<text id=00he0909><title>Racing with Patton's Third Army</title>
<history>US Air Force: Events History</history>
<article><hdr>Racing with Patton's Third Army</hdr><body>
<p>At that point, the flamboyant Lieutenant General George S. Patton began his dash through France. Swinging in a giant arc hinged on Caen, his Third Army armor rumbled across France, headed for the German frontier. The danger in a rapid advance is that it may leave the flanks uncovered. Flanking attacks, taught to military students early in their careers, can be most successful; they punch into an advancing column and cut it. Patton, himself a competent amateur pilot and aircraft owner, sensed what air power could do. He asked Brigadier General O. P. Weyland's XIX Tactical Air Command to cover his southern flank. It was a brilliant concept and proved a successful, and historic, use of the capabilities and strength of aircraft.
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<p>A German counterattack across the southern region of the Cotentin peninsula was slowed by air, blunted and turned by the GIs, and converted into a retreat. Patton chased them toward Argentan, while Montgomery moved his British and Canadian armies toward Falaise, planning to trap the Germans between the two Allied forces. The pincer never met; the Germans got out through the gap between the towns, but it cost them heavily: Ninth AF and RAF Second TAF fighter-bombers worked over the roads in the gap and decimated the German columns.
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<p>During this period, tiny Piper L-4s, the military models of the immortal Cub, began flying 'horsefly' missions, acting as forward air controllers and calling in strikes against targets designated by ground units. It was another example of the air-ground teamwork that moved Patton to comment that the cooperation between Third Army and XIX Tactical Air Command was "... the best example of the combined use of air and ground troops that I have ever witnessed."
