Arthur Coningham
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Sir Arthur "Mary" Coningham KCB KBE DSO MC DFC AFC (born January 19, 1895 in Brisbane ; † unknown, missing in the North Atlantic since January 30, 1948 ) was an officer in the Royal Air Force , most recently Air Marshal , and best known as the commanding officer Officer of the RAF Second Tactical Air Force in World War II .
Life
Youth and First World War
Coningham was born as the eldest child of the Australian cricketer Arthur Coningham senior and his wife Alice Stanford Dowling. His family moved to New Zealand when Arthur was a child following a scandal involving his parents . He attended Wellington College from 1909 , which he left in 1911 without a degree. When Arthur was 17, his parents divorced. In the period up to the First World War , Coningham worked as a farm worker.
In August 1914, Coningham enlisted in the army and was assigned to the 5th Wellington Regiment . With this he took part in the expedition to Samoa , in which this German colony was occupied. After seven uneventful months in Samoa, he returned to New Zealand to volunteer for service with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force . From the summer of 1915 he was used with the Canterbury Mounted Rifles Regiment in Anzac Cove . However, Coningham became so ill with typhus that he was sent back to New Zealand and discharged from service in April 1916. He then traveled to Great Britain at his own expense to try to be accepted as a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps . In December 1916, after completing his pilot training, he was assigned to No. 32 Squadron . equipped with Airco DH2 fighter aircraft, with which it was deployed on the Western Front . In May 1917 he was promoted to temporary captain . A little later he scored his first kills and was awarded the Military Cross and the Distinguished Service Order in quick succession . In August 1917 he was admitted to an English hospital. After his recovery, in March 1918, as a newly promoted major, he was given the command of the newly formed No. 92 Squadron, equipped with Royal Aircraft Factory SE5 , which went to the front in July. A total of 14 aerial victories are attributed to Coningham in the First World War.
Interwar period
After the war ended, Coningham applied for a permanent officer in the Royal Air Force, which he was granted in July 1919. He had previously received the Distinguished Flying Cross for his service in the First World War . As a flight lieutenant , he initially worked in training at RAF Manston and the Central Flying School in Upavon . In February 1922 he began a four-year stay abroad in the Middle East, where he was No. 55 Squadron in Mosul . The area of northern Iraq was at that time disputed between Turkey and the Kingdom of Iraq, which was dependent on Great Britain (see Mosul question ). In July 1923, he was named Squadron Leader in command of No. 55th Squadron promoted. In February 1924, he was transferred to Egypt, where Coningham worked in staff positions. In the fall of 1925 he led a long-haul flight from Egypt to Nigeria, for which he was awarded the Air Force Cross . The route from Takoradi via Sudan was later used to move planes to Egypt during World War II.
Upon his return to England, Coningham accepted a position at the RAF Cadet College in Cranwell . In 1930 he became deputy director of the Central Flying School in Wittering and was promoted to Wing Commander in July 1931 . In February 1932 he was transferred to Sudan, where he replaced Sholto Douglas as commanding officer of the RAF. During this time he married.
After returning to England, he was transferred to the headquarters of the Coastal Area in Lee-on-the-Solent . In January 1937 he was promoted to Group Captain and appointed Senior Air Staff Officer of No. 17 Group of the RAF Coastal Command . In June of the same year he took command of the RAF Calshot flying boat base . On the eve of World War II, in July 1939, he was also thanks to his good relations with the influential air marshals Edgar Ludlow-Hewitt and Cyril Newall , with the rank of Air Commodore to commanding officer of No. 4 Group of the RAF Bomber Command .
Second World War
Coningham was initially the lowest ranked group commanders in Bomber Command. It was not until September 1940 that he was promoted to Air Vice Marshal. His group, equipped with Armstrong Whitworth Whitley bombers, was used mainly for night propaganda missions (dropping of leaflets) in the first months of the war. Long-range attacks on Italy after its entry into the war and on the Ruhr area followed, among other things . His group was in the process of converting to the four-engine Handley Page Halifax when Coningham learned of his transfer to North Africa in late July 1941.
Here, on Ludlow-Hewitt's recommendation to Arthur Tedder , the head of the RAF in the Middle East, he replaced Raymond Collishaw as commander of No. 204 Group. In September he was appointed Commander of the Order of the Bath . His headquarters were upgraded to Air Headquarters, Western Desert in October to match the upgrading of the Western Desert Force to 8th Army (in preparation for Operation Crusader ). During this time, Coningham was busy improving air-to-ground coordination. For this purpose, an air support control system was set up and air liaison officers were deployed with the ground forces.
The retreat into Egypt after Rommel's enterprise Theseus was directed by Coningham with skill and without considering personal danger. The planes of the Desert Air Force were constantly in use and played a large part in keeping the 8th Army as a combat force. In these battles Coningham learned to appreciate the role of the fighter-bomber . The Desert Air Force received urgently needed reinforcement in the form of new aircraft and units of the US Army Middle East Air Force , which were tactically subordinate to Coningham. With the appointment of Bernard Montgomery as Commander-in-Chief of the 8th Army, a tandem was formed between him and Coningham that would last for the remainder of the war despite later mutual dislike.
Coningham's Desert Air Force played a major role in the victories at Alam Halfa and the Second Battle of El Alamein in August and October / November. Even before the decisive Second Battle of El Alamein, Coningham had worked out a plan for the pursuit of the defeated Axis forces, which was now implemented as Operation Buster . The aim was to keep the enemy in motion by constantly moving the hunting squadrons forward and ultimately to enable the relief of Malta by means of a convoy planned for the end of November ( Operation Stone Age ), by protecting it by a hunting umbrella operating from the Cyrenaica . This proved difficult, especially as Montgomery's ground forces were reluctant to advance and the Desert Air Force was plagued by supply problems. Instead of pursuing Rommel, Montgomery built up his troops around Tobruk and allowed Rommel to take up a defensive position at El Agheila . In November 1942 Coningham received his appointment as Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath.
From January 1943 Coningham was involved in the Tunisian campaign. As Air Officer Commanding Air Support Tunisia, later renamed Northwest African Tactical Air Force (NATAF), he was under the command of the American Carl A. Spaatz , the head of the Northwest African Air Forces . During a short stay in England he was appointed acting Air Marshal during this time . Coningham moved into a joint headquarters in the Algerian Ain Beida with the commander-in-chief of the ground forces in this campaign, General Harold Alexander . His deputy was the American Brigadier General Laurence S. Kuter . During a visit to North Africa by the Chief of the RAF Fighter Command and future Commander in Chief of the Allied Tactical Air Fleets in Northwest Europe, Air Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory , he was positively surprised by the effective surface-air cooperation under Coningham’s leadership and was convinced that whose system would also be applicable in Europe. Coningham's pilots were also involved in Operation Flax , the interruption of the air link from Italy to Tunisia, in April 1943 . Upon completion of the campaign, Coningham was inducted into the Legion of Honor as an officer and was named Chief Commander of the Legion of Merit by US President Roosevelt .
The next deployment of Coningham's command was in support of Operation Husky , the invasion of Sicily on July 10, 1943, which he led from Malta. Although the campaign was a great success overall, it did not succeed in disrupting the German evacuation of the island across the Strait of Messina ( company training course ) in August. His new deputy and subsequent successor was Major General John K. Cannon . After the invasion of mainland Italy , he moved his headquarters to Bari . Here he witnessed the heavy air attack by the Air Force on the port of Bari on December 2nd, which he had declared impossible at a press conference a few hours earlier. In December 1943, Coningham learned that he had been selected as Commander-in-Chief of the 2nd Tactical Air Force, based in Great Britain, in Operation Overlord - the post he had long sought. In January 1944 he left the Mediterranean for good to take up his new post.
In England, Coningham set up an advanced headquarters in Uxbridge . He placed great emphasis on training his fighter pilots in air-to-ground missions, an area that had previously been neglected. After several jurisdictional disputes was adopted in the spring that Coningham for a period of Overlord directing and advanced headquarters led by Leigh-Mallory, Allied Expeditionary Air Forces thus for the use of both tactical air forces of the Allies - in addition to the 2nd TAF American Ninth Air Force under Lewis H. Brereton - should be responsible. He thus had a role comparable to Montgomery for the Anglo-American ground forces. On August 5th, the Advanced AEAF headquarters was dissolved again, at which time Coningham moved into its new headquarters in Le Tronquay near Bayeux , near Montgomery's headquarters. The success of the Falaise Cauldron allowed a quick advance through northern France and on September 14th Coningham moved into its new headquarters in the Résidence Palace in Brussels .
The disastrous Operation Market Garden , during which the 2nd TAF was forbidden from operating over the area during the air landings, showed the importance of coordinated air support for the ground forces. As a result of this failure, the next major airborne operation, Operation Varsity in March 1945, was planned with the intensive involvement of Coningham's headquarters. During the Battle of the Bulge , Coningham was given temporary operational control over two tactical air commands of the Ninth Air Force, which operated north of the break-in point. On April 7, 1945, after the successful crossing of the Rhine, Coningham opened his new headquarters in Süchteln . A little later it was moved to Bad Eilsen .
post war period
After the end of the war, Coningham was replaced on July 15, 1945 by Sholto Douglas, who continued the command as the British Air Forces of Occupation . On July 26th, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal by US President Truman in Frankfurt . In October 1945 he took over the RAF Flying Training Command as Air Officer Commanding after a publicity trip through the United States . In November 1945 he was appointed Grand Officer of the Belgian Order of the Leopold and received the Croix de guerre with a palm branch. He has lectured on tactical air support in Belgium, Palestine and at the Royal United Services Institute and has been invited to numerous festive occasions. He was named Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1946 New Year Honors . A street in Brussels was also named after him.
In February 1947 he was interviewed by Forrest C. Pogue , author of the official US exposition of the history of the SHAEF , where he was very critical of Montgomery. In August of this year he resigned from the RAF after 30 years.
On January 28, 1948, he boarded an Avro Tudor aircraft operated by British South American Airways in Lisbon on a business trip to South America. On January 30, the machine disappeared near the Bermuda Islands, the accident has not yet been resolved.
literature
- Vincent Orange: Coningham. A Biography of Air Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham KCB, KBE, DSO, MC, DFC, AFC. Methuen, London 1990, ISBN 0-413-14580-8 ( PDF; 24 MB ).
- Glyn Harper, Joel Hayward (Eds.): Born to Lead ?: Portraits of New Zealand Commanders. Exisle Publishing, 2003, ISBN 1-927147-39-5 .
Web links
- Arthur Coningham on rafweb.org
Individual evidence
- ↑ Arthur Coningham on theaerodrome.com .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Coningham, Arthur |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Coningham, Mary (nickname) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | New Zealand officer in the Royal Air Force, most recently Air Marshal |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 19, 1895 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Brisbane |
| DATE OF DEATH | after January 30, 1948 |
| Place of death | North Atlantic |