Eighty years ago the Red Army raids an airfield deep in the German rear

  

The Red Army staged an audacious deep penetration attack in corps strength aimed at the major German airfield hub at Tatinskaya over 200km from its supply base. The Soviets broke through to the airfield so rapidly that air operations were still in progress when they arrived. Approximately 200 operational aircraft were destroyed, some reportedly by being rammed by Soviet tanks. This gravely compromising the Luftwaffe's already tenuous capacity to supply the forces trapped in Stalingrad by air. The 150 or so tanks and other heavy equipment commited to the operation were lost but it was a considerable strategic success.

Allied ground forces in Tunisia had reached sufficient size for their commanders to stage another push against the Germans. The Coldstream Guards led the assault with an attack on Longstop Hill against stiff German resistance. The Coldstreamers were relieved by the US 18th RCT when they took the first summit but a counter attack dislodged the Americans. The Coldstreamers attacked again and took both of the heights but a new counter-attack on Christmas Day drove them off. The Germans named the position Weihnachtsberg in honour of this success. Generals Eisenhower and Alexander concluded that further offensive operations were pointless and that the Longstop position was untenable. Bad weather and the distances that had to be flown from airfields in Algeria took the edge of Allied air superiority. 

The Americans were growing increasingly embarassed at their opportunitistic deal with Admiral Darlan, who was showing no sign of abandoning the authoritarian practices of the Vichy regime. Tentative steps were put in hand to lure him out of power but before they led anywhere, he was assassinated by a young French royalist who had been trained by the American OSS as a resistance operative before the Torch landings. The assassin and his accomplices almost certainly acted on their own motives; he was executed almost immediately. Darlan's place was taken by General Giraud whom the Americans had long promoted as their man to lead France, but he held scanty authority over the ex-Vichy forces in North Africa and none over de Gaulle's Free French