World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF AFRICA: Kesselring’s Job

Dispatches from Allied headquarters revealed last week that Field Marshal Albert Kesselring has for some time been in supreme command of Axis forces in Tunisia. He is nicknamed Smiling Albert. If he was smiling last week, it was not because the news of his front was good. He and his men were cornered for fair.

The Axis forces had been driven into a great beachhead, about 100 miles long and 50 miles deep. Inside that beachhead, Albert Kesselring had 18 airfields, two cities with radiating roads, many good heights, some fixed fortifications, plenty of guns, and perhaps 175,000 men. He had Rommel, a proved master of battle, and Arnim, an aristocratic technician. And he had orders.

What use was he going to be able to make of all these things?

His Terrain. The Axis beachhead in Tunisia is not wholly a fortress. Much of it is country which favors defense, but there are vulnerable spots.

The strongest areas lie on the flanks. From Sedjenane to Djebel el Ang on the northeast, and from Enfidaville to Djebel Sefsouf on the southwest (see map), the mountain chains are steep, and provide a natural defense in depth. But in the center there are two areas where the fortress walls are weak. These are the broad valleys of Tunisia’s two main rivers: the Medjerda and the Miliana.”

The most logical threats to the fortress, therefore, lay from the directions of Med-jez-el-Bab and Pont du Fahs — and last week Field Marshal Kesselring could see that his adversaries were aware of the logic. They seemed to be clearing the way, patiently and fiercely, for drives up Tunisia’s center alleys. They spent the week clearing the outer walls of the alleys. French troops took Djebel Sefsouf on the one hand. British troops took Djebel el Ang on the other—a hill from which, on clear days, Tunis is visible 35 miles away. Kesselring, seeing the danger, took the hill back; the Allies retook it and held.

Field Marshal Kesselring could and probably did expect the Allies to take other commanding heights (such as the beachhead’s highest hill, 4,250-ft. Djebel Zaghouan) and then, when artillery and lookouts commanded the lesser places, to drive up the broad valleys. Doubtless he had concentrated in those valleys the things which General Eisenhower last week said had become, not just an obstacle, but a weapon in Tunisia—the land mine. On the hills Kesselring was deeply dug in, with plenty of the 81-mm. mortars which have always been a weapon but are especially an obstacle in Tunisia.

His Men. The exact number and condition of the Axis force in Tunisia is known, probably, to only a few Germans. The Allies announced that 30,000 prisoners had been captured in all Tunisia since the breaching of the Mareth Line, and unofficial estimates placed Axis battle casualties in the same period at 10,000. The Italian Vittorio Veneto Division was said to have been virtually destroyed. These were losses for Kesselring, but not cataclysmic ones. His remaining force of approximately 175,000 was outnumbered by perhaps 2-to-1. But, considering its advantageous positions, it was by no means broken. It contained crack Austrian and Italian mountain troops.

His Generals. The outside world already knew plenty about Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Of Colonel General Jürgen von Arnim, much less was known.

Arnim is unlike most of the Wehr-macht’s professional military men in that he comes of a noble and wealthy landed family. The family has boasted admirals, generals, statesmen (one, who had been ambassador to France in Bismarck’s time, was accused of embezzling state papers and fled Germany), poets (one was the romanticist Ludwig Achim von Arnim, author of Des Knaben Wunderhorn).

Marshal Rommel reportedly asked for Jürgen von Arnim as coequal commander in Tunisia. The two had worked together on tank tactics through the years. In the early days of the reconstituted Wehrmacht, Arnim commanded the First Panzer Regiment. Later he was shifted back to infantry, which he commanded in Poland. He helped develop the cooperation of tanks and infantry within armored di visions, and in hilly Tunisian terrain where the uses of tanks are limited, his expertness in such liaison will be valuable.

His Orders. Albert Kesselring’s job in Tunisia is to hold on as long as possible. He is an officer of the Luftwaffe, as is also Colonel General Alexander Lohr, who commands ground forces in the Balkans. As an air officer, his job will also be to try to effect an ending to the Tunisian campaign which is less bloody than Dun kirk, less shocking to Germans than the failure at Stalingrad.

In the early stages of the German defense of Tunisia, Kesselring’s air transports daily flew in hundreds of troops, much equipment. His performance was a masterpiece of air supply. It made possible the whole Axis campaign in Tunisia. Now the campaign is approaching an end. To the extent that Allied airmen allow, Kesselring sooner or later will have to reverse the process.

Early this week the Allied air forces shot down a two-day total of 96 planes. The craft, mostly huge transports, were engaged in running a ferry service between Sicily and Tunisia. No one seemed to know whether the planes were carrying power to or from Tunisia. Paris radio said to, Cairo sources said from. It was possible that Kesselring had already begun the exit by air.

Supremacy Is Not Enough

“We’ve been continually on the offensive—the enemy has been on the defensive in this air war.”

The speaker was Lieut. General Carl Spaatz, U.S. commander of Allied Air Forces in Northwest Africa. He was explaining an exercise in war and semantics —the movement of his forces from the realm of “superiority” to that of “supremacy.” This had been achieved by the three arms of his command.

Coningham for Immediacy. The Tactical Air Force is under the command of Air Vice Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham, formerly the Eighth Army’s brilliant air officer. It is, said General Spaatz, designed for “immediate results.” Its job is to attack, with fighters and light and medium bombers, enemy troops, transport, airports and battle planes. One day last week, Air Marshal Coningham sent Marauders and Spitfires against 28 Axis planes parked on Oudna Field, south of Tunis; Hurri-bombers, Spitfires and Bostons against one large concentration of Afrika Korps vehicles; and Warhawks against another.

Doolittle for Long Ranges. The Strategic Air Force sends its bombers against enemy supply lines and rear bases. Said General Spaatz: “This group of flyers struck perhaps the hardest blows in daylight ever delivered by an air force.” The commander of this group, U.S. Major General James H. Doolittle, had to be reminded last week that April 18 was the anniversary of his raid on Tokyo. He looked in his logbook, found an entry describing “a 13-hour flight — one landing,” and said: “So it was.” On a typical day last week his Fortresses found 112 Axis transport planes on the ground at Castel-vetrano, Sicily, and destroyed 51, including eight huge six-motored planes; found 106 more at Milo, destroyed 22.

Lloyd for the Shores. The Coastal Air Force, said General Spaatz, “covered our shipping, protected our ports, made many reconnaissance flights to assure the arrival of our convoys and assisted in the destruction of enemy shipping.” The commander of this force was last week identified as Air Vice Marshal Sir Hugh Pughe Lloyd, a short, thickset, rough, gruff veteran flyer who was commander of Britain’s Mediterranean air forces in 1941-42. One day last week his Beaufighters caught enemy torpedo-bombers trying to attack Allied naval forces, shot down two.

All for One & One for All. These commands were not rigid. Their missions occasionally overlapped. On some days the Strategic and Tactical Air Forces combined to attack an airfield; on others, the Strategic and Coastal Forces combined to attack Axis transport planes.

Between Nov. 8 and last week, the Allied air forces in North Africa had shot down 1,253 Axis planes. In the last fortnight alone they had claimed 318 planes. The Allied toll for the whole period was 498 planes; for the fortnight, 100. Even making the necessary allowances, this record spelled first superiority, then supremacy.

But the Axis air force was not yet finished. Field Marshal Kesselring flew in relays of fighters last week to his 18 remaining fields. For the three air forces in North Africa, superiority was not enough. Not even supremacy was enough. They had yet to achieve finality.