In February 1943, an American ground unit called for air support in Tunisia. The planes arrived seven hours later. By July 1944, that number was three minutes. The German troops on the receiving end couldn't even reach cover.
This is the story of how one general — Elwood "Pete" Quesada — broke every rule in the Army Air Forces playbook to build a system that turned American close air support from a bureaucratic disaster into the fastest killing machine of the war. He put fighter pilots inside Sherman tanks, wired aircraft radios into turrets, and made a promise to Omar Bradley that no air commander had ever made before.
From the humiliation of Kasserine Pass to the destruction at Mortain, from Patton's race across France to the frozen roads of the Ardennes — this is how America learned to strike before the enemy could react. And why the system was quietly dismantled after the war, only to be rebuilt when the same men started dying for the same reasons all over again.
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