August 7th, 1944.
Half 6:00 a.m.
near Morton, France.
General Lightning Hinrich Aberbach, commander of Poner Group Abberach, stands in the command halftrack scanning the road ahead.
Stretched before him is the largest German armored formation assembled since D-Day 175 tanks, including 70 Panther and Tiger tanks supported by 20,000 infantry and self-propelled guns.
The column extends for nearly 12 m.
Hitler himself designed this offensive.
The plan is bold, perhaps desperate.
Punch west through the weak American defenses at Mortine.
Drive 30 mi to the coast of Ranches, cut off Patton’s third army, and split the Allied forces in half.
If it works, the breakout from Normandy fails.
The Allies lose momentum.
Germany buys time to fortify and negotiate.
Eberbach is a veteran of the Eastern Front.
He knows armor tactics, combined arms operations, mobile warfare.
He also knows something critically dangerous.
The weather report shows clear skies, perfect flying conditions, and his column has almost no air cover.
The Luftvafa promise fighter protection.
So far, he’s seen three German aircraft.
He raises his binoculars and scans the sky, empty, blue, silent for now.
At quarter to 8:00 a.m., the first British Typhoon fighter bombers appear.
What happened over the next 7 hours became one of the most devastating displays of tactical air power in World War II.
When it ended, the German offensive was annihilated.
175 tanks reduced to burning wreckage and the road to Mortine transformed into what Allied soldiers called the killing ground.
But what the German general said after the battle when his staff asked why the attack failed reveals a truth that decided the war.
Let me show you exactly what happened.
The Hawker Typhoon was not originally designed as a ground attack aircraft.
Early in the war, it served as a fighter interceptor, but it was mediocre in that role, slower than the Faulk Wolf FW190, less maneuverable than the Spitfire.
British pilots called it the Tiffy with a mix of affection and frustration.
But someone noticed the Typhoon had characteristics that made it perfect for ground attack.
It was fast at low altitude over 400 mh at 500 ft.
It was heavily built, able to absorb ground fire that would destroy lighter aircraft.
And critically, it could carry an enormous weapons load, 860lb RP3 rockets or two 1,000lb bombs, plus four 20 mm cannons with 800 rounds totally.
The RP3 rocket was a brutally simple weapon.
A 60lb high explosive warhead mounted on a steel tube with a solid fuel rocket motor.
Fired from rails under the Typhoon’s wings, the rocket accelerated to over 1,000 ft per second.
It wasn’t particularly accurate.
Pilots joked that hitting a specific tank was luck, not skill.
But accuracy didn’t matter when you fired in salvos.
A standard Typhoon attack pattern worked like this.
Four aircraft approach the target in a shallow dive from 3,000 ft.
At 1500 ft, the lead pilot acquires the target, a tank column, an artillery battery, a supply convoy.
At 1,000 ft, still diving, he fires all eight rockets in a ripple salvo over 2 seconds.
The other three aircraft follow at 3-second intervals, each firing eight rockets.
32 rockets impact a 100 meter section of road in less than 15 seconds.
Each rocket warhead produces an explosion equivalent to a 6-in naval shell.
The fragmentation effect is devastating even near misses destroy vision ports.
Damage tracks kill exposed infantry.
Direct hits penetrate armor.
Ignite fuel.
Cook off ammunition.
And that’s just one flight of four aircraft.
The RAF could launch dozens.
At 8:00 a.m.
on August 7th, RAF Tactical Air Force received the alert.
German armor in the open near Morton.
No cloud cover, minimal flack.
Every available Typhoon squadron was scrambled scrambled.
By 8:00 a.m., the first wave hit.
12 Typhoons from no 245 squadron approached from the east, flying at 300 ft to avoid detection.
The German column was moving west on a narrow road through blockage country hedger lined fields that restricted movement to the roadway.
Tanks traveled in single file 50 m intervals unable to disperse.
The flight leader, squadron leader JR Baldwin spotted the column immediately, pan their tanks, their distinctive sloped armor and long 75 mm guns unmistakable.
He called the attack run.
The typhoons climbed to 3,000 ft, rolled into a dive, and fired.
96 rockets slammed into the column in 20 seconds.
11 Panther tanks erupted in flames.
The rest stopped, unable to advance past the burning wrecks.
Crews bailed out, scrambling for cover in the ditches and hedge.
That was the first attack.
The typhoon circled, returned, and made a second pass with their 20 mm cannons, shredding soft skin vehicles, and exposed infantry.
Then they climbed and headed back to base to rearm.
By quarter 9:00 a.m., the second wave arrived, and the third and the fourth.
The German column couldn’t move.
The narrow road designed for farm carts became a trap.
Burning tanks blocked the way forward.
Vehicles behind couldn’t reverse.
More tanks pushed from behind.
Crews couldn’t disperse into the fields.
The hedros were too thick.
The ground too soft for heavy armor.
German commanders screamed for air support.
Where was the Luvafa? Where were the fighters that were promised? The answer is simple and horrifying.
The Luftwafa didn’t exist anymore.
Not as an effective force.
In June 1944, Germany’s air force had over 400 fighters stationed in France.
By August, attrition and fuel shortages reduced that to fewer than 100 operational aircraft.
Experienced pilots were dead or rounded.
Replacement pilots had 30, 40 hours of flight training, barely enough to take off and land, let alone dogfight with Allied pilots who had 200300 hours of training.
Even when German fighters appeared, they were outnumbered 10 to one or more.
On August 7th, the Luftvafa managed to launch 14 sorties over Normandy.
The RAF and US Army Air Forces flew over 3,000 S army air forces flew.
The German tankers at Mortine watched the sky fill with enemy aircraft and realized a brutal truth.
They were alone.
No one was coming to help.
They could either stay in their tanks and burn or abandon the vehicles and retreat on foot.
Let me paint you a picture of what this looked like from the ground.
Ober Rudolph on Ribbentrop, commander of the 12th SS Pancer Division’s tank regiment, watched from a farmhouse as his battalion disintegrated.
Typhoons attacked in relays, one flight after another, maintaining constant pressure.
The road was a corridor of fire.
Tanks burned so hot that ammunition cooked off in continuous explosions.
Black smoke rose and columns visible for miles.
Von Ribbentrop later described the sound a constant roar of aircraft engines, the shriek of rockets, the thunder of explosions, and underneath it all, the screaming of wounded men.
He said it reminded him of the Eastern Front of Soviet artillery barges that went on for hours.
But this was worse.
Artillery could be suppressed.
Positions shifted.
There was no defense against aircraft when you had no air cover.
His tank crews did everything they’d been trained to do.
They dispersed when possible.
They used smoke grenades for concealment.
Black units fired 20 mm and 37 mm anti-aircraft guns at the attacking typhoons.
They claimed three aircraft shot down, possibly five.
But it didn’t matter.
For every typhoon hit, 10 more appeared.
By noon, the offensive had stalled completely.
The 175 tank spearhead was scattered across 15 mi of road.
At least 70 tanks were confirmed destroyed burning wrecks visible in aerial reconnaissance photos.
Another 40 were damaged or abandoned.
Hundreds of infantry were dead or wounded.
The survivors retreated into the hedge waiting for darkness.
General Utnand Ibravak pulled back to his command post and sent a report to Field Marshall Gunther.
Funlugia, commander of Army Group B.
The message was blunt.
The attack had failed.
Armored losses were catastrophic.
Continuing the offensive was impossible without air superiority.
Vancluga forwarded the report to Hitler with a personal assessment.
He wrote, “The enemy’s air superiority is devastating.
Our tanks cannot maneuver in daylight.
Movement is only possible at night.
We are fighting a defensive battle without the means to defend.” Hitler ordered the attack to continue.
Over the next two days, German commanders tried to resume the offensive.
They moved only at night, hiding in forests and villages during the day.
It didn’t matter.
Allied aircraft hunted them relentlessly.
By August 9th, the offensive was abandoned.
Of the 175 tanks that began the attack, fewer than 40 remained operational.
But here’s the part that reveals the deeper truth.
When Ibra staff officers asked him why the attack failed, what went wrong? What could have been done differently? He gave an answer that stunned them.
He said, “We lost this battle in 1943.” His officers didn’t understand.
The Mortain offensive was August 1944.
What did 1943 have to do with it? Eberbach explained.
In 1943, Germany lost air superiority over Europe.
The Luftwafa was bled dry in the skies over Germany, defending against Allied strategic bombing.
Experienced pilots died.
Aircraft production couldn’t keep up with losses.
Fuel shortages grounded entire fighter wings.
By 1944, the Luftvafa was a hollow force.
Impressive on paper, useless in battle.
Without air superiority, modern mechanized warfare was impossible.
Tanks couldn’t maneuver.
Supply columns couldn’t move.
Artillery couldn’t be positioned.
Headquarters couldn’t function.
The entire system of mobile warfare that Germany had pioneered with Blitz Creek collapsed when the allies controlled the sky.
Ibra said the tanks at Morta were world class.
The Panthers and Tigers were superior to American Shermans in armor and firepower.
German crews were better trained than most Allied tank crews.
German tactical doctrine was excellent.
None of it mattered.
He said, “You cannot win a battle on the ground when the enemy owns the sky above you.” This wasn’t just Eberbach’s opinion.
It was the experience of every German commander in 1944.
Field Marshall Irwin Raml before he was wounded in a strafing attack wrote to Hitler describing the hopelessness of fighting without air cover.
He said, “Allied aircraft attacked continuously, destroyed supply lines, paralyzed movement, and made organized resistance nearly impossible.” General Hines Gudderion, the architect of Blitzkrieg, later wrote that Germany’s failure to maintain air superiority was the single most decisive factor in the defeat.
He argued that all other advantages, training, equipment, tactical skill were irrelevant once the Luftvafa collapsed.
The numbers support this.
Between June and August 1944, Allied aircraft destroyed or damaged over 3,000 German tanks and armored vehicles in France.
German ground forces destroyed only about 800 Allied tanks in the same period.
The kill ratio was nearly 4:1 in favor of aircraft against tanks.
Here’s what makes this significant.
Morton wasn’t an unusual battle.
It was the standard pattern.
Every German offensive in 1944 and 1945 followed the same trajectory.
Initial success under cover of darkness or bad weather of darkness or bad weather.
then daylight, then Allied aircraft, then annihilation.
The Ardenia offensive in December 1944, the Battle of the Bulge succeeded for 5 days because cloud cover grounded Allied planes.
When the weather cleared on December 23rd, and the typhoons and thunderbolts returned, the offensive collapsed within 48 hours.
This reveals something critical about World War II that often gets overlooked in popular history.
People focus on tank battles, infantry combat, amphibious landings, but the most decisive weapon on the Western Front wasn’t the Sherman tank or the M1 Garand rifle.
It was air power.
The Allies didn’t just have more aircraft.
They had total dominance.
By 1944, the RAF and US Army Air Forces operated over 14,000 aircraft in the European theater.
Germany had fewer than500 operational fighters.
Allied pilots flew multiple missions per day.
German pilots, when they flew it all, knew each sorty might be their last.
This imbalance didn’t happen by accident.
It was the result of strategic decisions made in 1942 and 1943.
The Allies prioritized air superiority above almost everything else.
They built aircraft in staggering numbers, over 300,000 total during the war.
They trained pilots extensively.
They developed tactics, technologies, and logistics to sustain continuous operations.
Germany, by contrast, diverted resources to other priorities.
VW weapons, yubot, wonder weapons that never materialized.
When they finally realized the Luftvaf was dying, it was too late to rebuild.
And so at Morton, 175 of Germany’s best tanks died.
Not because American infantry stopped them.
Not because Allied tanks out fought them, but because British aircraft turned a road into a crematorium in 7 hours.
So here’s my question for you.
When we think about what decides modern wars, how much weight should we give to air power versus ground forces? Mordane shows that superior tanks and tactics meant nothing without control of the sky.
Does that mean air power is the decisive factor? Or was this a unique situation specific to World War II? And if you were a military planner today, knowing what happened at Mortin, how would that shape your priorities? Drop your answer in the comments right now.
I want to see this debated.
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Thanks for watching
