels, but Germany was producing only four times more.
The gap widened every month.
By August 1944, the Luftwaffer was operationally defeated.
Not because German pilots lacked skill or German aircraft lacked quality, but because German industry couldn’t replace losses fast enough.
On August 10th, 1944, three days after the Morta disaster, General Derpanser trooper Hans Eberbach attended a conference at Army Group B headquarters near Fontenblau.
General Feld Marshall Gunter Vonluga, commander of Army Group B, opened the meeting with a question.
Can we hold Normandy? Eberbach’s response was documented in the conference minutes later captured by Allied forces.
We cannot hold against their air power.
Every movement in daylight is detected and destroyed within minutes.
Our tank losses from air attack exceed our losses from ground combat by a ratio of 3:1.
We are not fighting an army.
We are fighting an industrial system that can replace losses faster than we can inflict them.
The statement was remarkable for its clarity.
Eberbach understood that the tactical problem allied air superiority was actually a strategic problem industrial capacity.
He elaborated in the conference.
The enemy can lose 50 aircraft in a day and replace them within a week.
We lose 50 aircraft and cannot replace them for a month.
The enemy has 18 forward airfields within 40 km of the front.
We have three airfields within 150 km.
The enemy launches 700 sorties per day.
We launch 20.
Vonluga asked, “What do you need to restore offensive capability?” Eberbach’s answer.
Air superiority.
Without it, armored operations in daylight are suicide.
Vonluga, can we achieve air superiority? Eberbach.
No, not with current production rates, not with current pilot training capacity, not with current fuel supplies.
The conference ended without resolution.
There was no solution to propose.
The industrial disparity was too large to overcome.
5 days later, on August 15th, the Fallet’s pocket began to close.
Eberbach’s Panzer Group West, what remained of it, was trapped along with seven German armies.
The pocket was 40 km long, 15 km wide.
Inside, 100,000 German soldiers, 344 tanks, 2,300 vehicles.
Above, 2,800 Allied aircraft flying continuous attack missions.
Between August 15th and August 21st, Allied aircraft flew thousands of sorties over the file’s pocket.
RAF Typhoons, American P47 Thunderbolts, P-51 Mustangs.
They attacked in waves from dawn to dusk.
Pilots claimed 500 plus vehicles destroyed in the first 3 days alone.
Post battle analysis confirmed approximately 1/3 of all destroyed German trucks were lost to air attack.
The rest were abandoned when crews fled the constant bombing.
German casualties inside the pocket, 10,000 killed, 50,000 captured.
Another 20,000 to 50,000 escaped before the pocket closed completely on August 21st.
Eberbach was not among the captured at files.
He escaped the encirclement and continued commanding remnants of German armored forces during the retreat across France.
On August 31st, 1944, British forces captured him near Amy.
The war for Eberbash was over.
The Mortain counterattack failed because 185 German tanks faced a system that could deploy 486 Typhoons, 18 forward airfields, and unlimited replacement capacity.
On the morning of August 7th, 1944, General Hans Eberbach commanded 185 tanks and believed he could reach a ranches in one day.
By sunset, he commanded 62 operational tanks and understood the war was lost.
What changed in those 12 hours wasn’t German courage or tactical skill.
German tank crews fought with the same determination at 1800 as they had at 600.
What changed was the realization that courage and skill were irrelevant against an opponent who could deploy 294 Typhoon sorties, fire 2,88 rockets, and replace every loss within 2 weeks.
The Mortine counterattack proved what the entire Normandy campaign had already demonstrated.
World War II was decided not on battlefields, but in factories.
Germany produced 39,87 aircraft in 1944, an impressive achievement for a nation under constant bombing, but the Allies produced 167,654 aircraft, 4.2 times more.
Germany produced 27,300 tanks in 1944, more than enough to equip dozens of Panzer divisions.
But the Allies produced 51,400 tanks, 1.9 times more.
The numbers were insurmountable.
Every German tank destroyed at Morta took 34 days to replace.
Every Allied aircraft lost took 11 days to replace.
At those rates, Germany couldn’t win.
It could only delay the inevitable.
Eberbach survived the war.
He was released from British captivity in 1948, returned to Germany, lived until 1992, 48 years after Morta.
In his postwar memoirs, he wrote about August 7th, 1944.
We lost the battle in 7 hours.
But we had already lost the war in the factories.
We just didn’t know it yet.
The lesson of Morta wasn’t about tactics or technology.
It was about industrial capacity.
Wars are won by the side that can build more, replace faster, and sustain losses longer.
In 1944, that side was the Allies.
The factories had already decided the outcome.
The battles were just confirmation.
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