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The Campaign in CFS3
Part III - The Falaise "pocket": tac air in all its glory and horror

On August 15, the Canadian First Army took Falaise, and the Allied armies converging from the north, south, and west squeezed the retreating German forces into a "pocket" between Falaise and Argentan. This pocket was less than 15 miles wide and was rapidly shrinking, with the only exit to the east.

The next four days demonstrated the full and terrible potential of tactical air power. As more and more German troops and armor were crowded into the shrinking pocket, British and U.S. fighter-bombers reduced the milling men and vehicles to a bloody, burning shambles.

Rocket-firing Typhoons and strafing Spitfires, in coordination with Allied infantry and armor, relentlessly pounded the packed enemy columns. U.S. Ninth Air Force pilots flew deep interdiction missions against enemy road, rail, and bridge targets, as well as aggressive sweeps to maintain air superiority, swatting down Luftwaffe fighters before they could get into the air.

Allied tactical pilots stayed on the job as long as the daylight lasted, flying as many as five or six missions a day, stopping only to refuel and rearm. The air over the Falaise pocket was so crowded with aircraft that coordination became an issue, and mid-air collisions took a toll among pilots focused on destroying the enemy.

Save the bridges
As the Allied advance gained momentum and the carnage reached a crescendo, one Allied air objective changed significantly. Instead of destroying bridges and routes by which German forces and supplies could enter the area, bridges were to be left intact for the pursuing Allied ground forces; the goal now was to prevent the Germans from escaping and re-forming the remnants of the Seventh Army to fight another day.

Thus bottled up, 10,000 German soldiers died along a road that came to be called the le Couloir de la Mort—the "Corridor of Death." Another 50,000 were taken prisoner. And the remnant of von Kluge's army — perhaps 20,000 men — managed to escape to the east only after abandoning almost all their vehicles and heavy weapons.

Some fighter-bomber pilots who swooped down to strike the fleeing enemy were shocked by the devastation and carnage. What they found was a hellish scene beneath a blackened sky full of the smoke and stench of the battlefield. The piled corpses of men and horses, the shattered and burning remnants of soft-skinned and armored vehicles, and a litter of abandoned equipment were all that remained along the cratered roads near Falaise.

For those who had wondered about the effectiveness of tactical air power, Falaise was a gruesome revelation. Even for those who had counted on its effectiveness, the results, while beneficial to the Allied cause, were disturbing. The race toward the Rhine
As the remnants of the shattered Seventh Army fled eastward, additional German forces in Normandy swelled the retreat. However, like all major German retreats of the war, this was an organized and disciplined process. Despite hot pursuit by the Allied armies and continuing harassment by the tactical air forces, 240,000 Germans got across the Seine in the last dozen days of August and streamed toward Belgium, Luxembourg—and Germany.

Patton's army began its pursuit by crossing the Seine on August 21, and in the next ten days pushed almost 200 miles eastward to the river Meuse. Other British and U.S. forces liberated Paris on the 25th of August and pushed on into Belgium and Luxembourg.