The Pointblank Directive: The Untold Story of the Daring Plan that Saved D-Day

Where was the Luftwaffe on D-Day? The Pointblank Directive answers this question using extensive new research that creates a portrait of perhaps the last untold story of Operation Overlord. Following a year of unremarkable bombing against German targets, General Henry H. ‘Hap’ Arnold, commander of the US Army Air Forces, placed his lifelong friend General Carl A. ‘Tooey’ Spaatz in command of the strategic bombing forces in Europe, and his protégé, General James ‘Jimmy’ Doolittle, in command of the Eighth Air Force in England. For these fellow aviation strategists, he had one set of orders – sweep the skies clean of the Luftwaffe by June 1944. Spaatz and Doolittle couldn’t quite do that but they could clear the skies sufficiently to gain air superiority over the D-Day beaches allowing the Allies to establish their vital toe-hold on the beachheads. Their ambitious plan was called Pointblank.