Operation TINK was an air offensive ala-COBRA slated to level a large path through the Siegfried Line, centered on Zweibrucken. The operation was a named for nickname of General Weyland’s wife. General Weyland was the commander of Patton’s Air Force and General Patton was the commander of General Weyland’s Army. Quite a story to tell there but that is for another time when the real story of WWII gets fully introduced (still have several books to get through to complete the picture). At the end of the Lorraine campaign, frustrated from being stalled there and getting bogged down by 3 straight months of torrential rains and flooding, Patton and Weyand were in what I would call KLDC mood (acronym for Kick the Living Dog Crap out of). Despite the fact that some generals still considered Patton’s front a secondary front, Weyland was nevertheless able to convince Ike to come off the “cobranoia” (cobranoia – Noun – the fear of using strategic air power to annihilate the enemy). Yes, folks, I have my own language, mere English words would not do it justice. I have mentioned before how Ike had sworn off the strategic air usage with ground forces despite the unspeakable devastation it caused to the Germans. He simply could not stomach losing a handful to friendly fire no matter how devastating it was to the enemy. His preference was to lose many more times that in using conventional warfare against a stronger army and better armor. But, I can’t fault him for an emotional decision made. Often times, compassion gets men killed in war. It seems like there would be a better way to handle this and well worth looking in to because even though the Americans lost about 300, the German’s got it wiped, and got it wiped pretty clean. General Bayerlein’s greatly feared Panzer Lehr disappeared from the face of the earth in those three hours. Almost the entire 84th Corps was wiped out with a single carpet bombing run completed in less than three hours. Now you see why I need the special language extensions. 45 ton tanks were blown 20 feet into the air by the concussion of these heavy bombs "missing" the tanks. Folks, I’ll need to develop a new term for that, that’s just not something you see every day in a war. You might say, two or three more of those would have ended the war in the west, could we not have risked another 600-900 men? We will get a CL (CL = CrapLoad – Noun, a term that is used to designate a large quantity difficult to measure with accuracy) of men killed using the conventional passes and maybe can avoid those losses too. Why not try it? I mean, 900 men (at most) vs 200,000 men (at least)? It’s a no-brainer. Well anyway, it is what it is. Now this COBRA carpet bombing not only killed a CL of German troops it also turned armies loose for the famous breakout. So the great Breakout continued until the great Gasout at Lorraine from mid Sep-late Nov. Now, back to early December. During the Lorraine halt, the Germans had moved in more CLs of German divisions to dig in, in front of Third Army to prevent Patton from his patented breakouts. But then again, Patton had Shemans and Shermans don’t break out anywhere. Enter operation TINK. Operation TINK would be (to borrow from Hussein) “the mother of all carpet bombings” on the Siegfried Line that would have resulted in departure of the earth of German divisions there leading to an even faster breakout to Berlin. Given the potential of success proven by COBRA and the new technologies to mark Allied lines, Ike acquiesced. So there it was, D-Day set for Dec 19th 1944 scheduled three days of CLs of strategic, CLs of medium bombers, multi-CLs of fighter/bombers with fragmentation bombs, napalm and rockets set to end the war for the Germans (at least the ones in front of Third Army). The Siegfried Line be renamed the “What Siegfried Line”. Plans were formalized on the 13th of December, coordination with XII Air Force who would provide the heavies, supplies being lined up, troops being trained how to rapidly consolidate gains after the air strike finished, and all contingencies considered. This coordinated attack of the army following up the bombing campaign was called operation DAGGER. As Robert Burns penned, “The best-laid plans of mice and men oft go awry”. On Dec 12 and 14, Third Army intelligence reported an increase in rail communications into the Eiffel Area and warned of a potential spoiling counterattack. The degree of this threat and how well it was communicated back to the upper echelons to be communicated down to First Army is not addressed in the current book I am reading. But, I do remember reading Bradley where he said they were getting reports of buildup all up and down the 600 mile front so they could not distinguish the one in Eiffel from the others. Eiffel was a very dense wooded area, with few roads and not the place you would normally expect an offensive to come through. Of course we all know what transpired on December 16th. Weyland penciled in his calendar on the 16th that TINK was probably going to be scrapped. After the demands of air resources in the Bulge, and weather delays, on Dec 20th, it was officially scrapped. One wonders if cobranoia had not infected Ike, how many lives would have been saved in WWII. Yes you would have some civilian casualties but the cities would empty when the remaining groups of armies retreated to them after a round or two of that. Germans would see the horror and absolute futility and surrender like they did after COBRA. The German citizens wouldn’t have been bombed back into the Stone Age as the allies would have toppled the German Armies in extremely short order. The death camps would not have had sufficient time to mount so many deaths. Russia would still be a good distance away on the eastern front and would never have been allowed into Germany. The forces would have been sent to the Pacific to quickly remove the Japanese saving lives there too. If only… The incredible leverage air power gives you is that you can create breakouts from any static position and you can sustain and accelerate the breakouts with tactical air. If air power had been neutral in WWII, I am inclined to believe that the Germans would have mopped up the Allies. The more I see how tough a fight they put up with air power constantly destroying their assets it makes me realize that they were so much more dangerous than they appeared in the west. This is why I say air power alone decides the outcome of the war (politics aside). Some, who are a “tad” dense in the head, will read that and their tiny binary minds make them post things like “you can’t win without ground forces!”. For somebody that translates the truism that “air power determines the outcome of the war” to being “air power -without an army of any kind- determines the outcome of the war”, is beyond help and I just wanted to give such people a heads up before they identified themselves in unthinking responses.
