by CY Caldwell
In any discussion of airpower it should be emphasized that there is not yet in the world a great airpower nation: that is to say, a nation that has. believed in, has developed, and has relied upon airpower as its chief defensive or offensive arm.
At the start of this war all of the great nations. considered themselves primarily as sea powers or land-powers or as a combination of the two, with airpower placed in an auxiliary or secondary position in the nation's war plans. The fact that the air forces of Great Britain, Germany, Russia, France and Italy were supposedly independent of Army or Navy control while those of the United States and Japan were part of the Army or Navy, did not to any appreciable extent alter the actual position of those air forces.
Though all of these nations possessed armies, navies_ and air forces, geographical reasons had conditioned the national thinking. Germany, Russia, and France were land powers; Great Britain and the United States, sea powers; Japan, as an island nation wit h plans tor conquest on the continent of Asia, developed an army and navy appropriate to its situation All with the exception of Britain and Italy, designed their air forces to function in support of the Army and Navy, rather than to act independently The British developed an air force to act as an mdependen force but such was the British faith in seapower that when the war started the Royal Air Force was less than a quarter the size of the Luftwaffe, so it could not have held first place in national thinking. As tor the Italian Air Force, it functioned independently. and quite as efficiently and enthusiastically as the Italian Army and Navy. In every retreat, the Italian Air Force gallantly led the way.
The Germans, starting the war with the world s laraest air force, yet considered themselves a land power and placed their chief reliance upon their army Their air force, while it enjoyed an independent political entity, yet was designed built, and trained intensively to act in support of the army. Despite its inipressivesize, it was basically an army air auxiliary. It has proven itself amazingly successful in that capacity, and as amazingly ineffective when it worked independently as an air force.
The first battle of the war, that of Poland presented the pattern that the Germans have followed awfully ever since: air forces acting as spearheads of the mechanized divisions and the infantry injlose co-operation with the tanks and ranging far ahead of them to smash the opposing air force and destroy enemy ground communications Although the German war pattern then was made clear, French and English commanders failed to learn the lesson until it was repeated in the Battle of France.
AIRPOWER THE SPEARHEAD
In France, as in Poland, superior air power was the key to victory. In the first two or three days it over-whelmed and practically destroyed all French and British opposition in the air. The French and English had only a few hundred airplanes in action and they were soon shot down or destroyed on their aerodromes. It was a battle of airpower against almost nothing in the air.
The plane-tank combination, which broke with such fury upon the 1918-minded French and British army commanders, smashed the Allied ground defenses and knifed its way through to the back areas, disrupting all communications and cutting off the troops in forward areas. The French and English were separated, disorganized as a fighting force. An army of five million men was defeated by no more than 150000 highly trained Germans in tanks and airplanes.
It is significant that in German war communiques then, and in German comment generally since then, there is no tendency to play up armies or air forces as such in any joint actions. It is taken for granted that both must work together in a common effort to win a decision on the ground. The Germans think in terms of territory gained, which is the way they have thought for centuries. It is the unity of ground and air effort, the complete understanding and co-operation between ground and air forces, that has been one of the chief factors for achieving victory in every campaign. Other factors have been superior forces and also superior planning.
Spectacular German gains in 1940 emphasized the vital necessity for airpower in war, and in a form that worked in close support of armies. In France, the army held paramount interest. In Norway it was the German air force that made the invasion possible, that smashed the British Expeditionary Force and dictated its withdrawal. Here, for the first time in history, was a clear-cut victory of land-based airpower over seapower—the second was in Crete. The British made the official admission that they could not transport to and establish in Norway sufficient airpower of their own to defeat the Luftwaffe, and that it was impossible to maintain and supply their troops with only naval support.
In Norway the Germans held the initial advantage of sneaking in and securing operating bases, without the formality of a previous declaration of war against Norway. A declaration of war, incidentally, is a relic of the days of chivalry, when a knight threw down his gauntlet as a challenge. The Germans have purged chivalry. They simply got on the ground first with the most men, planes, tanks, and guns, before the Norwegians and British realized that a state of war existed in quite an advanced stage. Even had the British counterinvasion effort not been marred by indecision the Germans enjoyed the tremendous advantage of shorter lines of communication and the ease of reinforcement by air. Even if more than small ground forces had been established on Norwegian soil, the British position eventually must have been rendered untenable by heavy German airpower. The British discreetly withdrew, thus gaining experience that was to prove invaluable in Dunkirk, Greece, and Crete.
It should be noted that the Germans did not depend upon airpower alone to capture and hold Norway. They sent to Norway by air and by sea every soldier and every piece of equipment that they could possibly transport in the time at their disposal; and they threw into the battle practically all of their small seapower, trusting in their aviation to offset superior British naval forces. The Germans demonstrated then their determined war policy: to use every weapon of land, sea, and air, propaganda, and treachery, co-ordinated to win the decision.
In Norway, as later in Holland, Belgium, and France, the outstanding fact was the perfect co-ordination of all forces to gain the objective. Where there was such superiority on land and in the air, it is difficult to apportion the credit to land or air forces, considered as such. Airmen naturally hailed these victories as triumphs of airpower; army men as naturally hailed the tank, never failing to add that even tanks couldn't occupy territory without the infantry to follow along and consolidate the positions. Armies today believe as firmly as ever in the efficacy of infantry, supported of course by tanks and aviation. If the infantry no longer is able to act alone to conquer territory, neither are tanks or aviation or artillery. The thing now is perfect co-ordination of all forces, as the Germans have so efficiently demonstrated.
BATTLE OF BRITAIN
However, nothing is perfect in this sad world. There are conditions under which even the greatest strategist faces frustration, and munches his blutwurst mit sauerkraut with less than his usual zest. Such a sad condition popped up unexpectedly in the Battle of Britain, when the numerically inferior but technically and heroically superior Royal Air Force came to grips with the lumbering Luftwaffe and knocked it groggy.
There had been a preliminary engagement between British fighters and German fighters and dive bombers above the disconsolate sands of Dunkirk during the British evacuation—evacuation No. 2, that was. The British, surprisingly enough, had won local air mastery, permitting the flotilla of small boats, excursion boats, destroyers and punts to remove the defeated troops. The Germans, still busy chasing the French, and occasionally catching up to and passing the slower ones, thought little of this air action, blaming the British triumph mostly on the fog, an element with which the British were so familiar, from childhood, that they could see through it, while the Germans couldn't.
However, after standing on the French coast with his whole victorious Army warning the British that he was coming, Hitler sent his air force over to smash the RAF and pave the way for invasion. The battle lasted from Aug. 8th to Oct. 31, 1940, between which dates 2,375 German aircraft were destroyed in daylight, with the loss of some 6000 men. The British lost 733 planes, with 375 pilots killed and 358 wounded. The figure of German losses takes no account of those lost at night or those last seen fleeing home in a damaged condition.
Deficient in armor and in armament, the German bombers without exception were easy prey for British 8-gun fighters. The Spitfires and Hurricane pilots went after the bombers, protected by swarms of Messerschmitts, and shot down bombers and fighters with equal ease. Meanwhile British bombers attacked German invasion bases along the French channel coast, destroying barges and ships. Outnumbered four or five to one—and in some engagements outnumbered twenty to one—the RAF smashed the German air attacks and handed to the Luftwaffe its first defeat. Near the end of the fight a few Italian planes came over, though as an English pilot remarked at the time, a few thoroughly frightened Italians could have but little effect on the battle. The English casually shot down seven Italian bombers and six fighters the first day, seven more bombers next day, without the loss of a single Britisher. It was thought that Mussolini had sent them over as much-needed comedy relief, which the English said was rather nice of him.
It was the consensus that the enormous losses inflicted upon the Nazi air squadrons, together with the destruction of sea invasion equipment, forced Hitler to abandon his plan to invade England in 1940. While that is undoubtedly true, it seems that there were other factors controlling the situation. It is entirely possible that the invasion plans were not meant to be carried out, and that the virtual destruction of the RAF would have been thought sufficient to force the British to sue for peace. Even had air mastery been achieved, the task still remained to send vulnerable barges and transports across the Channel against the opposition of the British Home Fleet, to which the Germans could oppose only a small navy assisted by the air force. The initial engagements to pave the way for troop crossings might well be expected to dissipate nearly all of Germany's slender seapower and much of its remaining airpower. Furthermore, an invasion at night would receive but little help from an air force; to derive any advantage whatever from airpower the attack would have to be made in daylight. Neither by day nor by night was the prospect of invasion a pleasant one. But there may have been a still more compelling reason why the invasion plan was abandoned.
BASIC GERMAN STRATEGY
Germany is a land power, and despite its air force and its submarines and its surface Navy, the main trend of German military thinking has to do with the land - it was the Kaiser himself who remarked some - what bitterly that Germans are landlubbers, and he should know the Germans if anyone does. On Germany's eastern borders lurked the huge Red Army and Air Force; and in the German official mind must have dwelt the suspicion, if not the absolute certainty, that once large Nazi forces were fully committed to ihe invasion attempt, the Red Army would gird up its loins and wade into the fray. Certainly, rather than invade Britain, the Germans turned east to smash the Russian land and air threat. Thus it is well within the realm of possibility that the Red Army had something to do with saving Britain in 1940 and '41.
I mention this speculation to indicate that in this war so far it has been difficult to determine to what extent airpower has won decisions by its own independent action; to what extent armies have functioned successfully as armies, and to what extent navies have .acted independently. In practice, of course thev work together in co-ordinated effort, so far as it can be achieved. That much is plain. But which is the debtor? Which the creditor? Even a study of the various campaigns do not afford us any conclusive answer to those questions.
The invasion of Crete offered proof that under certain conditions air forces could defeat naval forces and effect the capture of an island inadequately defended by air and ground forces. Here for the first time parachute troops were used in large numbers; and. airborne infantry in transports and gliders made their appearance. A prerequisite to their successful use was mastery of the air, which the Germans achieved in two days by shooting down in the air and smashing on the ground the few RAF squadrons based on Crete. When it was evident that the air decision had been lost, the few remaining British air units were withdrawn, after which the Germans operated unopposed in the air, landing enough troops to effect the capture of the island and British evacuation No. 4-No. 3 had been from Greece. British ground troops were forced to surrender or escape in shattered remnants in the few remaining transports and even sailboats, leaving all of their equipment behind.
Overwhelming German air power combined with an air transportation operation, that delivered German troops, machine guns, light tanks, and artillery right on the battleground proved itself an invasion combination superior to the British defense combination of a naval fleet, ground troops, anti-aircraft guns, and a few airplanes. The Germans sank two British cruisers, four destroyers, many merchant ships, defeated an army of 50000 men with some 35000 men landed in Crete. The Germans had 8000 casualties, lost 300 planes. The British lost not only Crete, but all naval and air control of the Aegean Sea, cutting off Turkey and leaving that nation in the new German zone of influence. The first wholly air-borne invasion in history had resulted in enormous strategical gains at comparatively small cost in men and material.
NEW ERA IN WARFARE
The Battle of Crete undoubtedly marks the beginning of a new era in warfare, foreshadowed as it was by the use of similar tactics on a smaller scale in Norway, Holland, and Belgium. Such vertical investment, however, depends initially upon the gaining of air masterv and the development of a situation where the invader can assure continuous supply and reinforcement of his own forces while denying them to the opponent. To jump to the conclusion that it can be used anywhere against any opponent would be unsound. But the lesson is plain that surface forces, whether of sea or land, are incapable alone of defending territory against which an opponent can hurl superior airpower. With control of the air and the requisite air transport, the attacker must be able to deliver to the invasion area a greater force than the defender can bring to bear in the same space of time, or make up for lack of such ground force by direct air action. Without such assurance, an air invasion would be more likely to tail than to succeed.
In the Battle of Russia, for example, neither opponent as vet possesses the airpower necessary to duplicate the Crete invasion, although parachute troops have been used to attack many objectives behind the lines. If or when the time comes that either Russia or Germany gains marked air superiority, if not air mastery, we may see the tactics of Crete used on a large scale and in many sectors at the same time. Smashing-frontal attacks on positions defensive in depth pile up casualties in men and wastage in material so enormous that a vertical invasion behind that protected front may be deemed well worth the risk, even though the invader has not air mastery, but only a preponderance of aircraft. The presence of a considerable ground force landed in the rear of strongly held lines must exert on the defending army a disruptive power far in excess of its physical striking ability. It can at once cut that army off from its communications, forcing it to fight its way back to its own supplies, and thus withdrawing or weakening the front it held before such back-area invasion was effected. If such maneuvers are carried out in several areas at once, the result must be to render such areas mere islands of opposition scattered along the front. It would be the air equivalent of the German ground pincer movement. It would be a ground-air column of penetration along a strongly-held front, able to attack at any point, irrespective of the strength of the forces holding the front, for it would simply tiy over such forces, which could not come into action until they knew at what points in the rear the invader would be established.
The Russo-German war is primarily a land war, airpower, while a vital factor, is used in support of the ground forces. Both air forces operate from bases behind and protected by their armies. Without this around shield, either opponent could advance along the wound and capture the air bases of the other; for no air force yet in existence has within its own organization the ability to protect ground. If the. army is driven back, the air force operating behind that army must retreat to bases further back as British, German, and Italian air forces alternately have been doing for two years in Libya. It seems evident that without the opposition of the Russian armies the German armies would have had a clear road to Moscow in 1941, despite anything the Red Air Force could do to stop them. And without the German army to block its path, the Russian army could have invaded Germany. Air forces powerful enough to smash everything on the ground, including armies with their ability to disperse and offer only scattered targets, do not exist today. In the present stage of their development, armies fight armies, air forces fight air forces. Both act in support of the other. Both are necessary.
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