<Dl> <Dd> "The ground belched, shook and spewed dirt to the sky . Scores of our troops were hit, their bodies flung from slit trenches . Doughboys were dazed and frightened...A bomb landed squarely on McNair in a slit trench and threw his body sixty feet and mangled it beyond recognition except for the three stars on his collar ." </Dd> </Dl> <Dd> "The ground belched, shook and spewed dirt to the sky . Scores of our troops were hit, their bodies flung from slit trenches . Doughboys were dazed and frightened...A bomb landed squarely on McNair in a slit trench and threw his body sixty feet and mangled it beyond recognition except for the three stars on his collar ." </Dd> <P> The Germans were stunned senseless, with tanks overturned, telephone wires severed, commanders missing, and a third of their combat troops killed or wounded . The defence line broke; J. Lawton Collins rushed his VII Corps forward; the Germans retreated in a rout; the Battle of France was won; air power seemed invincible . However, the sight of a senior colleague killed by error was unnerving, and after the completion of operation Cobra, Army generals were so reluctant to risk "friendly fire" casualties that they often passed over excellent attack opportunities that would be possible only with air support . Infantrymen, on the other hand, were ecstatic about the effectiveness of close air support: </P> <Dl> <Dd> "Air strikes on the way; we watch from a top window as P - 47s dip in and out of clouds through suddenly erupting strings of Christmas - tree lights (flak), before one speck turns over and drops toward earth in the damnest sight of the Second World War, the dive - bomber attack, the speck snarling, screaming, dropping faster than a stone until it's clearly doomed to smash into the earth, then, past the limits of belief, an impossible flattening beyond houses and trees, an upward arch that makes the eyes hurt, and, as the speck hurtles away, WHOOM, the earth erupts five hundred feet up in swirling black smoke . More specks snarl, dive, scream, two squadrons, eight of them, leaving congealing, combining, whirling pillars of black smoke, lifting trees, houses, vehicles, and, we devoutly hope, bits of Germans . We yell and pound each other's backs . Gods from the clouds; this is how you do it! You don't attack painfully across frozen plains, you simply drop in on the enemy and blow them out of existence ." </Dd> </Dl>

How did the compromise of the german code affect the outcome of world war ii if at all