Brig. Gen. Carlyle H. Ridenour

Carlyle Howe Ridenour

8 Apr 1893 - 27 Aug 1971

United States Army Air Force Service Record

Jun 1940 - Mar 1942

Inspection Officer and Assistant District Supervisor, Central Air Corps Procurement District

5 Jan 1942

Promoted to Colonel (Temporary)

1 Feb 1942

Promoted to Colonel (Army of the United States)

Mar 1942 - Jul 1942

Assistant District Supervisor Glenn L. Martin Company, Baltimore, Maryland

Mar 1942 - Jul 1942

US Army Air Forces Representative, Glenn L. Martin Company, Baltimore, Maryland

Jul 1942 - 13 Mar 1943

Chief of Staff, 12th Bomber Command (United Kingdom-North Africa)

5 Oct 1942

Promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel

16 Dec 1942 - 1 Jan 1943

Acting Commanding Officer 12th Bomber Command

14 Jan 1943 - 20 Feb 1944

Commanding Officer 47th Bombardment Wing (North Africa-Italy)

2 Jun 1943

Promoted to Brigadier-General (Army of the United States)

1943

Awarded the Silver Star Medal, HQ, Northwest African Strategic Air Force, General Orders No. 9

Mar 1944 - Nov 1944

Air Inspector, Air Technical Service Command

31 Mar 1945

Brigadier-General (Retired)

Most of these photographs came from Brigadier General Carlyle Ridenour's scrapbook that was discovered by friends of Earl Young in boxes in a chicken house about to be bulldozed in Marietta, Georgia. General Ridenour and Earl Young worked at Lockheed Georgia Aircraft Company in Marietta. Earl Young kindly provided the images for this website.

1942

After this brief sojourn in Algeria, the 93d Group departed for the Middle East, pursuant to an agreement Spaatz had negotiated with Brereton and Andrews by which the Ninth Air Force's 513th Squadron (B-17's) would be shifted to Northwest Africa in return.* The 93d could be more useful in Libya where the B-24's superior range permitted strikes at Naples and Palermo. The B-17, on the other hand, was altogether suitable for operations from Algeria against Tunis and Bizerte. The exchange of three squadrons for one probably reflected Spaatz' difficult logistics and airdrome shortage-which prevented him from ordering in the two remaining Eighth Air Force heavy groups earmarked for TORCH, the 91st and 303d. He did attach a proviso to the Ninth Air Force's use of the 93d: the group's overriding targets were to be those affecting the Tunisian campaign. On 15 December it left for Gambut.

During its first seven weeks in Africa, XII Bomber Command had a total of four commanding officers. By 24 November, Duncan, who had brought the organization down from England, had been relieved and Col. Charles T. Phillips, heading the Eighth Air Force 3d Wing, was being requested as his replacement. Phillips took over around 11 December, only to be killed on a B-26 mission against El Aouina on the 15th. Bomber Command headquarters had been successively moved from Tafaraoui to Algiers to Constantine and Col. Carlyle H. Ridenour assumed command on the 16th. On New Year's Day, Cannon was brought over from XII ASC, and he continued in charge of XII Bomber until 18 February.

In his position as Eisenhower's deputy, Spaatz had earned the gratitude of the Twelfth Air Force by his efforts to get its purloined transportation back from the ground forces and by his representation of the airman's point of view at AFHQ. In one particular, however, the December routine at AFHQ worked unfavorably for the Twelfth's operations. Not only the specific objectives for the following day but the time over target and number of attacking aircraft were determined by a daily war-room conference at 0900 attended by representatives of the Twelfth, AFHQ, the RAF, the Royal Navy, and of Spaatz' staff. This procedure, although an improvement over complete control by Anderson, converted Twelfth Air Force and XII Bomber Command into agencies which did no more than pass on orders to the unit commanders. These, in turn, seldom received the orders in time to select proper bombs and fuzes, so bombs were loaded and fuzed a day in advance and dropped on whatever target was later designated. By 27 December this procedure had been abandoned and the Twelfth was given a directive which allowed it some latitude.

If, however, the heavies' pay loads had been preselected and fuzed for ports and shipping each evening, little would have been lost the next day, because during December and early January the bomber command mostly confined itself to the harbors at Tunis and Bizerte, undertaking strikes against Sousse and Sfax when weather or unusual enemy activity favored them as targets. Daylight pounding of Tunis and Bizerte was nearly exclusively the B-17's job, the ports having become too hot for medium or light bombers. No longer, as in the first days of December, did the DB-7's visit El Aouina or the mediums the Bizerte docks, although occasionally mediums attacked difficult targets when B-17's were along to saturate the defenses.

As operations go, the early missions had not been costly: in fact, on 30 November, Doolittle reported that only eight Twelfth Air Force aircraft had been shot down by enemy planes and twelve by ground fire, friendly or hostile. Seven had been lost on the ground by enemy bombing and strafing and forty-nine through miscellaneous and unknown causes. This last, Doolittle admitted, was "rather appalling," but it had been predicted that wastage from crashes, disappearances, and internments would be high in TORCH. Personnel losses had been relatively slight; pilots regularly walked home and the Arabs received considerable sums of blood money.

But after their fields had recovered from the rainy spell which set in on 8 December, the Allied airmen found that the Axis had put the respite to good use. The B-17's discovered new and formidable yellow-nosed FW-190's at Bizerte, and flak so markedly increased that Tunis and Bizerte soon compared with the more heavily defended targets in northwestern Europe.72 The Twelfth's B-17's attacked Tunis and Bizerte day after day, going in with forces which seem pitifully small in comparison with the armadas of 1944 and 1945. That their losses remained low must be attributed to the fact that they usually had P-38's escorting, not many P-38's but enough to divide the opposition's attention. Moreover, the German pilots had not evolved any very satisfactory way of attacking the heavily armed B-17, and they were properly respectful. For example, on 15 December two formations were sent out from Biskra for simultaneous attacks on Tunis and Bizerte. Six P-38's accompanied seven B-17's bound for Tunis; another six escorted the dozen heavies which could be mustered for Bizerte. All aircraft returned despite flak and enemy fighters, and according to an investigation of the port after its capture, with one 500-pounder the Tunis contingent sank the 10,000-ton Italian freighter Arlesiana. On the 18th, however, at Bizerte, four escorts and a bomber were shot down (another B-17 crash-landed at Le Kef) out of a formation of sixteen P-38's and thirty-six B-17's. Thirty-three of the bombers had attacked the target; the remaining three dropped on two naval vessels between Cap Zebib and the Cani Islands.

Thereafter, until 26 December, foul weather plagued XII Bomber. On the 21st at Sfax and Gabes and on the 22d at Bizerte, Sousse, and Sfax, 10/10 cloud prevented an attack. On the 23d, seventeen B-17's of the 301st Group, escorted by eleven P-38's of the 1st, took off for Tunis and Bizerte. Five bombers returned early after encountering cumulus and icing at 25,000. The targets were completely shrouded, and four wandering B-17's turnedup at distant airdromes, Tafaraoui, Nouvion, and Relizane.

By the end of December, XII Bomber Command organization began to take form, incorporating one feature novel in bomber commands: the escort fighters were attached. Between 14 and 18 December, two squadrons of the 1st Fighter Group (P-38's) moved to the bomber station at Biskra and came under the control of XII Bomber. Part of Doolittle's regime of composite commands, this innovation did away with the necessity, of coordinating each mission with a fighter command headquarters, and the P-38's presence on the bomber airdrome simplified such problems as rendezvous. The step seems to have been well suited to the operating hazards in Africa, especially to the miserable communications which Doolittle rated on 30 November as the chief bugbear of efficient operations.75 The system worked to the satisfaction of USAAF commanders, but, later, Coningham and other observers came to believe that continual employment of fighters as escort detracted from their efficiency in their primary role. The fighter pilots tended to regard themselves as stepchildren of the bomber command.76 In the early days, the bomber command passed down directly to the units the operational instructions for the missions. As the available groups became more numerous, however, wings were interposed. For this purpose the wing headquarters originally attached to XII ASC were utilized. On Christmas Day, Col. J.H. Atkinson, commanding the 97th Group, was promoted to brigadier general and later made commander of the 5th Bombardment Wing (Heavy), the organization gradually assembling at Biskra in mid-January. Moreover, shortly after New Year's, personnel of the 7th Fighter Wing headquarters in Morocco were alerted for a move eastward, and on 7 January, Ridenour replaced Col. John C. Crosthwaite as commanding officer. On 1 February the 7th began operating at Chiteaudun-du-Rhumel, near Constantine, as a medium bombardment wing, an arrangement solemnized when it was redesignated 47th Bombardment Wing (Medium) on 25 February.

After Christmas, the bad weather having worn itself out for the time being, the B-17's turned their attention chiefly to the east-coast ports of Sfax and Sousse, which were building up supplies against Rommel's arrival in southern Tunisia. Seven missions were run against them late in December, the results showing the high degree of accuracy the B-17's were achieving. P-40's of the 33d Group, by then operating out of Thelepte in central Tunisia, took the 301st to Sfax on 26 December; the bombs evidently wrought havoc in the harbor, one small and two large vessels being assessed as sunk. Next day the 301st attacked Sousse, claiming hits on four ships, one of which was reportedly blown to bits. Sfax absorbed further punishment on the 30th and 31st: the 97th started fires in the marshalling yards and on the west end of its north quay on the 30th, and next day the 301st claimed hits on two medium-sized ships in the harbor.

On 4 January weather prevented all but one of a formation of B-17's from bombing La Goulette, but on the 5th and the 8th effective strikes were carried out. The 5th saw the 97th Group over Sfax, weather reconnaissance having disclosed solid overcast at Tunis and Bizerte. Eleven B-17's bombed and completely destroyed the Sfax power station, hit at least one vessel in the harbor, and left the entire dock area smoking. Bad weather did not protect Ferryville on the 8th. The 97th found holes in the overcast, bombed through them, and reported hits on oil storage tanks, docks, and ships. After Tunis had fallen in May it was learned that the ships included five French vessels sunk or damaged beyond repair: a submarine, a sailing vessel, a tug, an aircraft tender, and a patrol vessel.

During their early operations in Africa the Twelfth's medium bombers did not achieve the performance of its heavies. For this there were cogent reasons: the medium groups had no previous combat experience and their tactics and employment remained to be worked out; they arrived in the theater mostly in driblets, and the 319th, for one, kept losing its commanding officers; once operational, they could not be kept at strength and suffered loss of morale and combat effectiveness. Medium bomber targets comprised, for the most part, airdromes, marshalling yards, and railroad bridges, although unsuccessful forays were made against shipping at sea and Sousse harbor was twice attacked. The outstanding lesson taught by these operations was that B-25's and B-26's could not be used profitably in low-level attacks on localities where the Germans had had time to get in any considerable amount of their light AA. The mediums were speedily driven to altitudes of 7,000 to 9,000 feet; and even there violent evasive action was necessary, with the result that their accuracy was not so great as that of heavies at 21,000 to 24,000 feet. All missions were on an extremely modest scale: for a time after 5 December the 310th's striking force consisted of a half-dozen B-25's, and the heaviest medium attack during 1942 mustered only thirteen bombers, the resources of both the 310th and 319th.

The first attempt to bomb Sousse harbor was frustrated on 12 December when two B-26's were lost to the winter elements. Next day six B-25's, escorted by four P-38's, bombed from 7,000 feet plus and reportedly hit the docks and two ships in port. On the 14th, the Sousse antiaircraft gunners were apparently befuddled when six of the 319th's B-26's swept in at 900 to 1,200 feet, hit the docks and, it was thought, three vessels in the harbor; bombers and escort got away unscathed. But when this tactic was repeated on the 15th and 18th it proved so dangerous that low-level bombing against land targets was virtually abandoned except where little or no AA was expected. Phillips was killed over El Aouina on the 15th in a flak barrage to which a cruiser and four destroyers off Carthage contributed. On the 18th, four P-38's from the 1st Group escorted five B-26's and six B-25's to the Sousse marshalling yards where they attacked at from 700 to 1,500 feet. They were greeted by a mile-long box barrage which shot down a pair of B-26's, one of which defiantly continued to fire at the flak barges until it crashed into the harbor.

After the Sousse marshalling yards, the mediums were quiescent for more than ten days, the crews spending their time sweating out bad weather and practicing minimum-altitude bombing, soon to be effectively employed against shipping in the Sicilian narrows. At the end of December, when operations were resumed, the effort was concentrated on airdromes-the mediums having largely taken over this function from the heavies-and on the Tunisian railroads which were carrying supplies not only for Rommel but for the growing Axis establishment in central and southern Tunisia.83 On 30 December the 17th Group made its debut, six of its B-26's hitting the Gabes airfield. (The 17th had arrived in Africa via the southern route, Natal-Ascension-Bathurst.) On the 31st, when it returned to the Gaes field with a mixture of demolition bombs and the 100-pound frag clusters which subsequently proved their worth in the Tunisian air war, enemy fighters downed one B-26 which had first been hit by flak.

On New Year's, while the 310th was moving to Berteaux, another of the new fields near Constantine, the 17th went to the heavily defended Tunis marshalling yards, where the intense flak shot down one B-26 and the escort lost a P-40 in an encounter with a half-dozen Me-109's. On 4 January the GAF discovered that unescorted B-26's were to be handled with care. The occasion was a coincidence: an Me-109-Ju-88 formation arrived to bomb Thelepte at the moment when eleven B-26's arrived over near-by Feriana to pick up escort from the field. The B-26's turned for home, were attacked by five Me-109's, and promptly shot down two. Meanwhile, the Ju-88's were, one by one, dive bombing across the field. Five P-40's got off, made interception, and shot down one of the offending Junkers and one of the remaining Me-109's.

In February (1943) most of NASAF's sweeps in the Sicilian narrows had been carried out blind-six mediums with a squadron of P-38's to deal with the air opposition which almost invariably developed, either from the convoy escort or from fighters vectored out from Tunisia or Sicily. The Royal Navy having mined the direct channel, the enemy now ran his convoys farther east towards Pantelleria, thence close inshore to Tunis, and onward. Against these more distant targets NASAF began experimenting with substitutes for the minimum-altitude attacks, which had become too costly. Reverting to medium altitude (8,000 feet) did not work--no ships were hit;

and finally, Ridenour's suggestion of coordinated medium and low attacks was taken up: three three plane elements at 8,000 and two three-plane elements on the deck, the latter attacking amid the confusion caused by the former's bombs. After the groups had been intensively trained, this method got results: on 12 March three Siebel ferries were sunk and three severely damaged out of eleven encountered.

Air Force: Carlyle Howe Ridenour

Wikipedia: Northwest African Strategic Air Force

Wikipedia: Mediterranean Air Command

Hyperwar: Army Air Forces in WWII Volume II Europe: TORCH to POINTBLANK

Some of these Wikipedia pages document the modern-day bomber groups but look for a section (usually under History) about their WWII version.

Wikipedia: 17th Bombardment Group

Wikipedia: 33rd Fighter Group

Wikipedia: 81st Fighter Group

Wikipedia: 82nd Fighter Group

Wikipedia: 98th Bombardment Group

Wikipedia: 310th Bombardment Group

Wikipedia: 319th Bombardment Group

Wikipedia: 320th Bombardment Group

Wikipedia: 321st Bombardment Group

Wikipedia: 325th Fighter Group

Wikipedia: 376th Bombardment Group

Wikipedia: 449th Bombardment Group

Wikipedia: 450th Bombardment Group

Wikipedia: 451st Bombardment Group