<text id=00he0702><title>British Control in the Desert</title>
<history>US Air Force: Events History</history>
<article><hdr>British Control in the Desert</hdr><body>
<p>The fighters and medium bombers of USAMEAF were attached to the RAF's Western Desert Air Force. Commanded by Air Vice Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham, WDAF became one model of air-ground cooperation for the USAAF to emulate. WDAF and the British Eighth Army had joint headquarters on the premise that air and ground strike forces were co-equal. It was the professional and personal relationship between airmen and soldiers that made the system work; each strove to understand the others' problems, and to do what could be done to ease them.
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<p>WDAF was a mobile, tactical air force. with its own radar controllers, a detachment of engineers to build and maintain airfields, and anti-aircraft and light armored cars to defend those fields. Its main strength was a combination of fighters and light bombers—Hurricanes, Spitfires, and some Gladiators from Britain, and American-built Boston and Maryland light bombers. The fighters often doubled as fighter-bombers.
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<p>The British retreat stopped at El Alamein, deep inside Egypt, at a gap between the sea and the Qattara Depression, an impassable area of deep canyons with steep walls. British morale was boosted by a leadership change: General Bernard Montgomery was placed in command of the Eighth Army. They held, and then dug in to prepare for a counter-attack.
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<p>Coningham sent his pilots on an air offensive to gain air superiority in the skies over Montgomery's army. The RAF had 813 aircraft in commission, and USAMEAF contributed another 130. Against those 943 Allied planes were ranged just over 600 German and Italian combat aircraft with an estimated serviceability rate of 50 per cent. They had no spare parts and no replacement items for their operations; heavy Allied air strikes against Axis supply lines had seen to that.
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<p>Montgomery ordered the Eighth to the attack on 23 October, and by 5 November, Rommel's drive had been turned back. Air support had been with Montgomery all the way, pounding the Germans and bombing their supply ships in the Mediterranean.
