De Nuages Et De Feu

On 16 December 1944, there started the most powerful artillery barrage that the forces of the Third Reich in its death throes were ever to launch on the Western Front after the Normandy landings six months earlier. It smothered the American lines holding the thinned-out front in the Ardennes. The most powerful armoured force ever assembled by the Germans for an offensive on this front was then to have struck out in the direction of Antwerp. All this was under low cloud cover, sheltering the 6th and 5th Armoured Armies precious panzers from the all-powerful Allied air forces. Low ceiling. However, the dog fights which were to take place over the Ardennes or perhaps because of the land battle that was taking place far below, did not surpass the land engagement in superlatives: strategic and tactical support, jet bombers or fighters, dropping men, supplies or ammunition, successfully or not, or just impossible, on both sides. The Ardennes skies saw what was a major part of the History of air warfare and we propose to describe it in the following pages.