The War in the Air

1914–1994

American Edition

Edited by

Alan Stephens

RAAF Aerospace Centre

In cooperation with the

RAAF Aerospace Centre

Air University Press

Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama

January 2001
Disclaimer

Opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied within are solely those of

the author and do not necessarily represent the views of Air University, the United States Air

Force, the Department of Defense, or any other US government agency. Cleared for public

release: distribution unlimited.

Copyright © 1994 by the RAAF Air Power Studies Centre. No part of this book may be used or

reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief

quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Inquiries should be made to the copyright

holder.

ii

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The war in the air, 1914-1994 / edited by Alan Stephens ; in cooperation with the

RAAF Air Power Studies Centre––American ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 1-58566-087-6

1. Air power––History––Congresses. 2. Air warfare––History––Congresses.

3. Military history, Modern––20th century––Congresses. I. Stephens, Alan,

1944-II. RAAF Air Power Studies Centre.

UG625.W367 2001

358.4′00904––dc21 00-068257
Contents

Page

DISCLAIMER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii

FOREWORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v

ABOUT THE AUTHORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

PREFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv

ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii

Essays

Airpower in World War I, 1914–1918 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Robin Higham

The True Believers: Airpower between the Wars . . . . . . 29

Alan Stephens

Did the Bomber Always Get Through?:

The Control of Strategic Airspace, 1939–1945 . . . . . . . . 69

John McCarthy

World War II: Air Support for Surface Forces . . . . . . . . 85

Vincent Orange

World War II: The Bombing of Germany . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

Richard J. Overy

Definite Limitations:

The Air War in Korea 1950–1953 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

Jeffrey Grey

The Air War in Vietnam: Reevaluating Failure . . . . . . . . 169

C. D. Coulthard-Clark

iii
Essay Page

Airpower as a National Instrument:

The Arab-Israeli Wars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191

R. A. Mason

It Was a Bit of a Close Call:

Some Thoughts on the South Atlantic War . . . . . . . . . . 221

R. G. Funnell

Airpower in Peripheral Conflict:

From the Past, the Future? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257

Dennis M. Drew

Soviet Airpower in the New Russian Mirror . . . . . . . . . . 301

Benjamin S. Lambeth

Air Operations in the Gulf War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339

Sir Patrick Hine

New Era Warfare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361

Charles A. Horner

The Future of Airpower . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377

Richard P. Hallion

INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415

iv
Foreword

This book is the Air University Press edition of the proceedings

of a conference on aerial warfare held by the Royal Australian Air

Force (RAAF) in Canberra in 1994. Because of the stature of the

contributing authors and the excellence of their essays, the original publication by the RAAF’s Air Power Studies Centre has

been in great demand and increasingly short supply. This

American edition is essentially a reprint, although it is a somewhat shortened version with stylistic changes. Its publication

will allow a wider audience access to an important segment of

airpower literature.

Among the book’s virtues are the high levels of expertise of its

contributors and the diversity of their backgrounds. Here the

American student can sample the views of Australian and British

airmen and scholars, as well as some perhaps more familiar

American vistas. Each of the book’s contributors speaks with

authority, and each discusses a specific area or period in the evolution of air and space power from World War I to the near future.

Essay subjects include World War I; doctrinal development in the

interwar period; strategic bombing and support of surface forces

in World War II; and airpower in the Korean War, Vietnam War,

Arab-Israeli Wars, Falkland Islands War, and Persian Gulf War.

They also include coverage of airpower in such peripheral conflicts as Operation El Dorado Canyon, the Malayan Emergency,

and the Israeli raid on the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq.

We at the Air University Press are pleased to republish this

important work and are grateful for the opportunity. Special

thanks are due to Dr. Alan Stephens, who not only edited the

original book but who did it again for our edition; the Aerospace

Centre for allowing us to publish this work; and Professor

Dennis M. Drew of Air University’s School of Advanced Airpower

Studies, who recognized the value of the original work and the

need for a new edition.

v

SHIRLEY BROOKS LASETER

Director

Air University Press
About the Authors

Professor Robin Higham

Professor Robin Higham was born in the United Kingdom

and educated on both sides of the Atlantic. He served as a first

sergeant pilot in the Royal Air Force (RAF) from 1943 to 1947,

ending up in Southeast Asia Command on Dakotas with No.

48 Squadron and then as an airfield controller. He graduated

cum laude from Harvard in 1950 and received his PhD there

in 1957. He has taught military history at Kansas State

University since 1963.

Professor Higham has been the editor of Military Affairs

(1968–88) and Aerospace Historian (1970–88), and remains

editor of the Journal of the West (1977–). He has published a

number of books, including Britain’s Imperial Air Routes; The

British Rigid Airship, 1908–1931; and Air Power: A Concise

History, and many papers and articles. He is currently

researching a book on the RAF and its preparation for war in

the period 1933–41.

Dr. Alan Stephens

Dr. Alan Stephens is a senior research fellow at the RAAF’s

Aerospace Centre. Before joining the center, he was a principal research officer in the Australian Federal Parliament, specializing in foreign affairs and defense; prior to that he was an

RAAF pilot, where his postings included the command of No.

2 (Canberra) Squadron in 1980–81.

Dr. Stephens is the author or editor of numerous books and

articles on security and airpower. He is currently writing an

official history of the RAAF from the end of the Second World

War to the withdrawal from Vietnam.

Associate Professor John McCarthy

Associate Professor John McCarthy has been a teaching fellow at the University of New South Wales, resident scholar at

the Australian National University, lecturer and senior lecturer

in history at the Faculty of Military Studies, and associate

vii
professor at the University College, University of New South

Wales. His work includes the publication of such books as

Australia and Imperial Defence, 1918–1939; Australian War

Strategy, 1939–1945; and A Last Call of Empire, and numerous articles on defense and foreign policy. He was the foundation president of the Association of Historians of Australian

Defence and Foreign Policy and is a member of the Australian

Institute of International Affairs.

Dr. Vincent Orange

Dr. Vincent Orange was born in England and served for

three years in the Royal Air Force. For many years he has been

a New Zealand citizen, and since 1962 has taught at the

University of Canterbury where he is a reader in history. He is

also a member of the Royal Aeronautical Society.

Dr. Orange has written four biographies of New Zealand airmen, including Sir Keith Park and Coningham. With the cooperation of family members he is currently preparing a book on

the life of Tedder.

Professor Richard Overy

Professor Richard Overy is professor of modern history at

King’s College, London. He moved to King’s in 1980 after

teaching for some years at Cambridge. He has written extensively on the history of airpower, the Third Reich, and the

Second World War. His books include The Air War, 1939–1945;

Goering: The “Iron Man”; The Road to War; and War and

Economy in the Third Reich. He is currently completing a history of the Nazi economy and has been commissioned to write

the Oxford history of the Second World War.

Dr. Jeffrey Grey

Dr. Jeffrey Grey is a graduate of the Australian National

University and the University of New South Wales, and currently is a senior lecturer in the Department of History at the

University College, Australian Defence Force Academy. He is

the author or editor of half a dozen books, including most

recently Australian Brass: The Career of Lieutenant General Sir

viii
Horace Robertson and Vietnam: War, Myth and Memory. He is

an author in the current series of official histories, Australia’s

Involvement in Southeast Asian Conflicts, 1948–1975; he has

completed the volume on Konfrontasi and is now engaged in a

volume on the Royal Australian Navy.

Dr. Chris D. Coulthard-Clark

Dr. Chris Coulthard-Clark is a former army officer and public servant who is presently working as consultant on a history

of Australian Defence Industries Ltd. He received his PhD from

University College, Australian Defence Force Academy, in 1991.

Dr. Coulthard-Clark has authored, edited, or contributed to

16 books, mostly in the field of Australian defense studies,

and has written numerous journal and newspaper articles.

His contribution to air history includes The Third Brother and

a volume of the official war history series covering the RAAF’s

involvement in Vietnam. He is also working part-time on a

biography of F. H. McNamara, Australia’s only Victoria Cross

winner in the air from the First World War.

Air Vice-Marshal R. A. Mason

Air Vice-Marshal Tony Mason is the Leverhulme airpower

research director of the United Kingdom-based Foundation for

International Security. He retired from the RAF in 1989, where

his last appointment was air secretary.

Over 20 years he has written several books and many articles on airpower, including Airpower in the Nuclear Age with

M. J. Armitage, The Soviet Air Forces with J. W. R. Taylor, War

in the Third Dimension, and Airpower and Technology. He has

recently concluded “Aerospace Security in the Middle East,” a

study for agencies in Israel and Jordan. His next book,

Airpower in International Security, A Centennial Appraisal, is

being published by Brassey’s.

Air Vice-Marshal Mason lectures internationally to military

colleges and universities on airpower and is a regular defense

analyst for the British Broadcasting Corporation. He is a consultant to the Society of British Aerospace Companies on the

European Fighter 2000 program. He is a senior visiting fellow

ix
to the Post-Graduate School of International Security Studies

at the University of Birmingham and to the Mosher Defense

Institute, Texas, and is a senior research fellow at the Conflict

Studies Centre, Sandhurst.

Air Marshal R. G. Funnell

Air Marshal Ray Funnell was educated at the Brisbane

State High School. He entered the RAAF in January 1953 as

a cadet at the RAAF College and graduated as a pilot in

December 1956.

His early career was spent mainly in fighter flying and in

flying instruction. In midcareer he occupied numerous staff

positions in the RAAF, in the central defense staff, and on

exchange with the United States Air Force (USAF).

Operational commands were held with No. 79 (F) Squadron at

Ubon, Thailand, in 1966; and No. 6 Squadron at Amberley

from 1972 to 1975 when it converted from the F-4E Phantom

to the F-111C.

His appointments at air rank included director General

Military Staff, Strategic and International Policy Division,

Department of Defence; chief of Air Force Operations and

Plans; vice chief of the Defence Force; and chief of the Air Staff.

Air Marshal Funnell retired from the RAAF in October 1992.

In January 1994 he was appointed as the first principal of the

Australian College of Defence and Strategic Studies.

He is a graduate of the RAAF Staff College, the USAF Air War

College, and the Royal College of Defence Studies. He holds a

master’s degree in political science and a graduate diploma in

administration. He has written and spoken extensively on military issues both in Australia and overseas.

Col Dennis M. Drew

Col Dennis M. Drew is professor of military theory, strategy,

and doctrine, and associate dean, School of Advanced Airpower

Studies, Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama.

Colonel Drew retired from the United States Air Force in

1992 after 28 years duty, including war service in Vietnam

and Thailand during 1966–67. He was an intercontinental

x
ballistic missile (ICBM) combat crew commander with

Strategic Air Command (SAC), and also held several staff

appointments at SAC Headquarters. For the last 15 years of

his USAF career, Colonel Drew was on the faculty of the Air

University, attaining the academic rank of full professor. After

retirement from the military he joined the civil service in his

present position.

He was the project director and coauthor of Air Force

Manual 1-1, Basic Aerospace Doctrine of the United States Air

Force (1992 edition). Other publications include The Eagle’s

Talons: The American Experience at War; Making Strategy: An

Introduction to National Security Processes and Problems (both

with Donald Snow); and Nuclear Winter and National Security:

Implications for Future Policy. His book Lexington to Desert

Storm has recently been released.

Dr. Benjamin S. Lambeth

Dr. Benjamin S. Lambeth is a senior staff member of the

RAND Corporation, with principal interests and background

in the Russian military field. He received his doctorate in political science from Harvard University.

His articles on Soviet military doctrine and strategy have

appeared in numerous journals and symposium volumes, and

he has lectured widely on these subjects. Prior to joining

RAND in 1974, Dr. Lambeth served in the Office of National

Estimates at the United States Central Intelligence Agency. He

is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the editorial board of The Journal of Slavic Military Studies.

In addition to his work in the Soviet military area, Dr.

Lambeth has written extensively on tactical airpower. He is a

licensed pilot and has flown over 20 different fighter types with

the United States Air Force, the United States Navy, the

United States Marine Corps, the Air National Guard, the

Canadian Forces, and the Royal Australian Air Force. In

December 1989 he became the first American citizen to fly the

Soviet MiG-29 fighter and the first Westerner invited to fly a

combat aircraft of any type inside Soviet airspace since the

end of World War II.

xi
In recent years Dr. Lambeth has been working on an official

study of Soviet airpower for the Russian Air Force.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Patrick Hine

Air Chief Marshal Sir Patrick Hine became military adviser

to British Aerospace and a director of British Aerospace

Defence in January 1992. Prior to his retirement from the RAF

in September 1991, he was commander in chief of United

Kingdom Air Forces (NATO) and air officer commanding-inchief of the Royal Air Force’s Strike Command.

Sir Patrick joined the RAF as a trainee pilot in 1950 and

throughout his career flew fighters—Meteors, Hunters,

Lightnings, Phantoms, and Harriers—in addition to three

years as an instructor at the Central Flying School. Staff

appointments included senior air staff officer at Headquarters

Royal Air Force, Germany, and assistant chief of the Air Staff

(Policy) in the Ministry of Defence.

Sir Patrick is a liveryman of the Guild of Air Pilots and Air

Navigators, a fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, and a

graduate of the Royal College of Defence Studies.

In 1990–91 he was joint commander of all British forces

involved in the Persian Gulf crisis and war, exercising overall

command from the war headquarters at High Wycombe but

regularly visiting Saudi Arabia throughout.

Gen Charles A. Horner

Gen Charles A. Horner is commander in chief of North American

Aerospace Defense Command and the United States Space

Command, and commader of Air Force Space Command. He

was awarded his pilot wings in 1959 and has since commanded

a tactical training wing, a fighter wing, two air divisions, and a

numbered air force. A command pilot on F-100, F-105, F-4,

F-15, and F-16 aircraft, he flew more than 100 combat missions

over North Vietnam. While commander of the Ninth Air Force,

General Horner also commanded US Central Command Air

Forces, in command of all US and Coalition air assets during

Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

xii
Dr. Richard P. Hallion

Dr. Richard Hallion has been historian of the United States

Air Force since December 1991. After obtaining a doctorate in

the history of aerospace technology at the University of

Maryland in 1975, he worked as a curator at the Smithsonian

Institution’s National Air and Space Museum and, between

1982 and 1990, he held chief historian appointments at

Edwards, Wright-Patterson, and Andrews Air Force Bases. He

has also been Charles A. Lindbergh professor of aerospace history at the National Air and Space Museum and a visiting professor at the United States Army War College.

Dr. Hallion is the author or editor of 14 books, including

Storm Over Iraq, Strike From the Sky: The History of Battlefield

Air Attack, Test Pilots: The Frontiersmen of Flight, and The Wright

Brothers: Heirs of Prometheus. He is also a practicing pilot.

xiii
Preface

This book contains the proceedings of a conference held by

the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) in Canberra in 1994.

Since its publication by the RAAF’s Air Power Studies Centre

in that year, the book has become a widely used reference at

universities, military academies, and other educational institutions around the world.

The application of aerospace power has seen significant

developments since 1994, most notably through American-led

operations in Central Europe and continuing technological

advances with weapons, uninhabited vehicles, space-based

systems, and information systems. But notwithstanding those

developments and the passing of six years, the value of this

anthology of airpower in the twentieth century seems undiminished. I am pleased that the RAAF has been able to join

with the Air University Press to produce this reprint. Together

with the AU Press, I should like to thank my fellow authors for

allowing their work to be reprinted.

xv

Alan Stephens

RAAF Aerospace Centre

Canberra

May 2000
Acronyms and Abbreviations

AAA antiaircraft artillery

AAM air-to-air missile

AAP Australian air publication

AAR air-to-air refueling

ABC3 airborne battlefield command and control

center

ACP air campaign plan

ACTS Air Corps Tactical School

ADF Australian Defence Force

Adm admiral

AFB air force base (USAF)

AFFE Army Forces Far East

AIM air intercept missile

AMC Air Mobility Command (USAF)

AMRAAM advanced medium range air-to-air missile

AOC air officer commanding

APEC Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (forum)

APSC Air Power Studies Centre

ASEAN Australia and South East Asian Nations

ASW antisubmarine warfare

ATACMS Army tactical missile system

ATO air tasking order

AWACS airborne warning and control system

BBC British Broadcasting Corporation

BDA bomb damage assessment

Brig brigadier

C2 command and control

C3 command, control, and communications

C3

I command, control, communications, and

intelligence

CAP combat air patrol

Capt captain

CINC commander in chief

CINCFE commander in chief Far East

xvii
CINCUNC commander in chief United Nations

Command

Col colonel

Comdr commander

CNN Cable News Network

CRAF Civil Reserve Air Fleet

CT communist terrorist

DRV Democratic Republic of Vietnam

EAF Egyptian air force

ECM electronic countermeasures

ELINT electronic intelligence

EUSAK Eighth United States Army in Korea

EW electronic warfare

FAC forward air controller

FEAF Far East Air Forces

FPDA Five-Power Defense Arrangements

GBU guided-bomb unit

Gen general

GHQ general headquarters

GQG Grand Quartier General

GPS Global Positioning System

GWAPS Gulf War Air Power Survey

HAS hardened aircraft shelter

HMS Her Majesty’s Ship

IADS integrated air defense system

IAF Israeli Air Force

IDF Israeli Defense Force

INS inertial navigation system

IR infrared

JFACC joint force air component commander

Joint STARS Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar

System

xviii
JSTARS Joint STARS

km kilometer

KTO Kuwait Theater of Operations

lb pound

LGB laser-guided bomb

LSL landing ship, logistics

Lt lieutenant

MACV Military Assistance Command, Vietnam

(US)

Maj major

MCP Malayan Communist Party

MIA missing in action

MLRS multiple launch rocket system

MOOTW military operations other than war

MPAJA Malayan Peoples Anti-Japanese Army

MRAF marshal of the Royal Air Force

MRC major regional contingency

MV motor vessel

NADACS National Air Defense and Airspace Control

System

NavFE Naval Forces Far East

NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NBC nuclear, biological, and chemical (weapons)

NCO noncommissioned officer

OCA offensive counter air

OODA observation-orientation-decision-action

PAVN People’s Army of Vietnam

PGM precision-guided munition

PLO Palestine Liberation Organization

RAA Royal Australian Army

RAAF Royal Australian Air Force

RAF Royal Air Force

xix
RAN Royal Australian Navy

RFC Royal Flying Corps

RN Royal Navy

RNZAF Royal New Zealand Air Force

ROE rules of engagement

ROK Republic of Korea

RTAF Royal Thai Air Force

RVN Republic of Vietnam

SAAS School of Advanced Airpower Studies

SAC Strategic Air Command (USAF)

SAD surface-to-air defense

SAM surface-to-air missile

SAS Special Air Service

SCAP supreme commander Allied Powers

SEAD suppression of enemy air defenses

SHAPE Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers

Europe

SIGINT signals intelligence

SS supply ship

TAC tactical air control

TMD theater missile defense

UK United Kingdom

UN United Nations

UNC United Nations Command

US United States

USAAC United States Army Air Corps

USAAF United States Army Air Forces

USAF United States Air Force

USMC United States Marine Corps

USN United States Navy

USS United States Ship

USSPACECOM United States Space Command

USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

VSTOL vertical short takeoff and landing

xx
Airpower in World War I, 1914–1918

Robin Higham

World War I broke out in 1914 only a decade after the Wright

Brothers first flew in late 1903. In that short time, gentlemanly

experiment had evolved into the aircraft and engine industry

with ancillary services. Concurrently, the world’s armed forces

had begun to take a rather skeptical interest in aircraft, both

lighter- and heavier-than-air, for naval and military purposes.

As befitted the nineteenth century legacy of cartels and

cross licensing, there were many international linkages

between the firms involved, through both commercial contacts

and international aviation meetings.1

But there were also inherent tensions in this early stage of

a technological and military development. Although there were

links to the nascent automobile industry, especially in the

development of engines, on the whole the aviation industry

would continuously go through all the trials and tribulations

of a new technology, compounded by venturing into a medium

of which very little was known. There was little knowledge of

the aerodynamics of control, of the importance of weight, or

even of drag and streamlining. This lack often produced disappointing, if not tragic, results and frequently created difficulties between the optimistic advocates and the pessimistic

bureaucrats, whose cooperation was so necessary for the success of aviation itself.

Another tension in this new industry, felt especially keenly

in relations with the military, was not linked to the secrecy

that was just beginning to muffle intelligence, but to the desire

of the military to standardize a weapon which was not sufficiently tested for such standardization to be wise.

Capt Murray Sueter, RN, in prewar days the inspecting captain of airships Royal Navy, early on noted that each new

design needed to have three prototypes—one for production,

one to further develop that model, and one to provide data for

the next design. He was quite correct, for outside of the rigid

airship field, aircraft could be designed and made operational

1
within six months, meaning that the four years of the First

World War would see some eight generations of aircraft design.

At the same time, aeronautics, civilian production, and military attrition would grow astronomically and come both to be

accepted and to cause noticeable changes in the political, economic, social, and ideological forces of the nations engaged in

the conflict, whether in the end victorious or defeated.

In assessing aviation in the 1914 war, it must also be borne

in mind that at the start of the war, airpower was virtually

impotent, with neither a civilian managerial structure nor an

experienced military command. By the end of the war in 1918,

a little over four years later, however, airpower had been

organized both in its infrastructure and at the front. But it had

taken time, and it was only in mid-1917 that airpower had

become effective enough to begin to merit respect over land

and sea. Airmen started the war burdened with their own and

their superiors’ preconceptions of the coming conflict. That

short-war syndrome deterred planning and preparations,

which by 1918 had become so pessimistic as to bound to a

long-war concept, seeing maybe the end in 1920.

The 1914–18 war saw the rise of airpower from a fad to a

land and sea battlefield force, with the added possibility of

becoming a grand-strategic weapon independent of the surface forces, but nevertheless subject to political control.

The Great War in the air exhibited traits and trends that

would be evident in the subsequent evolution of this highly

technical, consuming, new military arm. It did then, and it

continues today, to require very skilled professional management to make it efficient.

***

In order to provide a framework for an overview of the aeronautical proficiency of the world military powers, American

naval historian of the 1890s, Rear Adm Alfred Thayer Mahan’s

criteria provide a yardstick against which to measure Russia,

Austria-Hungary, Italy, Germany, Great Britain, and France—

the air powers of 1914–18.

Though Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power Upon History,

1660–1783, was about the technologically well-established

2

THE WAR IN THE AIR 1914–1994
Royal Navy in its mature sailing-warship days, the work is also

a resource, as air history falls into the regular patterns of history in general.2 Mahan’s definition of sea power is applicable

to the air—the ability to go where you wish, when you wish,

and to prevent the enemy from doing likewise. In addition, it

may be added that airpower is based upon technology, terrain,

thought, training, and tactics.

Mahan’s criteria for military success were:

• Geographic position

• Physical conformation

• Extent of territory

• Number of population

• National character

• Character of the government

In terms of their geographic position in relation to possible

enemies—the ability to undertake the offensive or remain successfully on the defensive and always maintain security—the

following can be said about the powers.

Russia was a vast land mass stretching from the German

border to the Pacific, linked only by a thin ribbon of steel.3

The tsarist empire had recently been humiliated by the

Japanese in the war of 1904–05 and faced enemies on three

frontiers—German, Japanese, and Austro-Hungarian. The

distances, by European standards, were immense and the

country was haunted by the memory of 1812. In addition

Russia had undeveloped resources. It is generally accepted

that while the Industrial Revolution had come to Britain

about 1760, it had not reached Russia until 1895, when her

newfound French ally began to pump in capital to develop

manufacturing. But the extent of the tsarist domains were

such that agriculture remained dominant; there was only a

small middle class to develop commerce, and it was spread

too thin, lacked capital, a vigorous internal communications

system, and warm-water ports.

One result of these deficiencies was that Russia had virtually

no aircraft industry and little that could be done to develop one.

Thus, it relied heavily on imported French air materiel, and

although it had a large population scattered about, it was generally not skilled enough for aviation ground crew, and aircrews

3

AIRPOWER IN WORLD WAR I, 1914–1918
were limited to the aloof aristocracy, which abhorred commerce.

And finally, it was not the autocratic nature of the Russian government that made the country virtually impotent, in spite of the

work of Igor Sikorsky in creating 36 long-range heavy bombers,

it was that the rulers did not understand the management of

war. That led the middle class to revolution in March 1917, only

to be overthrown by the Marxist intellectuals in November.

Thereafter, Russia dropped into civil war and outside intervention until 1922. If only the Dardanelles could have been opened

and Western arms supplied to the available, but unarmed, manpower, Brusilov might have been successful in 1916 in driving

the Austro-Hungarians out of the war, with interesting consequences that might sometime be war-gamed.

Austria-Hungary at this time had a constrained geographical position with the distinct possibility of three and possibly

four fronts to be defended. Although the mountains surrounding the country in most directions provided both defensive positions and offensive sally ports, Vienna lacked natural

resources for war production, especially in the area of aeronautics. Critical to the Dual Monarchy’s success in war was a

numerous and reliable population. But the empire was

divided, not only into the two major semistates of Austria and

Hungary with their two separate capitals and administrative

centers but also by a potpourri of minorities. Under those circumstances, the management of war required strong and prescient leadership as well as imaginative control of production

and of resources. But that was not to be. Vienna not only got

very limited production from its few aircraft and engine firms

but also found itself increasingly in thrall to Germany for both

raw materials and aeronautical supplies in general. As with

Russia, the people were not commercially inclined, but were

agricultural peasants ruled over by an aloof aristocracy not

professionally interested in war. The navy, moreover, was confined to the almost landlocked Adriatic, where its bases were

ultimately within range of Italian airplanes, as was Vienna

itself. And lastly, the autocratic government was lethargic

under Franz Joseph I, who had come to the throne in 1848

and would die in 1916. Thereafter, control began to ebb until

the multinational forces took control at the end of the war.

4

THE WAR IN THE AIR 1914–1994
Italy at this time had an important geographic asset in the

Alps, which allowed an essentially defensive stand until the

Austrians and Germans broke through at Caporetto in

October–November 1917, after a long series of indecisive battles

on the Isonzo. With its flanks protected by the sea and Allied

naval power, Italy could turn its attention to activating the air

arm as an offensive weapon.4 For this task it had developed

automobile, engine, and shipbuilding industries, as well as a

skilled population—who had cheered the early aviators both

over Turkish Libya in 1911 and over holiday crowds at home—

to man both the front and the infrastructure. Italians liked aviation, and they were fortunate that the many governments of

the day supported its development while limiting competition.

Germany had all the territorial disadvantages of Russia,

including a two-front threat to its security.5 But even though

its land frontiers were vulnerable, it had little seacoast and few

harbors that could be attacked by the great rival across the

North Sea or by the lesser one in the Baltic. Moreover,

although Germany lacked some desirable resources for war

production, it had a strong chemical industry that could and

did produce substitutes. In addition it had not only a plentiful, skilled people but also a commercially and industrially

minded population who accepted the need for military preparedness in the face of enemies both to the east and the west.

And finally, the kaiser’s government, although it may not have

funded the war sensibly, was very much attuned to the professional conduct of war and to technology. Germany’s aeronautical difficulties came eventually from the conservative

development of engines and a shortage of manpower, even

though it was sophisticated in the evolution of airframes.

Great Britain, of course, was Mahan’s ideal. It was situated

off the coast of Europe in such a way that it could undertake

the offensive easily, yet was well protected from attack by the

English Channel and the North Sea. In the security created,

Britain was able to develop commerce and industry to dominate the world, in part because its rivals had other distractions and weaknesses. However, the rise in 1870 of a fiercely

competitive Germany challenged Britain’s commercial and

naval supremacy. And the technological revolutions at the

5

AIRPOWER IN WORLD WAR I, 1914–1918
turn of the century would enable Germany to strike both

under the seas at British commerce and through the air at its

industry. Three-dimensional war became a real challenge for

the island kingdom.

To meet this challenge, Great Britain had a physical conformation that provided coal and iron, but it lacked petroleum,

bauxite for aluminum, and spruce needed for wooden warplane construction. It also lacked the ability to feed itself. Still

essentially immune to invasion, though not to fears of such, in

addition to ports well served by railways, the British acquisition of land for aerodromes further exacerbated the shortage

of sufficient acres upon which to grow food.

The country was densely populated with people who had

taken to commerce and industry; however, the 1914–18 war

would scrape the bottom of the manpower barrel, force the creation of the Ministry of Health, and require the dilution of skilled

labor with unskilled men and women. And that would necessitate rethinking the way in which goods were produced.6 As the

short, victorious war slid into an indefinitely long one, skilled

labor had to be recovered from the armed forces, if still alive.

Finally, in Britain, the character of government was favorable to industry, though paradoxically the rulers did not

understand its nature. The “amateur gentleman” concept of a

people who prided themselves on being able to “muddle

through” blinded them to the necessities of applying the principles of war also to the whole of the national economy—concentration and economy of force being especially important.

Casual habits of wealth and reluctance to talk about money

created inefficiencies and, in the Royal Flying Corps (RFC),

lack of training led to high casualties of men and materiel.

The quintessential aeronautical power of the First World War

was France.7 Though a land power with numerous borders, it

was only faced with the German enemy and was only vulnerable along the northeastern frontier, essentially from Verdun

northwest. Although the French had lost their vast iron and coal

resources in Alsace-Lorraine in 1871, this did not seem greatly

to handicap the war effort. Coal was imported from Britain, to

whom, in turn, the French supplied large numbers of aircraft

engines. And although France had a shrinking population and

6

THE WAR IN THE AIR 1914–1994
had lost a fair proportion of its 1870 population to Germany,

nevertheless, it had adequate skilled manpower, if not enough

soldiers and sailors. The French, moreover, were more skilled in

industry than the British gave them credit, and their factories

turned out more aircraft and engines than anyone else during

the war. Not only had they pioneered in aviation, but they were

also able to mobilize their automakers, so that there was a concentration of the aviation industry around Paris. Furthermore,

the French army air service was dominant, in contrast to

Britain where there was a rivalry between the Royal Naval Air

Service and the RFC for materiel. This rivalry led to the formation of the Air Ministry early in 1918 and the amalgamation of

the rival air arms into the Royal Air Force (RAF) in April. In

France, the tensions were between the Grand Quartier General

(GQG) at the front and the bureaucrats in Paris, stresses caused

in part by the problems of total and continuous war and in part

by the very evolutionary nature of airpower.

Judging by Mahan’s criteria, the course of the war in the air

was preordained on the eastern and Italian fronts by the paucity

of aeronautical resources, amongst a number of other factors.

The issue was much less clear on the western front where

geographic position was to the advantage of the Allies in that

they could tap world resources, notably the United States and

Canada. Extent of territory put Germany at the disadvantage

of having to fight major wars on two fronts and because it

lacked some essential resources and did not have the means

to reach beyond its European position for its needs. On the

other hand, Germany was prepared for war and to mobilize

what it did have to fight efficiently and professionally on interior lines. In terms of population and skills, the opponents

were about equal with the most critical matter being the management of manpower, in order to strike a balance between the

needs of the fighting fronts and of the infrastructure, especially where skilled labor was concerned.

Although the principles of war were bruited about from time

to time before the Great War, they were not written down, at

least in Britain, until 1920. At that time, Col J. F .C. Fuller,

then an instructor at the Army Staff College at Camberley,

gave them as follows:

7

AIRPOWER IN WORLD WAR I, 1914–1918
• the principle of the objective

• the principle of the offensive

• the principle of security

• the principle of concentration

• the principle of economy of force

• the principle of movement

• the principle of surprise

• the principle of cooperation

***

Both sea power and airpower operate in a fluid, threedimensional medium; both need bases and an infrastructure. However, there are three important differences. First,

sea power is constrained by coasts, whereas airpower—technology and diplomacy permitting—can operate over land or

sea. Second, naval vessels can stop their engines and remain

stationary without consuming fuel. Only airships can do

that. Third, naval vessels can enforce a blockade indefinitely

by their mere presence if the opponent has no counter

weapons. On the other hand, subject to limitations of time,

place, and technology, aircraft can appear anywhere, but

cannot remain.

Although it had been possible in the past for a sea power to

obtain virtually absolute control of the waters, an air power

could not completely dominate more than a limited area. In

the past, a fleet in being could remain in port and always be a

potential threat. The air equivalent was the withdrawal of air

forces to airfields beyond the reach of the enemy. In both the

cases of sea and airpower the de facto realities of the pre-radar

First World War were that control was limited. In the case of

airpower, control of the air—or air superiority—was only

achievable for very limited periods and over small areas. Only

after mid-1918 were the Allies so dominant in the air that the

German air force was increasingly unable to intervene in the

ground battles. Yet even in the vital matter of photographic

reconnaissance, German technology and chemistry prevailed,

allowing their planes to operate at 24,000 feet, quite above the

ceiling of Allied fighters and the pilots manning them.

8

THE WAR IN THE AIR 1914–1994
In a far distant theater such as Palestine, a very few aircraft

on either side made a significant difference. The British

achievements in 1918, especially, were due to the successful

exclusion of Turkish observation aircraft and the use of a combination of armored cars and aircraft to isolate the Turkish

headquarters and cause the disintegration of the Turkish front,

already weakened by the Arab revolt and the shortage of food.8

Not only did the ability to achieve air superiority depend

upon the stage of the war and whether by day or by night, but

it was also closely linked to the logistics organization, including that of salvage and repair, a topic very largely neglected in

the literature.

The air war at sea, which started out being dominated by

Zeppelins, saw a battle for air superiority develop over the

Heligoland Bight between long-range flying-boats from Britain

and German defensive forces, which involved evolution and

invention on both sides. By the end of the war, short-range

British fighters were being transported to the area and then

flown off, while the British Grand Fleet never went to sea without some 150 aircraft of both lighter- and heavier-than-air

types, the latter operating from flight decks fitted to a variety

of warships. But even this exercise of airpower was hampered

by production shortfalls on both sides.

The other use of airpower was in the grand-strategic realm.

There the ephemeral nature of airpower was clearly demonstrated in the ping-pong of attack and defense, if on a miniature scale. Zeppelin attacks on Britain began in daylight until

forced to shift to night by the rising success of the defenses

and the vulnerability of the hydrogen-filled airship as a

weapon.9 The same was to be seen when the giant airplanes

came into the picture. On the other hand, neither the French

nor the British grand-strategic attacks were physically devastating, nor were they beaten off by the defenses within

Germany. Their most notable difficulties were encountered in

the few short-range daylight raids conducted by unescorted

medium bombers countered by German fighters.10

Both sides showed that grand-strategic bombing was possible if conducted at night, especially by aircraft operating independently. But far more significant was the response of those

9

AIRPOWER IN WORLD WAR I, 1914–1918
attacked to the psychological threat of feeling naked at home;

that would create a legacy that would seriously divert attention

from the real lessons of the 1918 tactical use of airpower.

***

The creation and employment of airpower in the Great War

was a matter of management—a form of command, control,

and communications.

It required the assessing of needs, the drafting of specifications, planning, and approval, as well as the accumulation of

resources and their coordination and direction to obtain the

desired end result. In other words, ends had to be matched to

means and vice versa, the whole being based upon a reasonable forecast of likely action by both Allies and opponents for

the next year, taking into account seasonal patterns, production possibilities, and other variables.

10

THE WAR IN THE AIR 1914–1994

Table 1

Total Aircraft and Engine Production

Ratio of Prototypes to Service Types

France 264:38

Great Britain 309:73

Germany 610:73

Airframes Produced

France 52,000

Great Britain 43,000

Germany 48,000

Engines Produced 

France 88,000

Great Britain 41,000

(+16,000 French)

Germany 43,486

Source: John H. Morrow, The Great War in the Air (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993),

368–71.
What made this especially difficult in the aviation world was

the nascent stage of technology in 1914, the fact that engines

were generally behind airframes, the lack of training methods

and knowledge of aerodynamics, demands upon manpower

and resources, as well as the variable acceptance at the front

of aviation itself.

The numbers employed in the industry rose so that by the

war’s end the French employed 183,000; the British 202,000

of whom 67,100 were women and boys (about 40 percent); and

11

AIRPOWER IN WORLD WAR I, 1914–1918

Table 2

Aircraft Production and Consumption

Country Produced Wasted Percentage

Austria-Hungary 5,431

Germany 48,537 27,637 6.9

USA 15,000

Italy 20,000

Great Britain 58,144 35,973 61.8

France 67,987 52,640 77.4

Source: Enzo Angelucci, The Rand McNally Encyclopedia of Military Aircraft (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1981),

29 (Plate 7). See also figures in John H. Morrow, The Great War in the Air (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian

Institution Press, 1993).

Table 3

Losses of Manpower

Country Air Force Size Air Force Size Casualties

1914 1918

Germany 80,000 16,054

France 3,500 90,000 7,259

Great Britain 2,073 291,175 16,623

Italy 94,337

Source: John H. Morrow, The Great War in the Air (Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993),

364–67.
the Germans between 110,000 and 140,000. In contrast, at

the time of the Armistice, the French air services had 90,000

officers and men and 11,000 aircraft; the British 291,200 and

22,000; the Germans 80,000 and 9,000; and the Italians

100,000 officers and men. Although these figures were minuscule as compared to the size of the armies, they could make

for an interesting comparison in terms of the number of persons behind the men in an air force aircraft, if really reliable

figures were available. Roughly it can be said that the French

had 8.2 men per aircraft, the Germans 8.9, and the British

13.3 in November 1918.11

As the voracious demands from the front for a steady flow

of manpower continued, aircraft firms and their protecting

bureaucracies had an increasingly difficult time preserving

the workforce. And women had always had a place in the

manufacture of the wood and fabric aircraft, usually as

seamstresses, but also in other work. By the end of the war,

their participation had to be increased at both the airframe

and the engine manufacturers. By the Armistice, dilution

with women and boys in Britain had reached 50 percent of

the workforce.

In every country from time to time there were labor disputes

brought on in part by the need to raise wages to match inflation, yet opposed by the bureaucracies who did not wish to see

prices rise or who were not yet into cost accounting.

Craftsmen also objected to piecework rates versus wages. But

labor unrest also came to the fore as a skilled craftsman’s

reaction to the simplification of tasks, which enabled unskilled

labor to do the job. The development and use of manufacturing jigs enabled this simplification.

These labor disputes pitted workers against management in

an industry that had a close, paternalistic ambience and a

management opposed to the bureaucracy. In turn the officials

responsible for aviation found themselves confronting both the

military and naval ministries and those controlling manpower

and materials, as well as having to contend with demands

from the war front, from officers unfamiliar with manufacturing and too high in rank to have flown. Most actual flight experience was confined to those under 25 years of age and rarely,

12

THE WAR IN THE AIR 1914–1994
as the war progressed, from the select military academies or

the aristocratic class.

Weather was also a significant factor in the success of the

war; it affected not only flying operations and training but also

manufacturing. Although we have no studies of the impact of

weather upon operations, which would enable us to make precise statements about the frequency of fog, rain, snow, and

high winds, we do know that in the principal area of operations, rainfall varied annually from 26 inches at Paris to 44

inches at Valenciennes on the Belgian border.12 And in the

British Ministry of Munitions, shell consumption or wastage

was calculated on summer and winter rates.13 Although there

seems little such correlation in aircraft manufacturing, due to

the high wastage rates (66 percent per month of all fighters

produced in Britain—meaning that a squadron of 18 consumed 130 airframes every 12 months14), weather did affect

production in Austria during the very cold winter of 1917–18

when the Germans refused to ship adequate coal to Vienna

and the factories were freezing. This affected not only personnel but also gluing of wood and doping of fabrics.

Management of the war was influenced also by the constant

tension between the needs for quantity and quality. This

directly affected the seesaw battle over the front for air superiority. The standardized aircraft of 1912 with which the powers entered the war were rapidly being overtaken in 1915 by

newer models, which could carry armament and were flown by

pilots with hours and skills accumulated in an environment

that was not yet lethal, except for ground fire and the usual

accidents. Increasingly, by 1916 a renewed struggle for air

superiority was created with a return to standardization, the

greater availability of aircraft and crews, and the offensivedefensive demands for formation flying made possible by units

being composed of the same type of aircraft (especially important with rotary-engine machines whose power was either on

or off). But the benefits of all this were vitiated by the British.

At least partly to blame was the lack of thorough testing of new

aircraft types that were being rushed into service; and more

importantly, blame could be attributed to the inadequacy of

training. Pilots arriving at RFC squadrons had only 15 hours

13

AIRPOWER IN WORLD WAR I, 1914–1918
all told. Only those who survived to have some 400 hours had

a chance of becoming aces. Unnecessary casualties were

caused by the pilots’ inability to command and control their

aircraft, let alone fire the guns or drop the bombs effectively,

and by lack of parachutes.

In all the air services there was the problem of feedback

from the very junior officers and NCOs at the front to the procurement agencies, and from them on to the manufacturers.

Although the normal flow was through reports, Rolls-Royce

sent field representatives out, as they did for their luxury cars,

to find out how their engines performed.15 Various French and

German aces went back occasionally to the factories to talk

about their needs, and in 1918, the Germans even insisted

that Gen Ernst von Hoeppner, the air director, hold a discussion and competition for a new fighter. Both Anthony Fokker

and Geoffrey de Havilland were successful because they test

flew their own designs.

In all of this the auto industry played an important part either

directly as manufacturers or indirectly because so many of those

engaged in the aero-engine industry had started in automobile

factories or as mechanics and even drivers of racing cars.16

The military and naval management of aviation came from a

variety of backgrounds and was inhibited by the experience,

skepticism, and caution of the high commanders, and rightly

so. If officers were only seconded to the air arm for a limited

period before the war, it was for their own career protection,

especially in regimental armies. Navies having just undergone

the development of submarines were less skeptical and more

technologically minded. Though in 1909 a spate of articles

appeared on the new air arm and its potential, including one

by the Italian Giulio Douhet, the military and naval services

entered the First World War with very little idea of how aircraft

could be used except as scouts. In part this was because they

had little experience with reliable equipment and in part

because they had not realized how the air gave a different perspective upon surface matters. Kite balloon observers had

the advantage of pilots. Trying to jot notes on a knee pad

while flying the machine and perhaps also uncertain as to its

exact position made reports unreliable. It was not until the

14

THE WAR IN THE AIR 1914–1994
development of aerial cameras in 1915 that reconnaissance

and observation became more dependable.17 In fact, a specialization developed between photographic sorties and artillery

observation. In part this was necessary as the training

required was different and the hazards somewhat more varied.

Training of observers was something that the French and

Germans took seriously, because reconnaissance was important, making their backseaters professional observers, cameramen, and well-trained gunners.

Once it was realized that aerial observation was much more

dangerous than most other forms of aerial activity because

such flights tended to be followed by artillery bombardments

(or if an attack was pending, because of the vitiation of the element of surprise), fighters were developed to deny that information. And in spite of their limited resources, the Germans

at first created larger and larger units until they reached the

“circus” of some 60 aircraft. Nevertheless, the German concern was less for absolute air superiority and fighting for the

sake of fighting, or a battle of attrition, than it was for the

destruction of weaker hostile units. (Thus Richthofen’s picking

upon stragglers and those obviously new to combat was a

sound fighting tactic.) Indeed, the Anglo-German air battles,

as well as those Franco-German affairs, also reflected the

philosophies of the armies. The British attacked in a war of

attrition, which, as on the ground, cost them more casualties

than their opponents, especially as they refused to allow the

use of parachutes and, with the prevailing wind and German

doctrine, combats were often over the German lines. After

Verdun, the French realized they could not afford that type of

warfare and took a more conservative approach. The British

did not learn from the battles above the Somme, also in 1916,

and continued to treat air war as a hunting game with the

emphasis upon the white feather award for lack of determination. The result was a fatalism and combat fatigue that gave

an airman a life expectancy of three weeks.18 The Royal Navy

was more understanding than the RFC, of necessity. Ships

spent much time in port and even flying-boat crews were

rested because of bad weather and unavailability of boats suffering from being anchored out.

15

AIRPOWER IN WORLD WAR I, 1914–1918
The demand for improvements went in different directions

in the various countries and services. In Russia, Sikorsky’s

brilliance was countered by a lack of suitable targets for his

Giants and the supreme headquarters’ lack of faith. But what

was wanted were tactical and strategic aircraft that could

operate along and immediately behind the front. All aircraft

were scarce imported machines or license-built in Russia.

Austria-Hungary had much the same problems, though it

could have used grand-strategic bombers against Italian

industry in Milan, Turin, and Genoa. Yet design development

was hindered by German control of engines and other

resources. In Germany itself, improvements in aerodynamics

were forced by the failure to develop higher horsepower

engines. The result was that the Germans got outstanding

results, as in the Fokker D-VII of 1918, using basically a 1914

engine. Strained resources and the desire to standardize for

efficiency led to the production of only a limited number of

types and a reluctance to sponsor Junkers’ all-metal strafing

plane, though Gothas and Zeppelins were encouraged for

grand-strategic bombing of the British Isles. In Britain, the

effort to get quality resulted in too many types being kept in

production, but at the same time, in a quest for higher horsepower engines. Thus, while as many as 50-odd types were in

production and many manufacturers involved, engine power

improved from 120 to 450 horsepower in four years. However,

production was circumscribed by disputes between the

bureaucrats and manufacturers, and the British were only

saved by the importation of several thousand rotary and inline engines from France. On the whole, the French managed

not only to keep many types in production but ultimately to

create the world’s largest air force of the day, while at the same

time supplying the British, and after mid-1917 the Americans,

with aeronautical materiel. Thus, French, as well as German,

doctrine gradually came to reflect both the front and rear realities of the war. Given French politics, it was as nearly rational

a system as could be managed.

All opponents developed some kind of antiaircraft defense,

whether it was rifle fire or ack-ack or flak. The Germans

appear to have paid the most attention to flak as part of their

16

THE WAR IN THE AIR 1914–1994
defensive strategy, while the British failed to learn from their

experience in spite of a 1919 postwar survey, reissued in 1933

as SD8O.

One area of doctrine that had great postwar influence was

in grand strategy, where the argument was for an independent

bombing force not under the control of Generalissimo

Ferdinand Foch so that deliberate attacks on German industry could be undertaken. The force created under Hugh

Trenchard in France did not interpret its mandate that way

and spent the majority of its time bombing strategic targets in

back of the front lines. The real grand-strategic force being

developed to retaliate on Berlin was not yet equipped for operations from the United Kingdom when the war stopped.19

***

For the air services to be efficient and do their perceived

work, they needed both the right equipment and properly

trained air and ground crews. Unfortunately for us, very little

has been written on the training of other than pilots and

almost nothing on the education of fitters, riggers, armorers,

and the like.

We do know that the naval services, with their higher interest in technology, their greater resources, and their concern

with flying over the sea, paid more attention to these matters

than did the armies. The fact that senior officers in their

youth had to face the rigors of the sea seems to have contributed to this. Conversely, senior air service officers were

almost exclusively transfers from infantry, artillery, engineers, or the transport corps. Important as well to an understanding of how the technical side of the air services developed is a knowledge of the training, experience, and the

duties of senior NCOs, the rocks upon which the services

were established.

As noted, observers were not navigators over land. In fact, it

was not until 1942 that the RAF abolished the observer and

replaced him with a trained navigator. The development of

maps and techniques suitable for aerial work had to be evolved.

Bombsights did not exist at the beginning of the war and were

only developed to a crude level by 1918. Wireless had to be

17

AIRPOWER IN WORLD WAR I, 1914–1918
modified and lightened for use in the air, and radio-telephony

(R/T) was only just becoming available for artillery spotting at

the very end of the war. For a long time, gunnery training for

both observers and gunners on the one hand and pilots on the

other was limited to a few hours, often skeet or target shooting

with virtually no air-to-air practice. And not only the development of cameras had to take place to provide accurate maps

and intelligence of enemy activities but also the methods and

staff to convert photographic evidence into useful information

and assessments. Even when that was done, there had to be a

proper channel to be certain that the commanders understood

its significance. Ultimately, just as all new organizations tend

to follow the extant manuals, and just as commanders had

artillery and engineer advisers, so they acquired air commandants as well. But the effectiveness of these new commandants

depended both upon their own knowledge and prestige and

upon the efficiency of the infrastructure that supplied them

with the sinews of power—the men and materiels. And into that

category fell the maintenance and salvage and repair, or

rebuilding, of aircraft and auxiliary equipment, for which large

depots were set up behind the lines, especially in France.

Probably 40 percent of the aircraft and equipment delivered to

squadrons were rebuilds. This became of extra importance in

1918, when tactical aviation came into its own, with consequent high casualties and damage.

***

The impact of the theorists on the fighting from 1914 to 1918

was not nearly as great as that which they and their heirs

exerted after 1919. While F. W. Lanchester, in his articles and

in his 1916 book, Aircraft in Warfare: The Dawn of the Fourth

Arm, had some impact upon the British leaders, on the whole

his vision and knowledge as a practicing engineer outran the

current conflict. Douhet’s Command of the Air began to circulate

in 1921, but his work was a polemic written from a very Italian

viewpoint. The influential practitioners included Trenchard of

the RFC, because of his close association with British commander in chief Earl Haig and because of his extraordinary

tenure as chief of the air staff of the RAF—briefly in 1918 and

18

THE WAR IN THE AIR 1914–1994
then from 1919 to 1929. Trenchard’s disciple was Billy Mitchell,

or so he said, because both switched from being supporters of

strategic and tactical aviation to proponents of grand-strategic

bombing as the solution to the slaughters of the Great War. Like

archaeologists, the theorists and their disciples interpolated

from a very few incidents and produced a grandiose theory of

airpower which remained unmatched by the men and materiel

available. The ends far out ran the means.

Whether grand-strategic bombing would have become a

success in 1919 remained an unanswered question. But it

would have been interesting to history to know how the

Germans—the pioneers in grand-strategic bombing—would

have reacted if Berlin had been bombed, both then and in

terms of postwar aviation development.

What is curious is the duration of the glamorous myth of the

Red Baron and his cohorts, the aces of the Great War. They

still fly with us in air shows, in advertising, and in “Snoopy

versus the Red Baron.” In fact, theirs was a brief, hazardous

life at the front and frenetic behind it.

***

In conclusion, what can be said of the heritage and lessons

of the first great air war?

The warring nations fought the air war as their Mahanian

assets indicated that they would. But their natural and manpower resources combined with their technical and professional expertise and the nature of their governments determined their success.

The first difficulty was matching men and weapons and doctrine, always a prime problem in innovation. Close to that was

the need to realize that the new weapon was not yet a warwinner, that it had severe limitations, and that air superiority,

except in very limited terms, was not possible.

Second, the high command, in a time of revolutionary technological change, faced a daunting challenge. To exercise this

managerial responsibility required not so much the ability to

use power as the sense to understand the new system, to see

its implications for the future, and to work with younger and

19

AIRPOWER IN WORLD WAR I, 1914–1918
more skilled officers and bureaucrats—men and clerks as well

as women—to apply it.

Third, it was important to comprehend that war requires

the simplification of tasks, rapid realistic training, and the

application of the principles of war at all levels or at both the

front and in the infrastructure. Gen Sir Archibald Wavell

put it well in Generals and Generalship (1941) when he

noted that a commander needs knowledge, the ability to

combine arms, and an understanding of humanity.

Moreover, Wavell added that the key to success is the

thoughtful study of the past, an open mind, and the ability

to understand others’ difficulties.

Though casualties in the air arms were minute compared to

those of the surface forces, especially the infantry, they were

from the aristocratic and middle-class governing elite, thus

making them part of the postwar “lost generation.” Moreover,

casualties in the air arms were reduced proportionately in the

last two years to 18 months of the war as better aircraft and

better training mitigated the earlier risks of being airborne, or

almost so. Flying, in other words, ceased to be so hazardous,

and thus combat also was reduced somewhat in risk.

Formation flying and better discipline as well as more suitable

training were also contributory.

The 1914–18 war saw not only the refinement of engines

and airframes but also that of the aeronautical organization.

In addition, enough examples were made available that tactical, strategic, and grand-strategic activities could be tried

in combat. Thus, the Great War really was the prototype of

future wars. The much vaunted days of the aces was really

an aberration, just as the days of champions had been in

medieval and other times, caused by the birthing process in

which there was a lack of agreed or dictated doctrine, organization, command experience, and numbers at both the front

and the rear.

The very officers who fought the air war as squadron leaders would be the air officers commanding (AOC) of the Second

World War. Yet few drew lessons from the First World War, in

spite of the slow, somewhat biased, and neglectful help of the

official historians. Airmen were so arrogant, or unread, that

20

THE WAR IN THE AIR 1914–1994
after the war some insisted that history provided no precedents for their service. The 1918 tactical battles were not to

their liking, and thus the airmen eliminated them from their

memory. Others were not allowed to be so foolish and as a

result developed blitzkrieg and other operations in which tactical and strategic air forces supported the surface arms.

The irony of the war at sea was that after the Armistice the

Royal Navy lost the battle to the Royal Air Force and sent its

experienced naval aviators to teach the Japanese carrier warfare.

It is all very well to talk about the flexibility of airpower, but

the technical and political realities, amongst others, have to be

kept in mind in terms of the objective, concentration, economy

of force, and other principles of war.

Whether fighting a war of attrition over the front or bombing

the infrastructure, the objective must be clear—force concentrated to achieve victory, and at the same time used economically in terms of manpower, materiel, and money.

Airpower in World War I was not unlimited in strength or

activities, and it was governed by precedent whether airmen

saw this or not.

Studying the 1914–18 war again through glasses tinted with

both Mahanian principles and those of war can yet yield useful lessons.20

Discussion

Air Marshal Ray Funnell: Thank you very much Professor

Higham. As you pointed out, there is still much to be learnt

from conflict which occurred 80 years ago. Speaking of airpower theorists and theories, you mentioned F. W. Lanchester

and Giulio Douhet, but when you think of the way in which,

late in the war, an Independent Air Force was formed with a

specific mission which in today’s terms would be regarded as

strategic, you would think that there must have been a body

of thought behind that extremely significant development.

What was the thinking behind the Independent Air Force?

Professor Higham: There is some doctrinal material in the

archives and a couple of books have been written on the formation of the Independent Air Force. I think part of the answer

21

AIRPOWER IN WORLD WAR I, 1914–1918
is that the independent force was created for political reasons.

But I think what you also have to take into account is that this

was a case where personalities came into play. Trenchard

commanded that force, and he saw it basically as a strategic

force in the army sense of operating just beyond the front line,

but not really a grand-strategic bombing force. Apart from

that, I’m not sure if the doctrine is really very clear. There was

some idea of attacking enemy towns, but there was French

resistance to that because of the fear of retaliation. I think the

picture is not very clear at this point.

Professor Richard Overy: I was struck by the contrast you drew

between the British, French, and German experiences in the

use of fighter aircraft on the front line. It seems to me that

much of that difference can be explained by the different relationships with the respective armies, and the fact that France

and Germany had a large army tradition whereas Britain was

developing a large army for the first time. Would you like to

add some comments to that view?

Professor Higham: I think you’ve got a reasonable case there.

The British organization grew almost in an amateur sense as

it was expanded rapidly, and inexperienced people suddenly

found themselves commanding very large forces. But I think

the problem turns more on the fact that the British had done

relatively little thinking about fighting a war on the continent.

Before the First World War, the British army was very largely

for the defense of the empire. You had a few regiments in

England, but England relied on the navy. The French and the

Germans expected to fight each other. The Germans particularly expected to also have to fight the Russians and so they

were very interested in conserving their forces. I think that if

you look at German air doctrine, it’s very like the German

army approach to pillboxes: they built them very strong facing

the enemy, but with no back, so that if they were captured

they were useless to the enemy.

I think that the Royal Flying Corps—more so than the Royal

Naval Air Service—had to grow very rapidly under people who

22

THE WAR IN THE AIR 1914–1994
had very little aviation experience. And a number of those people like Trenchard had been in the colonial forces. He’d been

in West Africa originally and then applied to go to the

Macedonian constabulary, and then suddenly had to apply his

thinking to the war in the air. I think you also can’t leave out

the impact of very high casualty rates. About 50 percent of

pilots were lost, so there were very few experienced people who

rose to higher ranks. And even those who did, like Keith Park

for instance, who was a squadron commander at the age of 26,

had very little experience to fall back on. Things were changing all the time.

Dr. Alan Stephens: Another question on Trenchard. You mentioned that British air forces over the western front adopted a

highly offensive strategy which was in contrast to the

Germans’. It’s sometimes been said that Trenchard’s

approach in the air was simply a reflection of Haig’s on the

ground, a relentless offensive, and that it was not necessarily

derived from an appreciation of the particular demands of air

warfare. Could you comment please?

Professor Higham: I think that is true. It was perhaps the

approach of a colonial army, which tended to take the view

that you went on the offensive all the time regardless of the

odds. If you look at colonial wars, they got away with it so

often. It’s only when they got involved in the Boer War that it

became a real problem. I think Trenchard had the idea that

you must fight all the time, just as he wouldn’t allow parachutes because people might take a white feather and jump

over the side. He and Dowding had a row over this in 1918, I

believe, when Dowding insisted that people needed more training, which would pay benefits in the long run, but Trenchard

couldn’t see this. That’s why I think we need to go back and

look at squadron records and see how much these people flew.

Have any of you seen the old Ronald Colman and Errol Flynn

movie Wings, which was made around about 1928? You think

it’s appalling, but in fact that’s the way it was. On those fighter

squadrons, very few people survived the war.

23

AIRPOWER IN WORLD WAR I, 1914–1918
Dr. Iain Spence: You talked about the influence of individuals.

There were also institutional influences, such as creating an

air force from scratch with a predominance of cavalry officers

as opposed to infantry officers. That may have made a difference to the way in which air forces developed. Also, once they

had their structures in place, those structures must have

influenced the way the air war was fought.

Professor Higham: You have to remember that in the early days

officers had to pay for their initial flying training, which meant

that only the wealthy became pilots, and that obviously

affected the early nature and quality of aviation. But as the

war continued more people were recruited directly into the air

services, which broadened its base. I’m sure both approaches

affected the structure. But the structure of the air forces, I

think, evolved in the same way as for any other new organization. People reached into their cupboards and pulled out the

manual of organization they were familiar with, that they’d

been using in the army or the navy. So you’re right, familiar

institutional structures were used at first. But they had

become terribly diluted by experience by 1918.

Wing Comdr John Benjamin: I wonder if you’d share with us

some of the early historical developments of single-role versus

multirole aircraft and any of the lessons that might have

emerged and any compromises that were made?

Professor Higham: Most of the aircraft that started out in the

First World War really were single purpose. They started with

reconnaissance and then they had to be armed, and so they

gradually split into observation aircraft and fighter aircraft. Up

until 1918, they really went on in those separate roles. Then in

1918 there were two developments: the two seaters were converted also into day bombers, and aircraft were converted for

ground strafing. But even so I think aircraft remained fairly specialized because strafing aircraft like the Junkers, which was all

metal and looked like a small gardening shed flying along, were

not capable of mixing it with fighters at high altitude. So I think

the specialization went on. The general purpose aircraft came in

24

THE WAR IN THE AIR 1914–1994
much more strongly during the financial constriction of the

1920s and 1930s when fewer aircraft were being built and so

were required to do many things. When you look at that experience, I think one has to be rather skeptical about general purpose aircraft.

Mr. Peter Skinner: Unless I misinterpreted your remark, you

seemed to have said that we in Britain didn’t learn a great deal

from the First World War. Would you agree that, in fact, it

helped us very greatly in the preparation for the Second World

War, bearing in mind that it was only 15 years before we

started the rearmament program and set up the command

structure which led to the success of the Royal Air Force during World War II?

Professor Higham: I think that’s only partly true. In 1934 the

Royal Air Force had really perfected 1917. It had forgotten

1918. It had biplane fighters that were not much better; they

were just a little bit faster than those from the First World War.

The heavy bombers weighed about 14,000 pounds with the

same design basically as those of 1918. It’s not even accurate,

I think, to say that the command structure had improved. In

1936 the Air Defence of Great Britain—which provided a single command structure for the defense of the country—was

broken up into Bomber Command, Fighter Command, Coastal

Command, and Training Command, with Maintenance

Command being added in 1938. With the result that Dowding

fought the Battle of Britain able to control only Fighter

Command. There was discussion in 1936 of creating an air

officer commanding-in-chief Royal Air Force to be the field

commander because the chief of the air staff was only adviser

to the secretary, but it didn’t wash. It disappeared, partly I’m

told, because the only candidate was Dowding, and Stuffy

knew too much to be liked by a number of the air force. So I

think my argument holds.

I’ve just looked at the air exercises from 1933 and 1934, for

instance, and they were set up exactly like the First World War.

A line was drawn on the map with the enemies on one side and

25

AIRPOWER IN WORLD WAR I, 1914–1918
the RAF on the other. A force was to be taken to France, which

for the exercise was named Gaul. All the attitudes were strictly

from the First World War. There’s a lot of continuity of the idea

that World War II was simply going to repeat World War I. It

was a tremendous shock when suddenly France fell, all of

Europe fell, and commanders had to think totally differently.

Dr. Dan Keenan: One of the reasons the Royal Flying Corps

had a forward air strategy to fight on the German side of the

lines was that the British realized quite early the very great

importance of photo-reconnaissance and artillery spotting.

And of course those lessons were totally ignored after the First

World War. Could you make some comment about the importance of this with regard to the land battle?

Professor Higham: Photo-reconnaissance, aerial reconnaissance, was very important. That was one of the big British

contributions. But if they realized photo-reconnaissance was

so important, then you have to ask the question, why didn’t

the British develop fighter aircraft with the ability to get to

24,000 feet to deal with the German reconnaissance aircraft

which were at that height? After the First World War the RAF

abandoned the idea of trying to fly at those altitudes. If you

read the medical histories, one of the reasons why Royal Air

Force bomber crews carried two oxygen masks was because

they were wearing one and thawing the other in their armpit

because somebody decreed in 1920 that nobody would ever

fight above 20,000 feet. So medical research stopped on that.

Coming back to your reconnaissance point. The soldiers in the

line I think realized the importance of reconnaissance aircraft

because they knew it was they who were going to get bombed;

they who were going to get shelled. The reconnaissance aircraft directed the artillery. The other reason why the RAF

tended to fly over the German side of the lines was simply to

do with wind. The wind tended to drift aircraft over the

German side of the lines. The Germans had the advantage

that not only did they fight over their own side of the lines, but

they had parachutes.

26

THE WAR IN THE AIR 1914–1994
Notes

1. As an example, see Robin Higham, The British Rigid Airship,

1908–1931: A Study in Weapons Policy (London: G. T. Foulis, 1961).

2. A. T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660–1783

(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1890); (reprint, New York: Sycamore Press,

1957); and (reprint, New York: Dover Books, 1993).

3. The Cultural Atlas of Russia (New York: Time/Life Books, 1992).

4. On early Italian air warfare, see Revista Aeronautica: I Priori Ciquant’

anni dell Aviazione Italiana, Anno XXXC, 3 Marzo 1959.

5. William Carr, A History of Germany, 1815–1945 (New York: St.

Martin’s Press, 1969).

6. A. J. P. Taylor, The Oxford History of England, vol. 15, English History,

1914–1945 (London: Oxford University Press, 1965).

7. Theodore Zeldin, France 1848–1945, 2 vols. (London: Oxford

University Press, 1973).

8. F. M. Cutlack, The Australian Flying Corps in the Western and Eastern

Theatres of War, 1914–1918 (Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1923), 8;

(republished, St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1984); see also Col

A. G. Butler, The Australian Army Medical Services in the War of 1914–1918,

3 vols. (Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1943), 405–24.

9. D. H. Robinson, The Zeppelin in Combat: A History of the German Naval

Airship Division, 1912–1918 (London: G. T. Foulis, 1962); Peter Grosz et al.,

The German Giants: The Story of the R-Planes, 1914–1919 (London: Putnam,

1969); and Raymond A. Fredette, The Sky on Fire: The First Battle of Britain,

1917–1918 and the Birth of the Royal Air Force (New York: Harcourt Brace

Jovanovich, 1976); (reprint, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution

Press, 1991).

10. Malcolm Cooper, The Birth of Independent Air Power: British Air Policy

in the First World War (London: Allen and Unwin, 1986); Barry D. Powers,

Strategy Without Slide Rule, British Air Strategy, 1914–1939 (London: Croom

Helm, 1976); and Alan Morris, First of the Many: The Story of Independent

Force, RAF (London: Jarrolds, 1968).

11. Manpower and war production figures are not easy to obtain. Even

John H. Morrow in The Great War in the Air: Military Aviation from 1909 to

1921 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), could not

produce consistently comparable figures. Christienne, Groehler, and others

all have slightly different ones. Charles Christienne et al., Histoire de l

’Aviation Militaire Francaise (Paris: Charles Lavauzelle, 1980); and Olaf

Grohler, Geschichte des Luftkriegs 1910 bis 1980 (Berlin: Militaruerlag der

DDR, 1981). For dilution in the British airframe and aero engine industry,

see The History of the Ministry of Munitions, vol. 12, pt. 1 (London: Her

Majesty’s Stationery Office [HMSO]), 84.

12. World Atlas of Agriculture, vol. 1 (Novara, Italy: Instituto Geografies de

Agostini, 1969), 116–17.

13. History of the Ministry of Munitions, vol. 10, chap. 6, 73.

27

AIRPOWER IN WORLD WAR I, 1914–1918
14. History of the Ministry of Munitions, vol. 12, pt. 1, 70; and Enzio

Angelucci and Paolo Matricardi, The Rand McNally Encyclopedia of Military

Aircraft, 1914 to the Present (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1991), 29. Morrow suggests that the Germans wasted or lost 56.9 percent of all aircraft produced,

the British 61.8, and the French 77.4 percent.

15. Herschel Smith, A History of Aircraft Piston Engines, 3d ed.

(Manhattan, Kans.: Sunflower Press, 1986), 31.

16. For instance, see Ian Lloyd, Rolls-Royce: The Growth of a Firm, 3 vols.

(London: Macmillan, 1978).

17. For a brief history, see Roy M. Stanley II, World War II Photo

Intelligence (New York: Scribners, 1981); and for a more detailed view, Peter

Mead, The Eye in the Air: A History of Air Observation and Reconnaissance

for the Army, 1785–1945 (London: HMSO, 1983).

18. Denis Winter, The First of the Few: Fighter Pilots of the First World War

(Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1983), is an excellent portrait and

should be read in conjunction with his view of the infantry in Death’s Men:

Soldiers of the Great War (London: Penguin Books, 1978).

19. On the development of grand strategic ideas, see note 10 above as

well as Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought From Machiavelli to

Hitler, ed. E. M. Earle (1941) and Makers of Modern Strategy: Military

Thought From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, ed. by Peter Paret (1986), both

(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press); and Robin Higham, The

Military Intellectuals in Britain, 1918–1939 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers

University Press, 1966). Theory must be seen against practice and here

Allen R. Millett and Williamson Murray, eds., Military Effectiveness, vol. 1,

The First World War (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1988), which takes a countryby-country approach, is useful.

20. Very largely neglected, for instance, are studies of the weather, of

actual operations and maintenance through squadron and unit operations

record books, and aviation medicine within the context of medical knowledge then and now.

28

THE WAR IN THE AIR 1914–1994
The True Believers:

Airpower between the Wars

Alan Stephens

It is the opinion of those most competent to judge that the

aeroplane, as a weapon of attack, cannot be too highly estimated.

—Gen Hugh Trenchard, 1916

To conquer command of the air means victory; to be beaten

in the air means defeat and acceptance of whatever terms

the enemy may be pleased to impose.

—Gen Giulio Douhet, 1921

Air power, both from a military and economic standpoint, will

not only dominate the land but the sea as well.

—Gen William Mitchell, 1925

Those are not the words of uncertain men. They are, rather,

the words of true believers. During the years between the First

and Second World Wars it was the idea of airpower, as much

as any demonstrated capability, which played a dominant role

in international affairs and predisposed statesmen and airmen

in the United Kingdom and the United States in particular

towards strategic bombing as a potentially war-winning force.

More than that, the belief in a rapid “knockout blow” from the

air appeared to offer an alternative to the squalid slaughter in

the trenches, a perception which, in the peculiar logic of warfare at least, was comparatively humane.

The Classical Theorists

World War I had glamorized air war, a public perception

which was enhanced by the exploits of the civilian aviation pioneers in the following years. The period from 1918 to 1939 was

one of extraordinary achievement for aviation. Long-distance

air travel, which had scarcely existed at the end of the Great

29
the conventional Clausewitzian wisdom, dominant in strategic

thinking for almost one hundred years, that defense was the

stronger form of warfare and that an enemy’s army was his

center of gravity. Now, the imperative would be to take the war

directly to the heart of the enemy homeland and population.

By definition, strategic bombing theory challenged the preeminence of armies and navies. Based as it was on limited

experience, the belief of victory through airpower clearly was

going to agitate many people, not least the admirals and

generals. That was not a prospect which concerned

Trenchard, Douhet, or Mitchell (the latter two were in fact

court-martialled by their respective armies for their outspoken

views, Douhet in 1916 and Mitchell in 1925).

As chief of staff of the world’s first independent air force, Sir

Hugh Trenchard dominated the Royal Air Force (RAF) in its

formative years. Trenchard’s inability to express himself fluently has occasionally been taken as an indication of a mediocre

mind; suggestions have been made that his allegedly slender

claims to intellectual distinction rested largely on the literary

skills of his aide-de-camp, the Cambridge-educated man of

letters, Maurice Baring. Nothing could be further from the

truth. As Trenchard’s biographer has written, “In the scores of

official papers which stand out like milestones in the development of the RFC [Royal Flying Corps], the strain of prophecy . . .

is Trenchard’s, the clear measured prose Baring’s.”1

British airpower developed squarely from the base of

Trenchard’s vision and practical experience. Under his leadership the essential building blocks were put in place or consolidated: a central flying school to set and maintain standards;

research and development establishments for the technological edge; a cadet college at Cranwell to produce the future

leaders; a staff college at Andover to give those leaders the finishing touches; and an apprentice scheme to train the

mechanics. The Trenchard model has been emulated by effective air forces ever since.

Doctrinally, Trenchard was committed uncompromisingly to

the notion of the offensive. That commitment was in part related

to his determination to preserve the RAF as a separate service,

for it was offensive action, expressed through the relatively

31

THE TRUE BELIEVERS: AIRPOWER BETWEEN THE WARS
substituted for land or naval forces and do the job effectively

at far less cost in terms of casualties and cash. With the support of Winston Churchill as minister for war and air,

Trenchard applied the concept in British territories in the

Middle East and on the Northwest Frontier throughout the

1920s, using the RAF instead of the army to police vast,

remote areas. Basically, errant communities were given a

warning, sometimes by notes dropped from the air. If they

remained refractory, bombing attacks would be conducted,

usually against a high-value target like crops or herds of animals, often at prewarned times. Attacks could be sustained if

necessary, in effect “blockading” a village.7

Substitution was not always successful, particularly when

rugged terrain and/or nomadic peoples made targets difficult

to find and attack. However, when geography and demography

were favorable, the concept could be highly effective. Iraq, for

example, proved to be an ideal location for the innovative

application of airpower in 1921 (just as it did 70 years later),

when five RAF squadrons without any army forces in support

were successfully substituted for 33 imperial battalions,

reducing the annual cost of the garrison from £20,000,000 to

less than £2,000,000.8

Part of the appeal of substitution for airmen was the fact

that the concept best suited forces which could be rapidly

deployed and change roles, and which placed few friendly lives

at risk. In other words, the concept applied far more to the

employment of airpower than it did to either sea or land power.

Not surprisingly, the “substitution debate,” as it came to be

known, was perhaps the most contentious issue in British

defense policy in the late 1920s and early 1930s, a reaction

which did not deter Trenchard and his supporters as they

sought to introduce the practice as widely as possible.9

Gen Giulio Douhet’s book, The Command of the Air, was first

published in 1921, at the same time as Trenchard was trying

to turn ideas into reality in the United Kingdom, and then

Wing Comdr Richard Williams was establishing the Royal

Australian Air Force (RAAF) against the determined opposition

of admirals and generals. Presenting ideas the Italian had

been developing and publishing for over a decade, The

33

THE TRUE BELIEVERS: AIRPOWER BETWEEN THE WARS
by Douhet, incendiary and chemical weapons were used in

addition to high explosives.

A “battleplane” which combined the capabilities of bomber

and fighter aircraft and which would ensure control of the air

was proposed as the means to those ends.12 Incidentally,

Douhet’s idea of the battleplane was one of the first proposals

for a general purpose or multirole aircraft, a concept which

has been something of an article of faith for airmen ever since

and one which, like the belief in strategic bombardment, for

many years never quite met the expectations of its advocates.

Staff college libraries are full of analyses of Douhet. Two of

the better examinations, those by Edward Warner and David

MacIsaac, acknowledge the correctness of several of Douhet’s

major propositions: Command of the air is vital; the primary

targets of strategic air attack should be national institutions

and infrastructure rather than armies; and it is preferable to

attack an enemy’s air forces on the ground rather than in the

air.13 Equally, they identify Douhet’s “first and gravest error”;

namely, his gross overestimation of the damage a given tonnage of bombs could cause, both physically and psychologically. But as Bernard Brodie has noted, time has rescued

Douhet from that particular error through the development of

the nuclear bomb.14 Brodie’s observation could be extended to

include precision-guided munitions; indeed, in the wake of the

1991 Gulf War, a number of articles and papers appeared from

Western military academies with titles like “What Will Douhet

Think of Next?” and “Douhet was Right.”15

The validity of those kinds of reexaminations of Douhet may

promote discussion during later presentations in this conference. As far as this paper is concerned, the most intriguing

questions are how influential was Douhet’s work during the

interwar years, and how fair is it to categorize the general concept of strategic bombing as “Douhetism”? Those questions

will be addressed once brief comment has been made on the

third classical theorist, Gen William “Billy” Mitchell.

The suggestion has been made that if Douhet wrote for the

professional military audience, Mitchell addressed his convictions on airpower primarily to the public.16 Unlike the more

scholarly Italian, Mitchell was passionate and outspoken in

35

THE TRUE BELIEVERS: AIRPOWER BETWEEN THE WARS
There is no reason to question the statement that British air

policy in the first instance developed independently from the

ideas and experiences of men like F. W. Lanchester, Smuts,

Sykes, Groves, Liddell Hart, and Trenchard. The Command of

the Air did not appear in translation until 1923, by which time

ideas on strategic bombing in the RAF were well formulated.

However, with due respect to Slessor, Harris, and Liddell Hart,

the suggestion that Douhet had no influence at all in the following 15 years seems curious.

Throughout the 1930s, a series of articles on Douhet’s work

appeared in the preeminent publication for British airpower

scholars, the RAF Quarterly. These included a four-page summary, titled “The Air Doctrine of General Douhet,” in April

1933 and 17 pages of extracts from The Command of the Air in

April 1936.20 If Slessor and Harris (and the other officers

responsible for RAF policy) were indifferent to their own service’s professional journal, exposure to Douhet might still

have come from the book, Air Strategy, published in London in

1936 by the noted expatriate Russian military scholar Lt Gen

Nikolai Golovine.21 Golovine’s work was described in the RAF

Quarterly as “the most complete treatise on the subject yet to

be written . . . a classic on the subject . . . required by all students of air warfare.”22 Throughout Air Strategy, Golovine

assumes some familiarity on the part of the reader with

Douhet’s main theses.

As regards to Liddell Hart’s comment that Douhet had no

influence in Europe generally, plainly that was not true for

Italy.23 Nor was it for Germany. Horst Boog, a prominent historian of the Luftwaffe, has referred to Douhet’s “great influence” in the prewar German air force, a conclusion supported

by the high regard in which Gen Walther Wever, one of the

architects of German airpower, held the Italian’s theories.24

The extensive exposure Douhet was given in Britain through

the RAF Quarterly has already been noted. Even Australians

were familiar with his work. During his preparation for the

entrance exam to the RAF Staff College in 1936, the RAAF’s

Flight Lt (later Air Marshal Sir) Valston Hancock studied

Douhet, noting that the Italian’s thesis that airpower could

win wars had made him “prominent on the international

37

THE TRUE BELIEVERS: AIRPOWER BETWEEN THE WARS
Forces (USAAF) during the Second World War were involved in

the debates generated at Langley and Maxwell: men like Claire

Chennault, Carl A. Spaatz, Ira C. Eaker, Hoyt S. Vandenberg,

Curtis E. LeMay, John P. McConnell, and George C. Kenney.

An English translation of The Command of the Air was available at the Air Corps Tactical School in 1923.31 Extracts of

Douhet’s work were circulated at the school and amongst

members of Congress. In 1933 George Kenney had a summary

of Douhet’s ideas translated from French into English, and the

chief of the Air Corps, Maj Gen Benjamin Foulois, formally

endorsed Douhet’s theories.32 Gen Hap Arnold, commander of

the United States Army Air Forces during World War II, wrote

in his autobiography, “Douhet’s theory came out in 1933, and

was studied by airmen all over the world.”33 Arnold continued,

“As regards strategic bombardment, the doctrines were still

Douhet’s ideas, modified by our own thinking in regard to

pure defense.”

According to Claire Chennault—an advocate of fighters and

an instructor at the Air Corps Tactical School in the mid1930s—Douhet’s book “became the secret strategic bible of

the Air Corps.”34 Courses taught at the school envisaged

massed air attacks being driven home against an enemy’s vital

centers, while land and sea forces were ignored.35

Douhet’s impact on the United States Army Air Corps

(USAAC) should not be emphasized at the expense of

immensely significant, original American thinkers. In addition

to those already mentioned, two important contributors in the

early years were Capt Robert Olds and Lt Kenneth N. Walker.

As staff members at the tactical school, they promoted the

concept of fast, heavily armed, unescorted bombers making

war-winning knockout blows deep into enemy territory.36 Their

concept was rejected by other staff members led by

Chennault, who argued that command of the air would only be

achieved by the use of fighter aircraft, either defending vital

points or escorting bombers. Chennault described the tactical

school as a “crucible” of doctrinal debate, in which the dispute

over the relative effectiveness of fighters and bombers reached

“white-hot intensity.”37

39

THE TRUE BELIEVERS: AIRPOWER BETWEEN THE WARS
Parliament, “that there is no power on earth that can protect

him from bombing, whatever people may tell him. The bomber

will always get through.”40 Baldwin’s despairing remarks,

which envisaged the inconceivable horror of men watching

helplessly as their wives and children were slaughtered from

the air, were widely reported.

It was because of the perceived disturbing offensive potential of airpower that successive conferences on international

law and disarmament considered proposals as extreme as

completely banning aerial bombing.41 The Hague declaration of

21 July 1899 had contained only a single clause relating to air

warfare, prohibiting the release of shells and explosives from

balloons. Within a decade, annexes to the Second Hague

Convention of 1907 explicitly banned the bombing of towns,

villages, houses, churches, hospitals, and the like. Momentum

continued to gather after the First World War. The Washington

Conference of 1921–22 is often recalled only in relation to

naval disarmament. In fact its official title was the Conference

on the Limitation of Armament, and one of its subcommittees

(of which Billy Mitchell was a member) dealt with aircraft. The

conference recommended that military objectives should be

the only legitimate targets for aerial bombardment.42

A commission convened under the auspices of the League of

Nations in 1925 to control armaments was urged by the

United Kingdom to place severe limits on aerial warfare.

British officials promoted measures as extreme as abolishing

air bombardment; failing that, they recommended confining

the maximum weight of aircraft to three tons. The proposals

were never adopted, serving instead only to circumscribe the

development of heavy bombers in Britain.

The specter of the Luftwaffe intimidated Europe during the

1930s. Because of the fear of air attack, plans were made for

the mass evacuation of cities, the construction of shelters, and

the issue of gas masks. In March 1935, Sir John Simon and

Anthony Eden went to Berlin to discuss placing limits on air

armaments with Hitler, and were told instead that Germany

already claimed equality with Britain’s first-line air strength

and planned soon to match France, a revelation which caused

panic in the British cabinet.43 The RAF told the government to

41

THE TRUE BELIEVERS: AIRPOWER BETWEEN THE WARS
lightly armed fighter/bombers rather than long-range heavy

bombers, and their objectives were tactical rather than strategic. Often there was little opposition: one historian has

described airpower’s success in those three wars as “victories

won in battles that were never fought.”47 Nor were the results

an unqualified success which drove populations to abject surrender. On the contrary, there was ample evidence of hardened resolve, of an increased determination to resist, prompting claims that the concept of “terrorism from the air” had

been “tried and found wanting.”48

That was a conclusion based on observation and experience.

Notwithstanding that conclusion, the fact remained that most

public reactions to the threat of air bombardment were still

based on beliefs, and in Europe and the United States, those

beliefs were shaped more by images from London in 1917 and

Guernica in 1937 than through any rational analysis of ideas

and realities.

Precision Is a Relative Term

As the menace of Hitler’s Germany became increasingly

apparent, thoughts of placing some kind of international prohibition on air striking forces were abandoned. In the United

Kingdom in particular, politicians reversed their attitudes and

thought instead about acquiring a knockout force of their own.

But the belief that the bomber would always get through

was nothing more than that—a belief. An examination of that

proposition must focus on the experiences of the Royal Air

Force and the USAAC, the only two air arms which seriously

tried to develop the doctrine and systems of strategic air

attack before World War II.

With his powerful personality, authoritative wartime record,

and great stature as the “main creator of the Air Force,”

Trenchard dominated the airpower debate in the United

Kingdom. His prime objective was, simply, to give the RAF maximum offensive power by establishing as many bomber

squadrons as possible. Under his influence the government

began to channel large amounts of money into bombers, partly

at the expense of fighters. It was Trenchard alone who decided

that the RAF’s fighters should be short range, as they would be

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THE TRUE BELIEVERS: AIRPOWER BETWEEN THE WARS
entered production and, most significantly, design work began

on four-engine aircraft. The construction of heavy bombers

had not, however, developed sufficiently before the Wehrmacht

rolled into Poland in September 1939.

In any case, the equation had changed. During the late 1930s

fighters with dramatically improved capabilities had started to

enter service. After two decades of fabric and wire biplanes, the

emergence of low-wing, all-metal monoplanes, fitted with

retractable landing gear, propelled by powerful, reliable engines,

and armed with heavy caliber guns, was nothing less than revolutionary. The Supermarine Spitfire Mk I of 1938 flew twice as

high and three times as fast, and had four times the armament

of the Sopwith Camel F.1 of 1918. It is true that bombers were

also improving: the Vickers Wellington Mk IC of 1938 carried a

bomb load of 4,500 lbs at a speed of 230 miles per hour, compared to the 2,000-lb bomb load at 90 miles per hour of the

Handley Page O/400 from 1918. But the Spitfire was still 120

miles per hour faster than the Wellington, flew 15,000 feet

higher, and was immensely more maneuverable. The performance gap had widened dangerously in favor of the fighter.51

Improvements in fighter aircraft were complemented by the

development of the first effective long-distance control and

reporting system, as scientists on both sides of the English

Channel produced a revolutionary warning device known as

radio detection and ranging apparatus—radar. This was a system which transformed the possibilities of defense against

bombers.52

That gap in the respective capabilities of the offense and the

defense was not recognized in doctrine, as the Air Ministry

held fast to its belief that the air weapon was essentially offensive, and that the way to beat the Nazis was for the RAF simply to drop more bombs on Germany than the Luftwaffe could

drop on the United Kingdom. Following a series of development schemes and after prolonged debate, the British cabinet

finally endorsed a proposal in April 1938 under which the RAF

would reach a strength of 1,352 bombers and 608 first-line

fighters within two years. Aircraft production favored bombers

over fighters by a ratio of 2.3 to 1 between 1936 and 1939.53

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THE TRUE BELIEVERS: AIRPOWER BETWEEN THE WARS
for example, cloud or industrial haze prevailed two days out of

every three, and meteorological reports were unreliable.59

Under those conditions, average bombing accuracies

expressed as a circular error probable were more likely to be

in the order of three quarters of a mile rather than the circumference of a pickle barrel.60 Aiming problems were not confined to the Allies. In March 1939 the commander of the

Luftwaffe’s First Air Fleet, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring,

doubted whether his average crew could hit a target with any

degree of accuracy at night or in bad weather.61

Early performances in World War II justified the concerns of

both sides. A statistical investigation into Bomber Command’s

results completed in August 1941 by Mr. D. M. B. Butt of the

War Cabinet Secretariat concluded, among other things, that of

those aircraft recorded as having attacked their target, only one

in three had in fact been within five miles.62 Worse still, that

wretched statistic related only to those aircraft which claimed

to have attacked the target: if all of those which took-off were

counted, the figure was reduced by a further one-third. As Max

Hastings has concluded, “For all the technology embodied in

the bomber aircraft [by the end of the war], its load once

released was an astonishingly crude and imprecise weapon.”63

Why then, was the notion of precision bombing so enthusiastically endorsed, especially in the United States? Four contributing factors can be identified.

In the first instance, there was the pressure to substantiate

theories in the face of persistent navy and army hostility. For

example, in the early 1930s, the chief of staff of the United

States Army, Gen Douglas MacArthur, had aligned himself

with pacifists and proponents of disarmament by proposing

the abolition of military aviation in the cynical hope of releasing funds for his ground forces.64 Second, and related to the

first factor, the claim to precision countered the accusations

raised at the Hague and Washington Conventions that air

bombardment was indiscriminate and barbarous. At the least,

it implied that aerial bombing was not being directed against

civilians; that a conscious attempt was being made to hit

something else. The doctrine raised airmen’s status and eased

moral torment.

47

THE TRUE BELIEVERS: AIRPOWER BETWEEN THE WARS
counterair, strategic bombing, and close air support. While all

roles were significant, most attention was directed towards the

last three.

A doctrine for strategic bombing quickly emerged. Within a

month of the outbreak of fighting, the chief of the Nationalist

air forces, Gen Alfredo Kindelan, had issued a directive on the

employment of offensive airpower. Kindelan instructed his

commanders to select targets which were at least 30 kilometers behind the front line, and which were of strategic importance, such as bridges, airfields, railways, factories, and

munitions works. Later he specifically identified the gasoline

depots in the Republican-held cities of Valencia and Barcelona

as priority targets. Repeated attacks were called for, as was the

systematic bombardment of key railway lines.

Kindelan appreciated from the outset that his objective

would be placed at risk without control of the air. As early as

September 1936, Nationalist strike aircraft were targeting the

Republican’s air defenses through attacks on fighter aircraft,

fuel supplies, and airfields, as local air superiority was sought

for specific operations.69 General Kindelan also insisted that

whenever enemy fighters were expected, his bombers were to

have their own fighter escort, a practice which was to be at

odds with the thinking of the RAF and the USAAF in the early

years of World War II.

Other nations were learning important lessons. Luftwaffe

commanders in Spain noted that while fast bombers were able

to survive fighter attacks, slower machines, regardless of how

well armed they might be, were a dubious proposition.

Coincidentally, at the same time on the other side of the world,

Japanese airmen were learning a similar lesson. Japanese

naval air force crews on long-range strikes against China discovered with “devastating thoroughness” that unprotected

bombers were no match for enemy fighters; conversely, they

discovered that escorted bomber groups were far more likely to

reach and return from their targets.70

Returning to Spain, the claim by Gen Karl Drum that the

Luftwaffe’s experience in northern Spain in 1937 was “the

birthday of the principle of tactical employment of air forces

within the framework of ground operations” has correctly been

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THE TRUE BELIEVERS: AIRPOWER BETWEEN THE WARS
call coming from the floor of the Reichstag in 1929 from the

newly elected Nazi Party representative, World War I fighter ace

Hermann Goering. By the time Hitler formally denounced the

Versailles Treaty in 1935, Goering—now the air minister and

commander in chief—was able officially to reveal the existence

of an independent Luftwaffe of 48 operational squadrons.

Two men who played a major role in shaping the Luftwaffe

were the first chief of staff, Walther Wever, and his successor,

Albert Kesselring. Some significance is often attached to the

fact that Wever was an admirer of Douhet, the inference being

that had Wever not died in an aircraft accident in 1936,

Germany might have progressed further towards developing a

genuine heavy bomber force. Like Douhet, Wever believed that

the objective of any war was to destroy the morale of the

enemy and that the bomber was the decisive weapon of air

warfare, an outlook which made him a strong supporter of the

proposed long-range, four-engine Uralbomber.

74 Nevertheless,

it would be a mistake to categorize Wever’s thinking on air

strategy as doctrinaire. On the contrary, his outlook was

broad and, as might be expected of a former member of the

general staff, he believed that the air force’s fundamental

responsibility was to complement the other services in the

prosecution of the overall strategy.75

General Wever was killed in June 1936 when a Heinkel 70

he was piloting crashed shortly after takeoff, reportedly

because the flight control locks had not been removed. His

death was a major blow for the Luftwaffe. While his successors

were highly capable men, they perhaps lacked his commitment to the full development of airpower, being soldiers first

and airmen second. Under the pressure of competition for

insufficient resources, the Luftwaffe’s leaders gambled on initially building a tactical air force, hoping to add a strategic

heavy bomber force in the late 1930s or early 1940s. However,

Germany simply did not have the labor, capital, raw materials,

and productive capacity available when the time came, as

other arms were given priority.76

At least German airpower was unified. Japan entered the

Second World War with two separate air forces, which had

been created, developed, and maintained to meet the separate

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THE TRUE BELIEVERS: AIRPOWER BETWEEN THE WARS
of the Zero” in 1941. The dismissive attitude of some senior

Allied airmen towards the Japanese can perhaps only be

explained in terms of racism.

The ridiculously titled Workers and Peasants Air Fleet, later

renamed the Red Air Force, was established by Lenin after the

1917 revolution. Like the Luftwaffe, the Red Air Force found

its development largely determined by the demands of a dominant army. A modest strategic bombing capability was

acquired, but Soviet airpower existed primarily to support

land forces. It excelled in that role, Joseph Stalin describing,

for example, the remarkable Ilyushin Il-2 Sturmovik ground

attack aircraft as being “as essential to the Red Army as air

and bread.”81

Given the constraints of time and space, little comment can

be offered here on the two remaining major air forces of the

interwar period, those of France and Italy. In any case, like the

other armed forces of those countries, while ostensibly

impressive in 1939, neither air arm played a particularly noteworthy role during the Second World War. The French air force

possessed a large number of aircraft, but many were of dubious quality. Further, not only was it structured primarily to

provide tactical support for ground forces, but also it was

gripped by what one writer has called a combination of “parsimony, lethargy, and senility.”82 Douhet’s countrymen in the

Reggia Aeronautica had used the war against Ethiopia to test

the concept of bombing civilian populations into submission,

and had found that in those circumstances at least, it had not

worked. They enjoyed more success when offensive airpower

was applied against land forces in transit or over the battlefield, particularly when combined with a ground assault.83

The development of airpower was not confined to land-based

platforms. Following the appearance of converted aircraft carriers during World War I, warships which for several centuries

had been the centerpiece of global military power were now

exposed far more to a potential enemy’s striking forces.

Admirals found themselves having to confront the distasteful

question of whether or not a flimsy, relatively lightly armed

aircraft could find and sink a battleship. Answers varied.

Construction of purpose-built aircraft carriers began in the

53

THE TRUE BELIEVERS: AIRPOWER BETWEEN THE WARS
would be futile and which would reduce nations in days,

haunted statesmen and helped shape the course of international relations. Yet while the air weapon’s potential was clear

enough, the fact remained that its most potent expression—

strategic attack against an enemy’s vital centers—remained

unproven. It was the idea of airpower—an idea sustained primarily by public perception and the advocacy of theorists—

which was so compelling.

The relationship between theory and practice is delicate,

and commentators enjoying the benefit of hindsight should

think carefully before criticizing visionaries. That caution

notwithstanding, in this instance, the relationship was out of

balance. Twenty years after the end of World War II, the distinguished historian Noble Frankland suggested that people

have perhaps preferred to “feel rather than know” about

strategic bombing.91 Dr. Frankland’s observation could well be

extended to attitudes about airpower in general during the

period between the wars, when the doctrines which were

developed for its employment owed too little to rigorous analysis and too much to the true believers.

Discussion

Air Vice-Marshal Tony Mason: Could I first of all thank Alan

very much for that quite superb presentation and analysis? I’d

also like to thank him for the credit he gave to Sir Hugh

Trenchard, and it’s on that, if I may, I would like to add a couple of comments.

There is still a tremendous need for a new biography of

Trenchard because a lot of questions remain to be answered;

a lot of papers still require comprehensive analysis. For example, when Trenchard took over the Independent Bomber Force

within the new Royal Air Force in June of 1918, he kept meticulous personal diaries at headquarters in addition to his normal diary; he kept comprehensive squadron records of bombing sorties, of weather cancellations, and of overall

achievements. And he notified the then minister of air, Weir,

and his chief of air staff, Sykes, of those papers. Sykes suppressed them. When Sykes wrote his autobiography in 1941

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THE TRUE BELIEVERS: AIRPOWER BETWEEN THE WARS
reputation of French theorists a bit from the characterization

that Anglo-Saxons normally give them.

Dr. Stephens: Thank you. Those certainly were sophisticated

theories. But I wonder if it wasn’t the classic case of a disconnect between theory and practice. For example, when the

French air force reorganized in 1931, Marshal Petain was

appointed inspector-general of aerial defense, a position he held

for the next three years. Petain was aged well over 70, was an

advocate of defensive strategies and, I think, had no significant

firsthand flying experience. His appointment seems to me

indicative of a highly reactionary organization. Theories

notwithstanding, little money was spent on the French air force,

which at the outbreak of World War II was seriously obsolescent.

Group Capt Andrew Vallance: You said that the advocacy of the

theorists had a remarkable prominence in the interwar years.

Undoubtedly that was so, they were influential to an extent

which I doubt theorists have been before or since. The question

is, why was the ground so fertile for these theories to take root?

Linked to that, you mentioned the reluctance to accept

Douhet’s dominant influence in the theories and doctrines of

strategic bombing. In particular you mentioned that Harris and

Slessor denied all knowledge of his work. In truth, it seems to

me, that they must have known. Similarly with Mitchell, it’s

often said that there were two Mitchells; the early one who was

from the “anything that flies” school of airpower, and the later

one who was essentially a Douhetist. Here again there seems to

be a reluctance to acknowledge Douhet. Do you think this was

some form of racial prejudice or professional jealousy?

Dr. Stephens: I tried to stress in my paper the remarkable psychological power the notion of air bombardment developed

between the wars. The Gotha raids against London in June

and July 1917 created an extraordinary reaction in the UK;

there were the continual disarmament conferences focusing

world attention on the perceived horrors of bombing; and

there were highly visible events like Guernica. There was a

widespread belief that Stanley Baldwin was correct. I think

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THE TRUE BELIEVERS: AIRPOWER BETWEEN THE WARS
forcefully. In that respect I would liken him to Karl Marx, who

also presented two or three very powerful ideas to great effect.

Marx, however, then padded those ideas out with 50 or so very

large volumes of turgid nonsense. Happily for those of us who

read airpower, Douhet’s main work can be presented in one

manageable volume. It’s well-written, confident, and compelling reading. I would describe Douhet as an immensely

important visionary and polemicist.

Air Marshal David Evans: You have very eloquently told us

about the RAF’s and Trenchard’s commitment to the offensive

use of air, and one might think that commitment permeated

the whole Royal Air Force between the wars—it was a bomber

air force. Yet during those years the Royal Air Force developed

a highly efficient fighter force. Air Staff requirements for an

eight-gun fighter, radar, and a good command and control system were developed. By contrast, the raison d’etre they saw for

themselves was not developed. Where were the Air Staff

requirements for a decent bombsight or better aircraft than

the Fairey Battle?

Dr. Stephens: For much of the period between the wars the

Royal Air Force struggled along like the other services on

extremely low budgets. Further, in Britain in particular, the

series of international conferences on peace and disarmament

greatly circumscribed the development of an effective bomber

force. And finally, a lot of the thinking simply didn’t go past the

most cursory acceptance of the doctrine that the offensive was

the way to win wars. I think the Royal Air Force was extremely

lucky that it had a number of dedicated and highly perceptive

people who insisted on developing the air defense system.

Professor Robin Higham: I’d like to make a comment and then

add a question. I think one of the reasons the airpower people

had so much influence during the interwar years was that so

many of those who had fought in World War I did not want to

see that kind of war again. My father was an infantry officer in

the First World War and was in the reserves right up to 1939.

I remember in the 1930s he was afraid he would have to go

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THE TRUE BELIEVERS: AIRPOWER BETWEEN THE WARS
I should emphasize that I’m not disputing that a great deal of

original thinking was done at the tactical school, and you’ll

find more details on that in the published version of my paper,

which I simply didn’t have time to cover in the oral presentation. What I would suggest though is that the thinking they

were doing at the tactical school was strongly influenced by

Billy Mitchell, especially after 1926 when Mitchell left the Air

Service, and as Andy Vallance mentioned several minutes ago,

there seems to have been “two” Billy Mitchells. The evidence

suggests to me that the post-1926 Mitchell was strongly influenced by his meetings, discussions, and reading of Douhet.

Air Vice-Marshal Peter Squire: You’ve talked about the motivation of the theorists for propounding the independent use of

airpower and the bomber force, and we’ve also heard that

Trenchard himself changed his position on strategic bombing.

Also I was very interested to hear what the French air force

was thinking. Is not perhaps part of the motivation for advocating the bomber force so strongly a means of justifying an

independent air force as opposed to it continuing as either a

Royal Flying Corps or Royal Naval Air Service? And as a

slightly cynical approach, in this day and age, Lord Trenchard

as a 39-year-old passed-over major might well have been a

prime candidate for redundancy.

Dr. Stephens: Part of the rationale for combining the RFC and

the RNAS to become the RAF was to achieve economies by not

duplicating effort. But yes, I’m sure that the support for

strategic bombing was based in part on the fact that it alone

justified the existence of a single, equal, independent air force.

I would think, though, that there was a stronger element of

conviction and objectivity in the theorists’ beliefs.

Air Vice-Marshal Tony Mason: Excuse me for speaking twice,

but I must elaborate on one comment. I personally interviewed

John Slessor and Arthur Harris before they died, several

hours with each man, and I pushed very hard on the subject

of Douhet. Both were adamant: Slessor had heard of the work

of Douhet, but he assured me he had never read any of it, or

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THE TRUE BELIEVERS: AIRPOWER BETWEEN THE WARS
Calif.: RAND, 1989), 13–20; and Sir John Bagot Glubb, War in the Desert: An

RAF Frontier Campaign (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1960).

8. Aircraft (Australia) 7, no. 4 (October/November 1928). See also H.

Montgomery Hyde, British Air Policy Between the Wars, 1918–1939 (London:

Heinemann, 1976), 167–74.

9. According to Sir John Slessor, intense army and navy opposition did

not deter Trenchard at all. In 1929 Trenchard prepared a paper, “The Fuller

Employment of Air Power in Imperial Defence,” which according to Slessor

“fairly took the gloves off” by declaring “unequivocally the belief of the Air

Staff that real economies with at least no less efficacy could be secured by

the substitution of Air Forces for other arms over a very wide field.” See

Marshal of the RAF Sir John Slessor, The Central Blue: Recollections and

Reflections (London: Cassell, 1956), 45–75.

10. Giulio Douhet, The Command of the Air, trans. Dino Ferrari

(Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1983). For contrasting recent

assessments of Douhet, see Claudio G. Segre, “Giulio Douhet: Strategist,

Theorist, Prophet?” Journal of Strategic Studies 15, no. 3 (Frank Cass,

London, September 1992); and Phillip S. Meilinger, “Giulio Douhet and

Modern War” (Maxwell Air Force Base [AFB], Ala.: School of Advanced

Airpower Studies, 1993).

11. Douhet, 28.

12. Ibid., 117–20.

13. Edward Warner, “Douhet, Mitchell, Seversky: Theories of Air

Warfare,” in Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to

Hitler, ed. Edward Meade Earle (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,

1973), 489–91; and David MacIsaac, “Voices from the Central Blue: The Air

Power Theorists,” in Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the

Nuclear Age, ed. Peter Paret (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,

1986), 624–47.

14. Bernard Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton, N.J.:

Princeton University Press, 1971), 73.

15. See Segre; Meilinger; and Silvanus Taco Gilbert III, “What Will

Douhet Think of Next?” (unpublished thesis, Maxwell AFB, Ala.: School of

Advanced Airpower Studies, June 1992); published as What Will Douhet

Think of Next?: An Analysis of the Impact of Stealth Technology on the

Evolution of Strategic Bombing Doctrine (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University

Press, 1993).

16. Warner, 497–501. See also William Mitchell, Winged Defense: The

Development and Possibilities of Modern Air Power, Economic and Military

(New York: Dover Publications, 1988), x.

17. Quoted in Phillip S. Meilinger, “Global Air Power and Power

Projection,” RUSI’s [Royal United Service Institute] and Brassey’s Defence

Yearbook 1992 (London: Brassey’s, 1992), 195. Douhet also expressed that

view: “Future wars may yet prove to be more humane than wars in the past

in spite of all, because they may in the long run shed less blood,” 61.

18. See for example, Higham, 257–59.

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THE TRUE BELIEVERS: AIRPOWER BETWEEN THE WARS
30. The institution was originally known as the Air Service Tactical

School and was renamed the Air Corps Tactical School in 1926. See Futrell,

62–82.

31. Raymond Richard Flugel, United States Air Power Doctrine: A Study

of the Influence of William Mitchell and Giulio Douhet at the Air Corps Tactical

School, 1921–1935 (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Oklahoma, 1965),

200–201. See also Richard H. Kohn and Joseph P. Harahan (eds.) in the

Introduction to Douhet, ix; and Hurley, 75–77.

32. Futrell, 69; and Douhet, ix.

33. Henry Harley Arnold, Global Mission (Blue Ridge Summit, Pa.: Tab

Books, 1989), 131–32. Arnold presumably was referring to the Kenney

translation.

34. Claire Lee Chennault, Way of a Fighter: The Memoirs of Claire Lee

Chennault (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1949), 20.

35. Thomas H. Greer, The Development of Air Doctrine in the Army Air Arm,

1917–1941, USAF Historical Studies no. 89 (Manhattan, Kans.: Aerospace

Historian, Department of History, Kansas State University, 1955), 48.

36. Futrell, 65. See also Donald Wilson, “Origin of a Theory for Air

Strategy,” Aerospace Historian, March 1971, 9–25.

37. Chennault, 27.

38. For example, the RAF did not scientifically examine the effectiveness

of bombs until June 1938. See Malcolm Smith, British Air Strategy Between

the Wars (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 280–81. See also Donald

Cameron Watt, “Restraints on War in the Air,” in Restraints on War, ed.

Michael Howard (Oxford: Oxford University Press [OUP], 1979), 65; Robin

Higham, “The Royal Air Force at the Crossroads, 1934,” (unpublished paper,

1993), 5, especially footnote 12; and H. A. Jones, The War in the Air; Being

the Story of the Part Played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force:

Appendices (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1937), appendix 23, “Methods of

Bombing.”

39. For examples of both the British and German reactions, see

“Extracts from a Report by General Smuts on Air Organisation and the

Direction of Air Operations,” “Reports on the Attack on Cologne,” and

“Examples of Effect of Air Bombardment,” Stephens and O’Loghlin, 22–25,

145–48, 158–62.

40. Stanley Baldwin, “The Bomber Will Always Get Through,” in Emme,

The Impact of Air Power, 51–52.

41. George H. Quester, Deterrence Before Hiroshima: The Airpower

Background of Modern Strategy (New York: John Wiley, 1966), 77–89, 123;

and Watt, 57–77.

42. “Aerial Bombardment in the Law of War,” RAF Quarterly, October

1934, 462–64.

43. Webster and Frankland, 69–70. Simon was the foreign secretary,

Eden his deputy.

44. R. J. Overy, “Air Power and the Origins of Deterrence Theory Before

1939,” Journal of Strategic Studies 15, March 1992, 79.

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THE TRUE BELIEVERS: AIRPOWER BETWEEN THE WARS
66. It was as a direct consequence of the doctrine of “precision” that daylight bombing was officially adopted by the USAAC. Greer, 115.

67. Sherry, 50.

68. See R. Dan Richardson, “The Development of Airpower Concepts and

Air Combat Techniques in the Spanish Civil War,” Air Power History, Spring

1993.

69. Carl A. Spaatz, “Ethiopia, China, and the Spanish Civil War,” in

Emme, The Impact of Air Power, 363–67; and Richardson, 15.

70. Masatake Okumiya and Jiro Horikoshi, with Martin Caidin, Zero! The

Story of the Japanese Navy Air Force 1937–1945 (London: Cassell and Co.,

1957), 5–6.

71. Quoted in Richardson, 20. Richardson has noted that Soviet airmen

in Spain were also impressed by close air support, with one journal article

describing it as the “decisive factor in modern combat”; see page 21.

72. C. Rougeron, “How to Learn from the Experiences of the War in

Spain,” RAF Quarterly, October 1939, 401–16.

73. Murray, 14.

74. Maj Gen Walter Wever, “Doctrine of the German Air Force,” in Emme,

The Impact of Air Power, 181–85.

75. Murray, 17.

76. Edward L. Homze, “The Luftwaffe’s Failure to Develop a Heavy

Bomber Before World War II,” in Aerospace Historian, March 1977, 20–25;

and Powers, 177–78.

77. The Japanese Air Forces in World War II: The Organization of the

Japanese Army and Naval Air Forces, 1945 (London: Arms and Armour

Press, 1979), 1–4.

78. Okumiya and Horikoshi, 4–5.

79. Quoted in Richard P. Hallion, Strike from the Sky: The History of

Battlefield Air Attack 1911–1945 (Shrewsbury: Airlife Publishing, 1989), 116.

80. Group Capt H. C. Plenty, in Chris Coulthard-Clark, “The RAAF in the

Southwest Pacific Area 1942–1945: An Overview,” in The RAAF in the

Southwest Pacific Area 1942–1945: Proceedings of the 1993 RAAF History

Conference (Canberra: Air Power Studies Centre, 1993), 15–16.

81. Quoted in John W. R. Taylor, 572. About 35,000 Sturmoviks were

built.

82. Telford Taylor, Munich: The Price of Peace (Garden City, N.J.:

Doubleday, 1979), 490.

83. Hallion, Strike from the Sky, 83–88.

84. “Night Torpedo Attacks Made on the Fleet,” Aircraft, 1 January 1935,

22.

85. Overy, The Air War, 6–7.

86. Martin Middlebrook and Patrick Mahoney have written that Phillips’s

views on the dangers of air attack against capital ships “were considerably

more out of touch and mistaken than those of most of his contemporaries”:

see Battleship: The Loss of the Prince of Wales and Repulse (London: Allen

Lane, 1977), 56–59. See also Wing Comdr A. J. Curr, “What a Hell of a Mine,”

Defence Force Journal, November/December 1991, 31–35; and Slessor, 277.

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THE TRUE BELIEVERS: AIRPOWER BETWEEN THE WARS
Did the Bomber Always Get Through?:

The Control of Strategic Airspace,

1939–1945

John McCarthy

Perceptions

The Lord demonstrated the power to control the air when

the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah reportedly fell under a rain

of fire and brimstone. No defense was possible against this

overwhelming attack. It was the developing industrial and scientific revolution which for the first time, however, made it

seem possible that such power might be fashioned to fulfill

human purposes. From the midnineteenth century a future

war conducted from the third dimension excited speculative

fiction writers. Often a single air weapon, against which there

was little or no defense, was sufficient for an unscrupulous

will to be imposed upon an entire nation.1

Experience between 1914 and 1918 indicated though that

the air weapon might be countered. The Royal Naval Air

Service attacked Zeppelin bases. In flight such craft proved

vulnerable to the new incendiary bullet. Altogether 10.4 percent of Zeppelin sorties flown against Britain were lost. From

June 1917, day and night attacks by the Gotha and the Giant

posed a more difficult problem. By November 1918, 469 guns

backed by searchlights and primitive sound detectors together

with 376 aircraft were deployed against them. A loss rate of

6.36 percent resulted.2 In defeating attacks on Paris in 1918,

the French claimed even greater success. They argued of the

483 sorties dispatched, only 37 reached the target and of

these 35.1 percent were lost.3 The British bomber force fared

badly. Five months of operations in 1918 saw a monthly loss

rate of just under 70 percent.4

In the First World War, all bomber forces suffered such

casualties that a continuation of a sustained campaign by any

side would have been impossible. It is one of the oddities of

military aviation history that this conclusion was either

69
ignored or heavily discounted in the interwar years. Service

professionals at times sensed danger. In 1930 the American

Air Corps Tactical School admitted, “Bombardment formations

might be defeated”; yet concluded: “losses must be expected

[but] these losses will be minimised by proper defensive tactics.”5 In November 1935 Maj Gen Walther Wever, the first chief

of staff of the Luftwaffe, pointed to the error in believing that

bombers could be dispatched and return without loss. Rather,

he argued, it would be better to imagine “a difficult and costly

attack against strong defence.”6 In October 1936 a joint planning subcommittee of the British Committee of Imperial

Defence argued a properly organized air defense system would

be likely to “take a considerable toll of attacking aircraft.”7 But

it remains true that Germany had no night-fighter force until

1941 and that for most of the interwar years Britain’s air

defense system was allowed to decay.

Orthodoxy dictated only one strategic method of controlling

the air: a counterstrike bombing force. Names are familiar:

Smuts hinting this as early as 1917; Douhet utterly convinced

in 1921; William Mitchell with a doctrine which became a reason for being to the Air Corps Tactical School; Liddell Hart in

1925; and Lord Trenchard in 1928. There were others but

Stanley Baldwin was speaking received wisdom when he told

the British House of Commons on 10 November 1932: “I think

it well for the man in the street to realise there is no power on

earth that can protect him from bombing. . . . The bomber will

always get through. . . . The only defence is offence, which

means you have to kill more women and children quicker than

the enemy if you want to save yourselves.”8

Imagination conjured horrors. Italian use of airpower

against undefended Abyssinian targets, the bombing of

Guernica, and Japanese air attacks on Chinese cities seemed

to give them substance. The fate of the Sudetenland was partly

decided by the supposed power of the Luftwaffe to deliver the

feared “knockout blow.”9 Donald Davie caught the mood writing after the war, “The Anschluss, Guernica, all the names, at

which those poets thrilled or were afraid.”10 Louis MacNeice

expressed it in his moving The Sunlight on the Garden:

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The sky was good for flying

Defying the church bells

And every evil iron

Siren and what it tells:

The earth compels,

We are dying, Egypt, dying.

And so it seemed. In the midthirties Sir John Hammerton

edited the popular two-volume Aerial Wonders of Our Time. It

contained seven articles with themes such as “Death from the

Skies,” “The Doom of Cities,” and “New Horrors of Air Attack.”

In April 1939, Neville Shute’s prophetic novel, What Happened

to the Corbetts, was published. The publisher, William

Heinemann, distributed a thousand free copies to Air Raid

Precaution workers so accurate did the prediction of unhampered air attack appear. For Shute with his aviation background

there was no defense apart from a counterbomber offensive.

Clausewitz notes with a famous axiom: in war everything is

very simple but the simplest thing is very difficult. To launch

an effective bombing campaign which would result in the control of the air did seem such a reasonably simple operation.

Douhet had written, “An aerial fleet capable of dumping hundreds of bombs can be easily organised.” Baldwin mentioned,

“Any town in reach of an airfield can be bombed within the

first five minutes of war.” Was Clausewitz once again to be

proven right? Could a bombing force control the air or was the

experience of the First World War to be repeated? And what

were the consequences of losing control of the air to a strategic bombing force?

Realities

The attempt to control the air by strategic air attack could

be defeated provided early detection was made; the nature of

the threat identified; interception achieved; and an unacceptable proportion of the attacking force either destroyed,

deterred, or diverted from its task. The main initial problem

was early detection. For Britain it was quite vital. The governmental, financial, and distribution center of London lies only

some 90 miles from the French coast. Attacking aircraft at

heights of 20,000 feet and travelling at 250 miles per hour

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DID THE BOMBER ALWAYS GET THROUGH?
(MPH) with a short overland flight across hostile territory

could avoid interception entirely before delivering an attack.

Ground observation posts had an obvious limited utility, and

the sound detectors were unreliable. Radar changed this.

Much might depend on the strategic significance given to

the Battle of Britain, but it has been argued when Air Chief

Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding took the decision to support fully

the British work on radar early in 1935 it was perhaps “as

decisive for his country as any event recorded in British history.”11 By the time the German air attacks did begin in August

1940, the British coast was ringed with radar units capable of

detecting and determining the altitude of high-flying aircraft at

a range of 120 miles and less successfully low-flying aircraft.

Without radar the whole of Dowding’s elaborate and brilliant

system of integrated air defense would not have been possible.

Ultra had little or no part in the battle; the British Y-Service

monitoring Luftwaffe signal traffic was useful but could not

have been decisive.

In September 1939 the Germans themselves had a slight

lead in radar technology.12 It was a Freya radar unit which

located at a range of 70 miles the ill-fated Royal Air Force

(RAF) raid of 18 December 1939 when 24 Wellingtons attacked

naval units at Wilhelmshaven. The loss of 12 aircraft to the

Messerschmitt Bf-109 determined that henceforth Bomber

Command would operate only at night. General Kammhuber,

charged with countering the night attacks, may be regarded as

the German Hugh Dowding. Freya with its hundred-mile

range was supplemented by the Werzburg which allowed

Kammhuber from 1941 to erect a string of night-fighter control stations at 25-mile intervals extending from Denmark to

the Swiss border. It was a remarkable detection achievement,

and once his night fighters were equipped with airborne radar

even more effective. Only the introduction of Window (or chaff)

in August 1943 made the system briefly inoperable.

Kammhuber, the system’s architect, was replaced. So then

had Dowding previously.

For two major European powers, radar provided early detection of strategic air attack. Without radar, the perceptions of

the interwar years would have closer approached reality.

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Minding the variables, the fate of Japan makes the point. The

possibility of the homeland coming under air attack was discounted in 1941. Home defense radar had only a limited

capacity. The position of an incoming aircraft could not be

determined, and the Japanese air raid warning system was

largely based on visual observation.13 A mass production of a

more sophisticated radar was planned after the Doolittle raid

of April 1942, but even though the Japanese knew by April

1943 that the B-29 (designed specifically for attacks on the

homeland) was in production, it was only by late November

1944 that the technology could identify the B-29 and hopefully

predict speed and altitude, though not always the direction of

attack.14 Rightly it has been argued that Japanese radar could

not cope.15 That it failed in its very first task of early detection

contributed to the fact that Japanese airspace was virtually

controlled from mid-1945 by a hostile power. There was no

Japanese Dowding or Kammhuber; there was no radardirected and centralized fighter center.

Technology might detect. It could not interpret and decide on

the most possible target and thus assess the nature of the threat.

Only human intelligence and action was capable of that. The failure to apply both after attacking aircraft had been detected 132

miles away led to the Japanese controlling the air over Pearl

Harbor on 8 December 1941 (7 December Hawaii time zone).

Generally, however, it was the task of the attacking force to confuse the defenders, to confound the opposing mind. The

Luftwaffe introduced the tactic of splitting defenses by diversion

attacks on the night of 1–2 November 1940. The German targets

were Birmingham and London. Sparse British night-fighter

forces were drawn to London with the result that Birmingham

suffered an unopposed heavy attack which came close to the

type predicted by Neville Shute.16 From 1943, Bomber

Command’s increasing strength together with the application of

a refined bomber stream technique, deception raids involving

small numbers of aircraft later provided with Window became an

accepted tactical element for most major attacks.17

There were notable successes. Perhaps the most important

was the ability of eight Mosquitoes to divert most of the

German night-fighter defenses away from Peenemünde on

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DID THE BOMBER ALWAYS GET THROUGH?
22–23 August 1943 while the main force of 596 aircraft badly

damaged the experimental rocket center. On 3–4 December

1943 a third of Leipzig was destroyed when once again the

night fighters were deceived by a handful of Mosquitoes. It

says much, however, for the adaptability and flexibility of the

human mind that the German night-fighter controllers (coping

with clouds of Window, feint attacks, and British-based

German speakers issuing false instructions) were far from

being always confused. When mistakes were realized,

response came quickly. The Peenemünde attack cost 40

bombers, that on Leipzig 24. By then, however, the objective

had been achieved: control of the air over the target for albeit

a limited period of time.

Detection and identification of the target should ideally have

led to interception. Successful interception could lead to an

attacking force sustaining heavy if not unacceptable losses.

The fate awaiting Luftflotte 5 on 15 August 1940 is an example. A projected attack on Newcastle and Sunderland across

the North Sea from bases in Denmark and Norway precluded

Bf-109 escort. An early detection on Chain Home radar led an

inspired, imaginative, and courageous 13 Group controller to

vector all his available squadrons into the calculated path of

the oncoming bombers and place them at a higher altitude.

What followed has been termed “a memorable action.”18 More

than this, it was inspired interception. None of the targets was

hit, the raids were dispersed, 20 percent of the attacking force

was lost, and Luftflotte 5 never attempted a similar attack

again. In dispute for control of the air in the Second World

War, the defenses would hardly have expected a better result.

German defenses never did as well, but the American Eighth

Air Force suffered grievously from the time it launched its first

deep penetration of German airspace with its 17 August 1943

attack on Schweinfurt and 14 October 1943 when that ballbearing manufacturing target was attacked a second time.

By August 1943 the Luftwaffe fighter force had been centralized, placed under one controller, and given access to one

radio frequency. Such essential organization made it a potent

weapon, and first Schweinfurt gave the Americans a demonstration of it. The attacking force was quickly radar detected,

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interception awaited the forced return of its short-ranged

fighter escort, then for six hours the B-17s were savaged in

German airspace. Sixty American bombers were destroyed, a

19 percent loss rate. Between 10 August and 6 September

1943, Eighth Air Force mounted four major attacks on

German targets. All encountered similar interceptions, 133 B17s were lost for an average rate of 11.5 percent. Final disaster came at second Schweinfurt. Sixty aircraft or 26 percent of

the attacking force failed to return. The Americans had lost all

pretence of controlling the air to or from the target; indeed,

they had even lost the ability to compete for it. Only the

belated introduction of long-range fighter escort saved the

American strategic bomber offensive.19 The whole of the Battle

of Berlin, which extended from 18 November to March 1944,

was a disaster for RAF Bomber Command. The Nuremberg

attack of 30–31 March 1944 was final proof. Despite fake

attacks, the main force was soon recognized and as the

bomber stream left Britain, German night fighters drawn from

all over Germany were moved into position. Bomber Command

lost 107 of the aircraft dispatched. Overall, despite Window

and all the countermeasures, the Battle of Berlin campaign

cost 1,117 British aircraft or 3.8 percent of the attacking

forces. Opinion will vary, but possibly it achieved little apart

from demonstrating the efficiency of the defenses.

Without the ability to intercept, one again must turn to

Japan to see Baldwin vindicated. The maximum range of the

Japanese radar was some 300 kilometers, but Japanese geography precluded, in most instances, the location of a radar station further than 150 kilometers from a vital target area.

Generally, the B-29 could thus be within 50 minutes of being

over the target before detection. Poor organization, lack of centralization, and inefficient lines of communication meant that

it took over an hour before Japanese fighters could reach interception height. Therefore, only the first aircraft off the ground

had any chance of engagement. As one Japanese commander

recorded after the war, the majority of interceptors “would have

difficulty in becoming airborne in sufficient time to attack the

enemy even on their return run.”20 But then the Japanese had

never learnt, or given the intense interservice rivalry, could

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DID THE BOMBER ALWAYS GET THROUGH?
never implement, the basic principles of successful air defense

necessary for contesting the control of the air. Even against

these deficient Japanese defenses, however, the Twentieth Air

Force lost 414 B-29s. And this was the most modern, powerful, and heavily armed aircraft of its time.21

A general statement becomes evident: attempts to control

airspace worth defending were costly in lives and material.

Bare figures further endorse the point. In three and one-half

months in 1940, the Battle of Britain cost the Luftwaffe 1,733

aircraft of all types in daylight attacks.22 The April–May 1942

Badeker raids, often carried out at low level against virtually

undefended targets, cost 40 bombers in 14 operations.23 In the

last attacks against the United Kingdom made by manned aircraft, the Luftwaffe lost between 5 and 8 percent of sorties.24

By the end of the war, 8,205 RAF Bomber Command aircraft

were listed as missing on operations, while the command itself

suffered two out of three deaths sustained by the Royal Air

Force as a whole.25 In its attempt to control the air directly over

Germany and indirectly over the Normandy beaches for the

forthcoming invasion, the USAAF Eighth Air Force lost 5,548

heavy bombers from August 1942. Operating from Italian

bases, the Fifteenth Air Force lost 2,519 bombers in some 20

months of operations.26 After detection was achieved, the

nature of the threat identified, and interception obtained,

what caused such destruction?

A point should be made: as a lethal weapon directed against

its own aircrews, the bomber killed long before it entered

enemy airspace. In 1942 nonoperational accidents were causing 250 Royal Air Force deaths each month.27 In September

1943 an ex CINC Bomber Command, Air Chief Marshal Sir

Edgar Ludlow-Hewitt, reported that aircraft accidents “possibly

[accounted] for almost as many of our aircraft as the Luftwaffe

itself.”28 Loaded with explosive, incendiary, oxygen, flares, ammunition, and volatile high-octane fuel and cruising at some

180 MPH, once the bomber came under attack all hazards were

compounded and the chances of survival often slight.

First principles of destruction had been devised by General

Ashmore for the defense of London in 1917–18. Guns, aided by

searchlights, ringed the city. A fire-free fighter zone followed in

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front of which were placed anchored balloons. Far forward as a

first line of defense were the coastal batteries. Above all, command was coordinated. Given all the technological refinements,

the Kammhuber line possibly resembled Ashmore’s model. In

1938 it had been argued, “Adequate protection can be achieved

only by the combined action of fighter aircraft and AA

defence.”29 It proved a reasonably accurate prediction.

Flak and fighters were the main killers. Even in the Battle of

Britain, when the critical shortage of antiaircraft equipment

virtually made all depend upon Fighter Command, 6th AntiAircraft Division, working with the heavily involved 11 Group,

claimed the destruction of 203 aircraft on day operations.30

German flak units were considered an elite, and the skill of

combining with the night-fighter force after 1941 was quickly

mastered. Between July 1942 and May 1945, it was considered that Bomber Command lost 2,278 aircraft to fighters and

1,375 to flak. The Operations Research Section could not even

speculate why 2,075 bombers did not return.31 The American

daylight operations gave German flak a good chance of success. From August 1942 and the first tentative foray to Rouen,

the Eighth Air Force lost 2,452 bombers to fighters and 2,439

to flak. It was the relative failure of an air defense system

which led to Japanese desperation and the formation of

Special Attack Units. Stripped fighter aircraft equipped with a

nose bomb and flown by virtually untrained pilots rammed

American bombers. As the Japanese argued, “The loss of one

fighter aircraft and its pilot [was] a cheap price to pay for the

elimination of a B-29 and its crew.”32

Well-organized flak operating by itself, however, was capable

of inflicting almost unacceptable losses on an attacking force.

A classic Ashmore system was designed by the highly efficient

Lt Gen Alfred Gerstenberg in 1942 for the defense of the huge

oil-refining complex around the Rumanian city of Ploesti. More

than 100 balloons covered the city area, and two belts of flak

guns were sited from five to 30 miles from the target. This

obstacle had to be crossed.33 The target, attacked at low level

by 178 B-24s of the Ninth Air Force flying from Libya in

August 1943, extracted a toll of 54 aircraft or 30.3 percent.

Ploesti, attacked at high level 19 times between April and

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DID THE BOMBER ALWAYS GET THROUGH?
August 1944, saw Gerstenberg’s flak destroy 58.7 percent of

the 223 bombers lost.34 British guns had an outstanding success when pitted against the V-1. Once the decision was made

to move some 2,600 guns to form a coastal gun belt in July

1944, antiaircraft fire using the newly available radar-directed

proximity fuse won the battle. Static defenses accounted for

nearly 62 percent of these unmanned bombers destroyed, and

of the 4,656 V-1s launched, only 1,070 penetrated to the

London Civil Defence Region.35

Conclusion

Between 1939 and 1945 the bomber did get through, yet the

cost was high. It is a comment on the level of economic

resources, on the ruthlessness of bomber commanders, and

on the collective store of raw courage among aircrews that the

attempt to control airspace by the strategic bomber continued

at all. Only 7.1 percent of Bomber Command aircrews operating between July 1943 and June 1944 had a statistical chance

of completing the requirement of two tours when pitted

against German targets.36 Finesse had little part in the campaigns: attrition governed the actions of air commanders, and

aircrews were used as a readily disposable commodity. Sir

Arthur Harris, for example, in November 1942 was prepared to

equate their life expectancy with that of a junior infantry officer on the First World War western front and to be undismayed at a casualty level which marked an unrelieved Second

World War disaster. As he argued, “The infantry subaltern’s

expectation of life in 1917–18 was about 10 days in the front

line and in this war our ground casualties at Dieppe were a

very high proportion of the attacking force.”37

An American counterpart may be found in Maj Gen

Frederick Anderson. At 38 and an ex-director of bombardment

at the Air Corps Tactical School, he was given charge of the

Eighth Bomber Command in July 1943. A remorseless tunnelvisioned driver as totally committed to the strategic bomber as

Harris, the heavy losses of autumn 1943 failed to affect him.

In March 1944 he directed that B-24s should attack Berlin.

Faced with a protest from his chief of operations that lack of

ceiling meant that “aircrew would just get killed in them”

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Anderson only replied, “Well?”38 It might be only a blurred and

idealistic hindsight which makes such attitudes seem worthy

of comment, but it must be true that without such people the

bomber would hardly have attempted to get through at all.

The control of the air in the Second World War was a fluid

concept and remains so. If controlled at all, it could only be for

limited periods. Aircraft cannot “hold ground.” Staying power is

limited, and what airspace was controlled at one time had to be

refought for at another. The prototype Scud missiles of 1944–45,

the V-1 and the V-2, also showed that although the Germans,

in a conventional sense, had lost control of the air, they were

still capable of striking. And against the V-2 there was, of

course, no defense. It was a forerunner of future scenarios.

There remains a speculation. In March 1945 the director of

bomber operations in RAF Bomber Command presented a

paper which asked, “What is the highest percentage of losses

the Royal Air Force could stand over a period of three months

of intensive operations?” The conclusion was that a strategic

bomber force would become “relatively ineffective” if it suffered

a 7 percent loss rate over that period, while a loss rate of 5 percent would result in its operational effectiveness becoming

“unacceptably low.”39 Might it then be argued that if the

German defenses had been able to destroy three or four more

bombers out of each 100 dispatched in 1943, then the British

night offensive could not have continued? If so, then the

British bomber would not have got through at all, and surely

the Eighth Air Force attacks without the Mustang would have

been halted after second Schweinfurt. The Luftwaffe, faced

with such a consistent loss rate in January–February 1944,

was forced to stop. The proposition that the bomber would

always get through was more doubtful than Baldwin could

ever have considered.

Discussion

Maj Todd Vercoe: I think perhaps the issue from your presentation is not so much to what extent did the bomber get

through, but to what effect. A certain amount of what we now

call operational analysis was carried out under the guidance

of Professor Solly Zuckerman, and I know they had some fairly

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DID THE BOMBER ALWAYS GET THROUGH?
harsh things to say about the inaccuracy of bombing. What

sorts of changes to the tactics of the bomber streams resulted,

if any, from that analysis?

Associate Professor McCarthy: You’re quite right on the bombing

accuracy as the Butt Report of 1941 showed. But very significant

improvements were made with the advent of things like H2S

radar and Oboe for navigation, better training, better bombsights,

and of course the Pathfinders. Also, as the German fighter force

was gradually defeated, more day raids were possible.

Flight Lt Fred Anderson: I flew in Bomber Command as a member of the RAAF. You mentioned ground-based, Germanspeaking people who were used to confuse the Luftwaffe’s

radar control by giving false information to their fighters. How

effective were those people?

Associate Professor McCarthy: Not very, from my reading. The

countermeasures adopted by the Luftwaffe included speaking

in provincial German accents and using special codes. Still,

from a German night-fighter pilot’s point of view, it must have

been very frustrating to get contradictory instructions.

Air Commodore Alan Titheridge: John, in comparing the different approaches of the Royal Air Force and the US Army Air

Forces to strategic bombing, I’ve heard it said that the

Americans were so rigid with their doctrine after 10 years of

development that it took them three and a half years to realize

that the bomber wouldn’t always get through; while conversely,

the RAF had Bomber Harris and no doctrine, and they never did

learn it. Would you care to comment on the two approaches?

Associate Professor McCarthy: I think, as was said in the previous presentation, the doctrine of precision bombing was more

acceptable to humane-thinking people. It did seem to put limits on bombing raids, to harness them, whereas the area

attacks didn’t. The odd thing though is that a lot of the strategic air effort over Germany was directed at destroying the

Luftwaffe’s fighter force in the air. That surely was a bit of

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doctrine cobbled up from nowhere. The Air Corps Tactical

School never argued that the purpose of its B-17s was to shoot

down enemy fighters so that a landing force could get ashore

unopposed somewhere else. But they were very effective at that,

and they finally did win the air battle, albeit at tremendous cost.

Personally, I think the area attacks were a complete waste of

energy, effort, and lives. That is not to say that the Eighth Air

Force didn’t engage in them either because they did; they had

to at times. But I hold the view that the area attacks were a misuse of airpower, that there were better target systems available.

Group Capt Ian Madelin: The distinction which history draws

between the precision bombing of the USAAF and the area

bombing of the RAF is very largely an artificial one. Several

years ago I heard Gen Ramsay Potts, who flew from Britain

with the US Eighth Air Force during the war, summarize it

thus: “You guys did area bombing of area targets and we did

area bombing of precision targets.”

Dr. Dan Keenan: Even given the inaccuracies of night bombing,

do you think that if Air Marshal Harris had concentrated on

vital targets like the synthetic oil plants and perhaps some of

the larger electric power stations, that this would have produced a better result for Bomber Command?

Associate Professor McCarthy: Once again it’s the problem of

finding the targets at night and hitting them, that was the difficult part. The center of the city is a lot easier to find and hit.

Certainly, if attacks on vital targets could have been concentrated and repeated heavily, it would have been more effective

than bombing hospitals in the hope that you’re going to hit a

nearby factory. But Harris was a bit of a law unto himself; he

wouldn’t take a lot of direction even from Sir Charles Portal.

He was certain that those so-called vital targets were panacea

targets and that it was only by hitting the urban centers that

you’d win.

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DID THE BOMBER ALWAYS GET THROUGH?
Personally, I think hitting selected targets is infinitely better

than just scattering bombs at random.

Air Vice-Marshal Tony Mason: I think many British observers

of Bomber Harris would agree that he was rather inflexible late

in the war when he had weapons systems which could have

achieved greater precision. Nevertheless, the image of Harris,

as a man who didn’t care about his casualties and who was

just scattering bombs across Germany because he thought

that was a good thing to do, doesn’t stand up when you look

at the papers to which you yourself have just alluded, that is,

the correspondence between Harris and Charles Portal

between November 25th and January 18th, 1944–45. Those

papers are now fully accessible.

In that long argument, Portal was trying to get Harris to drop

his city list and go after targets Harris regarded as yet more

panacea targets. Harris had considerable logic on his side, as

recent raids against four or five similar panacea targets had

just been conducted unsuccessfully. The economic survey

used to justify attacking those targets had subsequently been

shown to be incomplete, as it had failed to recognize that alternative supplies of the resources being targeted were available

to the Germans. So Harris argued to Portal—and we don’t

have to agree with him, but at least we should do him the justice of listening to his argument—that the vagaries of weather,

of target concealment, and of actually being certain that the

panacea was what it was and where it was, was still, even in

late-1944, very difficult to achieve. On the other hand, he

knew that if, for example, there was a synthetic oil plant in a

particular city, then if he blanketed that city, he was certainly

going to get the synthetic plant as well as everything else.

Therefore to portray Harris as a mindless, doctrinaire air marshal who hadn’t read anything and didn’t understand a great

deal, is not, I think, an accurate picture of a man who retained

the loyalty and affection of those who flew and fought for him.

Associate Professor McCarthy: I certainly didn’t say what you

suggested I did: in fact, you and I are very close together in our

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points of view. I’ve got many good things to say about Bomber

Command’s offensive, but I wasn’t asked to talk on them.

Notes

1. Michael Paris, Winged Warfare: The Literature and Theory of Aerial

Warfare in Britain, 1859–1917 (Manchester: Manchester University Press,

1992), 16–29.

2. Figures from Kenneth P. Werrell, Archie, Flak, AAA, and SAM: A Short

Operational History of Ground-Based Air Defense (Maxwell Air Force Base

[AFB], Ala: Air University Press, 1988), 1–2.

3. Lt Gen N. N. Golovine, “Ashmore Modernized,” in Views on Air Defence

(London: Aldershot, Gale and Polden, 1939). Originally published in The

Royal Air Force Quarterly, July 1938.

4. John H. Morrow Jr., The Great War in the Air: Military Aviation from

1909 to 1921 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), 321.

5. Williamson Murray, Luftwaffe, 1933–45: Strategy for Defeat (London:

Brassey’s, 1983), appendix 1, 299.

6. Address given at the opening of the German Air Warfare Academy, 1

November 1935, in Eugene M. Emme, ed., The Impact of Air Power: National

Security and World Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Van Nostrand, 1959), 185.

7. Sir Charles K. Webster and Noble Frankland, The Strategic Air

Offensive Against Germany 1939–45, vol. 4, Annexes and Appendices

(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office [HMSO], 1961), appendix 4, 88.

8. Baldwin was speaking in the context of the Geneva Disarmament

Conference. It became British policy to urge a complete abolition of bombing aircraft, which from the United Kingdom’s point of view, possessed distinct naval and military advantages. As the CIGS argued, “An effective total

abolition of all naval and military aircraft cannot but be advantageous to

this country, as tending to restore to us the sea as our first line of defence

and as removing the danger of air attack on London.” Memorandum by the

Chief of the Imperial General Staff, 30 May 1932, Public Record Office (PRO),

Cab. 24-230, C. P. 176 (32). Finally, however, the Geneva debate ended without result when Germany withdrew in October 1933.

9. See Wesley K. Wark, “The Air Defence Gap: British Doctrine and

Intelligence Warnings in the 1930s,” in The Conduct of the Air War in the

Second World War: An International Comparison, ed. Horst Boog (New York:

Berg, 1991), 511–26. For a well-known exposition of the “knockout blow” point

of view see, “Aide Memoire by Sir Thomas Inskip, Minister for Co-ordination of

Defence,” 9 December 1937, in Webster and Frankland, appendix 5, 96.

10. Donald Davie, “Remembering the Thirties,” in The Oxford Book of

Twentieth-Century English Verse, ed. Philip Larkin (Oxford: Clarendon Press,

1973), 532–33.

11. Basil Collier, The Defence of the United Kingdom (London: HMSO,

1957), 37.

12. Alfred Price, Instruments of Darkness: The History of Electronic

Warfare (London: Macdonald and Jane’s, 1977), 60–61.

13. Japanese monograph no. 17, “Homeland Operations Record,”

Headquarters United States Army Forces Far East (USAFFE) et al., circa

1946, 8.

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DID THE BOMBER ALWAYS GET THROUGH?
14. Japanese monograph no. 157, “Homeland Air Defense Operations

Record,” Headquarters USAFFE et al., circa 1946, 114.

15. R. J. Overy, The Air War 1939–1945 (London: Papermac, 1980), 202.

16. Refer to the narrative of night attacks made by the Luftwaffe from

November through December 1940 in Francis K. Mason, Battle Over Britain:

A History of the German Air Assaults on Great Britain 1917–18 and July–

December 1940 and the Development of Britain’s Air Defences Between the

Wars (Bourne End: Aston, 1990), 383–90.

17. See Martin Middlebrook and Chris Everitt, The Bomber Command

War Diaries: An Operational Reference Book, 1939–1945 (New York: Viking,

1985), for details.

18. Collier, 193.

19. Stephen Lee McFarland and Wesley Phillips Newton, To Command

the Sky: The Battle for Air Superiority Over Germany, 1942–1944

(Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), 132, for this and

the preceding opinion.

20. Japanese monograph 157, no. 111.

21. Roger Anthony Freeman, The US Strategic Bomber (London:

Macdonald and Jane’s, 1975), 9, Operational Statistics, 151–60.

22. Derek Wood, Target England: The Illustrated History of the Battle of

Britain (London: Jane’s Publishing, 1980), appendix 3. Night losses were

much lower with the raids of November–December 1940 showing a rate of 1

percent of sorties flown. Mason, 383.

23. Collier, 308.

24. Ibid., 327.

25. Webster and Frankland, appendix 41; W. Franklin Mellor, ed.,

History of the Second World War: UK Medical Series: Casualties and Statistics

(London: HMSO, 1972), table 7, 600.

26. Freeman, 9; and Operational Statistics, 161–66.

27. Lord Brabazon to Secretary of State for Air, 13 May 1942, PRO, Air

19/319.

28. “Organisation for the Prevention of Accidents,” report by InspectorGeneral, 18 September 1943, PRO, Air 19/319.

29. Golovine, 100.

30. Collier, appendix 23, “Some Problems and Achievements of AntiAircraft Gunnery During the Battle of Britain,” report, 2 August 1941.

31. Webster and Frankland, appendix 40, 429–30.

32. Japanese monograph no. 157, 14–16.

33. Leroy W. Newby, Target Ploesti: View from a Bombsight (Navato, Calif.:

Presidio, 1983), appendix B, Air Objective Folder no. 69, 1, Rumania, 223.

34. Werrell, 29.

35. Collier, appendix 45, 523.

36. John McCarthy, A Last Call of Empire: Australian Aircrew, Britain and

the Empire Air Training Scheme (Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1988),

107.

37. “Note by C-in-C Bomber Command on Second Tour of Operations,”

24 November 1942, PRO, Air 14/1846.

38. McFarland and Newton, 153, 197.

39. Webster and Frankland, appendix 42, 445–46.

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World War II:

Air Support for Surface Forces

Vincent Orange

The current edition of Royal Air Force doctrine on airpower

was prepared under the direction of the chief of the air staff in

1993. It begins with a quotation from Arthur Tedder, one of his

greatest predecessors and one of the Second World War’s greatest commanders—land, sea, or air. “Air warfare cannot be separated into little packets,” wrote Tedder in 1947, “it knows no

boundaries on land and sea other than those imposed by the

radius of action of the aircraft; it is a unity and demands unity

of command.”1 Let me, like a bishop or even an air marshal,

preach upon that text (we academics easily succumb to delusions of grandeur when allowed out of our cozy nooks).

Successful air warfare in support of surface forces during

the Second World War depended on fighter aircraft, but was

best provided by fighter-bombers. Without the aerial superiority which fighters alone could achieve and maintain, no other

aircraft type could function effectively by day or by night—

because fighters would shoot them down or scatter them or

turn them back to their bases or prevent them from taking off.

Without that aerial superiority, operations could rarely be carried out safely because fighters were able to protect bombers

while they destroyed infantry, motor transport, artillery positions, and even tanks—or scattered them, turned them back

to their bases, or prevented them from setting out. The very

bases themselves became vulnerable.

In 1945, as in 1918, the most effective day fighters were

single-seat, single-engine machines. Until 1934, however, they

had been aerodynamically primitive biplanes of frame and fabric construction with open cockpits, fixed undercarriages, light

armament, and low-powered engines. Lacking radios, they

could not be controlled, warned, or guided either from the

ground or in the air. But after 1934, fighters appeared that

were aerodynamically advanced monoplanes of all-metal construction with enclosed cockpits, retractable undercarriages,

85
heavy armament, and high-powered engines. They were

equipped with radios, and the development of radar would permit effective ground and air control. This worldwide revolution

in fighter design and equipment came in response to the

appearance of streamlined metal monoplane bombers that

were much faster than biplanes, better armed, and capable of

carrying what was believed to be a devastating load of bombs

over an alarming distance and, with radio aids, arriving exactly

over the designated target. Such bombers, it was widely

believed, might win the next war on their own. Strong land

forces might no longer be needed if bombers could destroy the

cities supplying those forces with men and materials.

When these beliefs were put to the test, it was learned

(quickly in Britain, more slowly elsewhere) that modern fighters coped easily in daylight with modern bombers—unless

they were escorted by friendly fighters sweeping the skies clear

around them by attacking enemy fighters in the air or on the

ground. Twin-engine fighters (with a far longer range and

unobstructed forward visibility for a pilot assisted by a radar

operator sitting behind him) coped even more easily with

bombers obliged to seek the cover of darkness—unless they,

too, were escorted by friendly fighters able to sweep a clear

path for them. Some fighters were equipped with bomb racks

to produce a dual-purpose fighter-bomber that proved more

useful on or near battlefields than either dive-bombers or light

level-bombers because these types could only operate effectively under fighter protection. The fighter-bomber could look

after itself, once it had got rid of its load. Until that moment,

however, like all other aircraft, it needed fighter protection.

The Second World War, then, would not be won by unaided

bombers, although some airmen believe it could have been.

For instance, Rick Atkinson’s account of the recent Gulf War

(according to Max Hastings) examines arguments between

American airmen, “some of them passionate to win the war

single-handedly by strategic bombing rather than to carry

out tactical operations in support of the army.” When the

ground offensive at last began, Gen H. Norman Schwarzkopf

ruthlessly—and probably rightly—ordered the airmen to focus

their sorties on tactical support, and denied them the chance

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they craved to continue the strategic missions against Iraq,

designed to cause the collapse of its entire infrastructure.2

Like all earlier wars, the Second World War would be won by

the stronger surface forces (on land, at sea, or in combination). At first, air support for German armies greatly helped

those surface forces win decisive victories in western Europe.

An equally decisive victory might have been achieved in North

Africa and that victory might have led to the overthrow of

Stalin by opening another route into the Soviet Union, one

fuelled by Middle Eastern oil. Neither catastrophe happened,

and this war, like the First World War, became a long war.

Against an alliance of enemies with vastly superior military

and industrial resources, the Germans could not indefinitely

retain their conquests abroad, though their defeat at home

was by no means certain.

Although the fighters employed by the major powers were

comparable in performance, better rates of production, maintenance, and repair ultimately gave the Allies a massive advantage

over the Germans.3 The Allies were also readier to reject clever

modifications and interesting designs that excited backroom

boffins, rather than frontline ground or aircrews. Nevertheless,

the bravery, aggression, and experience of the man in the cockpit often made the difference between victory and defeat. Pilots

who lacked these personal qualities were killed or driven away

whatever they flew and however carefully they had been trained.

As Alfred Price wrote, “It isn’t the size of the dog in the fight that

counts, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”4

Under fighter protection, other aircraft types caused everincreasing harm on all German fronts: fighting, transporting,

manufacturing, and farming. By 1944 the deaths, injuries,

and damage caused by repeated aerial attacks upon such a

wide range of targets were of vital assistance to Allied land

forces advancing from the east, south, or west. Air warfare, as

Tedder often emphasized, was a cooperative venture in which

all types, unarmed as well as armed, played their parts in

helping soldiers to occupy enemy territory and sailors to close

enemy ports. From 1944 till the war’s end, Allied forces rarely

endured serious aerial attack. In addition, their efforts—and

those of partisans among the subjugated peoples—were

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helped by transport aircraft dropping troops or supplies or

carrying casualties to hospital.5

Tedder’s tripartite plan for the employment of airpower was

worked out in the North African desert by Arthur “Mary”

Coningham, his great executant.6 It was founded upon those

three principles still singled out by the modern Royal Air Force

for approval: no division into “little packets,” “no boundaries

on land and sea,” and “unity of command.” Incorporated into

the plan, these principles would soon be enshrined in

American doctrine, where they remain alive and well—modified, but never rejected, by generations of analysts. The doctrine made possible, in the opinion of John Fagg (an American

official historian), “one of the most effective collaborations

known to military history.”7 Geoffrey Perret has wisely

observed, however, that Coningham, like all the best military

commanders, “was an opportunist, not a dogmatist.”8 Never

having studied at a staff (or any other) college, he was the least

doctrinaire of men. For him, doctrine was a guide, not a rule;

it might help in making hard choices, but local circumstances

mattered more.

The Tedder-Coningham plan aimed first to achieve air superiority, second to isolate the battlefield, and third to provide

surface forces with close support. That superiority, once

achieved by fighters, could only be maintained by continuous

effort; it could never be more than temporary or local, as long

as an enemy fighter force remained in being; and all other

uses of airpower must be limited or even abandoned whenever

that superiority was in jeopardy. Battlefield isolation was seen

to have two distinct advantages. One, to deny enemy reinforcements immediate access to it by using escorted medium

bombers and fighter-bombers to attack roads, railways, crosscountry movement, and supply dumps. And two, to impede

distant supply to it by using escorted heavy and medium

bombers to attack factories, railways, shipping, and ports providing those reinforcements with their weapons, ammunition,

fuel, food, and men.

Close support was seen to have two distinct tasks. One, to

attack the enemy flanks or rear by using escorted fighterbombers in operations as frequent as the air commander’s

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resources and judgment would allow, mounted while the

ground commander was preparing (or recovering from) his

own action. And two, to attack the enemy front in operations

that must only be mounted for a very great purpose, either to

prevent a rout (not merely a forced withdrawal) or to permit a

major breakthrough (not merely a convenient advance). Here

lies the nub of my paper: the root of angry, exasperated, or

bewildered exchanges between soldiers and airmen throughout the Second World War. Direct attacks upon the enemy

front, where soldiers most wanted or needed air support, was

precisely what airmen were least able or willing to deliver.

Least able, in the early war years, because they had neither

suitable aircraft nor crews trained in such tasks. Least willing,

because heavy casualties must be suffered in attacking targets

that airmen believed artillery, mortar, or machine-gun fire

could deal with more effectively as well as more safely.

By the end of 1944, Allied air superiority had become air

supremacy. Numerous ground-attack aircraft were built, the

best of them single-engine types with huge air-cooled radial

engines (less vulnerable to flak than liquid-cooled engines),

but all of them heavily armed, armored, and flown by thoroughly trained, combat-experienced pilots. By long trial and

error, practical methods of cooperation were devised between

these ground attackers and forward troops, now themselves

far better equipped and versed in combat.9

We must emphasize the fact that the young men who did the

actual fighting on the ground or in the air on all fronts learned

quickly how to survive, how to kill, and how best to help each

other. Nothing compares with the certainty of combat—next

month, if not tomorrow—for concentrating attention during

lectures or training exercises. Those who fought in the second

half of the war were professionals in comparison with their

unlucky amateur predecessors. They were skilled in many

tasks that had not even existed in 1939, and the weapons,

instruments, or tools they used had been tested and proven in

demanding service. Among the Allies, though less so among

the Germans, systematic rotation of soldiers and airmen

between front and rear ensured the vivid transmission of

recent lessons to attentive newcomers. Their commanders also

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improved. The inept or unlucky were mostly gone by 1943,

and those who arrived or survived to make famous names

became surer of their own capacity, and that of their colleagues and subordinates, in the rarest of military arts: waging total war. Above all, the Allied commanders enjoyed the

confidence and prestige of victory. They never suffered the

despair of defeat, as opposed to the humiliation of setbacks,

and were increasingly concerned with their postwar ambitions, as well as the most economical means of ending the current conflict.

Only in the last year of the war did close support, of a kind

and impact that soldiers naturally preferred, become common.

Until the end, however, fierce, cleverly directed ground fire

made it perilous work. Pilots were asked to fly over hidden batteries until gunners revealed their positions by opening up;

those who survived were then to dive-bomb the batteries and

finally to strafe them. Such missions, wrote Bill Dunn, a

Thunderbolt pilot with over 500 combat hours to his credit,

“were nothing more than flying directly into the firing barrels

of hundreds of antiaircraft cannon and machine-guns, with

the chances about one in five you’d get hit, one in 10 you’d get

shot down. As the German army was gradually compressed by

our forces into small defense pockets, so their flak was also

compressed, with many more guns now defending each target

area.” And yet it is a well-attested fact that some pilots were

readier to press home very dangerous attacks in direct support of frontline soldiers than they were to attempt the

destruction of such impersonal targets as bridges, although

they clearly understood the overall military significance of

wrecking these.10

A question often asked was: “Will close air support work

best in fluid situations, against forces in movement—forward

or back?” “Perhaps” was the answer because at such times

opportunities for hits are fleeting and may easily be missed

even by experienced pilots amid traffic dust, smoke screens, or

light flak, even when clouds, rain, snow, adjacent hills, and

enemy fighters are not additional hazards. Moreover, it is

likely that friendly and enemy troops will be near each other,

thus increasing the chances of hitting the wrong ones, especially

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if they are using captured vehicles. While fighting virtually

hand to hand, it will be very difficult for soldiers to indicate

precisely where they need help and just as difficult for airmen

to deliver it accurately. We must also bear in mind the fact

that the ground situation may change crucially during the

time it takes, however short, for aircraft to arrive on the scene.

If all that is true, the question naturally followed: “Will close

air support work best then in static situations, against forces

virtually immobilized by prior action?” “Perhaps” was again

the answer because at such times flak is likely to be carefully

sited with all weapons providing mutual aid at optimum

angles, ranges, and altitudes. Crews will be well protected with

ample ammunition ready to hand, and the whole complex will

have been lovingly camouflaged. On the other hand, just as

the defenders—given time—will organize themselves efficiently, so will the attackers. It is in static situations that combat pilots serving a stint in radio-equipped tanks or light aircraft can best work with frontline troops to direct accurate

strikes. Flak crews reveal their positions when they fire, and

their supply lines should be identifiable (and therefore cuttable). Heavy equipment cannot be moved quickly and not at

all without large transport vehicles and a deal of commotion.

Regular aerial photo-reconnaissance may reveal when a move

is imminent and also its destination—unless traffic dust,

smoke screens, light flak, clouds, rain, snow, adjacent hills,

and enemy fighters spoil a pilot’s observations.

Effective aircraft operations in close support of land forces

required reliable systems of communication between airmen

at or beyond the front line, soldiers below them, and their

respective commanders in the rear, who would take a long

time to recognize the advantages of a joint headquarters. It

also took a long time to design and produce in quantity such

essential equipment as radios, radars, and cameras, as well as

to train men and women to use them correctly and interpret

their information accurately. In addition, the Second World

War demonstrated yet again that systems of communication

will always break down at unpredictable times and places

because human beings of every rank and age are so unreliable. They make mistakes, slack off, get in a muddle, panic,

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tell lies, refuse to listen, act without thinking, fall sick, or drop

dead at inconvenient moments. Even when the human element works adequately, the natural (or, if you prefer, the

divine) element intervenes: floods, storms, and fires wreck

communications and upset commanders’ choices. Not least,

the enemy element is never less than a nuisance, interfering

with our most cunningly wrought systems and devising his

own along lines unforeseen except by subsequent historians.

Unlike the French, the British were given time and space—

thanks to the English Channel and their forethought in creating an effective air defense system—to consider and practice in

North Africa methods of air support for surface forces in ideal

conditions during 1941 and 1942. That is, against an enemy

strong enough to punish their initial weakness and many subsequent mistakes, without being strong enough to sweep them

out of Egypt and the entire Middle East. British methods

worked and, during Operation Torch (the Allied landings in

Northwest Africa in November 1942), were taught to

Americans inclined to be receptive for three reasons. One,

some of their fellow citizens, serving under British command

in the Desert Campaign during 1942, voiced enthusiastic

approval. Two, other American airmen in Tunisia, as well as

back home, were already thinking along similar lines.11 And

three, the early conduct of Torch generated a shambles of

such heroic proportions that any different methods must produce improvement. On the other hand, the Americans contributed in areas quite beyond British capability. On one

December day, for example, 49 C-47 transports carried nearly

50,000 gallons of fuel forward in under two hours to assist the

pursuit of Rommel; it would have taken 59 trucks three days

to do that.12 Like the Desert Campaign, that in Tunisia was

also fought in ideal conditions. Long enough and bloody

enough to concentrate everyone’s attention wonderfully on

interservice and international problems, it was a perfect training exercise in that it could not be lost whatever mistakes were

made. The Allies had command of the sea and the air, plenty

of well-equipped soldiers, and fuel. Not least, they enjoyed (as

in Desert Campaign days) full information about enemy plans,

strength, and supplies.

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Rapidly growing numbers of aircraft better designed,

equipped, and employed, gradually deprived German armies

of tactical mobility. As a commander wryly remarked, “We

could make one move to your three.” The flow of reinforcements, fuel, and ammunition to the front lines was so reduced

or delayed that by 1944 German chances of mounting a major

offensive were gone. They defended with ferocious tenacity,

but on the only occasion that such an offensive was attempted

(through the Ardennes in December 1944), it failed to reach

any of its objectives, even though it began with the rare advantage of complete surprise. In the same year, American longrange escort fighters, assisted by British long-range night

fighters, ended the Luftwaffe’s defensive capacity over the

Third Reich in daylight or darkness, permitting heavy

bombers to wreck transport systems, end oil production, and

ruin urban areas.

Ultimately, the Allied call for “unconditional surrender”

became irresistible. And yet that last resort had been avoidable. Even without air support, most Germans fought so stubbornly and skillfully, both in the field and in dispersed factories (assisted by ample slave labor), that an adroit leadership

might well have managed a military stalemate in 1944, followed

by a negotiated peace leaving intact the rule of that leadership

over Germany. The rival surface forces were so nicely balanced

(even on the eastern front, until Hitler’s mistakes threw away

German men and materials) that airpower probably made the

difference. Tactical medium and fighter-bombers, strategic

heavy bombers, and transports carrying troops or supplies, all

protected by numerous fighter aircraft, ensured in 1945 a complete Allied victory and not merely a favorable armistice, as in

1918. “The old saw has it,” wrote John Keegan, “that air power

cannot hold ground.” That dictum remains as valid today,

when the question arises of creating an artillery-exclusion zone

around Sarajevo which will be useless without as many as

30,000 troops to enforce it, as it was half a century ago: each

campaign of the Second World War ended only when German

soldiers were driven away, killed, wounded, or forced to surrender and were replaced by Allied soldiers.13

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Unless they are permanently broken, nations learn more

from defeat than from victory. Spectacular Luftwaffe successes against opponents either irredeemably weak or poorly

organized and equipped disguised several grave weaknesses in

command, equipment, and production that were never remedied. Consequently, the Luftwaffe failed to maximize or rationalize production between 1939 and 1941, during what

Churchill would have called “the locust years.”14 Chief among

the aircraft types not produced in quantity was a four-engine

bomber, even though promising examples were flying as early

as 1936. The lack of such a weapon, plus the failure to build

fighters at an urgent rate to escort it, ensured that air support

for surface forces intending to invade Britain in September

1940 would be insufficient for them even to attempt the task.

Britain’s air and flak defenses, focused on the southeast and

sorely pressed in that small area, were not stretched beyond a

breaking point by the wider-ranging and much heavier attacks

that escorted heavy bombers could have delivered.15

A year later, when Hitler’s attack upon the Soviet Union

began, air support for surface forces would again prove inadequate in quantity and function. In order to provide effective

support in a long campaign against a major power, a tactical

air force needs soldiers to win, supply, and guard its bases; it

also needs a strategic air force. Ultimately, the lack of a

Uralbomber—a weapon that could reach factories in the region

for which it was named but not built—exposed German armies

to a weight of attack unrestricted either by destruction of those

factories or diversion of aircraft, guns, and men to protect

them. The Red Air Force was no better provided with heavy

bombers than the Luftwaffe, but Soviet land forces benefited as

much as their Western comrades from Anglo-American pounding of the Reich. Neither Stalin nor the British Joint Intelligence

Committee had realized, wrote Alan Bullock, that Hitler “was

such a fool as to think that Russia could be defeated by a

blitzkrieg.”16 No one in his right mind would attempt to conquer

an immense land without long and meticulous preparation.

Hitler did. Those who knew better dared not gainsay their

fuehrer and despite a string of impressive—though increasingly

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costly—successes, ruthless determination among soldiers and

airmen could not make up for unrealistic planning.

Although the Luftwaffe destroyed numerous aircraft, many

were obsolescent and caught on the ground, and their crews

(ground and air) survived. Even though its bombers and fighters were still unable to communicate with each other and with

their bases or ground forces on a common radio frequency, the

Luftwaffe covered the rapid advance of armor and infantry

more skillfully than in earlier campaigns, until the sheer

breadth and depth of the advance dissipated its strength. For

the first time, German surface forces failed to occupy the

enemy capital. Stalin, though severely shaken, was not obliged

to surrender because his essential tank and aircraft factories

had been moved beyond the reach of medium bombers. These

lacked the numbers, escorts, and handy, well-supplied bases

necessary to deliver concentrated, repeated attacks. With a

secure manufacturing base, large numbers of trained pilots

and technicians still alive, a people steeled by Nazi atrocities

to endure any hardships, a ruler temporarily persuaded that

military efficiency mattered more than ideological conformity,

and plentiful material support from Britain and the United

States, the Soviet Union would survive, rally, and conquer.

The escorted heavy-bomber fleet did not exist that might have

clinched a final German victory before Russia’s traditional

resilience in adversity could make itself felt.17

In North Africa, meanwhile, Tedder needed American aircraft to give effective air support to surface forces. Neither

Britain’s aircraft industry nor her merchant fleet was able to

supply enough machines. Good relations with Americans were

therefore essential. These became, for Tedder, an imperative

as vital during the rest of the war and beyond as any doctrine

he expounded on the proper use of aircraft.18 As for

Coningham, his gradual mastery of the tactical battle was

founded on personal experience. By the time of the armistice,

he recalled in 1946, fighters and fighter-bombers were cooperating closely with tanks to make the German retreat “expensive and chaotic.” The principles there thrashed out, he

believed, remained valid, and much of Coningham’s best effort

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in the Second World War was devoted to restoring “mutual

appreciation” between soldiers and airmen.19

Tedder had told Coningham to “get together” with the army

commander as his first task on going out to the desert in July

1941. Coningham’s opinion that this was a decision of “fundamental importance and had a direct bearing on the combined fighting of the two services until the end of the war” is

supported by Field Marshal Lord Carver who wrote, when evaluating airpower in the Second World War, that “by far the most

significant contribution [to victory] was made by the tactical

air forces in support of the army.” They were greatly helped by

a steady flow of reliable intelligence about enemy strength and

intentions from photo-reconnaissance, prisoner interrogation,

tapping radio messages, and—most famously—the decoding of

signals traffic far away in deepest Buckinghamshire.20

The army responded to Coningham’s initiative and agreed to

set up a joint headquarters when the Eighth Army was formed

in September 1941. In that same month, Prime Minister

Churchill ruled (in response to Tedder’s arguments, relayed to

him by Charles Portal, chief of the air staff) that ground forces

must not expect “as a matter of course” to be protected against

aerial attack. “Above all, the idea of keeping standing patrols

of aircraft over our moving columns should be abandoned.”

Hopes of winning and keeping air superiority would be undermined by this “mischievous practice.” When a battle was in

prospect, continued the prime minister, the army commander

was to “specify” to the air commander the tasks he wanted

performed, both before and during the battle, but it was the

duty of the air commander to decide how best to carry them

out. These fundamental rulings were widely publicized and

vigorously enforced by Coningham, with Tedder’s wholehearted support, in all the Mediterranean and northwest

European campaigns.21

“Whoever held the airfields on the shores of the

Mediterranean,” reflected Peter Drummond (Tedder’s deputy)

in October 1943, “could pass his own ships through that sea

with reasonable safety and could forbid the route to the ships

of the enemy.”22 For two years from mid-1940, the Axis Powers

held most of those airfields but failed to seize Malta, the key to

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permanent retention. Their last chance came after the fall of

Tobruk in June 1942. Rommel had still not grasped the need

to protect his supply lines from Italy by taking Malta before

pressing on to Cairo and the Suez Canal. Nor did he realize

how greatly air support could aid his eastward advance, for he

did not demand an urgent transfer of aircraft even to restore,

let alone strengthen, the forces of his air commander (Otto

Hoffman von Waldau). Rommel actually began his fatal invasion without informing Waldau and therefore gave him no time

to move his airfields forward.23

These decisions deprived Waldau of the opportunity to turn

retreat into rout. Only if British troops were panicked into fleeing through defensible positions at El Alamein would Rommel

be able to follow them. A classic blitzkrieg situation arose for

a fighter force strong enough to hold off Coningham’s fighters

while level and dive-bombers enjoyed themselves shooting up

trucks and armor, killing and scattering men already demoralized—and poorly provided with light flak weapons. In fact,

during the three days that it took the Eighth Army to retreat

from Gazala to El Alamein, a distance of nearly 350 miles, only

six soldiers were killed by air attack. This crisis showed British

defensive air support at its strongest, German offensive air

support at its weakest; Coningham’s name was made,

Waldau’s wasn’t.24

Neither Rommel nor Waldau would ever revel in Egypt’s varied delights, nor would they sample Malta’s more sober offerings. Correlli Barnett regards that island as “the Verdun of

maritime war,” a fortress not worth its cost. Many ships were

indeed sunk or damaged by Axis aircraft and submarines

while trying to supply Malta; many British aircraft were lost

trying to protect those ships; and the actual weight of air-sea

support mounted from there to assist desert campaigns by

cutting Axis sea or land links with Italy was by no means decisive. But at least Rommel never benefited from that island’s

strategic value. Tedder and Coningham feared the prospect of

a German Malta until August 1942. From then on, the growing prospect of a revitalized British Malta excited them. That

is why they were so angered by Bernard Montgomery’s tardy

pursuit of Rommel after El Alamein. By October Malta was

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critically short of food and fuel. A convoy was to be run from

Alexandria early in November to supply these. That “unsinkable aircraft carrier” would then be able to support the armies

advancing eastward to Tunisia. In order to protect that convoy, the airmen needed bases in western Cyrenaica; bases

which, as always, only soldiers could capture. They got them,

with a day to spare; the convoy passed unscathed, and Malta

played a key part in the Allied victory.25

Only after spurning all realistic Mediterranean options did

Hitler send vast resources there. The men and materials

wasted in Tunisia during the six months from November 1942

might well have taken both Malta and Egypt during the six

months before that date. Thousands of troops were airlifted

into Tunisia in response to Allied landings in Morocco and

Algeria, sea ferries took across heavy weapons and supplies,

while numerous aircraft flew in to all-weather bases.26 Until

mid-April, these troops were supported by over 300 German

aircraft offering “a classic example” (in the RAF’s official opinion) “of what may be accomplished, in the face of a superior

enemy, by a small, compact force of high morale and efficiency, although outnumbered.”27 The Allies were held at bay

and a refuge provided for Rommel’s forces, retreating westward after their defeat at El Alamein. But those men arrived

too late to do more than delay the collapse of Axis power in

North Africa. By March 1943 at the latest, one-quarter of a

million men were trapped there. These well-trained, experienced soldiers, supported by the crews of a thousand combat

and transport aircraft lost in Tunisia, would have made the

subsequent Allied landings in Sicily and Italy far bloodier.

Winston Churchill wrote that his first reaction to news of

the Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor was: “We had won the

war. . . . All the rest was merely the proper application of overwhelming force. . . . Many disasters, immeasurable cost and

tribulation lay ahead, but there was no more doubt about the

end.”28 So might I write of air support for surface forces, from

the Allied viewpoint, after the Tunisian Campaign. During the

two years after May 1943, lessons learned during the two preceding years were refined and employed in Sicily, Italy, and

northwest Europe. Effective air support became a matter of

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standardizing tested procedures and publicizing them widely

among airmen and soldiers, a task made easier by the fact

that many of the senior army and air commanders in May

1943 remained in office until the end of the European war.

Aircraft were now rarely used in “little packets” and the lack

of “boundaries on land or sea” was exploited boldly through

“unity of command.” Just as immense Soviet production more

than compensated for any doctrinal deficiencies on the eastern front, so also did American production on the southern

and western fronts, supplemented by that of Britain.29

Efficient maintenance and repair organizations maximized the

value of that torrent of production. From Tunisia onwards,

squadrons had their own transport and workshops; airfields

were built, stocked, and guarded for them; and communications between units and with army units became faster and

more accurate. Doctrine mattered less and less as it became

easier for air commanders to accept more and more demands

for assistance of all kinds.

It is well that this was so because on five occasions (in

Sicily, twice in Italy, Normandy, and southern France) the

Allies attempted the most hazardous of all military ventures: a

seaborne landing upon a defended shore. A major addition to

combined operations was the large-scale use of transport aircraft and gliders to drop paratroops behind enemy front lines.

Although their value remains controversial, they could not

have been employed at all without air superiority. Despite

fierce resistance that threatened on three of these five occasions to sweep the invaders back into the sea, the Allies were

not in fact repulsed. They were saved by the courage and skill

of the soldiers ashore, the sailors who got them there, and the

airmen fighting above and ahead of them. The initial landings

therefore survived; massive reinforcements, covered by aircraft, arrived safely; and sooner or later a successful breakout

from the bridgehead, assisted by aircraft, was achieved.30

Normandy, the ultimate examination in combined operations, could not have been passed without years of study and

practice in the Mediterranean, nor without the help either of

escorted strategic bombers over Germany or the victories of

Soviet armies (ground and air) in the east. Once ashore in

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Normandy, Allied artillery fired at will, without fearing to reveal

its positions to enemy aircraft. Guns, trucks, armor, and

infantry moved freely in daylight. Airfields were set up wherever

convenient, and airmen did not long trouble about camouflage

or dispersing aircraft because air superiority soon became

complete. However, air support was limited throughout the war

by bad weather and, less excusably, by the inability of tactical

air forces to operate in darkness. German ground forces made

good use of every minute of bad weather, every hour of darkness, and their flak gunners labored with a will to compensate

for the Luftwaffe’s weakness. During the nine-week campaign

before D day, for example, nearly 2,000 Allied aircraft were shot

down.31 The triumph of air support for ground forces, in this as

in all campaigns, was bitterly earned. But let me end on a happier note. As early as 24 June 1944, Lt John Eisenhower sat

with his father in a car held up by heavy traffic in Normandy.

“You’d never get away with this if you didn’t have air superiority,” observed John. Gen Dwight D. Eisenhower replied, “If I

didn’t have air superiority, I wouldn’t be here.”32

Discussion

Group Capt Andrew Vallance: You said that air forces cannot

hold ground, that only ground troops can do that. While that

has been the case as a general rule, I don’t think it has always

been true, and it’s certainly not true now. I’ll just offer you

three examples from World War II when it wasn’t true. One,

with which you’ll be very familiar, was at Pantelleria, where

the islands were in effect taken by the air forces 20 minutes

before the first land forces arrived. The second one was the

use of the 19th Tactical Air Command south of Loire, which

compelled German forces to surrender before they’d been

engaged by ground forces. Later on in Burma, the fortified

town of Gangaw was actually taken by the air forces. There’s

a classic quote in Slim’s book, Defeat into Victory, where he

says, “Gangaw was taken by the Air Forces and occupied by

the Army, a most satisfactory affair.”

I think it’s important to make this distinction. While I

acknowledge the complementary capabilities of air forces and

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ground forces, I don’t think we should divide them with heavy

pencil lines saying, “This can be done only by this force, and

this one cannot do that.”

Dr. Orange: I’ve spent the afternoon sitting beside an RAF

Regiment officer, and that has helped to remind me that the

RAF Regiment came into existence during the Desert

Campaign, partly because the army wasn’t able to do, or perhaps in some cases wasn’t willing to do, what the air commanders wanted, and that was protect their airfields.

Coningham on several occasions needed his uniformed

ground personnel to hold land otherwise they would have been

pushed back towards Cairo.

Air Commodore W. H. Garing: I don’t agree with that previous

question. I’ve always believed that the army held ground, and

when we captured ships at sea, the navy boarded them.

On the morning of D day the weather was pretty foul, and we

got ashore by a whisker, and it was made possible, I think, by

the Halifax bombers which went in and attacked those nine

heavy defense positions; heavy guns pointing seaward on the

coast, near the area where the D day landings took place. I

think that was a very vital operation.

Dr. Orange: I can only comment by repeating one sentence, a

theme I tried to bring out in my paper. I do feel that as Tedder

always argued, it has to be all hands to the pump depending

on the time and the circumstances. Strategical, tactical,

fighter, fighter-bomber, transport, everything has its part to

play. Tedder was adamant about avoiding interfunctional

rivalry—fighters against bombers, bombers against transports, and so on. Everybody had to pull together, and on the

occasion you mentioned, the Halifax bombers certainly made

a valuable contribution.

Air Commodore Gordon Steege: I had a P-40 squadron in the

Western Desert under Air Marshal Coningham, and I saw

quite a lot of him. He was a very good-looking man, a man of

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great personal charm and approachable at any time by

squadron commanders. He was also a man with great flexibility of mind. The arrival of the Bf-109s in North Africa brought

an airplane which was superior to anything we had at that

time, the P-40 and the Hurricane. The 109s were in fact operating at will way behind British lines. Coningham arranged

that South African bomber squadrons, which had some problems operating against the 109s, would be escorted by a large

number of at least two or three squadrons of P-40s. When this

was first introduced, we approached it with some trepidation,

as you could see the 109s taking off from their airfields. But I

don’t think that we ever lost a day bomber on those operations, which went on for a very long time and certainly kept

the Germans back where they belonged.

Dr. Orange: The Germans certainly had some superior aircraft

in North Africa and Tunisia, the latest models of the Bf-109

and also the FW-190, but in fact, largely through the excellence of the British repair and maintenance organization, the

Western Desert Air Force kept more of its aircraft flying more

of each day than the Germans did. The man whose name who

has always stood in mention here is Air Vice-Marshal

Grahame Dawson.

Notes

1. Air Publication (AP) 3000, Royal Air Force Air Power Doctrine, 2d ed.

([United Kingdom]: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office [HMSO], 1993), iii. The

quotation (not there identified) is from the fourth of Marshal of the Royal Air

Force Lord Tedder’s four lectures given in February and March 1947 in

Cambridge University, entitled “Air Power in War,” issued by Directorate of

Command and Staff Training, Air Ministry, London, September 1947, 40.

2. Rick Atkinson, Crusade: The Untold Story of the Gulf War (New York:

HarperCollins, 1993), reviewed by Max Hastings in the Weekly Telegraph,

London, 19–25 January 1994, 20.

3. R. J. Overy, The Air War, 1939–1945 (London: Europa Publications,

1980), 149–84.

4. Vincent Orange, “The Fighter Aircraft, 1915 to 1945: A Vital Weapon

in the World Wars” in Historical News, Department of History, University of

Canterbury, no. 60, May 1990, 1–4; Williamson Murray, “The Influence of

Pre-War Anglo-American Doctrine on the Air Campaigns of the Second World

War” in The Conduct of the Air War in the Second World War: An International

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Comparison, ed. Horst Boog (New York/Oxford: Berg, 1992), 237–39; and

Alfred Price, World War II Fighter Conflict (London: Macdonald and Jane’s,

1975), 158.

5. The contribution of transport aircraft, worth a paper on its own, is

admirably outlined in AP 3231, Airborne Forces (London: Air Ministry, Air

History Branch [AHB], 1951).

6. Arthur William Tedder, With Prejudice: The War Memoirs of Marshal of

the Royal Air Force Lord Tedder (London: Cassell, 1966); and Vincent

Orange, Coningham: A Biography of Air Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham KCB,

KBE, DSO, MC, DFC, AFC (Washington, D.C.: Center for Air Force History,

1992).

7. John E. Fagg, “Mission Accomplished” in The Army Air Forces in World

War II, vol. 3, Europe: Argument to V-E Day, January 1944 to May 1945, ed.

Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate (1948–1958; reprint, Washington,

D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1983), 807. See also Daniel R. Mortensen,

A Pattern for Joint Operations: World War II Close Air Support, North Africa

(Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History and US Army Center of

Military History, 1987); Daniel R. Mortensen, “The Legend of Laurence

Kuter: Agent for Airpower Doctrine” and David R. Mets, “A Glider in the

Propwash of the Royal Air Force?: Gen Carl A. Spaatz, the RAF, and the

Foundations of American Tactical Air Doctrine” in Airpower and Ground

Armies: Essays on the Evolution of Anglo-American Air Doctrine, 1940–43, ed.

Daniel R. Mortensen (Maxwell Air Force Base [AFB], Ala.: Air University

Press, 1998); Richard H. Kohn and Joseph P. Harahan, eds., Air Superiority

in World War II and Korea, An Interview with Gen James Ferguson, Gen

Robert M. Lee, Gen William W. Moyer, and Lt Gen Elwood R. Quesada

(Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1983); and Maj John Patrick

Owens, “The Evolution of FM 100-20, Command and Employment of Air

Power, 21 July 1943, The Foundations of Modern Airpower Doctrine” (masters thesis, Fort Leavenworth, Kans., 1989).

8. Geoffrey Perret, Winged Victory: The Army Air Forces in World War II

(New York: Random House, 1993), 193.

9. Procedures clearly described in AP 3235, Air Support (London: Air

Ministry, AHB, 1955).

10. Perret, 352.

11. Richard P. Hallion, Strike from the Sky: The History of Battlefield Air

Attack, 1911–1945 (Shrewsbury: Airlife Publishing, 1989), 52–53, 150;

Mortensen, “Laurence Kuter,” and Mets, “A Glider in the Propwash,” in

Mortensen, Airpower and Ground Armies.

12. Lewis H. Brereton, The Brereton Diaries: The War in the Air in the

Pacific, Middle East, and Europe, 3 October 1941–8 May 1945 (New York: W.

Morrow and Co., 1946), 172.

13. John Keegan in the Weekly Telegraph, London, 16–22 February

1994, vii.

14. Paul Deichman (Littleton B. Atkinson, Noel F. Parrish, and Albert F.

Simpson, eds.), German Air Force Operations in Support of the Army (New

York: Arno Press, 1962), original publication (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air

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University, USAF Historical Division); David John Cawdell Irving, The Rise

and Fall of the Luftwaffe: The Life of Luftwaffe Marshal Erhard Milch (London:

Futura Publications, 1976); and Harold Faber, ed., Luftwaffe: An Analysis by

Former Luftwaffe Generals (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1979).

15. The Dornier Do-19 and Junkers Ju-89 were cancelled in May 1937;

the Heinkel He-177, first flown in November 1939, would have performed

well had its four engines not been coupled in two nacelles and had a divebombing capability not been thought desirable. J. Richard Smith and

Antony L. Kay, German Aircraft of the Second World War (London: Putnam,

1972), 279–89; see also Faber, 160–64.

16. Alan Bullock, Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives (London: Fontana

Press, 1993), 776.

17. Kenneth R. Whiting, “Soviet Air-Ground Co-ordination, 1941–1945,”

in Case Studies in the Development of Close Air Support, ed. Benjamin

Franklin Cooling (Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1990),

115–51; Overy 47–60; Von Hardesty, “The Soviet Air Force: Doctrine,

Organisation and Technology,” in Boog, 208–22; and Hallion, 228–60.

18. Vincent Orange, “Getting Together: Tedder, Coningham, and

Americans in the Desert and Tunisia, 1940–43,” in Mortensen, Airpower and

Ground Armies.

19. Air Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham, “The Development of Tactical Air

Forces,” RUSI (Royal United Service Institute) Journal 91, 1946, 32; see also

Charles Carrington, Soldier at Bomber Command (London: Leo Cooper,

1987). As John Terraine points out in his introduction, Carrington’s

repeated assertion that the principles of close support were devised in

England, not in North Africa, is mistaken. See also David Syrett, “The

Tunisian Campaign, 1942–1943,” in Cooling, 153–92.

20. Coningham, 213; and Michael Carver, Twentieth Century Warriors:

The Development of the Armed Forces of the Major Military Nations in the

Twentieth Century (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987), 313.

21. Orange, Coningham, 79.

22. Air Marshal Sir Peter Drummond, “The Air Campaign in Libya and

Tripolitania,” RUSI Journal 88, 1943, 257.

23. David John Cawdell Irving, The Trail of the Fox: The Life of FieldMarshal Erwin Rommel (London: Futura Publications, 1978), 182–83, 189,

201.

24. Matthew Cooper, The German Air Force, 1933–1945: An Anatomy of

Failure (London: Jane’s, 1981), 209–10; and Orange, Coningham, 97–103.

25. Ronald Lewin, Hitler’s Mistakes (London: Guild Publishing, 1984),

117–19, 144–45; Correlli Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely: The

Royal Navy in the Second World War (New York and London: Norton, 1991),

491–94, 525–26; Maj Gen R. F. K. Goldsmith, “The Development of Air Power

in Joint Operations: Lord Tedder’s Contribution to World War II,” two parts,

Army Quarterly and Defence Journal 94, no. 2, July 1967, 192–201, and vol.

95, no. 1, October 1967, 59–69; and Vincent Orange, A Biography of Air

Chief Marshal Sir Keith Park GCG, KBE, MC, DFC, DCL (London: Methuen,

1984), 172–76.

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26. George F. Howe, Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West

(Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, US Army, 1991), 682–83.

From November 1942, 172,783 men (142,047 of them German) reached

North Africa with 544 tanks, 8,173 vehicles, and 1,093 guns.

27. The Rise and Fall of the German Air Force, 1933–1945 (London: Arms

and Armour Press, 1983), 250–52.

28. Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance (London: The Reprint

Society, 1952), 477.

29. The Allies built 634,142 aircraft between 1939 and 1945; Germany

built 117,881 and Italy 10,000. Overy, 150.

30. Alan F. Wilt, “Allied Co-operation in Sicily and Italy, 1943–1945,” and

Will A. Jacobs, “The Battle for France, 1944,” in Cooling, 193–293.

31. John Terraine, “Theory and Practice of the Air War: The Royal Air

Force,” in Boog, 493.

32. Quoted in Hallion, 227.

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World War II:

The Bombing of Germany

Richard J. Overy

Ever since the American economist John Galbraith as a

matter of “intellectual honesty” revealed in 1945 that the

bombing of Germany had accelerated rather than reduced

production, the Anglo-American bomber offensive has been

regarded as a flawed campaign. For not only was the central

aim of the offensive, the progressive reduction of the economic

capacity and war willingness of the German home front, not

apparently achieved, but the bombing appeared to have had

the opposite effect, actually to stimulate greater production

and firmer morale.1 The conclusion reached at the end of the

war was that bombing cost the Allies more in economic

resources than it did the enemy and that the great manufacturing effort in Britain and the United States would have been

better devoted to tanks, guns, and ships. For it was the

ground troops, according to Galbraith, who won the war. All

bombing did was “to ease somewhat their path.”2

These were provocative claims, but they have solidified since

the war into historical orthodoxy. The bombing of Germany

has generally been regarded as a waste of strategic effort. Yet

much of the argument remains speculative; even where issues

might be quantitatively verifiable, little effort has gone into

their historical verification. Of course, without bombing the

Western Allies would certainly have had more troops and

weapons for a surface assault on Europe (though shortage of

equipment was never a serious constraint even with the bombing), but they would almost certainly have faced a larger and

more heavily armed force in France and far greater tactical airpower. How much stronger it is impossible to say, for considerations like these are the stuff of war gaming, not history.

There is only one sure way to assess the effects of the

Combined Bomber Offensive, and of the great strategic investment in Allied bombing, and that is to reconstruct as fully and

107
carefully as possible the actual impact of bombing on German

strategy, economic power, and morale.

Much of the groundwork for such an assessment was laid

by the United States Strategic Bombing Survey, of which

Galbraith was a senior member. But the survey has a number

of drawbacks as a historical source. It was put together in

great haste in the few weeks after victory, with many of its general conclusions based on interviews and statements from

senior German officials. It was in no sense a historical record,

nor was it intended to be. Its brief was to examine the damage

to German industry, not to make wider judgments about

German strategy or military effort. It was staffed by academic

experts many of whom were skeptical of what airmen claimed

for bombing and inclined by training and outlook to view the

offensive critically.3

The survey took a narrowly economic view of the purposes

and effects of bombing, and much of the critical postwar literature on bombing has followed suit. This has tended to distort

assessment of the offensive in several ways. It ignores the other

strategic considerations which drew the Western Allies to select

bombing as a major element of Allied war making. Bombing

was regarded, rightly or wrongly, as one of the few ways that

first Britain, then her American ally, could get at Germany,

while they cleared the seas of submarines, stabilized the

Mediterranean theater, and built up the large, fully trained

forces necessary to breach the Atlantic Wall. Bombing signalled

Allied commitment to the fight with Germany. It also fitted with

other Western preferences. The Allies expected that bombing

would produce lower manpower losses than ground war. No

doubt memories of the Somme played a part in this, as Lord

Cherwell once remarked to Gen George C. Marshall, but the fact

remains that reducing overall combat losses was an important

consideration in preferring airpower to land power. The loss

rates for both the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the United States

Army Air Forces (USAAF) were high on bombing missions, but

the absolute totals of approximately 50,000 per force over three

or four years were tiny compared with the millions lost on the

eastern front, or even with the 200,000 Western casualties suffered between June and August 1944 in the invasion of France.4

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Finally, bombing was seen as a “Second Front,” designed to

absorb German manpower and weapons in order to ease conditions for the Red Army. Bombing forced dispersal on

German forces that had proved so effective between 1939 and

1941 only when they were able to achieve unrestricted concentration of effort. After the combined offensive was sanctioned at the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, the

assault on German airpower became an important intermediate priority before bombing could come fully into its own. The

bombing campaign was in this sense a military conflict, not

just an instrument of economic warfare. With the introduction

of long-range strategic fighters in 1944, the bombing offensive

became the means to blunt and then defeat German airpower,

the most formidable element in German military success since

1939.5 The military confrontation between Allied offensive airpower and German active and passive air defenses absorbed

substantial resources on both sides. Albert Speer, the German

minister of armaments during the period of the bombing offensive, doubted the effectiveness of many of the economic

attacks, but he regarded the military conflict as “the greatest

lost battle on the German side.”6

Even on the narrower economic issues, the survey’s

assumptions should be cautiously approached. It is true that

German war production expanded continuously during the

period of bombing until the autumn of 1944. But this was not

due, as the survey insisted, to a great deal of productive slack

in the German civilian economy which was gradually absorbed

into weapons production after 1942. The expansion was

largely achieved by the rationalization of the armaments economy from 1941 onwards and a program of administrative centralization. The aggregate resources devoted to war production—labor, raw materials, factory space—were not much

greater in 1944 than in 1941 (in some cases it was less), but

the resources were used more efficiently. Labor engaged in

war production increased by 149 percent between 1939 and

1941, but by only a further 11 percent between 1941 and

1944.7 Allied intelligence assumptions that the German economy was already heavily committed to the war effort in 1941

were correct; what was underestimated was the extent to

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which increased efficiency and greater coordination and planning could transform German war industry, even in the face

of heavy bombing.

The survey was chiefly concerned with assessing the effects

of bombing on the industrial system. This was measured by

looking at month-by-month production planning and gauging

the monthly shortfall. The survey’s Overall Report estimated

that bombing reduced gross industrial production by 9 percent in 1943 and by 17 percent in 1944.8 These were significant figures in their own right in an industrial economy the

size of Germany’s, the equivalent of a particularly acute downturn in the business cycle.9 But the aggregate figures obscure

the real impact of bombing, for there were obvious differences

in the effect of bombing on the industries chosen as targets,

and between war industry and the rest of the civilian industrial structure. Nor did the survey take account in these calculations of the redistribution of resources and productive

capacity within the war economy from the output of battlefront weapons to equipment for air defense. The emphasis on

industrial performance also disguised other economic costs:

the distortion of the labor market, the demands of repair,

rehabilitation, and evacuation, or the opportunity costs of dispersal and decentralization of production. The estimates of

production loss were based on plans which already reflected

these other constraints. In an economy without bombing,

none of these other constraints would have existed, and the

production threshold could have been pushed well beyond the

plans that were actually drawn up. Bombing did not stop production from expanding, but it placed important limits on how

far that expansion could go. Without bombing, German managers and officials would have worked without the inhibiting

effects of high levels of absenteeism and slack working, or the

redistribution or relocation of much of the workforce, or the

constant and debilitating fracturing of the delicate network of

distribution and fabrication produced by rationalization. The

aggregate effect of bombing on German economic performance, or on that of Italy and Japan, was necessarily greater

than the rough-and-ready estimates of overall percentage loss

expressed by the survey.

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The question of what effect bombing had on Germany’s war

effort has no simple statistical answer. The effect can be broken down into a number of distinct elements, though they are

not necessarily mutually exclusive. There were in the first place

what might be regarded as intended effects. These comprise the

direct physical damage to German war industry, the indirect

factors reducing economic capability, and the effects on labor

morale and utilization. Second, there were diversionary effects

on German strategy and military effort. These included the dislocation of Germany’s air effort, the allocation of manpower

and weapons to air defense, and the distorting effects on

Germany’s war effort of the search for weapons of revenge.

Third, there were unintended or subsidiary effects which also

undermined the production effort by taking resources away

from the output of battlefield weapons and by injuring the

administrative apparatus set up by Speer in 1942 to run the

war economy. Most disruptive were the program of underground relocation, pursued at great expense in 1944, and the

program of research and production for the V-weapons. Both

invited the growing encroachment of the Schutzstaffel (SS) at

the expense of the circle of industrial and engineering experts

recruited by Speer in 1942. This political shift was a direct

result of the bombing, which encouraged the search for radical

economic solutions and increased the need to coerce the home

population and the foreign workforce. Directly or indirectly,

bombing had wide-ranging and diverse effects on the German

war effort which went well beyond the material damage to factories and infrastructure. Indeed, by 1944 bombing was the

central issue on the German home front.10

Intended Effects

In assessing the intended effects of the bombing offensive it

is necessary to be clear from the outset about what those intentions were. There were senior airmen in Britain and the United

States who subscribed to the view that bombing, given its head,

could end the war on its own. It was to counter this exaggerated view of airpower that Galbraith and his team emphasized

its limitations. But the directive agreed at Casablanca was

more modest. The combined offensive was one of a number of

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strategic initiatives, not a war-winner on its own. The bomber

forces were directed to undertake “the progressive destruction

and dislocation of the German military, industrial and economic system and the undermining of the morale of the

German people.” To achieve this objective a number of specific

targets were chosen—the aircraft industry, the submarine

industry, oil, ball bearings, and military vehicles—to which

transportation was later added in 1944. The RAF attacked the

cities where these industries and facilities were located; the

USAAF attacked the industrial targets directly with as much

precision as was then technically feasible, which was not a

great deal.11

The cumulative effect of these attacks in 1943 was relatively

small, though it was higher in the cities and industries actually bombed. During 1944 and the first half of 1945, bombing

played a major part in reducing production in the central cluster of industries and industrial regions chosen for attack. The

loss of production in the armaments sector was calculated by

the British Bombing Survey Unit at 14 percent in 1944 and 48

percent in 1945, though the latter figure also reflected circumstances other than bombing. However, the effects on the

specific industries within the war economy subject to attack

were considerably more substantial. The British survey noted

that the loss in aircraft production in 1944 was one-fifth and

in 1945 59 percent; tank production was down by 16.5 percent on plan in 1944 and 42 percent in 1945.12 Figures produced by the Speer ministry in January 1945 showed an even

higher shortfall in 1944: a loss of 35 percent in armored vehicles, 31 percent in aircraft of all types, and 42 percent in the

output of military trucks.13 On the basis of these estimates,

Germany could have had between 7,800 and 17,000 more aircraft in 1944. Additional numbers would have reduced the

high levels of attrition, allowed a better rate of survival for

German aircrew, and more protection for the oil production on

which the Luftwaffe depended. These estimates relate, however, only to the gulf between plan and fulfillment. Speer calculated that the shortfall between potential capacity and actual

production was much higher, in the case of fighter aircraft as

much as 50 percent. The plans for aircraft production were

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scaled down during 1944 to match the economic reality imposed

by bombing. The effect of bombing on these key sectors—

tanks, aircraft, and trucks—was markedly higher than the

effect on armament production as a whole, and it was the failure to supply more of this equipment that contributed to the

decline in German fighting capability in 1944 and the progressive “demodernization” of its forces.

The physical destruction of selected raw material industries

also produced rates of loss well above the aggregate for

German industry as a whole. The oil industry was hit heavily

in 1944, forcing the use of scarce oil stocks and reducing the

fighting power of all German forces. From September 1944 the

Luftwaffe received only 30,000 tons of fuel a month instead of

the 160,000 to 180,000 tons it needed, so that the large

increases in fighter aircraft produced could not be used effectively nor pilots properly trained.14 Oil production declined

from the early spring of 1944, to reach by September 27 percent of the level in March. Aviation fuel was reduced to 5 percent of its spring level (see table 1).15 Attacks against the basic

chemical industry produced similar results in 1944, severely

reducing explosives production and forcing the use of accumulated stocks. The production of nitrogen for explosives was

reduced by three-quarters during 1944, of methanol by fourfifths, soda by 60 percent, chlorine by 40 percent, sulfuric acid

by 55 percent, and so on.16 Unlike the armaments industry

where production increased for most of 1944, though well

below plan, the losses in oil and chemicals represented an

absolute decline in output which proved irreversible. The

shortfall from planned production was even higher. Output of

nitrogen was scheduled to reach 87,000 tons in December

1944; actual output was 19,000 tons. The effect of the loss of

chemical production was a serious decline in explosives, from

a peak of 51,000 tons in June 1944 to 30,000 tons in

December, a shortfall of 42 percent.17 Attacks against the synthetic rubber industry were carried out simultaneously.

Production here fell from 12,000 tons in March, the wartime

peak, to 2,000 tons in November. The shortfall between

planned and actual output was 11 percent in March but 88

percent in November.18

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The success against oil and chemicals reflected the capitalintensive nature of the industry and the large body of detailed

target intelligence on both sectors collected since the beginning of the war, when oil had been regarded as the critical

German bottleneck. These were industries difficult to relocate

quickly and highly susceptible to bomb damage. Their progressive destruction compelled German manufacturers to use

up stocks. By the last nine months of war, much of the new

output was based on what had been saved from earlier production rather than on new supplies. The long-term provision

of basic materials and oil for the war economy and the armed

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Table 1

The Loss in Oil Production, 1944 (thousands of tons)

Synthetic Fuel Total Home Aviation Fuel

Production*

Jan 336 673 159.5

Feb 306 638 163.7

Mar 341 733 180.4

Apr 348 658 175.4

May 285 606 156.1

Jun 145 427 53.8

Jul 86 344 34.7

Aug 47 318 17.1

Sep 26 265 10.0

Oct 38 279 21.0

Nov 78 290 39.0

Dec 56 272 24.5

*Total Home Production includes domestically produced natural oil and other low-grade synthetics.

Source: Charles K. Webster and Noble Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany,

1939–1945, vol. 4, Annexes and Appendices (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office [HMSO], 1961),

appendix 37, 516.
forces was eroded during the course of 1944 to a point where

the cycle of decline could not easily be reversed.

Not all of this decline was due to the direct attack on industrial targets. At least some of the production loss from 1943

onwards was the result of more indirect pressures exerted by

bomb attack. In the first place, the sophisticated central system for the control of flows of raw materials and components

established in 1942 was particularly vulnerable to arbitrary

interruption and dislocation. To increase production Speer

discouraged the holding of large stocks of parts and materials

which had been common practice in the early years of the war.

Under the rationalization drive arms production was concentrated as far as possible in larger, more technically efficient

plants, which were nourished by a flow of components and subassemblies from smaller subcontractors. Such a system placed

a premium on the smooth flow of supplies feeding into the

final assembly plants.19 It was designed to make possible mass

production and long production runs, with special-purpose

machinery and a higher ratio of less skilled workers.

Bombing distorted this production system in a number of

ways. It interrupted the structure of distribution of both materials and components through damage to rail links, roads, and

waterways. City attacks destroyed small businesses or storehouses where stocks of components awaited delivery. The supply of energy—gas and electricity—was routinely cut. None of

these interruptions on their own held up production for very

long, but their effect was cumulative. German managers and

officials were forced to devote organizational effort and

resources to repair the damage. Labor had to be detailed to

antiaircraft precautions, particularly the building of dummy

targets and the camouflaging of operational plant.20 Some effort

was made by the bombing survey to calculate the quantitative

impact of the indirect attacks. In Berlin, where 45 percent of all

industrial and commercial buildings were destroyed and 30

percent damaged, it was found that in 1942, 4,000 local workers were engaged in repair work on average over the year. In

1943 the figure was 10,000, in 1944 9,000, or the equivalent of

2.7 million working days. Attacks on gas supplies in January

1944 reduced Berlin’s gas by half for two weeks, but constant

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fracture in the pipe work produced a long attrition of gas

pumped into the capital throughout 1943 and 1944. Stocks in

gasometers were reduced from 2.25 million cubic meters in

early 1943 to 900,000 by December of that year and 480,000

by March 1944. Random destruction of electrical power supply

had the same effect: in 1943 Berlin received 2,297 million kilowatt-hours, in 1944 only 1,946 million.21 The burden on industry was eased where possible by imposing cuts in energy use by

ordinary civilians and by the establishment of mobile emergency repair teams, but even the limited statistical evidence

available suggests a margin of resource loss that rose steadily

over the war and left many businesses in the unhappy position

of having to run simply to keep still.

The most conspicuous indirect effect was the forced decentralization and dispersal of production. The German authorities from 1942 insisted on establishing new production facilities in areas more remote from the air threat in southern

Germany, Austria, and occupied central Europe. While dispersal did allow production of key armaments to continue, it

proved very disruptive in the short term and brought with it a

whole host of new problems.22 Firms found that the premises

to which they were dispersed lacked equipment or amenities;

local support services were often deficient. In one case, the

transfer of Daimler-Benz aero-engine production to a new

purpose-built plant in Austria, shortages of construction

materials and labor held up completion of the project for

months, while production at the main plant was run down.

When Daimler-Benz finally made the transfer, American

bombers damaged the works so severely three weeks later that

the new production had to be dispersed again into the surrounding region.23 The program of decentralization also ran

counter to the rationalization drive. The move to new production sites reduced the opportunities for mass production with

less skilled labor. Instead a higher number of skilled workers,

using general-purpose machine tools and increased handwork, were once again necessary. In many cases the skilled

labor could not be found, and the quality of production

declined, together with prospects for effective inspection. Even

where the main assembly plant was retained, much of the

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subassembly work was dispersed to more secure sites. The

effect was to lengthen the distance considerably between the

central plant and its main subsidiaries. The average distance

of the main dispersal sites from the Junkers central aircraft

assembly at Dessau was 92 kilometers; from Junkers at

Magdeburg the distance was 160 kilometers.24

Whatever advantage dispersal brought in protecting production was compromised as the war went on by the problems

of communication. Once the two Allied air forces agreed to

coordinate the attack on transport in the autumn of 1944, the

prospects for maintaining a decentralized system of production declined sharply. Almost all the senior German officials

interrogated at the end of the war agreed that the systematic

disruption of traffic by bombing was the critical factor in the

collapse of the industrial economy from September 1944. The

number of freight-car placings by the German railways

declined by just over one-third between April 1943 and April

1944; by the end of 1944 total placings were down twothirds.25 Raw materials and finished armaments piled up at

the railheads. Unable to move the coal and steel from the

Ruhr, production progressively declined. Output of steel fell by

three-quarters at the Vereinigte Stahlwerke during 1944, while

stocks of coke and iron ore were rapidly run down. The collapse of the rail network split Germany into smaller economic

regions which were unable to support armaments production

once remaining inventories were used up. From January 1945

bombing made it impossible to support a serious economic

war effort. Its effects were, according to one senior German

official, “catastrophic.”26

The effects on German morale were equally debilitating.

Although bombing did not produce a popular uprising against

the German government, nor the complete collapse of warwillingness, all the evidence suggests that the experience of

bombing was uniquely demoralizing. Of course only a fraction

of the population, concentrated in the major industrial regions, was subjected to the regular threat of bombing, but it was

a fraction vital to the war effort. The progressive destruction of

the urban environment and the major consumer services, far

from stiffening resolve and encouraging greater productive

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efforts, made the workforce listless, nervous, and prone to illness and absenteeism. The head of the Labor Section in the

German Armaments Ministry described the deteriorating

social conditions to Allied interrogators: “The burdens were:

accommodation in mass and emergency quarters, difficulties

of going to and from work, loss of personnel and personal

property on account of bombing, disturbed rest at night on

account of air-raids, difficulties of supply, change of place

of work when the firms were evacuated, working in factories

without a roof or working underground.”27 When German civilians returned American questionnaires on wartime morale,

91 percent said that bombing was the hardest thing for them

to bear.28

The social dislocation and psychological crisis induced by

bombing were reflected in problems of work discipline. In 1944

the average level of absenteeism was 23.5 days, or almost four

full working weeks. At the Ford works in Essen the average

rate of absence throughout 1944 was 25 percent among the

native German workforce (though only 4 percent among foreign workers who could more easily be coerced). Even in areas

more remote from bombing, the fear of attack could still be

effective. At the BMW works in Munich, absenteeism averaged

10 percent in 1943, but reached a peak of 19 percent by

August 1944.29 Populations in the big cities beneath the

bomber flight paths were forced to spend long hours in shelters as the aircraft passed overhead and back again. In a

recent study of the air defense of Mainz, it has been shown

that between January and November 1944 a state of alarm

existed for a total of 540 hours, reaching a peak of 117 in

October.30 Much of the population reacted by evacuating to

safer areas. Estimates of the numbers evacuated vary between

eight million and four million. The population of Berlin

declined from four million in January 1943 to 2.7 million in

May 1944.31 The effect of large-scale evacuation was to create

social strains in the main reception areas, in the countryside

or the small towns of the south, and to increase the mobility

and turnover rates of the industrial workforce. This is part of

the explanation for the great increase in the employment of

forced foreign labor and prisoners of war from 1943; forced

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labor was easier to discipline and was decidedly less mobile,

even if its average productive performance was below that of

the native German workforce. But with less effective provision

for air-raid precautions, the forced laborers also experienced

higher rates of casualty from bomb attack.

There can be little doubt that without bombing the German

workforce would have been much more productive, and the

German economy and welfare services would have been

relieved of the obligation to rehouse bomb victims, evacuate a

large fraction of the population, and cope with the costs of

medical care and rehabilitation. The effects of widespread fear,

apathy, and despondency on a population from whom the

regime expected great sacrifices in living standards and political freedoms can hardly be exaggerated. Bombing persuaded

a great many Germans that the war was lost, but it scarcely

produced the political will or physical desperation necessary

to confront and overthrow the Nazi state. People continued to

work, but they did so less frequently, less attentively, and less

willingly than hitherto.

Diversionary Effects

The impression is often given that the bombing offensive

was a battle between aircraft and enemy civilians when in

reality it was a campaign fought against the antiaircraft

defenses of the enemy, guns and planes. The ultimate objectives were German economic power and domestic morale, but

these were increasingly shielded as the war went on by a substantial military shell. The consequences of this military confrontation for the German war effort were disastrous, for the

bombing not only diverted very large resources away from the

main battlefronts where it was needed, but it created the circumstances for the defeat of German airpower in 1944 as the

Allies sought for ways to break through the Third Reich’s

defenses. The bombing distorted German strategy in such a

way that German military capability was weakened, not only

in defense of the German economy but on the main fronts in

eastern and western Europe.

From the early years of war the German military leadership

saw little need for extensive aerial defenses. Great reliance was

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placed on antiaircraft fire and effective observation. But by

1942 the scale of attack forced the gradual establishment of

fighter and night-fighter forces in the Reich and the creation

of an elaborate network of static defenses—antiaircraft guns,

radar stations, and searchlights. By 1943 the balance between

frontline and Reich air forces changed sharply. On 1 January

1943 there were 59 percent of German single- and twin-engine

fighters in the west facing the bombers, and 25 percent were

on the eastern front. By 1 January 1944 there were 68 percent

in the west, 17 percent in the east. By October 1944, 81 percent of an enlarged fighter force faced the combined offensive.32 Many of these fighters were effectively immobilized for

long periods waiting for the bomber streams and could not

easily be redeployed to the fighting fronts.

The emphasis on fighter defense also produced a forced

restructuring of German airpower. Up to the beginning of 1943,

the bomber force and fighter force were of roughly equal size,

and bomber production was higher. In 1942 fighter production

was just over three-quarters the level of bomber output. But in

1943 one-third more fighters were produced than bombers,

and in 1944 bombers made up just 22 percent of the number

of fighters (see table 2).33 By the summer of 1944 the German

air force had on hand over 2,200 fighter aircraft but only 1,000

bombers, of which almost one-half were out of service. The

bomber commanders urged Goering to restore a balanced force

in 1944, but the desperate need to protect the rest of German

war production against bomb attack gave fighters an irresistible priority.34 The effect was to reduce the bomber component on all fronts, in the Soviet Union, in Italy, and in France,

at a time when the German armies needed tactical bombing

more than ever to slow up the movement of enemy reserves and

attack enemy air installations. By the summer of 1944 the

German air force faced an unbridgeable disparity of force. The

Allies mustered 12,000 aircraft for the invasion of France and

were faced by 170 serviceable German fighters and bombers.

By the end of 1944 Soviet aircraft outnumbered German by 10

to one. Levels of force attrition were as a result overwhelming.

The diversion of resources was felt not only in aircraft.

During 1943, in anticipation of an escalation in the bombing,

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Table 2

Production, Strength, and Serviceability of the

German Bomber and Fighter Forces, 1943–44

A: Production

1943 Fighters Bombers 1944 Fighters Bombers

Jan 512 674 Jan 1,555 522

Feb 858 781 Feb 1,104 567

Mar 962 757 Mar 1,638 605

Apr 936 735 Apr 2,021 680

May 1,013 718 May 2,212 648

Jun 1,134 710 Jun 2,449 703

Jul 1,263 743 Jul 2,934 767

Aug 1,135 710 Aug 3,020 548

Sep 1,072 678 Sep 3,375 428

Oct 1,181 738 Oct 2,973 326

Nov 985 702 Nov 2,995 412

Dec 687 643 Dec 2,630 262

B: Strength (Serviceability

Rate in brackets)

1943 Single-engine Night Fighters Bombers

Fighters

Mar 1,535 (66%) 493 (73%) 1,522 (55%)

Jun 1,849 (74%) 554 (67%) 1,663 (64%)

Sep 1,646 (66%) 574 (60%) 1,080 (59%)

Dec 1,561 (70%) 611 (66%) 1,604 (67%)

1944

Mar 1,696 (70%) 565 (64%) 1,331 (62%)

Jun 1,523 (59%) 778 (68%) 1,089 (64%)

Sep 1,984 (71%) 1,018 (84%) 929 (69%)

Dec 2,260 (67%) 1,256 (73%) 528 (68%)

Source: Charles K.Webster and Noble Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany, 1939–1945,

vol. 4, Annexes and Appendices (London: HMSO, 1961), appendices 22 and 27, 494–95 and 501–2.
Germany’s static defenses were much enlarged. Three-quarters

of all heavy antiaircraft guns were positioned in the Reich,

manned by 900,000 antiaircraft personnel. The total number of

guns reached a peak of 14,489 heavy and 41,937 light antiaircraft artillery, and production ran at well over 4,000 a month.

Speer later calculated that this represented about one-third of

all gun production, while the antiaircraft effort absorbed 20

percent of all ammunition in 1944, one-half the production of

the electro-technical industry, and one-third of optical equipment.35 This represented a formidable diversion of manpower,

fighting equipment, and industrial resources. There were as

many guns defending Germany as there were on the entire

eastern front in the summer of 1943. The total personnel

engaged in antiaircraft work, in ancillary air defense services,

and in the repair teams and the reconstruction of damaged

buildings and communications has never been fully calculated,

but was almost certainly in excess of two million men.36

Of course none of this expenditure of effort would have mattered if the bombing offensive had been defeated, and indeed in

the winter of 1943–44 and the early spring, both the RAF and

the USAAF faced loss rates so high that regular attacks were

temporarily suspended. The critical factor was the introduction

of the strategic fighter, principally the P-51 Mustang, which,

with enhanced fuel capacity, could fly with the bomber streams

deep into Germany and engage the defense forces directly.

These attacks permitted a high level of attrition against fighters whose principal task was to attack bombers rather than

engage in fighter-to-fighter combat. From the early spring the

Allied air forces attacked aircraft production on the ground and

fought German fighters in the skies at the same time. Loss

rates were exceptionally high. As Allied air superiority came to

bear, it proved possible to attack airfields and air depots, where

thousands of the new fighter force were destroyed in ground

attacks before they had reached the squadrons or even left the

factory.37 Although some 43,000 aircraft were allocated to the

German air force in 1944 (33,864 newly produced, 9,448

repaired), most were destroyed or damaged within days of

release. By 1 July 1944 there were 306 operationally ready

fighter aircraft in the Reich. With the effective defeat of German

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airpower, it became possible to inflict much heavier levels of

damage on German industry and communications.38

The military conflict between Allied bombers and fighters and

German air defense forced a critical division on German

resources. There were never enough German aircraft to perform

both the attack and defense functions effectively. By the time

German fighter production achieved the high levels of output

necessary in 1944, the bombing offensive was sufficiently

advanced both to cripple aircraft output and to attack the force

in being with devastating effect. The diversion of effort starved

the German armies of air protection, of adequate radio equipment and very large numbers of guns, and a further two or three

million men and women who might otherwise have been engaged

in armaments work or fighting at the front line. Added to the

physical destruction of plant and the dislocation of the wider economic fabric, the diversion of resources to fighting the bombing

offensive undermined German military strategy and weakened

the tactical capability of Germany’s formidable ground army.

Subsidiary Effects

The progressive reduction in German frontline fighting

power, and the growing destruction and diversion of resources

inside Germany, prompted responses from the German

authorities that the Allies could not have predicted. Though

unintended in effect, the wider initiatives not only failed to

reduce the impact of bombing but contributed in significant

ways to further undermining the German arms economy. The

onset of heavier bombing in the spring of 1943 prompted

Hitler to counter the threat with a two-fold strategy. First, the

movement of all essential military production into underground factories, where it would be safe from the bombs; and,

second, to adopt a more offensive posture by retaliating

against England with bombers and the new weapons of

revenge, rockets and flying bombs, in the hope of deterring the

Allies from further attacks.

The program of underground construction was a radical solution. It made sense only if a large part of essential production

could be transferred, but the costs in manpower and resources

in constructing and equipping new plant on this scale carried

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the risk that they would undermine the very economic fabric the

program was designed to protect. Not until the autumn of 1943

did Hitler finally sanction the underground dispersal. Speer did

what he could to slow the program down for fear that it would

disrupt the system of centralized production set up since 1942.

But in the spring of 1944, Hitler insisted on pushing it through

so that aircraft, rocket, and oil production in particular could be

safeguarded against heavier air attacks.39

The whole construction program was, as Speer feared,

planned on the largest scale. By December 1944 the program

absorbed almost half the labor force engaged in industrial construction, over 200,000 workers, and took 75 percent of the

steel allocated to construction. The total planned floor space of

the underground plants was 93 million square feet. By

November work was under way on 71 million, and 13 million

were already completed. The distribution of the program

between different industrial sectors is set out in table 3.40

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Table 3

Germany’s Underground Factory Program

(square feet of floor space)

Planned In Progress Completed

Aircraft 48,150,900 21,933,971 8,371,320

Industry

Tanks 2,109,000 1,818,400 290,500

Vehicles 2,808,360 2,711,500 96,800

V-Weapons 1,538,700 387,400 1,151,300

Ships 1,775,400 1,248,200 527,200

Weapons 2,173,500 2,119,720 53,800

Machine Tools 7,101,600 6,079,400 1,022,200

Other Supplies 16,839,400 10,512,500 None

SS Projects 11,298,000 8,651,100 1,883,000

Grand Total 93,794,900 71,318,000 13,396,200

Source: Public Record Office (PRO), Kew, London, AIR 10/3873, British Bombing Survey Unit, “German

Experience in the Underground Transfer of War Industries,” n. d., 12. The table is taken from a Rustungsamt

report for the Armaments Ministry, 11 November 1944.
Some of the underground plant came into operation during

1944 and early 1945, though conditions were generally poor,

but most of the projects had little hope of completion because

of the scarcity of labor and materials and the gradual running

down of the transport network. Much of the building and

operation of the plants were undertaken by foreign labor and

prisoners who were forced to work in unsanitary, poorly ventilated, and ill-lit facilities, where labor productivity was

inevitably much reduced. The competition for scarce resources

produced by the underground program, and the increasingly

arrogant and wayward behavior of SS officials as they tried to

compel firms to move underground, disrupted what efforts

were still being made to maintain production through dispersal on the surface. Both the scale and disruptiveness of the

program vitiated what gains might have been made by a more

modest and coordinated effort or by more effective programs of

surface repair. But, instead, almost one-half the construction

workforce found itself, in the words of the British Bombing

Survey Unit, “burrowing away from reality.”41

Nor was the offensive effort to halt the bombing any more

successful. The renewed bombing of England begun in the

winter of 1943, the so-called Baby Blitz (Operation Steinbock),

lacked the necessary equipment and manpower, and dropped

only 1 percent of the tonnage dropped on Germany in 1943.

Hitler placed his faith instead in new weapons developed to

take the air war to British cities, the “weapons of revenge”

(vergeltungswaffen). There were two weapons involved, the

small flying bomb (V-1) and the much larger A-4 rocket (V-2).

The weapons, first launched successfully in October 1942,

carried only one ton of explosive and could not be targeted

with any accuracy. The first flying bombs were launched in

the middle of June 1944, and the first rockets reached

England in September. Their firepower was extraordinarily

small in relation to the costs of producing and launching

them. Only 14,000 tons (9,521 flying bombs, 5,000 rockets)

were fired, and most of these either failed or missed London

altogether. Total tonnage dropped on Britain in 1944 was a

mere 0.77 percent of the quantity dropped by the Allies on

Europe.42 The object of the V-weapons campaign was to cause

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sufficient levels of civilian casualty to persuade the Allies to

halt the bombing of German cities. The quantity of missiles

dispatched was far too small to produce this effect, and the

equipment was in its infancy, technically unreliable and relatively easy to destroy in the air. The V-weapons failed entirely

to halt the conduct of the Allied air war.

Instead the effort to research, develop, and manufacture the

V-weapons had serious repercussions for the German scientific and industrial system. Research on the German antiaircraft rocket (Wasserfall), which might well have produced

more significant strategic results, was held up so that technicians could concentrate on the A-4 rocket. The production

plans were to build 60,000 V-1s a year and 36,000 V-2s. In

practice, output of V-ls reached 30,000 altogether and of V-2s,

6,000. Even these more modest sums made very large demands on German materials and manpower, equivalent,

according to the bombing survey, of 24,000 fighter aircraft.

The explosives allocated to the program equalled one-half of all

military consumption in July to September 1944.43 And all this

for a campaign that delivered no more than the tonnage from

a single large-scale Allied raid. The only strategic gain was the

diversion during 1944 of about 13 percent of Allied bombing

capacity directed against the V-weapon sites which might otherwise have been used against German industry.44

The V-weapons program, like the underground dispersal,

was the product of an understandable desire on Hitler’s part

to find an antidote to bombing before it eroded war capability

fatally. Yet the means chosen were improvised and irrational,

serving only to distort still further the structure of the war

economy and to reduce the prospect of producing large numbers of conventional aircraft which could have inflicted a more

effective rate of loss on Allied airpower. There certainly were

German leaders—Albert Speer, Erhard Milch at the Air

Ministry—who argued the case for concentration on fighter

output. But their attempts to resist Hitler’s priorities were

treated as political disobedience, while those who flattered his

search for wonder-weapons and emergency programs

improved their political stock. In the summer and autumn of

1944, the bombing served to undermine the existing wartime

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apparatus of control and evaluation. It was replaced by a system of commissars and plenipotentiaries, drawn predominantly from radical party circles more willing to follow Hitler’s

flights of fancy and to use coercion to achieve them.45

In the final months of the war, bombing contributed a great

deal towards the creation of a more ideologically charged technological and economic system, run by extremists anxious to

extract the final ounce of sacrifice from an exhausted and

dispirited population. Both employers and workers found

themselves the victims of accusations of defeatism and slack

working, and of arbitrary punishment. To keep the underground and emergency factories going the SS mobilized the

concentration camp population in a final drive for production,

brutally compelled. The system of economic control broke

down in confusion, which compounded the problems already

experienced by industry as a result of bomb attack and the

transport crisis. Hitler and the party radicals grasped at any

straw. In September 1944 aircraft designers were ordered to

produce a “people’s fighter” made of cheap substitute materials and wood, which could be used for suicide attacks on

Allied bombers. They were to be piloted by boys from the Hitler

Youth imbued with the National Socialist “spirit,” German

kamikaze. Within 69 days of the order, designers at Heinkel

finished the first prototype of the chosen model, the He-162.

Hitler ordered one thousand a month. The project achieved

nothing, except to divert more resources away from the manufacture of standard fighter aircraft.46 In this case, too, the

production was driven by the SS, under the leadership of Kurt

May, who commandeered the factory capacity and labor to fuel

the new projects.

All the expedients pursued by Hitler from 1943 to avert the

bombing failed in their purpose; all of them made heavy claims

on German industrial and labor resources at the expense of

the system of concentrated, rational production set up in

1942. In the desperate search for relief from air attack, the

domestic political and administrative structure was subject to

a progressive radicalization, as experts and officials were displaced by party fanatics. The effect was to reduce the

prospects for the serious evaluation of ends and means, and

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to politicize production in ways that made an effective technical and tactical response to bombing less likely. By the spring

of 1945 the effort was no longer possible. “The air war,” complained Goebbels in his diary on 1 March, “has now turned

into a crazy orgy. We are totally defenseless against it. The

Reich will gradually be turned into a complete desert.”47

Conclusions

Was strategic bombing a wasted effort? The balance of evidence suggests that it was not. Of course the bombing offensive had limitations. Bombing accuracy was poor, even for the

American forces practicing “precision” bombing. The destruction of German oil production was achieved with only 2.2 percent of bombs dropping within the productive area and 84 percent of bombs falling outside the target altogether.48 Nor was

all Allied bombing equally effective. The impact changed over

time; it was influenced by the nature of the target and by differences in night and daytime bombing. Bombing was most

effective in the last 18 months of the war, least effective in its

first two years. It is often argued that the wrong target systems

were chosen or that targets were not hit regularly or accurately enough. This may well be so, though beyond historical

proof. The test for judging bombing is the effect it actually had,

rather than the effect it might have had with different priorities and different tactics.

On this criterion the impact of bombing was wide-ranging and

ultimately devastating for the German war effort. The initial

attacks on industrial cities and industrial target systems produced a chain reaction that affected the military structure,

social life, and the political system. Its effects were cumulative,

prompting a variety of strategic and organizational responses as

the ramifications of bomb attack became clearer. Some of those

responses produced positive results. The system of formal dispersal and the concentration and simplification of production

that accompanied it allowed more weapons to be produced by

1944 than would otherwise have been the case. Bombing compelled the German authorities to improvise and maneuver, to

anticipate the bombing rather than merely react to it.

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Yet, after all allowance is made for the limitations of Allied

bombing and the countermeasures bombing provoked, the

catalogue of debilitating effects is a long and complex one.

Bombing physically destroyed or limited the productive capacity of a key cluster of major armaments industries. The indirect effects of attacks on oil, raw materials, and transport, and

the demoralizing impact of bombing on the workforce, placed

a clear ceiling on German war production in 1944 and undermined it fatally in 1945. The diversion of resources to halt the

bombing removed three-quarters of the fighter force, 56,000

guns, and a million men and women. The battle for air superiority broke the back of German airpower in the spring and

summer of 1944 over the Reich. Damage to the urban environment, the decline of amenity, and the programs of evacuation and rehabilitation were major social and economic disasters. Six million households were destroyed or badly damaged;

4.8 million people were rehoused.49 To try to save the economic

fabric and to avert social collapse, the regime resorted to ever

more desperate remedies, which served only to squander additional resources for little strategic gain, while the increased

coercion that accompanied it alienated and terrorized wide

sections of the population. Taken together the effects of bombing reduced potential German war production by perhaps as

much as a half in 1944–45. It inflicted terminal decline on

German forces by interrupting supplies and destroying

German airpower. And bombing hastened the demoralization

and social impoverishment of Germany’s urban population.

There is a striking contrast here with the role of bombing in

the Korean War and in Vietnam, where the effect of very largescale campaigns was small in relation to the effort expended.

The German case was very different. Germany was a predominantly urban and industrial society. Its industries and cities

were conspicuous targets, and much of the productive system

was concentrated and highly visible. The economic system was

sophisticated, reliant on structures of production and distribution that were closely integrated and interdependent. The

urban workforce had, by the standards of east Asian societies,

high levels of amenity and socioeconomic expectations, and

found it difficult to adjust to exceptional rates of casualty and

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physical damage. Much of this was anticipated by Allied air

forces when they began to think about the probable effects of

bomb attack in the 1930s, and it colored the development of

the force structure and the technology. By 1945 the effect of

Allied airpower against a modern industrial state with a highly

trained workforce and a sophisticated technological and scientific establishment was qualitatively distinct from the effects

of the same technology used against developing states. Bombing may well have been the most strategically cost-effective

way of reducing the economic and technical advantages

Germany enjoyed and of stifling German fighting power to a

point where the Allies could be confident of complete victory.

Discussion

Mr. Brian Hayes: As a veteran of Bomber Command I’d like to

thank Professor Overy for a very concise paper on the command’s operations. There are one or two things I would like to

clear up. Firstly, almost nothing favorable was said about Air

Marshal Harris yesterday. I was on my third term of operations when I was shot down over Germany and became a prisoner of war. In both those environments I never heard a single

derogatory remark about our great commander in chief.

I’d like to read a message sent to Air Marshal Harris by

Winston Churchill at the end of the war:

Now that Nazi Germany is defeated, I wish to express to you

on behalf of His Majesty’s Government the sense of gratitude

which is felt by all the nation for the glorious part Bomber

Command played in forging the victory. For over two years

(and this is a very significant point) Bomber Command alone

carried the war to the heart of Germany, bringing hope to the

peoples of occupied France and the other occupied territories;

and to the enemy a taste of the mighty power which was rising against his. As the Command expanded, the weight of

attacks was increased, dealing destruction on an unparalleled

scale on the German military, industrial and economic system. Your Command also gave powerful support to the Allied

armies in Europe and made the most vital contribution to the

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war at sea, things quite often overlooked. You destroyed or

damaged many of their ships of war. You sank or damaged

much of his merchant shipping. All of your operations were

planned with great care and skill, they were executed in the

face of desperate opposition and appalling hazards. They made

a decisive contribution to Germany’s final defeat. The conduct

of these operations demonstrated the fiery gallant spirit that

animated your aircrews, and the high sense of duty under

your command. I believe that the massive achievements of

Bomber Command will long be remembered as an example of

duty notably done.

Flight Lt Fred Anderson: I am also a veteran of Bomber

Command who wants to set the record straight. After the war

many trendy academics tended to write Bomber Command off

so I was pleased to hear your argument today. My question is:

would you like to comment on the changing role of Bomber

Command in the period from April to December 1944 when we

changed from strictly night operations to more and more daylight precision attacks?

Professor Overy: I ought to make clear from the outset that

even if I’m not a trendy academic, I don’t think I’m a reactionary one either. Your question does allow us to look in more

detail at the critical period of the war from the summer of 1944

onwards. I didn’t touch on what Bomber Command was doing

in support of D day or, indeed, in support of the antisubmarine campaign or naval warfare. I was concentrating particularly on the bomber offensive against the German economy

and German morale. If one looks at the whole range of heavy

bomber operations, the contribution was even more substantial. Nobody can doubt that the successful interdiction campaign that backed up D day was a very important factor in

holding up the movement of German reserves. But once the

German air force had largely been crippled by attacks on the

aircraft industry and attacks on aircraft on the ground and

their airfields, and subjected to high rates of attrition over the

Reich itself, daylight bombing over western Germany was possible almost at will. In the last nine or 10 months of the war,

both Allied air forces were able to achieve a much higher level

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of precision and were able to join forces in accurate attacks

against transportation and oil targets, for example.

What I wanted to argue this morning was that the distortion

and disruption of German strategy was something which had

begun earlier than 1943 and characterized the whole of the

last two and one-half years of the war.

One should add, I think, something which was touched on

yesterday in the discussion on “area” bombing and “precision”

bombing. During 1943 and 1944 there wasn’t a great deal to

distinguish one from the other. An increasing proportion of

British bombs fell within a mile of the markers in the cities,

but when American airmen attacked precision targets a great

number of bombs fell outside a mile from their targets. So in

tactical terms the big difference was fighting during the day or

at night, which required rather different flying and navigational skills. But by late 1944 it was possible for both air

forces to attack with a much higher level of precision. The

technology was much better and was complemented by

improved navigational skills and the development of the

Pathfinder force. By the end of the war bombing was a very

much more sophisticated animal.

Dr. Dan Keenan: Two questions. You mentioned the distortion

of the Germany economy caused by the bomber offensive, but

one must not forget the possible distortion of the British economy. As I recall, 30 to 40 percent of British production in the

United Kingdom went into supporting heavy bomber production and training crews. Secondly, while the heavy bombers

made many attacks against the U-boat pens in France and

Germany, they were largely ineffective because of the concrete

bunkers that were protecting those pens. Further, Air Marshal

Harris was reluctant to support the Battle of the Atlantic,

when heavy long-range aircraft were desperately needed to

suppress the U-boats. So there was a lot of distortion on the

Western side as well, particularly with Britain.

Professor Overy: I certainly wouldn’t argue that mistakes were

not made. I concluded my paper by saying that the bombing

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offensive was a blunt instrument. The antisubmarine campaign and the use of heavy aircraft over the Atlantic in support

of naval operations was not something I addressed because I

was discussing the Combined Bombing Offensive. I would certainly take the view that if larger numbers of heavy aircraft

had been detailed sooner to the Battle of the Atlantic, it might

well have made a difference of a number of months. But I

should add that both air forces, British and American, had

doubts about how effective very long-range aircraft would be

and had to be persuaded of that as a priority. We know after

the event that it made a substantial difference. But the difference was also made by a wide range of other changes which

were brought about by the navies themselves in addition to

the use of a long-range aircraft.

Submarine pens? Well, Harris was not really surprised by this;

he did not support bombing submarine pens. It was entirely

ineffective, a complete waste of bombing effort. In his view

you’d gain a lot more by bombing the production facilities in

the Reich, which both air forces then did in 1944.

The other question was: did it distort British and American

production? The issue here is that the American and British

leaders had made a positive choice. This was their strategic

objective, and they planned their economies and devoted their

resources accordingly. When the Americans came into the

war, they balanced their effort. Britain produced more heavy

bombers, and America produced a lot more fighter and transport aircraft, and so on. From the American point of view the

distortion was really not that great. America mobilized its

industrial economy to a lower proportion than any of the other

combatant powers. Another 5 or 10 percentage points of

industrial production devoted to the war in the United States

would have provided enormous numbers of additional fighter

aircraft and tanks and so on. The shortage of materiel was not

much of a problem for the Allies in 1943 and 1944, except of

course for landing craft. The necessary level of industrial production was built into their expectations and planning. The

problem with the Germans was that it wasn’t built into their

planning. Their planning was predicated on producing large

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quantities of high-quality battlefront weapons to defeat the

Allies in the Mediterranean and in the Soviet Union, and to

defeat the coming invasion, which they expected from 1943

onwards. What the bombing offensive did was essentially to

deny German battlefront forces a very large proportion of what

an unbombed German economy would have been capable of

producing. I think it is misleading to talk about it as a distortion in the Allied case, for it was a deliberate strategic option.

In the German case it was not; it was something to which

German leaders were then forced to react and against which

they had to maneuver and shift their own strategy.

Group Capt Andrew Vallance: First to reiterate the views of previous speakers. Congratulations on what I thought was an

absolutely first class analysis. We heard the price of the

bomber offensive yesterday; we have now learnt the value of it,

and I think both need to be said. Second, critics of the bomber

offensive sometimes say German industry in the early part of

the war was underutilized, and that one of the effects of the

bomber offensive was to act as a trigger to the Germans to get

their act together and produce more. How much credence do

you put on that view?

Professor Overy: I don’t put much credence on it at all. Much of

that view rests on assumptions based on the bombing survey

which has now been found to have given a very misleading picture of the German war economy. In fact the German war economy was very heavily mobilized from quite early on. Indeed, by

the summer of 1941, war production made a larger claim on

the German workforce, on German industry, than was the case

in Britain, and it remained higher throughout the war.

The real problem for the German war economy was the ineffective way in which the mobilization of resources was translated into the production of finished weapons. Under pressure

from Hitler, in 1941 to early 1942, the military and the administration began a thoroughgoing rationalization of the German

war economy which enormously increased the quantity of

weapons produced from the resources that were already there.

Even by 1944 the aggregate resources in Germany devoted to

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war production were not much larger than they’d been in

1941, but the level of weapons output was three to four times

higher. So there was an enormous improvement in the efficiency of the German economy over that period. But it was

precisely because of the growing dependence on a system that

was increasingly rationalized and streamlined that the bombing was actually more disruptive than it might otherwise have

been. Albert Speer developed in Germany an extremely sophisticated system of allocation and distribution of components,

materials, and labor, centralized on Berlin where all the planning took place. What bombing did was to interrupt that web

all the time so that it could not operate as effectively.

The other point I should make is that the decision to kick-start

the German economy, to make it more effective, actually predated bombing. It was in the spring of 1941 that Hitler discovered how ineffective German war production was. He knew

he would need large quantities of materiel to defeat the Soviet

Union and then to turn and defeat the Anglo-Saxon powers.

So Germany’s enormous increases in production were in the

pipeline before Allied bombing became very effective. Once

bombing had started seriously in 1943, the German authorities began to plan even higher levels of production. What Speer

and the Air Ministry really wanted in 1944–45, for example,

was to reach a production figure of 80–90,000 aircraft a year;

more or less what the Soviet Union and the United States were

capable of producing. That target was well within the production capabilities of a vast continental economy, but in practice

they were only able to produce 39,000. And many of those

39,000 were destroyed in the factories or in the depots or in

transit. The German fighter force was not much larger by the

end of 1944 than it was at the beginning. I think we need to

be aware that the expansion of the German economy was

fuelled by things other than the bombing offensive, though the

bombing eventually did encourage a much higher concentration on fighter production.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Patrick Hine: Two questions if I may. First

of all, one focusing on the effectiveness of night bombing. You

were right, Professor Overy, to remind us that it was a blunt

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instrument, something of which Harris was well aware and

which he tried to do something about. You mentioned yourself

the Pathfinder force, which in a sense was the 1940s equivalent of today’s laser designation. Could you give us any measurement of the increased effectiveness of night bombing as a

result of the introduction of the Pathfinder force?

My second question is on the issue of morale and whether or

not the bombing offensive could have cracked German morale.

If I recall correctly, in 1943 there was one attack on Hamburg

where incendiaries caused a firestorm and a loss of something

approaching 50,000 lives. Some commentators have said that

if we could have repeated that attack against another 10 or 12

cities within the next two or three months, German morale

may have cracked. I wonder if you could tell us whether there

was any evidence from interrogating Germans after the war if

that might have indeed been the case?

Professor Overy: The answer to your first question is yes, the

Pathfinder force made a huge difference. Refinements were

introduced with new navigational aids and better bomb aiming. Much higher standards of pilot and navigator training

were also developed during 1942–43 at Harris’s insistence.

Those changes made the bomber force more effective tactically. Oddly enough, the best single report on the improvement in the RAF was produced by the Americans at the end of

the war. That report demonstrated clearly that by 1944 the

ability of night bombing aircraft to get within a mile of the target had improved beyond all recognition from the dismal performance of 1940 to early 1942.

To the second question about morale. I still think that in some

ways people are asking the wrong question. It’s hard to envisage quite how an apathetic, miserable, dispirited population,

subject to high levels of bombing, is going to be in a position to

overturn a regime in the middle of a war, especially when that

regime is committed to maintaining fighting power to the end

and is willing to impose terror on its own population. It’s a little bit like Iraq, where everybody thought once the Coalition

attacked, Saddam Hussein would be overturned by palace

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revolution or a popular uprising. But I’m not sure that politics

really works that way. If the attack on Hamburg had been

repeated in other cities, I think all you would have had would

have been a very much larger level of German casualties and

social dislocation and misery. The Hamburg raid was one of

those interesting cases where the consequences were so horrific that there was something of a backlash against area

bombing inside the British leadership. I don’t think Harris

would have been allowed to conduct 10 more firestorm raids,

even if he’d argued it was strategically necessary. There’s little

evidence to suggest—and the whole thing is speculative of

course—that it would have brought the regime down through

popular revolt. I think that the expectation held in Britain since

the late 1930s that Hitler would be overthrown once he was

faced with firm resistance was always a misreading of the

nature of the Third Reich, just as it was a misreading of the

nature of Saddam’s rule in Iraq in 1991. I think we should

always be wary of the idea that by a mere show of force it might

be possible to produce a political revolution in the enemy state.

Group Capt Mike Rawlinson: Professor Overy, in Albert Speer’s

book, Inside the Third Reich, he comments that if the attacks

on the ball-bearing factories had been sustained, it would

have crippled aircraft production in Germany. Could you comment on the issue of panacea targets?

Professor Overy: A list of targets was drawn up in 1943 for the

combined offensive. Ball bearings was one of the targets. It

was attacked at great cost, and one should add that the ballbearing industry was subsequently attacked again in 1944. I

think we tend to forget that it continued to be attacked. The

ball-bearing industry was quite effectively dispersed, which

made it very difficult for Allied intelligence to pick up in detail

where the main locus of production was. I think Speer was

being a little bit mischievous in arguing that the Allies should

just have kept attacking it, because it was Speer’s job to

ensure ball-bearing production was continued and to prevent

the Allies from finding out where the factories were.

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When Allied intelligence staffs actually sat down to determine

the industries and infrastructure they needed to attack in

order seriously to undermine levels of armaments production,

I think they recognized that it would really be impossible to

attack a single target, that they would have to attack a cluster

of targets. Bomber Command from 1938–39 onwards had

stuck to the panacea target of oil. Oil was the issue, they said;

if you could find ways of undermining Germany’s oil supply,

that was Germany’s weak link. When the American Air

Intelligence staff came to think about the bombing campaign,

they were initially influenced by the British preoccupation

with oil. But they then decided to look at their own industry:

what would interrupt the American war industry if it were

attacked? They then projected that analysis onto German

industry and decided in fact a cluster of industries would have

to be attacked. The top priority ones I have talked about. But

there was also a series of lower priority industries—machine

tools and various other forms of capital production which were

systematically attacked from 1944.

Notes

1. John Kenneth Galbraith, A Life in Our Times: Memoirs (London: n. p.,

1981), 219, 239–40.

2. Ibid., 240. These views have been recently endorsed in Stephen A.

Garrett, Ethics and Airpower in World War II: The British Bombing of German

Cities (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), 158–64.

3. These included the economists Burton H. Klein and Nicholas Kaldor,

whose postwar publications elaborated the survey’s conclusions that the

German war economy reached its peak only when the bombing was at its

most intense. See Klein, Germany’s Economic Preparations for War

(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959); and Kaldor, “The German War

Economy,” Review of Economic Statistics, 13, 1946.

4. Estimates on loss rates differ. It is virtually impossible to break down

the figures for losses to show how many died in the strategic assaults on

Germany. Casualties for the Eighth Air Force and Bomber Command

include losses in the war at sea, tactical bombing, accidents, and training.

The number of Bomber Command aircrew lost totalled 47,268 operational

crew, 8,090 nonoperational (accidents, enemy bombing attacks, ground battle). The Eighth Air Force lost 43,742, but an estimated 46 percent of sorties

were in support or defensive operations, so that the figure of those who died

in the skies over Germany is considerably lower than this. Aggregate figures

on the losses of bombing personnel are not the same as losses sustained in

bombing operations against strategic targets in Germany and central

Europe, though they are often cited as if they were. On Bomber Command

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casualties see Charles K. Webster and Noble Frankland, The Strategic Air

Offensive Against Germany, 1939–1945, vol. 4, Annexes and Appendices

(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1961), appendix 41, 440. For

American casualties, Alan J. Levine, The Strategic Bombing of Germany

1940–1945, (London: n. p., 1992), 189.

5. Stephen L. McFarland, “The Evolution of the American Strategic

Fighter in Europe 1942–1944,” Journal of Contemporary History, 10, June

1987, 198–208.

6. Albert Speer, Spandau: The Secret Diaries, trans. Richard and Clara

Winston (London: Collins, 1976). See too, Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich

(London: n. p., 1970), 278–91, for his general views on bombing. Also, Roger

Beaumont, “The Bomber Offensive as a Second Front,” Journal of

Contemporary History, 22, January 1987, 3–17.

7. R. J. Overy, War and Economy in the Third Reich (Oxford: Clarendon

Press, 1994), 294.

8. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey: Over-all Report (European

War) (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 30 September 1945), 3.

Hereafter USSBS for the series of publications.

9. The decline in industrial output in the slump in Germany between

1929 and 1932 averaged 10.5 percent a year.

10. The best study on the home front is Earl R. Beck, Under the Bombs:

The German Home Front, 1942–1945 (Lexington, Ky.: University Press of

Kentucky, 1986).

11. Maurice Matloff, Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1943–1944,

United States Army in World War II Series (Washington, D.C.: Office of the

Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1959), 27–30.

12. Public Record Office (PRO), Kew, London, Air 10/3871 British

Bombing Survey Unit, “Potential and Actual Output of German Armaments

in Relation to the Combined Bombing Offensive,” n. d., 7, 11, 13.

13. Imperial War Museum (IWM), London, Albert Speer Collection, box

S368, Report 67, 14. See too, Report 65, 18, for details on tank production.

14. Wladyslaw Anders, Hitler’s Defeat in Russia (Chicago: H. Regnery

Co., 1953), 227–28.

15. USSBS, Report 109, Oil Division Final Report, 25 August 1945, 17–26.

16. Ibid., figure 49.

17. Ibid., figures 49, 60.

18. Ibid., figure 52.

19. Overy, War and Economy, 358–62.

20. IWM, box S368, Report 67, “Economic Branch Interrogations,” 13

December 1945. Most of those interviewed claimed that bombing undermined the attempt to rationalize and centralize the production and distribution of weapons and components, particularly the supply of vormaterial,

the equipment, parts, and subassemblies necessary to sustain the final

assembly plants. See in particular interrogations I, II, III, VIII.

21. USSBS, Report 39, A Brief Study of the Effects of Area Bombing on

Berlin, Augsburg, Bochum, Leipzig, Hagen, Dortmund, Oberhausen, Schweinfurt and Bremen, 26 October 1945, 8, 10–11, 15. See too, IWM, box S368,

Report 67, Interrogation II, Dietrich Stahl (head of ammunition production):

“All kinds of air attack were effective, whether directed against transport,

towns, gas and electricity installations or factories”; and Interrogation III,

Wilhelm Schaaf (head of main committee vehicle production), who estimated

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that area bombing produced a 20 percent loss of output due to absenteeism,

damage to transport, and destruction of industrial services.

22. On aircraft production see R. J. Overy, “The Luftwaffe and the

European Economy,” Militargeschichtliche Mitteilungen, 21, 1979, 55–76.

The dispersal program began in late 1942, well before bombing became a

serious threat. See IWM, Milch Documents, vol. 56, 2648–55, Minutes of a

meeting in the German Air Ministry, 11 November 1942, on dispersal to

areas outside the Reich; vol. 56, 2662–66, German Air Ministry memorandum on dispersal, 14 October 1942. By November 211 out of 290 major

firms working exclusively on aircraft contracts had produced detailed dispersal plans.

23. Details in IWM, Speer Collection, Privafirmen, FD 778/46, records of

the meetings of the Beirat of Flugmotorenwerke Ostmark, 9 May 1941 to 18

August 1944.

24. IWM, Privafirmen, FD 5665/45, Junkers Interrogation Reports, no.

5, Production Statistics, section F.

25. Alfred C. Mierzejewski, The Collapse of the German War Economy,

1944–1945: Allied Air Power and the German National Railway (Chapel Hill,

N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 191, 198.

26. IWM, box S368, Report 67, II Stahl Interrogation, 3; and

Mierzejewski, 147.

27. IWM, box S368, Report 85, Interrogation of Dr. Theodor Hupfauer

(Labour Section, Armaments Ministry), 10 September 1945, 1.

28. USSBS, Report 64B, The Effects of Strategic Bombing on German

Morale, vol. 1, May 1947, 14.

29. On Ford, see IWM, box S126, FD 4396/45, BBSU “Manuscript Notes

on Ford Cologne”; on BMW, USSBS, Report 18, Aero-Engine Plant Report no.

4, Bayerische Motorenwerke AG, 22 October 1945, 5 and exhibit E.

30. D. Busch, Der Luftkrieg im Raum Mainz wahrend des zweiten

Weltkreiges (Mainz: n. p., 1988), 363.

31. USSBS, Report 64B, German Morale, vol. 1, 17–10; and USSBS,

Report 39, Effects of Area Bombing, 11. By March 1944 1.5 million people in

Berlin were homeless.

32. British Air Ministry, The Rise and Fall of the German Air Force

(London: published in-house as Air Ministry Pamphlet no. 248, 1948; reissued London: n. p., 1983), 274.

33. Ibid., 273–75, 307–9.

34. National Archives, Microcopy T321, Luftwaffenfuhrungsstab papers,

frames 6754–69, “Studies uber die Flugzeuglage der Kampfverbande,” 5 May

1944.

35. Figures from Rise and Fall, 274, 298; and Anders, 229. On flak

defenses, see Friedhelm Golucke, Schweinfurt und der strategische Luftkreig

1943: Der Angriff US Air Force vom 14 Oktober 1943 gegen die Schweinfurter

Kugellagerindustrie (Paderborn: Schoningh, 1980), 153–59. On flak output,

IWM, Milch Documents, vol. 53, 877, letter to Milch from Flak Office,

German Air Ministry, 12 August 1943.

36. Speer calculated that by 1944 one million men were engaged in

repairing bomb damage, clearing rubble, and restoring services, in addition

to some 803,000 in the air defense system (manning search lights, radar

stations, observation posts, etc.). See Anders, 229; Webster and Frankland,

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Interrogation of Albert Speer, 6th sess., 30 May 1945, 377–78; and

Interrogation of Albert Speer, 18 July 1945, 383–84.

37. Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate, eds., The Army Air Forces

in World War II, 7 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948–1958),

56–64; Rise and Fall, 306–10, 314–16.

38. Williamson Murray, Luftwaffe: Strategy for Defeat (London: n. p.,

1985), 248; Webster and Frankland, vol. 4, appendix 27, 500.

39. PRO, Air/3873, BBSU “German Experience in the Underground

Transfer of War Industries,” n. d., 7–9. For a general discussion, see Albert

Speer, The Slave State: Heinrich Himmler’s Masterplan for SS Supremacy

(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981), especially chaps. 16 and 17.

40. PRO, Air/3873, 6–7.

41. Ibid., 5. On the conditions in underground plant, see for example,

Combined Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee, Report xxx-80, Bavarian

Motor Works: A Production Survey, sec. 8, “Salt Mines as Factories.”

42. On the V-weapons program, see D. Holsken, “Die V-Waffen:

Entwicklung und Einsatzgrundsatze,” Militargeschichtliche Mitteilugen 27,

1985, 95–119; Michael J. Neufeld, “The Guided Missile and the Third Reich:

Peenemunde and the Forging of a Technological Revolution” in Science,

Technology, and National Socialism, ed. Monika Renneberg and Mark Walker

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), especially 61–67.

43. USSBS, Report 60, V-Weapons (Crossbow) Campaign, 24 September

1945, 33–36.

44. Ibid., 3. From August 1943 to August 1944 Crossbow absorbed 13.7

percent of joint USAAF/RAF bombing sorties and 15.5 percent of their joint

bomb load.

45. Speer, Slave State, 363–76; on Milch see David John Cawdell Irving,

The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe: The Life of Luftwaffe Marshall Erhard Milch

(London: n. p., 1973), 274–88; R. J. Overy, Goering: The “Iron Man” (London;

Boston: Routledge; Kegan Paul, 1984), 225–28.

46. Ulrich Albrecht, “Military Technology and National Socialist

Ideology,” in Renneberg and Walker, 101–13.

47. H. R. Trevor-Rope, ed., The Goebbels Diaries, The Last Days, trans.

Richard Barry (London: Secker and Warburg, 1978), 18.

48. USSBS, Report 109, Oil Division, figure 7. The estimated distribution

of bombs was as follows:

In target area: Productive area 2.2 percent

Pipelines 1.2 percent

Open terrain 7.6 percent

Unexploded 1.9 percent

Outside target: Decoy plants 3.0 percent

Remainder 84.1 percent

49. USSBS, Report 64B, German Morale, vol. 1, 7. For the effects on

German communities in the last year of the war, see Beck, chaps. 7 and 8;

Marie-Luise Recker, Nationalsozialistische Sozialpolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg

(Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1985).

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Definite Limitations:

The Air War in Korea 1950–1953

Jeffrey Grey

There were those who felt, at the time of the Korean War,

that air power might accomplish miracles of interdiction, by

cutting the flow of reinforcement and supply to the embattled enemy. The fact that it could not accomplish these miracles has not yet been accepted as widely as it should. . . .

Air power does have its definite limitations, and even some

in high position still fail to acknowledge them.

—Matthew B. Ridgway

The Korean War marked one of the two or three most dangerous periods in the history of the Cold War. It was dangerous not merely because it represented the first open conflict

between the two emergent blocs, both equipped with atomic

weapons, but because it was fought in large part with the

assumptions of the preatomic era. Coming so closely after the

end of the Second World War, which had been waged on a total

basis and to complete victory (unconditional surrender), the

Korean War was fought with mostly Second World War technology and doctrine, and under the leadership of men who had

held senior commands in the war against Germany and

Japan. The Korean War for a long time enjoyed the reputation

of the “forgotten” or even the “unknown” conflict. The regular

appearance of books and articles on Korea in recent years

belies that notion now, but it remains true that this, one of the

most important examples of modern conventional conflict to

have faced Western armies, is still imperfectly understood in a

number of key respects. Our understanding of the higher command relations, key decision making at the strategic and

national policy levels, and the internal political dynamic in

Korea itself has been shaped by a number of excellent scholarly studies appearing throughout the 1980s; analysis of the

operational and tactical problems of the war, in all three

dimensions, remains much less developed. It should go almost

without saying that these remarks apply to the United Nations

143
(UN) side only; our knowledge of the communist side is seriously deficient in almost every respect.

It might be thought that the literature of the air war in Korea

formed an exception to my stricture above. The United States

Air Force (USAF) published a massive and scholarly official history within less than 10 years of the war’s end,1 and the command and control arrangements, air interdiction campaigns,

and thorny issues of close air support have all attracted considerable analysis over time. The air efforts of other contributory UN members, whilst far smaller in scale than that of the

US Far East Air Forces (FEAF), have also received some attention.2 But I suggest that the American writing on the subject—

and the great majority of it is American—reflects many of the

doctrinal and operational disputes that have characterized the

airpower debate within the United States armed forces from the

Second World War onwards and that it must be read with this

in mind. In this paper then, I want to examine some of the

issues and arguments thrown up by the literature and then

reinforce some of these points through an examination of the

experience of the small Commonwealth air contingents which

flew as part of the UN effort.

Korea was a fortunate conflict for the US armed forces. It

demonstrated the continuing utility of conventional forces at a

time when the secretary of defense, Louis A. Johnson, had

started reducing the forces’ capabilities because they did not,

in his view, match the projected combat needs of the United

States in a climate in which the possession of atomic weapons

rendered traditional armed forces “obsolete.” It also helped to

end the internecine bickering over roles and missions which

had characterized interservice relations in the late 1940s on

issues such as the future of naval aviation or the cancellation

of the B-36. It achieved this by ensuring that all the armed

forces would expand considerably to meet the Cold War challenge posed by hot war in a peripheral region.

But the US forces, and especially the Army and the Air

Force, went into the Korean War with a set of attitudes governing the correct use of the air weapon in their particular

environment, and with grievances and prejudices concerning

each other, which were firmly grounded in recent historical

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experience. The Second World War had seen major advances

in the technologies of close air support, air interdiction, logistic support, and naval aviation, and these were to provide the

major features of the air war in Korea as well. The arguments

over their correct application during the war spill over into the

literature produced after the war, to which must be added disagreement over air command and control doctrines. The

establishment of the Air Force as a separate service in the

immediate postwar period provided an additional context into

which to place the disagreements that ensued.

There were three air forces in Korea: the Fifth Air Force,

commanded by Far East Air Forces, the 1st Marine Air Wing,

and the air groups on board the carriers, both under the command of Naval Forces Far East (NavFE). Their principal client,

and principal critic, was the Eighth US Army in Korea

(EUSAK), commanded by Army Forces Far East (AFFE). The

command of all three was united in the person of the commander in chief, Far East (CINCFE), who was also the commander in chief, United Nations Command (CINCUNC) and

the supreme commander Allied Powers (SCAP) with responsibilities in occupied Japan. This was the first problem; for most

of the war there was no joint staff at Far East Command headquarters, nor any unity of command when it came to the control of joint air operations.3 “In the absence of the joint headquarters staff,” wrote Dr. Robert Futrell, the USAF historian,

“the full force of United Nations air power was seldom effectively applied against hostile target systems in Korea.”4 This

overstates the case, but it is certainly true that unity of command in the air was rarely attained, in part, because

MacArthur’s staff neither understood joint air operations, nor

had made staff provision for their conduct, and because on

occasions MacArthur made command arrangements which

further divided the control of air assets; the creation of X

Corps under Maj Gen Edward M. Almond in northeast Korea

in the latter part of 1950 not only divided command of the

ground forces available to Gen Walton Walker, but by assigning the 1st Marine Air Wing to Almond’s command, it further

split command of air assets.

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Command of air force and naval air components only came

together at the level of the commander in chief, and this

clearly posed problems since the successive theater commanders, MacArthur, Ridgway, and Clark, all had their own

ideas concerning the proper applications of airpower which

did not necessarily coincide with United States Air Force doctrine. Air Force thinking on the conduct of air operations was

set out in Field Manual (FM) 100-20, The Command and

Employment of Air Power, issued in July 1943. Undoubtedly

influenced by the postwar debates over future roles and missions, in Korea the USAF attempted to enforce Navy and

Marine compliance with Air Force procedures and assumptions, a move which prompted the Navy to carve out an independent role based on geographic demarcation lines and to

avoid coordination of effort except in the face of severe operational necessity on the ground. Marine aviation, of course, was

dedicated primarily to close air support of ground forces,

which was why Marine aviators found such favor with the

Army. Army thinking on the subject was encapsulated in FM

31-35, Air-Ground Operations, issued in 1946 but which in

1950 was undergoing a review that had not been completed

when war broke out.

In the postwar period the Army had attempted to cultivate a

continuing interest in ground support operations within the

Air Force, but the results of joint tactical exercises between

1947 and 1950 were not happy ones, and one student of the

subject has suggested that by 1949 most senior Army commanders “appear to have regarded close air support as a lost

cause after the Air Force became a separate service.”5 A British

observer made the same point: “In the US Air Force, as in the

RAF, far greater importance and priority was given to ‘strategic’ air than to ‘tactical’ air.”6 The problem here lay in the definition of support, coupled with the fact that at the outbreak

of war the USAF was “quite unprepared to participate in joint

air-ground operations,” as Gen George Stratemeyer’s staff

admitted.7 The Air Force view was that “the capabilities of tactical aviation in Korea have not been fully exploited due to disregard of basic principles: e.g., by the Army ruling that all

available aircraft must be employed on close support to the

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detriment of an interdiction program.”8 Where the Air Force

would argue that 80 percent of sorties were in support of

ground forces, divided into close support and interdiction, the

tendency on the part of ground commanders was to count only

those missions flown in direct support of units engaged with

the enemy, which reduced the figure for the war overall to

between 10 and 15 percent (although it must be noted that in

the dangerous early weeks of the war up to 74 percent of combat sorties were close support).9

In the first months of the fighting, air support gave ground

forces a considerable edge over the North Koreans, and this

advantage was extended against the Communist Chinese during the fluid phase of the war, which ended in late 1951.

Thereafter, the enemy had to pay extra attention to concealment and dispersion, with which the United Nations Command

(UNC) did not need to bother because of the absence of an

enemy air threat to its forward positions or rear areas. The

absence of enemy air operations over UN lines permitted the

allocation of a substantial proportion of the available combat

aircraft to support missions, but tensions persisted in the system nonetheless. The Air Force insisted on centralization of

control of air support through the joint operations center, and

initially at least declined to provide either additional forward air

controllers (FAC) or ground FACs as the Army requested. The

request itself was a consequence of the Army’s inability to provide a ground-air liaison signals capability, despite the fact that

FM 31-35 specified that the Army was responsible for providing its own request net, and secondly of observation of the 1st

Marine Air Wing’s support of the 1st Marine Division and the

detached X Corps in late 1950.

Invidious comparisons were drawn which were to fuel the

debate over control of close air support for the rest of the war.

The Marine system, one advocated by Almond among others,

provided a FAC to every battalion, but the reasons for this

need to be understood. Marine doctrine had evolved during the

amphibious campaigns of the Pacific war; Marine formations

were much lighter than Army equivalents, especially in terms

of organic supporting arms. The Marine air wing was intended

to compensate for the lack of Marine artillery. The Army, on

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the other hand, usually preferred to engage enemy targets

within the first thousand yards of its own front with artillery

fire, since a divisional fire was to be equated with 1,800 sorties with 500-pound bombs.10 Air support within that range

was generally only requested when artillery could not be

brought to bear. The Marines, on the other hand, insisted on

routine close air support within that range.

Futrell argues that adoption of such a system on an Armywide basis would have been hugely expensive and unjustified.11 In any case, he argued, “the USAF-Army system proved

able to meet requirements laid upon it in Korea,” which would

seem an overly sanguine reading of the experience. In the

early, critical months of the war, ground forces were badly

short of artillery as a result of the run down of capabilities

during the occupation of Japan, while later attempts to keep

down the costs of the war through reducing the availability of

ammunition stocks hindered ground operations in much the

same way. “The routine use of air power as flying artillery”

may have constituted “a severe expense to American taxpayers,”12 but in the desperate fighting of August–September

1950, there is little evidence that the Air Force stinted in its

provision of close air support. Overall in the period to 30

November 1950, 52 percent of the combat sortie effort was

devoted to close support (and 46 percent to interdiction); from

1 to 15 August the figure was 74 percent, from 1 to 15

September 62 percent, and for the second half of that month

61 percent.13

The heart of the argument was less over the fact of close

support than its control, and this issue was not resolved during the war because the Army seems not to have pushed the

issue. In exercises in the United States between 1951 and

1954, however, many of the same problems reasserted themselves. The air-ground operations system, which the Air Force

agreed to, was usually undermanned because the Air Force

would not supply sufficient personnel of the appropriate rank

and experience even when the Army agreed to furnish the

equipment and enlisted personnel for the tactical air control

parties; the Air Force nonetheless insisted that all traffic be

handled in this highly centralized manner. Futrell argued that

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the Army’s preferred option would have required the Air Force

to find an additional 364 pilots for forward air control duties

in Korea alone and that such a requirement would have been

extremely expensive. This formed the basis perhaps of the Air

Force evaluation that the Army’s use of air support “was so

wasteful that the Air Force should make no special concessions until ground commanders became more competent in

planning air support.”14 In 1955 the Air Force took the logical

step and abolished all joint boards charged with writing doctrine. The Air Force Manual 1-2, United States Air Force Basic

Doctrine, which had appeared in 1953, had reasserted the primacy of centralized air war, while the supporting manual on

theater air war, which was published the following year, made

the joint operations center an all Air Force organization to

which the Army would attach liaison officers. Small wonder,

perhaps, that Gen Mark Clark declared before taking up his

post as commander in chief in Korea that “all elements of the

ground forces must make a firm bid for the control of close

support operations and until such time as this control is

assigned to ground force commanders, close support operations can never achieve maximum effectiveness.”15

The primary missions from the Air Force point of view were

air superiority and interdiction. Korea demonstrated, to

Futrell’s satisfaction at least, “one more historical justification

for the overriding priority which USAF doctrine accords to the

air superiority mission”; the air pressure strategy, he further

concluded, “made the war too expensive for the Communists

to continue.”16 The air superiority mission had two phases,

and two features, not necessarily parallel. In the opening

weeks of the war, UNC aircraft destroyed the relatively small

North Korean air force with ease, in the air and in large part

on the ground. UN ground forces thus operated, as we have

noted, without fear of air attack, which given their manifold

other problems was probably just as well. After November

1950 when the Chinese entered the war, and did so equipped

with MiG-15 jet aircraft, the nature of the struggle changed. In

general, the enemy operated aircraft from bases in Manchuria,

which meant that these were inviolate because of strict orders

not to enter Chinese or Soviet airspace. On occasions the

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DEFINITE LIMITATIONS: THE AIR WAR IN KOREA 1950–1953
Chinese attempted to rebuild airfields inside North Korea, but

the airfield neutralization program employed to counter it

proved highly effective. It should be added, however, that

towards the end of the war the Chinese created a sophisticated

ground-controlled air defense system over northwestern Korea

which had a significant impact on American bombing raids,

and had they been willing to use, or the Soviets to supply,

electronics-equipped all-weather fighter aircraft, there seems

little doubt that the older B-29 aircraft, which provided the

“heavy punch” in terms of bomb loads, would have found it

difficult to continue operations, especially at night (which was

when the airfield neutralization missions were flown).

Although the Chinese, Soviet, and North Korean pilots who

flew against the UNC lost 810 aircraft against 139, their planes

were good and some of the pilots skillful; aerial combat in “MiG

Alley” had its hazards.17 As the first example of air war in the

jet age, combat in Korea held considerable interest for Western

air forces, a point to which I wish to return shortly. But it is

important to recognize that the enemy did not employ their full

resources in the contest for control of the air, and the absence

of enemy aircraft over the UNC’s lines was a conscious imposition of limitations on the part of the Chinese, just as the decision not to attack UNC ships prevented the war from getting

dangerously out of hand. In the view of some in the United

States Air Force, this was not an unmixed blessing. Gen

William Momyer, one of the fathers of American tactical airpower and later commanding general of the US Seventh Air

Force in Vietnam, observed much later that “we would be in a

much stronger position today with regard to the importance of

air superiority if the enemy had been able to penetrate and

bomb some of our airfields and had been able to bomb the front

lines periodically. It would have brought home to our ground

forces and other people the importance of air superiority.”18

Futrell likewise believed that the absence of a significant enemy

air threat distorted aspects of the US air war in Korea.19

There was little opportunity for strategic application of airpower until relatively late in the Korean War, but heavy

bombers—specifically the B-29—were used in a tactical application in the interdiction role and against industrial and

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infrastructure targets within North Korea. Of the interdiction

campaign, two American analysts have suggested:

One of the most important conclusions to be drawn from an unbiased

examination of interdiction experience is that the outcomes seldom

come close to the expectations of the interdiction planners. Even when

an interdiction effort has been judged successful, the achievement has

not infrequently been quite different from the original objective.

Misperceptions as to what was feasible, misunderstandings about the

appropriate payoffs to be sought, differences of opinion as to the most

suitable targets, and misevaluations about what was actually being

accomplished were common.20

Interdiction was one area at least where the failure to create

a joint headquarters staff showed itself clearly in the early

days of the war, and it was only after heated arguments

between Gen O. P. Weyland and MacArthur’s staff that FEAF

was permitted to mount an interdiction campaign, beginning

in August 1950. Even then, general headquarters staff frequently interfered in target selection and allotment of effort

against individual targets, to the considerable dissatisfaction

of Air Force commanders.

North Korean industrial targets posed little problem,

although the destruction of the North Korean industrial base

made virtually no difference to the enemy’s ability to maintain

his military effort. There were two reasons for this: the enemy

demonstrated consistently an ability to operate on a much

slimmer logistic tail than the UNC, and hence the assumptions of air planning staff concerning the necessary minimum

supply rates were usually wrong; secondly, North Korea’s

industrial heartland lay not inside its own borders, not even in

Manchuria, but in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. By

dint of an aerial logistic support effort, the dimensions of

which we are only just beginning to appreciate, a Soviet air

corps provided a vital link between the Chinese and North

Korean armies in the field and their principal sources of

resupply in the rear, all the while protected by the sanctuary

status which operating out of Manchurian bases provided.

This measure of Stalin’s support had been given hesitantly; it

was not until a month after Chinese intervention that the

Soviet air force began its major supply lift effort. Once it

began, it proved crucial.

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The interdiction effort lacked nothing in intensity, totaling

some 320,000 sorties for the whole of the war, approximately

9,000 per month on average or 48 percent of combat sorties

overall. As in the Second World War, although damage claimed

was probably in excess of damage inflicted, the level of

destruction was real enough. FEAF aircraft expended nearly

220,000 tons of bombs and 3,800 tons of napalm on interdiction missions alone, and these figures do not include Navy and

Marine Corps sorties. The major target of interdiction missions

was the enemy’s supply system and transportation infrastructure. Enormous damage was done to bridges, rail lines, roadways, locomotives, rail cars, and road transport. The effort,

like the close support role, was at its most effective in the crisis period leading up to the UNC breakout from the Pusan

perimeter in September 1950, but thereafter its overall effectiveness declined. Operation Strangle I, the air interdiction

effort aimed at roadways and trucks in the spring and summer of 1951, was a disappointment, and although high expectations were maintained for Strangle II, a rail interdiction program beginning in August 1951, these expectations remained

unfulfilled. Operation Saturate, mounted in early 1952 against

rail lines, likewise failed to justify the optimistic evaluations

made of it. Communist countermeasures proved sufficient to

break the railway blockade of Pyongyang, for example, by the

end of 1951. The objective of Saturate in 1952 became the

much more modest intention to “interfere with and disrupt”

enemy efforts, but even this fell some way short of realization.

In July 1951 the Chinese and North Korean forces were firing

about 8,000 artillery and mortar rounds a month; in May

1952, after 10 months of transport interdiction, they fired over

100,000 rounds. Not only that, but their capacity to mount

and sustain an offensive actually increased, demonstrated by

the ferocity of attacks against Republic of Korea (ROK) positions in April and July 1953.

Part of the problem, and the cause of much of the frustration, lay in the assumptions made about the level of destruction achieved. In the air attacks mounted against North

Korean targets in October–November 1950, very precise claims

were made for the effectiveness of the interdiction effort. The

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report on a raid against the Sonjin dock and port area and

neighboring marshalling yards in mid-October 1950, for

example, claimed: “destroyed 36 vehicles, 106 supply carts, 3

gun positions, 6 locomotives, 3 railway cars, 11 buildings

housing enemy troops; damaged 27 vehicles, 33 supply carts,

7 gun positions, 3 locomotives, 63 railcars, 9 small villages,

390 troop casualties,” prefaced by the observation “results

unobserved.”21 Throughout this period, while attacks on large

targets like marshalling yards were consistently claimed as

excellent, assessments of the results against communications

targets varied much more widely, from poor to excellent.22 The

confident assertion, reported by the British representative on

MacArthur’s headquarters to the UK chiefs of staff, that “our

air forces will . . . turn North Korea into a veritable hell for the

enemy,”23 may have been true as far as it went, but apparently

did little to dent the enemy’s capacity to continue the war, as

other RAF observers noted.24

Nor did the “Air Pressure” strategy, embarked on in the

spring of 1952 and intended to give the Air Force an independent role after a period of being “tied down” to support of

the ground forces, deliver all that was hoped for it. Intended to

put pressure on the negotiations at Panmunjom, it involved

the bombing first of the North Korean hydroelectric power system and the capital, Pyongyang, and then, when the talks

apparently reached a further impasse in April–May 1953, the

targeting of the dams system which controlled irrigation for

the North Korean rice crop. The first phase exhausted the target list with little obvious impact on the communist negotiating position, and the signing of the cease-fire in July 1953

owed as much, probably more, to political factors, although

some in Air Force circles claimed it as a victory for the Air

Pressure strategy. The interdiction campaign was at its most

effective when it was most closely tied to the situation on the

ground, as in the early months. On such occasions, as the testimony of prisoners of war made clear, “unremitting daylight

air attacks on enemy ground targets and troop concentrations

acted as a disorganising and disrupting factor on N[orth]

K[orean] tactics,”25 lowering morale, blunting combat effectiveness, and forcing the enemy to confine much of his movement

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to the hours of darkness. As the British naval staff study concluded, however, the continuation of the interdiction effort

“throughout the procrastinated armistice negotiations

savoured dangerously of trying to win the war by air power

alone, while the army and navy were relegated to comparatively static and defensive roles.”26

As noted earlier, Korea was the first air war of the jet age,

and thus a subject of considerable interest and study to

Western air forces. I want to conclude this paper by considering some of the problems of operational flying in Korea as

experienced by squadrons of the Commonwealth air forces

and fleet air arms which took part. Full accounts of their daily

activities may be followed elsewhere, and I do not intend to

provide one here.27

The Commonwealth air effort in Korea was small, and

Commonwealth forces were not represented in all areas of

activity in the war in the air. The initial response of the RAF to

American requests for air units was that nothing could be

spared from existing commitments in Hong Kong and Malaya.

A Sunderland flying boat squadron (No. 88) was authorized to

be sent from Hong Kong in July 1950 for use on antisubmarine tasks in the Yellow Sea, with a second (No. 209) joining it

in September. Ultimately three squadrons (the third was No.

205) rotated on duty through the Japanese port of Iwakuni,

joining American naval patrol aircraft in watching for Soviet

submarines and maintaining the 24-hour blockade of North

Korean waters and the monitoring of shipping in the area. The

only other RAF contributions took the form of aeromedical

evacuation flights and the provision of No. 1903 Independent

Air Observation Flight and No. 1913 Light Liaison Flight, both

of which worked with Commonwealth ground forces.

In order to benefit from the opportunities which flying

against the MiG-15 presented, the RAF attached small groups

of pilots to American Sabre and Thunderjet squadrons and,

after it converted to the Meteor-8 in February 1951, to the

Australian No. 77 Squadron as well. The experience gained

and the reports on American activities submitted by the first

group of RAF officers so attached persuaded the chief of the air

staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir John Slessor, to ask the Americans

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to accept British pilots on a regular rotation, and from

December 1951 four at a time were posted to the Fifth Air

Force. So successful did this prove that by 1953 there were 17

British pilots attached to squadrons in Korea.

The major Commonwealth air contributions were made by

the Australian No. 77 Squadron, the South African No. 2

Squadron, and the fleet air arms of the Royal Navy and Royal

Australian Navy operating from carriers off the Korean coast.

They flew in all the tactical air roles on offer in Korea, but

three in particular are worth looking at for what they illustrate

about the broader issues of the air war: ground support (both

close support and interdiction), aerial combat, and the

deployment of naval aviation.

The first carrier, HMS Triumph, arrived in Korean waters

only in September 1950, having been dispatched from Hong

Kong. Carrier-based aircraft proved particularly valuable early

in the war because of the lack of secure airfields in South

Korea and, in consequence, the very short endurance over targets of American jet aircraft operating from bases in Japan.

Although the overall numbers of British and Australian naval

aircraft committed were not large, their presence enabled the

UNC to maintain carrier-borne forces off both sea coasts and

to conduct a more or less continuous air offensive against the

North Koreans.

The biggest problem that faced the Royal Navy was the need

to relieve carriers every six months, deemed by the Admiralty

the maximum period which aircrews in particular could be

expected to operate without relief. Britain’s carrier assets, like

all its other defense resources, were stretched thinly in this

period, and the refit schedule for carriers in Korean waters

necessitated the deployment of ships from the Mediterranean

and home waters as well as from the Far East station, and the

relief of HMS Glory by HMAS Sydney in October 1951 to

enable the former to refit in Australia. Because only part of the

navy was at war, the commitment to Korea distorted training

cycles and interrupted normal posting and planning. This was

felt the more keenly because of what the Admiralty saw as the

relegation of naval aircraft to “what is normally a secondary

role,” an outcome ascribed to “political (and US interservice)

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reasons.”28 What this meant was the use of naval aircraft in

the ground support role, for which Royal Navy aircrews generally were not trained. The emphasis in NATO planning for

British carriers was on the antisubmarine and trade protection roles. “I think it correct to say that we have never considered it a primary task of our carriers to support the Army on

the flanks,” noted the Air Branch of the Admiralty.29 The training of aircrews had been based on the assumption, drawing

heavily on experience in the Second World War, that in a major

war the first phase of operations would last two or more years

and require every effort to be lent to trade protection, with

support of the army on the offensive coming only in phase II.

“As a result of this assumption Army Support training was

given a low priority but nevertheless kept alive. Accordingly

when Korea started our aircrews knew the subject but were

not in practice. They had to be given a short working up period

before going into action.”30 The implied lack of versatility of

their carriers concerned the Admiralty, but at “an awkward

moment in both aircraft and carrier development,” any longterm change seemed unlikely. The fleet air arm, like the US Air

Force, found itself initially fighting a war other than that for

which it had armed and trained.

In any case, naval aviators soon overcame the problems of

lack of familiarity with the ground support mission, and the

Royal Navy took considerable interest in their performance.

Particular attention was paid to sortie rates, which were generally felt to be more favorable than on American carriers,

accident rates, and difficulties experienced through adverse

flying conditions. During its deployment between October

1950 and April 1951, crews from HMS Theseus managed

nearly 30 sorties per 30-day operational cycle, averaging 45

flying hours per month. American carrier air groups in an

overlapping two month period (November–December 1950)

managed only 11 sorties and 31-32 flying hours per month,

although the figures for escort carriers were generally higher.31

(In an earlier period on station, HMS Glory had been mounting over 50 operational sorties per day.)32 Accidents and other

wastage were of particular concern, since 50 percent of UN

aircraft losses overall were from causes other than enemy

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action, with just 7 percent owed to combat with enemy fighter

aircraft.33 Increasingly, and in line with the diversion of aircraft

from the close support mission on the part of Fifth Air Force,

naval aircraft found themselves tasked to the interdiction

campaign. During its tour between May and October 1952,

HMS Ocean launched 4,143 sorties in prebriefed and shipcontrolled strikes from a total of 5,877; close air support

accounted for just 211 sorties in the same period.34 As part of

the plan to target road and rail infrastructure, over 65 percent

of their bomb load was dropped against bridges, as opposed to

about 25 percent against troops positions and stores.35

At least initially, close support was the primary mission of

both the Australian and South African air force squadrons,

equipped at the beginning of the war with the Mustang (P-51/F51). Unlike American squadrons on occupation duty in Japan,

No. 77 Squadron had undergone some training in ground support, and this preparation paid off handsomely in the early days

of the war in concerted strikes against North Korean troops. The

Mustang was particularly suited to these sorts of missions and,

flown by experienced pilots (which both the Australians and

South Africans were), was highly regarded by the American

command. As a later British report noted, “attacks with conventional weapons against most types of targets can be made

more economically by ground attack aircraft than by high-level

bombers,”36 a point confirmed by a US Air Force report which,

in assessing the use of B-29 aircraft in the close-support mission, concluded that while it had made a valuable contribution

to the interdiction campaign, “any evaluation of the close support effort must remain wholly inconclusive.”37

The importance of Korea as a test for new, specifically jet,

technology has been noted already. The appearance of MiG15s in the skies of North Korea in November 1950 affected the

balance of the air war immediately, with serious consequences

for the Australian squadron whose Mustangs were now obsolete and whose pilots were thus felt to be at considerably

greater risk from enemy interceptors. The Americans had

deployed six Mustang squadrons to Korea, and these were

now replaced with more modern jet aircraft, the F-84—which

lasted only a few months on operational deployment against

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MiGs—and the much more suitable F-86 Sabre. The South

African squadron retained its Mustangs and its close-support

mission until reequipped with Sabres in January 1953. The

Australian squadron was withdrawn to Japan in April 1951

for conversion to the British Meteor-8.

Nothing exemplifies better the problems which adapting to

the new technology posed than the fortunes of the Australian

squadron during the remainder of the Korean War. The Meteor

was obsolescent; it had first flown in 1943 and was outclassed

by the newer, swept-wing aircraft with which both the

Americans and Chinese were equipped. The commanding general Far East Air Forces, Lt Gen George E. Stratemeyer, urged

the Australians to reequip with jet aircraft quickly, but added

that the aircraft of choice, the Sabre, could not be supplied

due to shortages in the United States inventory. The selection

was bedeviled further by the requirement in Australia that the

new aircraft must fly in an air superiority role, since that was

No. 77 Squadron’s assigned task in the air defense of

Australia. Even then the Meteor was not the preferred aircraft.

Nor was the RAF altogether happy about providing them, since

to do so in the time frame requested would mean delaying the

reequipping of at least one squadron in Germany. Australian

representations prevailed, however, and the RAAF acquired

the Meteor, at an overall cost of £5 million, with the first aircraft delivered to go straight into frontline service in Korea.38

The Australian squadron returned to operational flying on

29 July 1951. In the words of its commanding officer, Wing

Comdr Gordon Steege, “It required little appreciation to reach

the conclusion that the Meteor [was] vastly inferior in performance . . . borne out by actual experience on the 29th

[August]. . . . Unless the MiGs are operated unintelligently

Meteors are not going to account for many.”39 He foreshadowed

that the squadron might have to consider redeployment to a

“more economical role,” which duly followed in September.

Henceforth, they were to be utilized in “middle cover” as

escorts for bombers and fighter-bombers, but south of the

Chongchon River. This did not remove the MiG threat by any

means, as Chinese air patrols became more aggressive, and

after further losses to enemy fighters in early December, the

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decision was made to take them off fighter sweep operations

altogether. Henceforth, the Meteor was to be utilized largely in

the air defense and ground attack roles.

The Meteor’s inadequacies were not simply nor solely a matter of concern to the RAAF, of course.40 Steege’s pessimistic

analysis earned him no points with the RAF, especially not with

its roving representative in Korea, Air Vice-Marshal Bouchier.

The United Kingdom chiefs of staff, when informed of

Weyland’s decision to alter 77 Squadron’s role, reported themselves “deeply disturbed . . . and concerned over the effect

[these events] may have on the morale of Meteor pilots in all the

allied air forces which have, or plan to have, this type in their

front line for some years to come.”41 They promptly raised questions about the experience of the Australian pilots and the

qualities of the squadron commander. Bouchier replied with a

damning and unfair portrait of Steege and an almost equally

damning description of the Australian squadron. The Meteor

“has not had a fair chance yet to show what it can do,” he

reported, “largely because the pilots in this Australian

squadron have not been hand picked.”42 This latter he thought

was an essential requirement in circumstances where the

Meteor was “called upon to face up to a very high performance

fighter.” Perhaps he missed the point that an aircraft which

required above average pilots to survive in relatively normal

combat conditions was unlikely to be of much use on frontline

service. Weyland likewise expressed concern at “the undesirable implications of changing the Meteor operations since a

number of NATO nations are depending upon the aircraft for

air defense purposes and the implication of a ‘bad name’ . . .

could be serious,” but he decided not to interfere.43

The concern expressed over Australian criticisms of the

Meteor soon blew over, not least because in essence they told

the Air Ministry nothing it did not know already. The deputy

chief of the air staff minuted that in spite of the fact:

that it has now been proved by experience (as we already knew from

comparative data) that the Meteor is no match in performance for the

much more recently designed MiG-15, I do not think we need be

unduly despondent on that account. The Meteor is a robust and welltried aircraft from the flying point of view and has shown itself in Korea

to be a good gun and rocket firing platform. It still has an adequate

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performance to intercept and destroy the Soviet long-range bombers at

present in use—its primary role in air defence operations, and is certainly a very useful ground attack aircraft. It is inevitable that it should

be outclassed in fighter v. fighter work.44

The change in role eventually convinced even Bouchier, who

wrote six months later that “everyone in this squadron is

enthusiastically convinced that the Meteor is a really first

class aircraft in the ground attack role,” that morale in the

squadron “is excellent,” and that the aircraft was “a wonderfully steady gun and rocket platform and great accuracy is

being obtained with rockets.”45

The relative failure of the Meteor had its most serious implications for the RAAF, of course. As one analysis of the problem has suggested, the Australian squadron in Korea became

increasingly specialized not through doctrinal necessity but as

a consequence of aircraft inadequacy.46 The RAAF felt this sufficiently keenly to approach the British again in April 1953

with a view to reequipping No. 77 Squadron, this time with the

new Swift Mk 2, at an estimated cost of £4.5 million. Whilst

the RAF thought that combat testing of the Swift had its

attractions, it was unhappy about the prospect of again delaying the deployment of aircraft to frontline RAF squadrons in

order to meet the Australians’ needs. This time, however, the

Australians themselves killed the proposal.47

The decision to buy the Meteor seems an ill-considered one.

Not only did the aircraft not meet Australia’s frontline requirements, as was more than amply demonstrated on operations

in Korea, but it is not self-evident that the changeover from

Mustangs to jet aircraft was as pressing as was presented in

Canberra at the time. The South African squadron continued

to fly Mustangs in the ground support role until January

1953, at which time it was converted to Sabres, which by then

were in more plentiful supply. Nor was the MiG threat as great

perhaps as suggested. In the course of the war the South

Africans lost to enemy action or accident 74 Mustangs and five

Sabres; of the 34 pilots killed (all in Mustangs), only one was

lost to air-to-air combat, the rest falling victim to ground fire.

To have followed suit would have necessitated reverting to a

less high-profile role for the RAAF squadron, but then this

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eventuated in any case and, given the known inadequacies of

the Meteor, might have been predicted.

The Korean War marked a transitional rather than transformational period in the development of airpower. Jet aircraft

proved themselves, and the tactics and techniques of jet combat were further developed and refined. Helicopters made their

first significant appearance, giving an indication of the potential which was to be realized in the following decade. The US Air

Force benefited organizationally, undergoing considerable

peacetime expansion which it was largely to retain following the

cease-fire. The rivalry with the Army was intensified (although

that with the Navy was resolved legislatively by the war’s end),

with the consequent growth in Army aviation which was to

reach its apogee in the 1960s. Closer to home, the Korean War

demonstrated the penalties to be paid in failing to keep abreast

of technological and operational developments.

Operationally, as opposed to organizationally, however, the

Korean War presents a less reassuring picture. The interdiction campaign was in most respects an expensive failure; the

air superiority campaign was a success but a limited one given

the constraints which the enemy chose to apply to the conduct

of his own operations. Close air support seemed to go begging

by the war’s end, with consequences discussed already. And

yet, the war must be broken into two phases. In the critical

early period—say, June to September 1950—airpower was

almost certainly the margin of survival, if not necessarily of

victory.48 Ironically, the very success of airpower in destroying

the North Koreans’ capacity to wage mechanized armored war

forced the enemy back into fighting the sort of war which he

was best equipped to wage in a prolonged fashion, one moreover against which high-technology solutions would prove

least effective. As two British analysts have noted then, Korea

emphasized once again “the unsurprising fact that aircraft

alone are not enough.”49 As Air Chief Marshal Sir John Slessor,

who initially had had to be convinced of the desirability of

involving RAF personnel at all, further observed, “The idea

that superior air power can in some way be a substitute for

hard slogging and professional skill on the ground in this sort

of war is beguiling but illusory . . . all this is cold comfort for

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DEFINITE LIMITATIONS: THE AIR WAR IN KOREA 1950–1953
anyone who hopes that air power will provide some kind of

short cut to victory.” The lessons of American military policy

in the 1950s, however, suggest that many American military

planners believed exactly that.

Discussion

Air Commodore Gordon Steege: I think the lecturer has covered

the period accurately and well. The Meteor was purchased as

a replacement for the P-51 Mustangs of No. 77 Squadron

which had been operated with great distinction by Wing

Comdr Dick Cresswell, who is here today. The Meteor was purchased by the RAAF for the air-to-air role, but you didn’t have

to be a Rhodes scholar to know that it just wasn’t going to

cope with the MiG-15. I was quite convinced of the aircraft’s

inadequacies even before it went into operations, but of course

my opinion wasn’t well received by either Air Force

Headquarters in Melbourne or the Royal Air Force representatives who naturally had their own ideas about the value of a

British airplane. But the critical difference was that the RAF

intended using it as a bomber interceptor, not for air combat,

and it was suitable for the air defense of the UK in those days.

But to put it into air-to-air operations against the MiG in

Korea was just asking for an entire squadron to get knocked

off. Having had some experience with fighters during the

Second World War, that was not my way of doing things.

Dr. Richard Hallion: A couple of points for consideration. First

on the P-51 versus Meteor issue. The P-51 was extraordinarily vulnerable to ground fire. In fact, in April 1951, the United

States Air Force lost 30 P-51s to ground fire during close support operations. I think that has to be factored into the Meteor

versus Mustang issue, because if you look at battlefield air

attack in Korea, you find that the jets had a higher survivability on ground attack operations. Also, North Korean and

Chinese prisoner interrogations indicated that they were far

more often surprised by the relatively quiet approach of a jet

as opposed to the noisy approach of something like a Corsair

or a Mustang.

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The interesting point you made on interdiction is well taken.

In January 1951 there was an Air Force intelligence report

which stated that the North Koreans were better equipped

than they had been at any previous time in the war.

Nevertheless, I would like your thoughts on the following comparison with Operation Strangle in Italy in 1944. The front in

Korea was fairly stable and very long, but in 1953 the UN

Command combined air attacks with ground action. Again

using information based largely on prisoner interrogation

reports, this forced a high consumption of supplies by the

communist army. In other words, the Air Pressure campaign,

particularly the Cherokee strikes that were undertaken in the

fall of 1952, did seem to have some effect once high consumption fighting resumed.

I would like to offer a couple of other thoughts. First of all,

there were occasions when communist air forces did come out

and attempt to attack UN ground forces. For example, there

was one particular raid by Tupolev Tu-2s that was decimated

by intercepting F-86s, and then in another case some Russian

MiGs came out in November 1952 and attacked the combat air

patrol of Task Force 77 in the Sea of Japan and several of

them were shot down.

Finally one tiny quibble. The F-84 actually served throughout

the war, but primarily as a strike aircraft and not as a bomber

escort aircraft.

Dr. Grey: I guess the comment that calls for response is your

point about the interdiction campaign. I suppose the problem

here—and this follows on from what Richard Overy was saying this morning—is that without that campaign you don’t

know what else the Chinese and North Koreans might have

been able to do. That’s speculative.

I think the real criticism that can be made about the conduct

of the interdiction campaign is the rosy optimism with which

the US Air Force planners in particular continued to regard

it. There are a couple of very good examples of the way the

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DEFINITE LIMITATIONS: THE AIR WAR IN KOREA 1950–1953
high-technology Western mind-set simply didn’t see what was

in front of it. My favorite is from the period when interdiction

strikes were being targeted against bridges in North Korea.

They dropped every span in the country, really marvelous.

But it was high summer and the water levels were low, so the

North Koreans simply forded the rivers wherever they

pleased. In other words, the antibridge campaign didn’t matter then or for some months after, yet the Air Force planners

congratulated themselves for knocking all those spans down.

The actual effect on what the North Koreans and Chinese

were able to accomplish at that time was probably negligible.

It was a classic example of thinking entirely in terms of what

would hurt your own side and then projecting it on to your

opponent, even though his circumstances, values, and so on,

might be entirely different. It was an attitude which I think

provided an ominous premonition of what was to come in the

following decade. I think that the Korean War provided the

genesis of many of the bad habits of the American forces in

Vietnam 10 years later.

Dr. Alan Stephens: A comment followed by a question. The

comment is that you placed caveats on the success of the control of the air campaign, which I think’s a little unfair. You can

only fight a war as you find it. If the Communists chose to put

restrictions on how they applied their airpower then that was

their business. The fact of the matter was the United Nations

surface forces fought completely free from enemy air attack.

My question relates to the air-land command relationship.

The relationship between Douglas MacArthur and George

Kenney in the Southwest Pacific area during World War II was

one of the most successful between a soldier and an airman.

The same general principles and working arrangements

which made that partnership function so well were still relevant in Korea. In view of the joint command problems you

outlined, it would seem that MacArthur did not understand

those principles.

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Dr. Grey: I accept your caveat entirely. My point would be

not about the success of the air campaign, but rather about

the extrapolations which were taken for future use. You find

that happening repeatedly in the US Air Force official history of the Korean War, which incidentally is at times very

self-congratulatory and I think unduly optimistic about

some of the outcomes.

But to come back to your other point. I think you’ve got to see

the command relationships and the interservice relationships

in Korea very much in the context of the poisonous feuding

that had gone on, particularly at the chiefs of staff level, after

the Second World War and up to 1950. Let’s remember, in

1947 the Army lost its air force, and it didn’t like it. One of the

fascinating things about the service dynamics in the US, I

think, is that by 1967 it had gained it back again. The principal student of this has made the point that by the end of the

Vietnam era the US Army was the world’s fourth largest air

force, which is bizarre. This “new” Army air force was a very

different sort of air force, a consequence in part of the Army’s

dissatisfaction with the USAF during the Korean War. I think

you’ve got to see the relationship in Korea in those terms.

There was a great deal of bad blood on both sides. Having

achieved independent service status, the USAF clearly was

now ready to forge ahead and prove that it could do all the

things that it said it could; that it could fulfill the air force mission which had been boldly asserted in the USAAF manual

produced in 1943. On the subject of the 1943 manual, it’s

interesting that although the US Army Air Forces were still,

theoretically at least, under the command of the US Army, no

one outside the USAAF was consulted before the manual was

issued. That perhaps gave a presentiment of future intention.

Mr. Peter Skinner: You made a couple of references in your

most interesting paper to target damage assessment. Was this

tackled in any particular way during the Korean War, especially by photographic reconnaissance?

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Dr. Grey: Yes, photographic reconnaissance aircraft were available and were quite widely used. The problem though was in

viewing the results and then extrapolating something meaningful from them. Reconnaissance and useful intelligence are

not necessarily the same thing.

Notes

1. Robert F. Futrell, The United States Air Force in Korea 1950–1953, rev.

ed. (Washington, D. C.: Office of Air Force History, 1983).

2. For example, Robert John O’Neill, Australia in the Korean War

1950–53, vol. 2, Combat Operations (Canberra: Australian War Memorial

and Australian Government Publishing Service [AGPS], 1985), 293–409;

Dermot Michael Moore and Peter Bagshawe, South Africa’s Flying Cheetahs

in Korea (Johannesburg: Ashanti Pub., 1991), which is more solidly

researched than its deliberately populist title might suggest.

3. James A. Winnefeld and Dana J. Johnson, Command and Control of

Joint Air Operations: Some Lessons Learned and Four Case Studies of an

Enduring Issue, R-4045-RC (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 1991), 24–40.

4. Futrell, 693.

5. Allan R. Millett, “Korea, 1950–1953,” in Case Studies in the

Development of Close Air Support, ed. Benjamin Franklin Cooling

(Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1990), 349.

6. Naval Staff History, British Commonwealth Naval Operations, Korea,

1950–53, London, 1967, 30.

7. Wing Comdr J. E. Johnson, “Five Reports on Tactical Aviation in

Korea,” Report no. 1 - general, 11, Public Record Office (PRO), Air 20/7796.

8. Squadron Leader C. N. Clements, memorandum to Director of

Weapons, 23 January 1951, PRO, Air 20/7313.

9. “Close Support Operations,” USAF Operational Report, 9 March 1951,

PRO, WO 216/838. See also “Fighter Operations in Korea,” USAF briefing

paper, 10 March 1952, PRO, Air 20/7798. “80 percent of air action in Korea

is in direct or indirect support of ground forces.”

10. Futrell, 705.

11. Ibid., 706.

12. Ibid., 707.

13. “Close Support Operations,” PRO, WO 216/838.

14. Millett, 397–98.

15. Johnson, 1, PRO, Air 20/7796.

16. Futrell, 694, 703.

17. These figures represent losses in air combat only. Total aircraft

losses were Chinese/North Korean: 976, FEAF: 1466, Navy/USMC: 420.

The great majority of UNC losses were to ground fire. Callum A. MacDonald,

Korea: The War before Vietnam (New York: Free Press, 1987), 277.

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18. Richard H. Kohn and Joseph P. Harahan, eds., Air Superiority in

World War II and Korea: An interview with Gen James Ferguson, Gen Robert

M. Lee, Gen William W. Momyer, and Lt Gen Elwood R. Quesada (Washington,

D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1983), 74.

19. Futrell, 699.

20. Edmund Dews and Felix Kozaczka, Air Interdiction: Lessons from Past

Campaigns, N-1743-PA&E (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 1981), v.

21. UK Liaison Mission, cable, Tokyo to Air Ministry, London, 18 October

1950, PRO, Air 20/6672.

22. Ibid., 13 October 1950.

23. Air Vice-Marshal C. A. Bouchier to Chiefs of Staff, London, 16

November 1950, PRO, Air 20/8007.

24. Loose minute, n. d. [1952], commenting on Wing Comdr J. E.

Johnson’s final report from Korea, PRO, Air 20/7313. “The effect of the

interdiction campaign was over-estimated against the non-mechanised and

living off the land enemy.”

25. “Close Support Operations,” 23, PRO, WO 216/838. The report cites

prisoner of war statements collected and analyzed in US Army operational

research reports.

26. British Commonwealth Naval Operations, 292.

27. In addition to O’Neill and Moore and Bagshawe, already cited, see

George Odgers, Across the Parallel: The Australian 77th Squadron with the

United States Air Force in the Korean War (Melbourne: n. p., 1952); and

Anthony Farrar-Hockley, The British Part in the Korean War, 2 vols. (London:

Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1990 and 1995).

28. Director of Operations Division, minute, 24 November 1951, PRO,

Adm 1/22667.

29. Ibid., minute, 1 May 1952.

30. Director, Naval Air Organisation and Training, note, January 1952,

PRO, Adm 1/22667.

31. Report on operations of HMS Theseus, April 1951, PRO, Adm 1/

22364.

32. British Commonwealth Naval Operations, 155.

33. “Fighter Operations in Korea,” PRO, Air 20/7798.

34. “HMS Ocean in Korea,” Operational Research Memorandum no. 167,

April 1955, PRO, Adm 219/526.

35. Vice Adm A. D. Struble, commanding the US 7th Fleet, was of the

view that the carrier aircraft would have been better deployed exclusively in

close support of the ground forces, but he was overruled by Ridgway, acting

on the advice of Far East Air Forces. British Commonwealth Naval

Operations, 292.

36. “Carrier operations in support of Operation Musketeer,” Directorate of

Operational Research report 34, 1959, PRO, Adm 219/610.

37. “Close Support Operations,” PRO, WO 216/838. Of two carpet bombing attacks in support of ground offensives in September 1950, the report

noted that “there is no evidence that any significant results were obtained.”

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38. Robert John O’Neill, Australia in the Korean War 1950–53, vol. 1,

Strategy and Diplomacy (Canberra: Australian War Memorial and AGPS,

1981), 149–51.

39. 77 Squadron monthly tactical report 3/51, PRO, Air 8/1709.

40. It should be understood that the Meteor was not a defective design,

merely an outdated one. The biggest limitation on the aircraft was its maximum speed of Mach .82, while both the MiG and the Sabre managed in

excess of Mach .90. In early combats the MiG enjoyed advantages in both

speed and height, and while at lower altitudes the Meteor had an advantage

in handling and maneuverability, this did not make up for the relative lack

of speed. As one combat evaluation of the Meteor in Korea noted, “The Mach

of .82 imposes a handicap of such magnitude that only fleeting shots can be

hoped for while ever the MiG continues to use its superior speed to advantage.” “Combat Evaluation of the Meteor VIII,” n. d. [late 1951], PRO, Air

20/7798.

41. Chiefs of Staff to Bouchier, cable TOK69, 12 September 1951, PRO,

Air 8/1709.

42. Bouchier to Chiefs of Staff, cable TRAIN34, 19 September 1951, PRO,

Air 8/1709.

43. Lt Gen O. P. Weyland, to Maj Gen L. W. Johnson, commanding general, Third Air Force, letter, 30 September 1951, PRO, Air 8/1709.

44. DCAS to Secretary of State, minutes, 26 September 1951, PRO, Air

8/1709.

45. Bouchier to Chief of Air Staff, 7 April 1952, PRO, Air 20/7611.

46. Bruce Lyman, The Significance of Australian Air Operations in Korea,

Air Power Studies Centre Paper no. 2 (Canberra: Air Power Studies Centre,

1992), 46. See also Alan Stephens, Power Plus Attitude: Ideas, Strategy and

Doctrine in the Royal Australian Air Force 1921–1991 (Canberra: AGPS,

1992), 122–23.

47. DCAS to Air Marshal Sir Donald Hardman, cable A1140, 8 April

1953, and reply, cable A601, 22 April 1953, PRO, Air 8/1626.

48. A point acknowledged explicitly by Ridgway: “No one who fought on

the ground in Korea would ever be tempted to belittle the accomplishments

of our air force there. Not only did air power save us from disaster, but without it the mission of the United Nations Forces could not have been accomplished.” Matthew B. Ridgway, The Korean War: How we met the challenge:

How all-out Asian war was averted: Why MacArthur was dismissed: Why

today’s war objectives must be limited (New York: Doubleday, 1967), 244.

49. M. J. Armitage and R. A. Mason, Air Power in the Nuclear Age

1945–82: Theory and Practice (London: Macmillan, 1983), 43.

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The Air War in Vietnam:

Reevaluating Failure

C. D. Coulthard-Clark

Immediately after the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991,

the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Colin Powell,

made a point of thanking the American and Coalition forces

involved in the decisive defeat of Iraq. “Operation Desert Storm”

had been, he said, “a textbook joint operation, each service

doing what it does best to ensure victory.” General Powell went

on to claim that, with the “thunder and lightning” of Desert

Storm, the commander of US forces in the gulf, Gen Norman

Schwarzkopf, had “laid to rest the phantoms of Vietnam.”1

Powell’s comment is revealing and provides a useful point at

which to begin this review of the use of airpower as demonstrated in Vietnam. He was, we can be sure, expressing relief

that the Gulf War had not led to the same sort of protracted

and militarily frustrating conflict endured in Vietnam from

1961 to 1973 by the United States and its allies. He was

apparently also referring to the widespread view of that earlier

war as a somewhat shameful episode in the history of the

American armed forces, one which had finally been redressed.

While it might be reading too much into his meaning to seize

on his use of the word phantoms, this could be taken to suggest that Powell considered that there has been something

essentially unreal about much of what has been made of the

Vietnam experience. If this was his intent, then let me say at

the outset that I think he is right.

Earlier this year I read with interest an article written by the

previous speaker this morning, regarding the popular tendency—certainly in this country—to forget or distort the facts

regarding Vietnam. I am sure Jeff Grey will not mind me quoting his observation: “Because the war ended in defeat for the

United States it has been easier to present its origins and

course as the product of folly, its conduct fundamentally

immoral. The focus of the criticism has moved. . . . But the

169
fundamental elements of the anti-Vietnam War case—immoral

war, incompetently handled—remain seemingly immutable.”2

Jeff’s objection was with the accepted wisdom that the war

was little more than “a criminal undertaking which benefited

no-one, a vast tragedy whose outcome was pre-ordained,” and

the way that “myopia, mythology and hindsight” has come to

debase and overshadow a more objective look at the facts.

Here again, I have to say that I agree.

Some of the most pervasive and enduring images of Vietnam

concern aspects of the air war conducted there. Masses of

Iroquois helicopters carrying troops in an awesome display of

the new measure of battlefield mobility achieved in the conflict. Horrific pictures of children burned in the accidental

napalm bombing of villages which became an icon for the

antiwar movement. Also firmly part of the public memory is

the opposition to the bombing campaign against North

Vietnam, with captured American airmen put on public display in Hanoi much as Saddam Hussein’s regime did during

the gulf conflict. “Stop the Bombing” became the catch cry

which effectively destroyed the presidency of Lyndon Baines

Johnson (LBJ). It seems appropriate, then, to reconsider the

proposition that the outcome in Vietnam represented a colossal failure, not just of American force of arms in general but of

airpower in particular.

Lest some of you think it strange for an Australian to be

undertaking this session, it is perhaps necessary to point out

that Australia was the only one of America’s allies to join it in

making a major aerial contribution in this conflict. Thailand

provided air assistance between 1964 and 1971 in the form of

pilots who flew in the United States (US) and South

Vietnamese transport units, while the South Koreans deployed

a few transport aircraft in 1971 for administrative support of

their large ground contingent. New Zealand also sent pilots,

some serving in a Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) squadron

while others flew as forward air controllers (FAC) with the US

Air Force (USAF).

Australia alone, however, sent operational units—the first in

1964—which served alongside or as part of the broader allied

structure. By the time of our withdrawal in 1971–72, the RAAF

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had deployed three squadrons, comprising Caribou transports, Canberra bombers, and Iroquois helicopters. The RAAF

also provided some 35 pilots who served as FACs, and others

flew in USAF fighter squadrons. In addition, the Royal

Australian Navy sent a helicopter flight which was integrated

into a US Army assault helicopter company. My point is simply that Australia played a part in this air war, and although

its contribution was dwarfed by the American effort, this

involvement at least provided many of our airmen an opportunity to form perspectives on how the war was conducted.

As you have heard, my knowledge of this conflict stems from

having been involved in researching and writing about

Australia’s part in the air war in Vietnam. In the course of talking to many of our veterans, I have been privileged to learn of

their experiences and to gain an understanding of their perceptions, as professional airmen, of this conflict. I make no pretence of having a detailed grasp of all the technical aspects of

air operations as these were carried out, a disclaimer I hasten

to make in recognition of the wealth of experience present in

this hall. What I would like to offer are some broader thoughts,

derived from historical analysis, on what the Vietnam conflict

can tell us about airpower and its application. These observations may not be particularly profound and original, but they

will fill a gap in the chain of campaigns considered in this

forum and put into context matters discussed here.

Before narrowing in to this particular theme, it is worth considering for a moment the changing way in which historians and

other commentators are beginning to regard what happened in

Vietnam, in particular the extent to which the outcome of that

conflict should be judged to have been the abject defeat it is commonly held to be. That the United States and its allies were

obliged to withdraw their forces from the southern Republic of

Vietnam (RVN) by 1973, without achieving a decisive military victory after more than a decade of expensive effort, is undeniable.

That this then left the gate wide open for a communist offensive,

mounted and directed by the northern Democratic Republic of

Vietnam (DRV), which toppled the southern regime in 1975, is

also an inescapable fact of history. The passage of the last 20

years and the subsequent course of world events have, however,

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given different significance to all of this, although whether that

filters through into the popular canon of the generation which

lived through the conflict remains to be seen.

According to the new line of argument, when judged in

terms of the motivations and objectives which inspired external involvement in Vietnam, America and her allies achieved

far more than is commonly perceived. In the world order of the

early 1960s, dominated by East-West confrontation in Europe,

what we saw was an extension of Cold War concerns to prevent the expansion of communism. Specifically, the American

aim in Southeast Asia was to contain the spreading of infection from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia to Thailand and into

the new states of Southeast Asia emerging from colonial origins. Not just Malaysia and Singapore seemed vulnerable then

but also Indonesia and the Philippines. The image conjured up

by the “domino theory” of a sequential collapse of these states

into the communist camp may belong to a crude and unfashionable political theory today, but it cannot be discounted as

shorthand for a genuinely held concern at the time.

The situation accompanying the eventual triumph attained

by Hanoi in 1975 was a far cry from the worst fears earlier

held by the United States and its allies. The stability of

Southeast Asia was nowhere near so fragile and at risk as in

the early 1960s, with most of the fledgling states of that time

having consolidated and matured enormously in the ensuing

period. Moreover, a decade of direct American interest had

helped the wider Asian region, bringing great benefits to the

economies of South Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong in particular. Reunified Vietnam was no longer the threat it earlier was

expected to represent either, since although heavy with military power, it was economically impoverished and faced with a

massive task of reconstruction, particularly in the north as a

result of the war damage inflicted by US bombing.

The policy of economic isolation pursued against Vietnam in

the years since the communist victory, only abandoned in the

last month or so with the ending of the embargo on American

companies doing trade there, made the new regime even more

dependent on its communist backers, the People’s Republic of

China and the Soviet Union. This source of aid, as we have

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seen, proved unsustained. Vietnam fell out with its Chinese

ally and even fought a border war against it in 1979, while

communism itself collapsed in the Soviet Union and across

Eastern Europe in what will surely come to be seen as a

bizarre twist to the domino theory.

In short, the northern Vietnamese regime that so doggedly

pursued its war aims against the south paid a heavy and continuing price, one which might have left it wondering at times

what it was precisely that had been won—although this is

quite possibly a Western reservation no Vietnamese would

share. And in the clear evidence that there were some positive

long-term strategic consequences to the allied participation in

the war, how then can we continue to characterize the outcome as a total defeat? It might not be exactly true to say that

the lives and national treasure expended in Vietnam, Laos,

and Cambodia had ever or fully justified the result, but it also

would not be true to say these had been completely wasted.

The point in approaching my subject from this angle is not

to reignite a debate over the moral issues of the Vietnam War.

Indeed, to ensure that we are not diverted from the issues of

proper concern here today, I must say now that I see little

point to getting into any sort of discussion of that area at all.

My purpose is really to draw a distinction between the shortterm and long-term connotations behind such terms as defeat

and victory. Making such a distinction seems to me necessary,

if only to reconcile the ambiguity between notions of defeat

with so many unmistakable signs of success.

But if not defeat, then what was it? Perhaps we are on safest

ground if we accept that the outcome of the Vietnam War represented a failure to attain the expected result that such a

large-scale application of military force ought to have brought.

It is here that we find the basis for the belief that American

might of arms had been humbled in Vietnam. How could the

massive forces deployed have failed to prevail unless they pursued a false doctrine, were incompetently handled, or showed

inferior mettle?

On the surface, the logic of such an argument seems compelling. At the height of the war the United States had committed to the contest in Vietnam one-half its tactical airpower,

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along with two-fifths of its combat-ready divisions and onethird of its Navy. That is, over one-half a million American

ground troops deployed, in addition to the RVN’s own sizeable

forces, equipped with the best that the world’s leading superpower could provide. On the air side, over 3,000 aircraft were

available to the allies from within the RVN’s borders alone by

1968, and many more were operating from bases in Thailand,

the Philippines, and Guam.3 How could force of this magnitude fail to gain the required result?

For purposes of comparison, it should be noted that the

stunningly successful six-week air campaign against Iraq was

carried out with less than 2,800 aircraft on the Coalition side

and involved the dropping of only some 85,000 tons of bombs.4

This tonnage was barely two-thirds of that dropped by Allied

aircraft on Germany during March 1945 alone.5 Adding weight

to the point is the fact that the United States dropped eight

million tons of bombs in Indochina between 1962 and 1973,

compared with four million dropped by all the warring nations

throughout the Second World War!6

Apart from this, rarely could any side entering into a conflict

hope to experience an air environment so much in its own

favor, in terms of the three basic components or campaigns

recognized by our air doctrine: that is, the battle for control of

the air, the air bombardment effort, and air support for combat forces. Air superiority over the RVN was a given, since the

Vietcong insurgents and People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN)

forces up to 1973 lacked any air support of their own. Only in

the late stage of the war did allied aircraft face any sort of challenge over South Vietnam, aside from ground fire, in the form

of surface-to-air missiles (SAM). In such a benign environment, allied forces were able to concentrate on building effective cooperation with surface forces.

The battle for control of the air which the allies faced was,

therefore, primarily associated with their attempts to bring the

DRV’s homeland interests, resources, and war-making capacity

under attack by bombing. Here the opposition presented by

DRV air defenses was formidable, principally in the form of

Soviet-supplied SAM batteries. The threat posed to raiding allied

aircraft by MiGs of the DRV air force was spasmodic, though

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nonetheless serious. In the period August 1967 to February

1968, for example, the USAF accounted for 31 enemy aircraft in

combat but lost 24 of its own; even as late as 1972 the threat

posed by DRV MiGs was considerable, with 18 US aircraft lost

between February and July for the cost of 24 MiGs.7

So, to frame the question in the terms used by General

Powell: Precisely which phantoms were laid to rest by the Gulf

War? What was wrong with the way airpower was applied in

Vietnam, or could it be that airpower inherently lacks the ability to consistently produce the promised results? Interestingly,

we are told that Powell himself held doubts on such questions

prior to the gulf, having “an Army officer’s natural distrust of

air power,” dating from his own experience in Vietnam.8

In talking to many airmen who fought in Vietnam, or in reading the growing number of accounts which have been published or exist in the records, one never comes across individuals willing to declare that their units failed to do a useful or

effective job of work. Many will admit to shortcomings in particular areas which might have been experienced from time to

time—for example, in the levels of pilot training or experience—

but in nearly all cases one finds that the problem was

addressed and corrective measures implemented. It was interesting to find my experience mirrored by one US researcher,

who commented, “Gradually, the accumulation of testimonies

to the efficiency of various units in Vietnam defied the outcome

of the war as a whole.”9 Basically, if everyone in the Air Force

was doing their job, how come success still proved elusive?

On a wider scale, one occasionally encounters suggestions

that the same phenomenon existed across the services: the

sort of argument that goes, “Well, we in the Army did everything asked of us, but we were let down by the Air Force.”

Airmen, of course, can turn that line on its head by pointing

to the oft-heard claim that Vietnam was primarily a ground

war and that was where the conflict was going to be won or

lost. This finger-pointing relates to the observation I made earlier: there is so much evidence that each of the services in

Vietnam was operating successfully and effectively, at least

much of the time, that it becomes hard to accept the notion

that the “Free World Forces” did not, in fact, ultimately prevail.

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There can be little doubt that in many areas there was scope

for improving on what was done or aspects which specifically

defied the superficial appearance of invincible might. The raw

numbers of aircraft available are, for example, no clear guide

to the operational capability or suitability of individual types.

Several airmen I have spoken to have remarked on the number of older propeller-driven aircraft which they saw operating.

Certainly many of these types, like the T-28 and A-1, were bottom of the range and carried quite small armament loads, but

many jet aircraft that saw service in Vietnam also had limitations in close air support (such as the F-100 Super Sabre tactical fighter), setting up a “prop versus jet” controversy which

raged throughout the war.10

In any event, old was not necessarily useless, as the RAAF

came to appreciate in the case of its Canberra bombers. These

aircraft were held to have already seen their best days when

sent to Vietnam in 1967. As was quickly discovered, however,

this obsolescent type—though in the planning process of being

replaced by the F-111s which Australia had on order—proved

remarkably effective in the level-bombing mode and achieved

sometimes extraordinary accuracy in preplanned strikes.

Although the USAF also operated its version of the Canberra,

the B-57, these were effectively an entirely separate type,

being designed and configured for use in a dive-bombing role.

In the same vein, technology in many areas was not always

equal to the challenges presented by the operational environment encountered in Vietnam. Today we are used to and accepting of many of the developments pioneered in Vietnam, particularly in precision-guided munitions (PGM) which played such a

conspicuous part in the gulf success, without recognizing that

much of the vast amount of ordnance dropped in Vietnam was

of the dumb or iron variety. The effectiveness of such weaponry

in the Vietnam environment, where accuracy had to be within

10 meters to have any effect against some of the bunkers constructed by the opposition, was an acknowledged problem. As

General Schwarzkopf remarked after the Gulf War, in answer to

critics of the performance of PGMs, “I would have given my left

arm if our Air Force could have had half the capability in

Vietnam that it demonstrated in the Gulf.”11

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Having suggested that many of the statistics which can be

used as yardsticks of performance or achievement must be

regarded as misleading or worse, let me develop this theme for

a moment. If the aircraft type flying a particular mission and

the type of weaponry it carried were often important qualifiers

in judging effort, other factors need to be taken into account

too. The loss of effectiveness which went with the appalling

weather during the middle months of each year also points up

the fact that large numbers of aircraft flying often tell us very

little about what was actually being achieved.

I recall one interview subject telling me, during my research

of the practice adopted late in the war, of US sorties being sent

off with less than full armament load but twice as many aircraft

being used on each mission. This was, apparently, a deliberate

device to keep up the figures for the number of hours and missions being flown, at a time when the number of targets was

reducing. Without this practice being adopted, the fear was that

political pressures would have built for a cutback in the number of squadrons deployed. Hearing evidence of this nature, it is

hard not to wonder whether the allies might not have gotten by

in Vietnam with even less airpower than they actually had.

Other complaints heard relate to the choice of targets (hitting small jungle camps on the basis of three-day-old intelligence), and the US reliance on bomb damage assessment

(BDA) as a measure of operational effectiveness. Since this

system relied on an individual FAC making a best estimate of

the damage caused by any one strike, it was usually based on

little more than guesswork. As such, it was a system open to

serious abuse, becoming the Air Force equivalent of the

Army’s “body count” syndrome in creating an appearance of

progress essentially for political purposes. I recall being told

by an Australian FAC who, on one of the few occasions where

he controlled a strike by a RAAF Canberra, rejoiced in giving

his countrymen a “big fat zero” as their BDA—“just to keep

them honest,” as he put it. Perhaps if there had been a good

many more like him, the operational statistics for Vietnam

may have retained a good deal more credibility.

In the area of Army-Air Force cooperation, so vital to the main

game being pursued within the southern republic’s borders,

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there is similar evidence—a lot of it anecdotal—which points to

periodic shortcomings. Individual instances can be found where

air strikes summoned in support of ground forces in contact

were late in arriving, failed to hit the intended target, or—

worse—sometimes inflicted casualties among the troops being

supported. Undoubtedly such things happened, just as they did

during the Gulf War if we recall the losses through friendly fire.

In this area we need to beware of a number of dangerous

myths which have been propagated regarding the Vietnam

experience. For instance, the professed fear of some infantry

commanders about using air strikes too close to their own positions, because of the lack of skill exhibited by Air Force pilots,

is contradicted by other accounts from FACs. These tell you of

instances where ground commanders deliberately misstated

the safety distance of their troops from the intended target of

an air strike, relying on the accuracy of ordnance delivery.

Other complaints about the response times entailed in

obtaining air support for ground troops do not withstand

scrutiny. The location of air bases throughout the RVN and

the system used of holding pairs of fighter-bombers on

standby at these bases meant that the occasions were very

rare when air support could not be provided within 20 minutes anywhere within the RVN’s borders. Added to this was

the practice employed of diverting aircraft from preplanned

missions to undertake more urgent tasks, which ensured that

this time frame was frequently bettered. Indeed, where a

planned target could not be hit because of weather or some

other reason, aircraft could be left looking for a worthwhile

alternative target and effectively “hawking” their armament

load. In such cases, the response time involved could sometimes be almost instantaneous.

Of course, the very effectiveness of such a system brings its

own problems. When 20 minutes becomes the norm for an air

strike to become available, there is a natural tendency for a

ground commander in difficulty to ask why the same support

could not be provided in five, with little consideration of the

numbers of assets needed to achieve that level of coverage.

Using aircraft which had been armed in anticipation of a particular mission, or for stand-by against a range of contingencies,

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also did not guarantee a ground commander that the aircraft

arriving to lend him support would be optimally loaded for the

actual task required.

Whatever the distorting effects of the factors mentioned, or

the deficiencies which might be held to have been revealed,

none of these seems to stand out so clearly as to suggest that

there was a widespread, endemic or systemic failure of the air

capability available in Vietnam. There was, I conclude, plenty

of airpower—indeed, it can even be argued that its levels were

extravagant—and it was generally capable of doing the job

required of it. What we are left with in the case of Vietnam is

a failure to have properly or effectively applied airpower, or to

have misdirected this effort.

Constraints on the use of airpower are undoubtedly observable at several levels of the structure which ran the war in

Vietnam. At a purely local level, the requirement to obtain clearance from Vietnamese province chiefs before engaging targets in

many areas was a frustrating limitation which allied airmen

could do little about. Suggestions also can be found that there

was, perhaps, an inadequate appreciation in the US Military

Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) headquarters of how to

get the best use of air resources in a counterrevolutionary warfare setting. Several Air Force accounts, for example, have

pointed to the unwillingness of the Army generals who headed

the MACV organization to achieve effective representation from

the USAF on their staff.12 This is pointed to as typifying a shortsighted attitude to achieving the centralized control of the total

air effort which was seen as a desirable objective.

That the US military was obliged to fight in Vietnam “with one

hand tied behind its back” is a charge which has been made

often over the years. In essence, this line of argument points to

there having been a political failure to win in Vietnam rather

than a purely military one. As one popular account of recent

years put matters, none of the presidents from Truman to

Johnson who presided over the progressive US entry into the

conflict had a plan behind their actions. “They were trapped

between their fear of being blamed for the fall of Vietnam and

widening the war so much it might bring in China or the Soviet

Union. So each did only the minimum necessary not to lose it

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during his tenure in the White House. They nibbled the bullet

rather than bit it.”13

There is a considerable body of evidence to support the contention that misunderstanding and lack of resolve at the political level did much to squander the military effort devoted to

Vietnam. That there was a degree of political control exercised

over the detailed conduct of operations also seems unquestionable. On the air side this was manifested even in the selection of bombing targets in the DRV being made in Washington

by President Johnson or the secretary of defense, Robert

McNamara, rather than the military commanders responsible

at the front.14

The fear that Vietnam would cease to be a limited war and

bring about a direct confrontation between the United States

and either or both of the Soviet Union and China stemmed, of

course, from the experience of Korea. The entry of Chinese

forces into that earlier conflict, precipitated by General

MacArthur’s UN offensive deep into North Korea, had convinced

a later generation of American politicians to distrust the judgment of their military advisers and keep them on a short leash.

In the literature of the war, we find efforts to excuse

Johnson’s miscalculations in respect to the bombing of North

Vietnam, arguing that the president was “misled by stupid or

self-serving military advisers and ill-founded intelligence

reports.”15 Not so, suggest other accounts, which make the

point that Johnson and his advisers were skeptical about the

field reports received from Vietnam, routinely discounting the

accuracy of body counts and claimed successes of the pacification program and Air Force bombing estimates.16 At the very

least, we can be sure, the process of policy decision was much

more complex than apologists for LBJ would have us believe.

However, while it may be convenient to adopt the line that

the politicians got things hopelessly wrong, and did so despite

the professionals’ best efforts, there is a body of analysis which

argues that the services, including the Air Force, do not stand

absolved from blame. As one recent study has pointed out, the

USAF was mentally ill-prepared for a conflict like Vietnam:

Since its doctrinal departure point was that small wars could be won

easily as long as it was ready to win big wars, the Air Force had to

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believe that once air power was properly employed, this war could be

won quickly. The Air Force, winging its way into Southeast Asia on a

doctrine devised for bombing Nazi Germany, was not alone in its nostalgia for fighting World War II nor in its determination to envisage the

enemy’s capabilities as mirroring its own.17

In this writer’s view, the USAF in the period of the early 1960s

showed inferior intellectual caliber, tending more and more to

abdicate strategic thinking to civilian think tanks like RAND:

“Consequently, when Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon

B. Johnson turned to their military leaders for a strategy to follow in Vietnam, the generals could not devise one appropriate to

the war as perceived by the civilian leaders. . . . In Vietnam, the

Air Force along with the other services was rarely outfought, but

like the other services it was often outthought.”

18

The advice the service was capable of giving to civilian policy makers was hardly of a kind to inspire confidence, therefore, appearing to be out of touch and heavy handed and giving rise to unfortunate comparisons between military

dreamers and civilian pragmatists.19

However arrived at, the mistake which lay at the core of the

strategic misdirection of the war came directly from

Washington. Perhaps McNamara and Johnson were claiming

superior knowledge over their military chiefs in taking matters

such as target selection into their own hands, but the parameters they set for the conduct of the air war were, at least

arguably, the wrong ones. In late 1964, for example, the US

Joint Chiefs of Staff presented proposals for a hard-hitting 16-

day air campaign against 94 strategic targets considered critical to the DRV’s ability to wage war. This program was

rejected by Johnson and McNamara, who decided that the

option of bombing should only supplement pacification efforts

focused within the RVN. Thus the Rolling Thunder program

initially implemented by the United States amounted to a tactical rather than strategic air offensive, one aimed more at

sending signals of political will rather than achieving decisive

military objectives.

Both the political and military advocates in this debate were

exhibiting mistaken ideas here. The latter had missed the

point that Vietnam was a preindustrial, largely agrarian

nation which was never likely to be subdued in the same way

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that Germany and Japan had been. At the same time, the wisdom of using a blunt and brutal instrument such as airpower

to send diplomatic signals was open to question.

That the United States proceeded to forfeit the true impact of

airpower through such a choice seems confirmed by subsequent events. Certainly the benefits of shock and surprise

espoused in the RAAF’s current air doctrine had been lost

through the process of gradual escalation which subsequently

characterized the US air campaign. The DRV was enabled to

undertake major improvement of its air defense network which

would cost the USAF dear in later operations over the north.

More than this, however, it was fundamentally wasteful to

devote air resources to knocking out enemy assets when these

eventually appeared in the RVN, or to intercept them along the

length of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the major southern infiltration

route for men and materiel running through eastern Laos.

The principle of economy of effort argued that the best effect

would be achieved through attacking the enemy’s war effort at

its source, chiefly at the points where stocks of supplies destined for the south were concentrated on arrival in the DRV.

Prime targets in such a campaign were the rail links to China

and the port of Haiphong which serviced Hanoi. The validity of

this was clearly demonstrated with the Freedom Train and

Linebacker I bombing programs from April to October 1972,

involving fewer target restrictions than Rolling Thunder, and

more especially Linebacker II during December 1972 when

there was unrestricted bombing of the north.

The sheer destructiveness of the Linebacker operations

brought a resumption and eventual conclusion of peace negotiations, which by this stage was all that was intended of

them. Interestingly, these have since been represented in

much of the literature as one of the few demonstrations in the

war of the effective and cost-effective use of airpower. Many

writers have been tempted to ponder what might have been

the effect of adopting this course much earlier in the war,

preferably at the outset of the air campaign in 1965—a line of

thought which has given rise to some disturbing mythology

about the real value and achievement of these operations.

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As previously indicated, the fear of provoking the major communist powers acting in support of the DRV was the principal

constraint on engaging in unrestricted bombing earlier in the

war. This raises a question, though, as to whether Vietnam was

a war which the United States felt it could even afford to win in

a conventional sense. Pulverizing the DRV into an acceptance

of US will (even if achievable, and that is debatable) would have

damaged the US’s global standing by apparently confirming all

the worse rhetoric of US opponents regarding its imperialist

nature and ambitions. The problem from the outset was that

the United States had no basis for intervening in Vietnam

which was internationally recognized as legitimate.

Reverting once more to General Powell’s comments in connection with the Desert Storm victory, it was probably the

avoidance of political overcontrol which represented the most

important “phantom of Vietnam” laid to rest. In Woodward’s

book, The Commanders, we are told that President George

Bush took a key lesson from Vietnam into his handling of the

gulf situation. This was that he should “send enough force to

do the job and don’t tie the hands of the commanders.”20 To

further avoid “the military’s Vietnam nightmare,” typified by

Johnson leaning over maps in the White House circling specific targets, Powell also reportedly determined to keep as

much air targeting information as possible away from

Washington,21 thereby allowing Schwarzkopf and his commanders the maximum freedom to work within the guidelines

set for them by the political leadership.

So, what do we take away from consideration of the Vietnam

experience? It might be the proposition that the conduct of air

operations in that theater cannot be taken as a fair test of airpower, any more than it provided the opportunity to usefully

measure the strength and ability of ground combat or naval

power. This was, surely, the implied conclusion offered by

General Powell regarding the difference between Vietnam and

the Gulf War: in the latter case, each service had been allowed

to do what it does best to ensure victory, which was more than

could be said of Vietnam.

To ignore the experience of Vietnam and to discount it as some

sort of aberration to a golden rule of airpower which remains

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inviolate seems to me, however, a dangerous alternative.

Airpower failed to deliver the goods in Vietnam, perhaps not in

the way that we expect to have defeat presented, but through an

inability of its practitioners and advocates to be realistic in their

arguments of what could be achieved and might be expected

from it. Here was a case where an out-dated doctrine, rigidly

applied, proved unresponsive to the demands of a conflict

demanding a more creative approach. Vietnam was a reminder

that war frequently produces situations which defy rules which

quantify or expectations which seem straightforward.

Discussion

Air Commodore C. H. Spurgeon: I was the commander of RAAF

Vietnam in 1970–71. I don’t think any commander has ever

been sent on an RAAF mission with his duty statement written on half a piece of A4 paper, as I was. I don’t think any air

force commander should ever be sent anywhere with a directive on half a piece of paper. The two items on that paper gave

me command of all RAAF forces in Vietnam and told me to

keep them half a mile away from the Cambodian border. On

that premise, I suppose the border was neatly marked by a

white painted picket fence. As a result of that directive, such

limitations as I could impose on the use of our Caribou and

Canberras were made extremely difficult. Also, when I arrived

I found that the targeting and mission responsibility for those

aircraft was totally in the hands of a USAF operations room

run by a lieutenant colonel. Our Canberras were listed on the

mission board as B-57s, when in fact in some critical aspects

they were quite different. When we came to withdraw from

Vietnam, our air staff in Australia were too hasty in removing

the helicopters, which were still needed to support the army.

So I found my job up there very frustrating.

Dr. Coulthard-Clark: Perhaps I could make a few points about

the RAAF commitment. I was critical in my talk about the doctrine pursued by the USAF. We have to be equally critical of the

guidance provided to our RAAF commanders. A number of people who were interviewed as part of the Australian War

Memorial’s oral history program commented on the inadequate

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briefing they were given before taking up command and on the

lack of debriefing on their return home. We seemed singularly

determined neither to provide guidance nor to learn from the

experience of Vietnam. So the malaise I was talking about certainly wasn’t confined to the USAF. The inviolability of borders

was a legitimate political constraint to set on our forces, but in

some circumstances it was quite impractical. We had a number

of fighter pilots flying with USAF squadrons which regularly

operated over North Vietnam and Laos, and the simple fact is,

our people flew with them. At least two RAAF pilots flew 10 missions over North Vietnam.

The point about tasking the Canberras is worth elaboration.

One RAAF Canberra in Vietnam was definitely shot down by a

SAM. That situation, as I understand it, probably arose because

the tasking authority at Tan Son Nhut Airport in Saigon had no

idea that our aircraft, not being the same as B-57s, lacked the

necessary equipment to detect SAMs and consequently sent it

into an area where SAM batteries were possibly operating.

Air Vice-Marshal Gary Beck: You say that the out-dated doctrine was rigidly applied. From my perspective as a squadron

pilot, we measured our effectiveness by bomb damage assessment. This has all been discounted in the years since, but I

can tell you then we thought we were doing a great job. I’d be

interested to know how you’re going to write about the RAAF’s

contribution in Vietnam. It seems you could write glowingly

about what we think we did, but in the broader context you

could be very critical.

Dr. Coulthard-Clark: Using American statistics, the RAAF’s

Canberra bombers had the best BDA record of any of the allied

squadrons in South Vietnam. But one of the odd experiences

I’ve had is going through the squadron’s monthly reports

which contain extensive data on BDA. When you look at the

amount of damage claimed—the number of enemy personnel

killed and injured, the yardage of trenches uncovered,

bunkers destroyed, weapon positions knocked out, sampans

sunk, and so on—you’re left with a curious feeling. If we were

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doing so “well,” why were so many of the enemy still so active?

I think that’s a real contradiction we face and that’s what I was

trying to highlight in my presentation. I’m not sure it necessarily answers your question.

Air Vice-Marshal Beck: I think the missing ingredient was

clearly stated strategic objectives. The objectives for the air

campaign weren’t clearly enunciated, and neither was an air

campaign plan. But at the tactical level we thought we were

doing a great job.

Dr. Coulthard-Clark: I think we’re dealing here with one of the

odd aspects of Australia’s commitment. We never believed we

were making the kind of contribution which would significantly affect the overall outcome. We were engaged in an exercise of tokenism. The units we sent were those elements of our

force structure which were most readily released. They were

selected not by the RAAF but after discussion by the Chiefs of

Staff Committee, and the decisions were made by the Defence

Committee, not the Air Board. There’s perhaps nothing

strange about that. But you never find in the records of our

higher defense organization debate over what we were specifically required to do in Vietnam and how best to do it. I think

that typifies the Australian participation.

Air Marshal David Evans: You said that you found it odd that

almost everyone you’d spoken to had claimed that they were

operating effectively, and yet we didn’t win the war. Well, you

know as well as I do, the constraints placed on our forces prevented them from winning the war. The army, for instance,

couldn’t pursue people into Cambodia; generals couldn’t

decide to do an amphibious landing in North Vietnam. The

circumstances were not conducive to winning the war. But

that doesn’t mean that the American and Australian units

weren’t operating as efficiently as they were allowed to in their

specific tasks each day.

Dr. Coulthard-Clark: My point entirely.

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Air Marshal Evans: The people who should learn from Vietnam

are not the military but the politicians. Military power is only as

effective as the guts of the politicians to use it, and I suggest

that if we’d had LBJ and McNamara at the time of the Gulf War,

we’d still be there and the casualties would be mounting.

Dr. Coulthard-Clark: I’ll agree with you but with one qualification. The obligation is still on the practitioners of airpower to

provide advice, and unless that advice is credible and realistic, we are always going to be ignored by the politicians.

Air Vice-Marshal Peter Squire: In the previous presentation Dr.

Grey referred to inadequacies in the joint command and control arrangements in Korea, and suggested that perhaps lessons were not learnt from that conflict and translated to

Vietnam. What are your thoughts on that?

Dr. Coulthard-Clark: I mention in my paper that the USAF was

inclined to complain about their underrepresentation on what

was supposedly a joint staff in MACV headquarters. It does

seem as though there wasn’t a strong Air Force voice and that,

in turn, did affect the planning and conduct of operations.

Air Vice-Marshal Beck: Could I add that we’ve come a long way

since Vietnam in terms of Australia and other countries being

involved in a coalition force with the United States. While our

contribution in a combined operation may still look like

tokenism, it’s certainly not the way the Americans view it from

the command perspective. The command and control of operations in the Gulf War showed how much things have

improved since Vietnam.

Dr. Coulthard-Clark: General Horner has made the point that in

the gulf a conscious effort was made to decentralize command.

In Vietnam the emphasis was entirely the other way, with, in

effect, a number of separate air forces operating independently.

The Marine Corps, for example, retained their aircraft specifically

to support the Marines. Only if there was no requirement from

the Marines would they be released to the broader air effort.

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THE AIR WAR IN VIETNAM: REEVALUATING FAILURE
Professor Robin Higham: I’d like to make a couple of observations. It seems to me that one of the things that hasn’t been

talked about here is topography. The Gulf War was fought as

the Western Desert was fought in the Second World War.

Topographically, it was very suitable for military operations;

there were very few places you could set an ambush and

things of that sort. Secondly, it seems to me there’s a parallel

between what happened in Britain between the First World

War and the Second World War. In the First World War the military were very poor at giving advice, and they determined by

the Second World War that they were never going to allow the

politicians to override them again.

Group Capt Gary Waters: Chris, you’ve brought us to the brink

twice now, once in the presentation and once in the discussion. If the political parameters were askew or just plain wrong

as you’ve suggested, what should or even could the military

commanders have done?

Dr. Coulthard-Clark: Good question, Gary. In fact when I was

preparing this paper I contemplated that question several

times. It brings you face to face with one of the central dilemmas of Vietnam. The options confronting America’s political

leaders were limited and all unpleasant. They wanted to support the southern republic but not to the extent of bringing in

the Soviet Union and China; but the very fact of an American

military presence in Southeast Asia ensured that the Soviets

and Chinese would be involved to some extent. It was that sort

of war; it didn’t allow simple solutions.

One point regarding the military I raise in my paper is that in

the absence of any obvious answers, airpower practitioners

were not sufficiently creative or flexible in their thinking.

Air Vice-Marshal Beck: If I can add another observation, air

interdiction campaigns in counterrevolutionary warfare suffer

from considerable constraints, and we have to recognise that

there’s a limit to what can be achieved.

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Notes

1. Canberra Times, 6 March 1991.

2. Bulletin, 28 December 1993–4 January 1994, 47.

3. J. Schlight, The War in South Vietnam: The Years of the Offensive,

1965–1968 (Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1988), 129.

4. Gary Waters, Gulf Lesson One—The Value of Air Power: Doctrinal

Lessons for Australia (Canberra: Air Power Studies Centre, 1992), 101.

5. Ibid., 8.

6. Earl H. Tilford Jr., Setup: What the Air Force Did in Vietnam and Why

(Maxwell Air Force Base [AFB], Ala.: Air University Press, 1991), 293.

7. Robert Frank Futrell et al., Aces & Aerial Victories: The United States

Air Force in Southeast Asia, 1965–1973 (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Albert F.

Simpson Historical Research Center; Washington, D.C.: Government

Printing Office, 1976), 2, 16.

8. Bob Woodward, The Commanders (New York: Simon & Schuster,

1991), 148.

9. Donald J. Mrozek, The US Air Force After Vietnam: Postwar Challenges

and Potential for Responses (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, 1988), 10.

10. Schlight, 19.

11. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, It Doesn’t Take a Hero: General H. Norman

Schwarzkopf, The Autobiography, written with Peter Petre (New York:

Bantam Books, 1992), 583.

12. See, for example, Schlight, 76–77, and William W. Momyer, Air Power

in Three Wars (Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1978), 73–77.

13. Fox Butterfield’s introduction to John S. Bowman, ed., The Vietnam

War Day by Day (London: n. p., 1989), 7.

14. Brian VanDeMark, Into the Quagmire: Lyndon Johnson and the

Escalation of the Vietnam War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991),

107–8, has Johnson acknowledging that he personally selected targets in

the DRV for bombing attacks.

15. Booth Mooney, LBJ: An Irreverent Chronicle (New York: Crowell,

1976), 180.

16. Paul Y. Hammond, LBJ and the Presidential Management of Foreign

Relations (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 1992), 198–200.

17. Tilford, 78.

18. Ibid., 287.

19. Ibid., 93.

20. Woodward, 306–7.

21. Ibid., 368.

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THE AIR WAR IN VIETNAM: REEVALUATING FAILURE
Airpower as a National Instrument:

The Arab-Israeli Wars

R. A. Mason

Origins

When Israel became independent in May 1948, the infant

state was only nine miles wide to the east of Tel Aviv, 70 from

the coast to the Dead Sea, and 400 miles long from the

Lebanon border to Eilat on the Gulf of Aqaba. Its population

was two and one-half million. It was surrounded by hostile

states: Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria with a total population of approximately 50 million. Beyond them were several

other states which either opposed the establishment of the

State of Israel from the outset or joined the opposition during

the next 45 years. For the greater part of the next 45 years,

Israel was either involved in open war with her neighbors or in

hostile confrontation. The state was the product of armed

struggle and has depended on military strength for its subsequent evolution. For 40 years the cornerstone of that military

strength has been the Israeli Air Force (IAF). This paper seeks

to analyze the sources of that strength, concentrating on

peacetime preparation, and the occasional mistake, on which

such an outstanding combat record was based, rather than on

the conflicts which have been so assiduously documented.

The chronology of the modern state of Israel is punctuated

by significant events in the history of airpower: the June War

of 1967, the War of Attrition, the October War, the Entebbe

raid, the Osirak raid, Bekáa Valley, Tunis, and finally, part of

“The Patriot War” of 1991. Israel’s strategic environment is

unusual and therefore “lessons” read across to airpower elsewhere need to be drawn with particular caution. Moreover,

until Israel regards her political position as secure and no

longer feels dependent on her armed forces, any military

information released “officially” is unlikely to be neutral, and

a similar caveat is required for Arab sources. Very seldom, for

191
example, do accounts of success and failure written by either

side correspond with each other.

Most other air forces originated in peacetime and entered

combat in either World War I or World War II with at least an

embryonic structure, concepts of operations, and combat

force. In 1937 the Jewish underground military organization,

the Haganah, organized its first clandestine flying course, followed a year later by Irgun Zvai Leumi. By May 1948 Israel

possessed a handful of unarmed aircraft and 22 registered

pilots. Its combat strength was increased during the War of

Independence by four Messerschmitt Me-109s, three B-17s,

and then by a trickle of assorted relics from World War II.

The Egyptian Air Force (EAF) was established in 1932 and

until 1945 had been effectively under British control. During

the Second World War an Egyptian squadron of Hurricanes

was formed primarily to provide air cover for shipping off the

Egyptian coast. At the end of the war Britain handed over the

squadron and one Spitfire squadron to the EAF. By 1948 the

EAF was suffering from poor maintenance and lack of spares,

and only 12 Hurricanes and 18 Spitfires were serviceable.

Nevertheless, in the early months of war, the EAF enjoyed air

superiority. It bombed Tel Aviv and other civilian/industrial

targets and haphazardly attacked Israeli airfields. It had no

intelligence on the infant but rapidly expanding IAF and, more

seriously, it was not aware that a detachment of Royal Air

Force (RAF) Spitfires remained at Ramat David. On 22 May

five EAF Spitfires were shot down by their RAF counterparts

and the Egyptian government apologized to London for attacking British forces. This event was not mentioned in any Israeli

account of the war. Subsequently, when the IAF had increased

to about 100 aircraft, it moved over to the offensive, taking its

opponents completely by surprise. Cairo, Damascus, and

Amman were all attacked and the remnants of the EAF neutralized by a heavy offensive counter air (OCA) attack on El

Arish airfield.

One other incident, of no military significance at the time,

foreshadowed events 25 years later. On 29 May 1948, under

pressure from the ground forces and against IAF opposition,

the general staff instructed the air force to launch all their four

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Messerschmitts against an Egyptian column advancing on Tel

Aviv, rather than attack airfields in the Gaza Strip and Sinai.

One aircraft was destroyed and its pilot killed, another damaged and pilot wounded, for a 50 percent attrition rate. The

episode was typical in scale of the efforts in the air on both

sides at this stage: too small, too uncoordinated and inadequate weaponry to exercise any influence on the outcome of

the struggle.

Establishment

After the war, cameos of struggles played out in Whitehall

and the Pentagon were repeated in Israel before the “independence” or otherwise of the IAF was determined. There does

not appear to have been any appeal to theorists by either side.

The first leaders of the IAF had served in one or other of the

Allied air forces, all in junior ranks, and none had any experience of bureaucratic infighting. Their common sense was

based on experience and perception. So was that of the common sense high command, personified by Ygael Yadin, ex

Haganah commander who subsequently commented, “When I

took on the post of IDF Chief of Staff (in October 1949) I knew

that our problem of problems [was] this: were we going to

make the same mistake as other nations that established

independent air, sea and land forces? Or were we going to

establish one general staff for all the forces . . . as befitted a

small country, a small force, and short, internal communication routes. It was clear to me that the second way was correct, and that if I could not solve the problem that way I had

better resign my post.”1 The issue at stake, however, was not

the independence or otherwise of the IAF, but the nature of its

contribution to Israeli security and its subordination not to

the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) but to the Israeli Army.

There was a curious reprise in Israel in 1948 of circumstances in Britain in 1917. David Ben-Gurion, like David Lloyd

George before him, called upon a South African to advise him

about his air force. In less than a week Wing Comdr Cecil

Margo constructed the blueprint for the IAF. He observed that

the IDF command had failed to include senior IAF officers in

operational planning, dissipated already minuscule assets,

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and failed to provide adequate support. The IAF’s primary role,

said Margo, was to defend Israel and its ground forces from

enemy aircraft: that required air superiority. Because Israel

was outnumbered by its opponents, victory in the air war had

to be given resource priority. Once the air war was won, the

IAF could help the ground forces. At present, army demands

were draining the IAF’s limited resources and weakening

Israeli security rather than enhancing it. Margo fleshed out his

comments with recommendations for new mission planning,

control, and targeting procedures and finally urged BenGurion to place the IAF supreme commander on equal footing

with the heads of the other armed services, answerable to the

IDF chief of staff.2 Ben-Gurion listened, and on 26 July 1948

declared the air force to be an independent branch answerable

only to the IDF chief of staff and appointed Aharon Remez to

be its commander. But there was still a long way to go before

Margo’s recommendations were to be completely carried out.

David Ben-Gurion wished to base the nation’s defense on a

small regular army expanded in crisis by reserves. Remez

argued that such a mobilization would be threatened by air

attack, and therefore air superiority was essential from the outset. Consequently, the air force had to be the exact opposite of

the army. He repeated Margo’s position: It had to be a powerful full-time force capable of seizing an initiative and establishing air superiority. It had to have control of its own supplies,

training, manpower, intelligence, and operations. It also had to

take priority in defense resource allocation.3 In December 1950

Remez resigned after failing to persuade Ben-Gurion or Yadin,

and a large number of IAF officers followed him.

The debate rumbled on into 1953 until changes in leadership slowly began to modify entrenched positions. Dan

Tolkowsky, air force commander in 1953, subsequently and

astutely reflected that part of the problem had been that the

airmen had translated their experience from World War II into

an Israeli environment where the air force simply lacked the

capacity to apply any kind of doctrine.4 No wonder the indigenous IDF leadership had no grasp of operations. Ezer

Weizman recalled that in the War of Independence the ground

forces lost 6,000 killed, while the air force lost 10 pilots, and

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some of these by accident. “None of the battles [was] decided

by the Air Force.”5

Instead of perpetuating the debate, Tolkowsky took two

practical initiatives: First, he preached and practiced combat

readiness so that commando and other army operations could

be supported without notice; and second, he began to train his

crews to attack the opposition on the ground. He also crystallized the significance of airpower to Israel. “From the ground

forces point of view, we were unfortunate. We were surrounded

by enemies on all sides. But from the Air Force point of view it

was a terrific advantage. We could offer 360 degrees of protection, and Cairo, Amman, Damascus were only minutes away.”

And since to attack Israel the Egyptians or the Iraqis had first

to move their forces across large expanses of open desert, it

should have been “obvious [to] any fool that this was an ideal

situation for the use of air power.”6

This evaluation came to dominate Israeli defense policy, but

the translation of the concept into combat success took time.

In the nine days of the Sinai conflict in 1956, more usually

referred to in the West as the Suez confrontation, Tolkowsky’s

air force made a significant contribution—fighting for air superiority and providing close air support—in a short and militarily inconclusive war.

By October 1956 both air forces had increased considerably

in size. The EAF contained 80 MiG-15s, 45 Il-28s, 25 Meteors,

57 Vampires, and 200 trainer, transport, and others. They were

faced by five fighter squadrons of 37 Meteors and 75 Ouragons

plus a mixed bag of piston-engine Mustangs, Mosquitoes, and

one or two B-17s. The battle, however, was joined and dominated by the British and French air forces. Engagements

between the EAF and IAF were largely confined to the first two

days of the war when the IAF shot down eight EAF aircraft but

themselves lost 10 aircraft, all to ground fire.

The subsequent political debacle for France and Britain, plus

some well-founded criticism of the British bombing campaign,

were allowed by President Abdel Gamel Nasser to outweigh the

obvious weaknesses disclosed in the EAF. Promotion was

based on political affiliations, and combat readiness was actually relaxed. Along with one-third of the Egyptian armed forces,

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the EAF was diverted to the intervention in Yemen with further

deterioration in combat training and neglect of the Sinai front.

Consequently further purchases of Soviet bombers and air

defense radars in the early 1960s were not accompanied by

adequate modernized combat training.

Meanwhile, in Israel, almost the exact opposite was taking

place. Political leaders were displeased by what they perceived

to be unreliable support from their “allies” and began to provide

for operational self-sufficiency in the next stages of what had

come to be perceived as a war for the nation’s survival. Military

commanders constructed a concept of operations which was virtually an adaptation of blitzkrieg. IDF commanders had studied

the theories of Basil Liddell Hart and his advocacy of fluid

mobile warfare in conjunction with heavy air attack. They added

to them the ingredient of preemptive attack.7

Superiority

In the 11 years between Suez and the Six Day War of June

1967, the concepts identified by Remez, Margo, and

Tolkowsky were related to the ground strategy and given substance by reequipment, expansion, and above all, by training.

In 1957 only 17 cadets applied for flying training, and the primary ambition of a young Israeli was still to be a commando

in the Palmach tradition. The IAF Flight School had been a low

priority both for resources and instruction, suffering in part

from the exclusively elitist image of the fighter pilot inherited

from the first generation of IAF aircrew and from anachronistic British methods. The problems were solved within 12

months by a barbary fighter pilot, Yeshayaho Gazit who at first

resigned when assigned to the position of commander of the

flight school in July 1957. In 12 months Gazit increased the

intake to 80. He organized a personal letter from Tolkowsky to

every qualified high school graduate; he insisted on all new

instructors being fighter pilots and on two of his instructors

going into a newly formed Super Mystere squadron.

Subsequently, he reorganized the flying training syllabus to

accelerate conversion to jet aircraft. It was a combination of

strong leadership, personal example, personal contact, removing the chasm between training and operations, and above all,

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insistence on unalloyed standards of excellence. After several

frank exchanges of view with the IAF commander, Ezer

Weizman, Gazit became head of Training Command where he

imposed his standards on frontline as well as training

squadrons, using computerized records to monitor both unit

and individual performance.

The allocation of frontline aircrew to flying training posts

can be a source of additional turbulence and it can increase

costs. If, however, frontline experience is not considered necessary or if flying instructing comes to be perceived as a dead

end, one has to ask why does it remain a uniformed commitment at all. The cheapest approach of all is a civilian flying

school, and the hope that “operational conversion” will produce both the military officer and the combat pilot. The interaction in the IAF between training and operational flying had

been further developed by 1994 when flying instructors continued to “belong” and train with their frontline squadrons

during their training tour.

The preparation of the pilot for combat received an increasingly sharp focus from 1963. Commander in Chief Weizman

instructed his chief of operations, Yak Nevo to prepare a plan

for “achieving air superiority through massive deployment of

the IAF,” a euphemism for OCA. The plan was to become the

blueprint for the annihilation of the Arab air forces in the June

War of 1967.8

Never was the aphorism “train as you intend to fight” so comprehensively addressed. Nevo and Col Raphael Sivron, later to

be air attaché in London, requested and received detailed intelligence on almost every Arab airfield in the region, collating

runway data, aircraft, and associated personnel. From that

data, minutely detailed over-the-target requirements of bomb

weight and aircraft were compiled to close runways long

enough for the trapped aircraft around them to be destroyed.

All the IAF aircraft types likely to be involved in such an attack,

which was virtually the whole of the air force, carried weapon

loads within Israeli airspace at the heights, speeds, and distances necessary to ensure that mission performance data was

exact. Precision bombing and ground attack gunnery became a

squadron’s first priority, concentrating on low-level navigation,

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precise timing, and complete radio silence from start-up to

touchdown. Finally, the entire plan, known as Moked for

“focus,” or “sacrificial fire”9 was drawn up in outline and completed with operational appendices which would be kept up to

date by the appropriate staffs. It would be kept until a threat

to Israel was perceived to require a preemptive response. The

plan took four years to construct, refine, and practice. It was to

be executed in four hours on 5 June 1967.

By 1967 the EAF had expanded still further, to include 30

Tu-16s, 40 Il-28s, 130 MiG-21s, 80 MiG-19s, 15 Su-7s, and

150 MiG-15/17s. Of those, only 200 were serviceable, and

there were only 150 combat pilots, according to a subsequent

observation by the war minister, General Fawzi.

Pilot availability was in fact irrelevant as the first wave of

IAF aircraft, with complete radio silence, hit the first EAF airfields at 8:45 A.M. Cairo time on 6 June. Within one hour 200

EAF aircraft had been destroyed. A second sortie followed in

midmorning when air bases in the west and south of Egypt

were attacked. Some aircraft, including the Mirage squadrons,

made a third sortie before being switched at 12:45 P.M. to

Syrian and Jordanian targets. By the end of the day some of

the Vautour and Super Mystere squadrons had flown six sorties. For the rest of the week the IAF swept the Sinai desert

annihilating Egyptian ground forces in support of the IDF

advancing armored columns. A classic air superiority battle

was followed by its maximum exploitation.

Subsequent analysis of the June War has naturally concentrated on the factors which produced the devastating IAF victory, its impact on the ground campaign in Sinai, and the subsequent revision worldwide of airfield protection and defenses.

It is therefore worth noting that the outcome was by no means

a foregone conclusion.

Nasser, like Saddam Hussein a generation later, pursued a

provocative political and military policy without the detailed

strategic planning and military preparation to support it.

Nonetheless, at a meeting on 2 June with his senior commanders, he warned them that Israel might attack between 3

and 5 June.10 The air force commander, General Sodki, argued

for a preemptive strike against Israeli airfields, radars, and

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troop concentrations, even though no detailed EAF plans for

such an offensive existed. He was refused by Nasser who

explained that for political reasons Egypt must absorb a first

blow before retaliating. In those circumstances the EAF was

expecting to lose less than 20 percent of its strength. Despite

that meeting and those assumptions, no action was taken to

raise alert states or disperse aircraft, to the extent that Sodki

did not cancel a proposed inspection of air bases in Sinai on 5

June. As a result, most air defense guns in the region were at

“guns tight” when the IAF attacks began at 8:45 A.M.

Meanwhile, a prewar IAF internal analysis of the Moked

plan had concluded that to achieve a 90 percent probability of

closing the runways required many more planes than the 200

which the IAF possessed.11 Rapid turnarounds and repeated

attacks were therefore essential. Even if Sodki had only managed to launch a small number of preemptive attacks, he

would have hit an IAF that had considerably reduced its air

superiority training and would have undoubtedly disrupted a

very complex plan which depended on absolute synchronization for its success. Thereafter, the sanctuary which the IAF

enjoyed to turn round its aircraft for repeated waves of attack

would have been jeopardized. The perennial lesson is that

even a modest OCA effort can disturb an opponent’s offensive

equilibrium, and the more detailed the plan the more sensitive

to disruption it becomes.

The opportunity was comprehensively missed later in the

day by Syrian and Jordanian aircraft which, faced by only 12

Mirages retained by the IAF to protect the homeland, attacked

scattered targets across Israel at noon. There was no apparent coordination or concentration even though Iraqi Hunters

did reach the Mirage base at Ramat David. After the EAF had

been eliminated, the Syrian and Jordanian air forces,

together with a number of Iraqi aircraft, received similar

treatment. It is generally agreed that the Arab air forces lost

approximately 400 aircraft, the great majority on the ground,

to almost 1,000 IAF sorties which cost the lives of 20 pilots.

Thereafter, the Egyptian Army was decimated by ground

attack in the Sinai desert.

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The War of Attrition

After 1956 Nasser had been preoccupied by the attacks from

the British and the French, and had consequently underrated

the potential of the IAF. In the aftermath of the June War, the

Egyptian government moved 180 degrees the other way, ultimately basing its military strategy and deployments on the

assumption that the IAF was invincible. The war of Yom

Kippur in 1973 was to spark a great deal of controversy about

the impact of surface-to-air defenses (SAD) on tactical air

operations. Just as the outcome of the June War was greatly

influenced by the prewar attitudes and preparations of the two

main combatants, so the events of the October War had their

roots in the War of Attrition after 1967.

This phase of the Arab-Israeli conflict began on 8 September

1968 with an announcement in an Egyptian military communiqué in Al-Ahram Weekly on that date. It declared the start of

“The Policy of Preventive Deterrence,” an active defense policy

aimed at forcing Israel to pay a high price for staying in Sinai,

through inflicting heavy losses on its forces. On the same date

an Egyptian artillery barrage along 65 miles of the Suez Canal

caused 28 Israeli casualties. Retaliation by Israeli commandos

300 miles south of Cairo prompted an Egyptian pause until

March 1969 when further artillery barrages were accompanied

by President Nasser’s announcement of the beginning of the

“liberation” phase of the War of Attrition.

It was to continue incessantly until a cease-fire in August

1970 and was marked by Egyptian artillery and sniper fire, with

occasional short-range air attacks on the static Israeli positions

across the canal. It was punctuated by Israeli commando raids

and dogfights in which invariably the EAF lost heavily.

The decision by Egypt to rely heavily on SAD rather than aircraft originated in the ignominy of the EAF as a result of its

annihilation in 1967, but there were other factors which will

continue to reoccur elsewhere.12 At the time the EAF also commanded the SAD, but its equally inept performance was overlooked. In the subsequent reorganization of the Egyptian

armed forces, the surface-to-air defenses were taken away from

the EAF and a new Air Defense Command was subordinated to

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the army. Nonetheless, plans in 1967 to rebuild the Egyptian

armed forces included an 800-strong EAF by 1971.

The target was not achieved. It was estimated that only one

in a thousand candidates could pass medical and aptitude

tests. Another estimate was that only one candidate in a million could become a fighter pilot. Egypt’s population at the

time was 35 million and already in 1967 was producing 50

pilots a year. There were insufficient flying instructors, even

with infusion from India and the USSR, while language difficulties slowed down the process still further. Maintenance

could not keep pace with the increased flying load and flight

safety suffered. Between 1967 and 1970 more pilots were lost

in training accidents—83—than in combat with the IAF. It was

subsequently asserted that these generic problems were not

unique to Egypt. Not only did the EAF fail to reach a 1:1 pilot

to aircraft ratio, but the problem was common to most of the

Arab world.

Meanwhile, the commander in chief of the Egyptian forces,

General Fawzi, and the Soviet advisers imported immediately

after the June disaster, strongly argued for giving resource priority to surface-to-air defenses. SAD offered many advantages.

While Soviet systems were manpower intensive—an SA-2 battalion for example required 280 people—the required skill levels, even for the comparatively advanced SA-3, were far less

than for combat aircraft, and there was no shortage of

Egyptian conscripts. Training to operational level took only

12–15 weeks compared with three years for aircrew. Medical

standards also were lower. Egyptian estimates of the cost of an

SA-2 battalion were $8,000 in 1969, compared to $250,000 for

a MiG-21.13 The final factor in the Egyptian defensive decision

was the influence of the USSR. It was quick to rearm the EAF

after 1967 but was loath to supply offensive aircraft and

actively encouraged both the separation of the air defense system from the EAF and the former’s expansion.

The war presented the IAF with several problems. Egyptian

policy was to maintain pressure on the Bar-Lev defensive line

on the east bank of the Suez Canal by artillery and nuisance

raids until international pressure could be brought to bear on

Israel to withdraw from Sinai. The accumulative impact on the

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IAF of the spasmodic air combat began to impose a strain. The

IAF had lost 10 percent of its aircrews in the June War.

Peacetime aircrew strength of the Israeli combat squadrons

was roughly one-third active and two-thirds reserve in an

establishment of 30. Of those, six would be squadron executives and senior pilots, the other three or four would be “ab initios” from flying training. Consequently the bulk of the fighting was borne by a small number of veterans. Ironically, their

consistent superiority over the EAF contributed to the EAF’s

sense of inferiority as Egyptian intelligence failed to distinguish between the limited number of veterans and the rest of

the reservist/ab initio IAF.

A longer term problem was disclosed: a cadre-reserve combat force designed for a national emergency was not best

suited to continuous smaller scale engagements. It was this

potential weakness in an otherwise impressive IAF that

prompted the Israeli government to escalate the war in an

attempt to stop Nasser’s corrosive campaign. In July 1969 the

SA-2 batteries in the northern area of the Suez Canal were

destroyed. Six months later the IAF began a bombing campaign against military and industrial targets in Egypt which

began to threaten Nasser’s political survival. In January he

turned to the USSR for help, arguing that his fight was not

really with Israel, but the United States. The Soviet government responded by dispatching 32 battalions of SA-3 missiles,

two squadrons of Su-15s, and six squadrons of MiG-21 interceptors, together with aircrew, ground crew, maintenance,

and electronic workshops. By late 1970 there were between

15,000 and 20,000 Soviet military in Egypt.14

In the same period two bombing errors by the IAF killed a

large number of civilians, including school children, and

prompted a temporary suspension of US shipment of Phantoms

and Skyhawks, reinforcing a neutral viewpoint that by 1970

Israeli airpower was no longer quite the dominant factor it had

been previously. Indeed, IAF operations had been counterproductive: stimulating a massive enhancement of Egyptian air

defenses and the public commitment of Soviet forces to

Egyptian defense at a time when Israel’s patron was heavily tied

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down in Vietnam and in no mood to risk further direct confrontations with the USSR.

On 7 August 1970 a cease-fire was agreed, but it failed to

stop the completion of the SAD belt along the west bank of the

canal. Israeli airpower had been stymied in the War of Attrition

by a combination of political and military factors, and some at

least of the IAF crews were pleased to be out of it. Squadron

attrition exchange ratios had changed from 1:40 in the air to

2:4 against missiles. One very professional and very gallant

Mirage squadron commander subsequently observed, “When

the cease-fire was declared we thanked God.” One night at the

forward base of Bir Gafgafa he had actually declined a directive to scramble, saying, “We have no strength left.” Another

reflected: “We were fighting a centipede—you hit it here and

two more legs grow in its place. You hit it there and it keeps

growing. We were fighting an enemy that seemed not only irrational but with unlimited resources. It was like trying to empty

an ocean with a bucket.”15 One Arab military scholar summarized the cause and effect of the War of Attrition in terms

which could have been applied equally accurately to the

Intifada on the West Bank and Gaza 20 years later: “The War

of Attrition aimed both at imposing a higher price on Israel for

keeping the occupied territories and bringing the Middle East

crisis to the attention of world opinion.”16 It also marked the

change of Egypt’s political objective from the total “liberation”

of Palestine to one of confining Israel to her pre-1967 borders.

In October 1970 Anwar Sadat succeeded Nasser, and in May

1971 his general staff began to prepare a new plan to liberate

Sinai and the Gaza Strip. For the next 18 months two alternatives were debated. One proposed a longer preparatory

period in which Egyptian forces, including the air force, would

be strengthened to the point that with coordination with Syria

and Jordan an attack across Sinai and into Gaza would have

a good chance of success. Initially, Sadat supported this plan,

specifying an increase in the EAF to 1,000 pilots and seeking

Soviet supplies of modern bombers and fighters.

By July 1972, however, Sadat had become disillusioned

with his Soviet sponsors. The USSR had failed to deliver promised aircraft, had diverted others away from Egypt to India,

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and in May 1972 in a summit meeting with the USA, appeared

to have reduced superpower priorities in the Middle East. As a

result he asked the Soviet military to leave Egypt while at the

same time instructing his armed forces to begin preparations

for offensive action.

The October War

In October Sadat chose the alternative plan for a limited

offensive of up to eight kilometers across the Suez Canal in a

shorter timescale and dismissed his commander in chief,

Sadek, who had been the proponent of the sweep across Sinai.

Egyptian perception that it would not be possible to challenge

IAF superiority for some time appears to have been a strong

influence on Sadat. Pilot shortages continued and were aggravated by the expulsion of more than one hundred Soviet aircrew. About 20 pilots were recruited from Korea, but by

October 1973 the EAF’s pilot to aircraft ratio was still less

than 1:1. Moreover, the hoped for modernization had not

taken place because Sadat was unable to replace his Soviet

supplier by any Western alternative. Egyptian aircraft were

considered inferior to their counterparts in range, payload,

electronics, and missiles.

On the ground, only some 20 SA-6 batteries were mobile; 70

SA-2, 65 SA-3, and most of the 2,500 antiaircraft artillery

(AAA) batteries could not be moved forward to cover an

advance into Sinai. Three thousand handheld SA-7s could

provide additional low-level protection, but they were obsolescent by 1973. Of the Egyptian Army’s 800,000 troops, less

than one-half were in combat units and of these two-thirds

were infantry. In sum neither army nor air force was equipped

to launch a mechanized, armored offensive across the open

Sinai desert in the face of the IAF, regardless of any assistance

forthcoming from Syria or Jordan. Consequently Sadat deliberately chose a limited operational plan dependent on groundbased air defense to provide air cover for a canal crossing.

On 6 October the offensive was launched, code named Badr,

after a battle won by the Prophet Mohammed in the holy

month of Ramadan in A.D. 624. On this occasion the Egyptian

and Syrian attacks were well synchronized.17 Both allies

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achieved tactical surprise even though the IAF had been on

fully mobilized alert for several hours. The problem was that

the IAF had prepared to repeat the 1967 preempt, this time

against Syrian and Egyptian missiles. Defense Minister Moshe

Dayan, however, persuaded Prime Minister Golda Meir to let

the IDF accept a first blow for international political reasons.

As a result the IAF’s first task was to deal with the EAF strike

across Sinai which accompanied the ground force crossing of

the canal. There was therefore an immediate mismatch

between the political objective, the IAF’s operational posture,

and in the event, weapons fit as IAF aircraft which had been

bombed up for the antimissile strike were scrambled for air

interception sorties.

Further confusion followed. The IAF established air-to-air

superiority over Sinai and began its delayed attack on the

canal missile batteries early the following morning. Then that

attack was abruptly checked when the Syrian attack over the

Golan Heights began to threaten northern Galilee, and the IAF

squadrons were switched to the northern frontier.

At this point, in retrospect, the priority allocation of

resources to the IAF probably saved Israel from extinction.

Certainly the IAF checked the Syrian armored advance for long

enough to allow the ground force reservists to reach the front

line and incidentally ensure that their arrival was not interrupted by hostile air attack. In due course the Syrian armor

was turned and thrown back onto Damascus. In the subsequent postwar analysis, however, IAF satisfaction was tempered by a great deal of critical reappraisal.

There had been only one plan for the IAF in the north, a

variation of the preemptive antimissile attack across Sinai,

itself very similar in concept to Moked of 1967. In the war

game Eil Barzel played in 1972, IDF chiefs of staff concluded

that air superiority was a precondition for a successful ground

campaign. From this it was understood that the air force

would join in the ground battle with support operations only

after air superiority in the theater was achieved. This meant

that the air force had first to destroy enemy missile batteries

to secure that freedom of action.18 But in October 1973 the

Syrian missiles were on the move; they also included SA-6s on

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which initially the IAF had no intelligence. In the first antimissile attack, only two Syrian batteries were destroyed. There

was no system for forward air control to focus close air support; initially all requests from ground force commanders had

to go up to the general staff for approval. This was the penalty

for the centralized control which had facilitated the strategic

switch from south to north but had failed to incorporate any

tactical flexibility into the structure. Ironically, the same

Raphael Sivron who had been one of the architects of Moked

now appeared on the northern front coordinating swiftly delegated tactical air control. His problems were aggravated by

Syrian missiles inhibiting battlefield reconnaissance. Even the

hardened professionalism of the IAF pilots was frayed by what

appeared to be inconsistent orders, inaccurate target intelligence, and mounting losses with not a lot to show for them.

These factors are of longer term significance than the

straightforward statistics of the SAD versus aircraft argument.

The IAF plan was inflexible and based on assumptions which

had been appropriate for 1967 but not for the political and technological circumstances of 1973. Initiative, aggression, and

bravery by individual pilots were an inadequate substitute for a

carefully coordinated attack on the layered, in-depth air defense

lines either on the Suez Canal or over the Golan Heights.

Meanwhile heavy fighting continued in Sinai as the

Egyptians consolidated their positions on the east bank of the

canal under the umbrella of the SAD. IAF frustrations

increased as lack of intelligence concealed the exact location

of Egyptian bridges over the canal. Any time spent looking for

targets, as opposed to their swift acquisition during a preplanned tactical-defensive approach, was very difficult over

the missile protected area. In 1971 the IAF had abandoned

high-level reconnaissance over Egypt and had subsequently

lost a Globemaster over Sinai to slant range SA-2 while on a

photo-reconnaissance sortie. Only after Yom Kippur was it

discovered that there had been photographs of the canal

bridges, but they were not considered relevant to the IAF

because they were not airfields or SAD sites. The IDF still controlled all intelligence sources, including IAF photographic

interpreters.19 Between 8:00 A.M. and 3:00 P.M. on 8 October,

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the IAF flew only 62 sorties over the Sinai front, of which 20

were directed at the bridges. Below them an unsuccessful

Israeli counterattack was taking place. A divisional commander, Major General Adan, called for urgent air support to

Headquarters Southern Command. He was told by General

Gonen that “I was already getting it. I told him that I didn’t

notice any.”20 The air commander in the theater was not aware

that any counteroffensive was taking place, so General Adan’s

frustration was well founded.

Not surprisingly after this episode and the Golan experiences, among several reforms introduced after the war, airground coordination was taken out of the hands of the

artillery, and the IAF was given responsibility for a structure

based on that of NATO. A weakness had lain undetected for 25

years waiting for adverse battle conditions to disclose it.

The tide was turned in the south by the Egyptians themselves, when on 14 October they made the fateful decisions to

move out into Sinai beyond their SAD umbrella and to move

their strategic reserve across the canal. Whether the moves

were made in response to Syrian requests to divert Israeli

pressure from the north, or whether in ignorance of the real

Israeli ground force strength is uncertain. There are however

no doubts about the resulting impact of unrestricted IAF

ground attack. Air-ground synergy was restored, and Israeli

troops crossed the Suez Canal, fanned out, and overran or

destroyed a significant number of surface-to-air missile (SAM)

batteries. The exact number remains in dispute because of the

widespread use of dummies and decoys by the Egyptians.

Egyptian sources stated that most of the damage to SAM batteries came from ground fire, including five out of nine moved

across onto the east bank. Such a loss would certainly

account for the Egyptian failure to coordinate the movement of

offensive ground forces and their air defenses.

The significant feature in this phase which ought to reoccur in the future application of airpower is the suppression of

SAD by ground forces in their own interest. If airpower can

deliver more firepower in support of either offense or defense,

and if that contribution is being constrained by enemy SAD,

then AAA and SAM batteries become a high-priority target for

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counterbattery fire. A soldier will need a lot of persuasion to

give hostile SAD target precedence over hostile artillery, but

to achieve the greatest air-ground synergism it will frequently

be necessary.

Dominance

In the next major encounter between the Syrian and Israeli

air forces, in the Bekáa region in 1982, the synergism worked

again even though IDF ground forces did not enter the Bekáa

Valley. The annihilation of the Syrian Air Force took place

while the British and Argentinean forces were contesting the

Falkland Islands. In terms of the evolution of airpower, the

battle in the Middle East was a generation ahead.

On 6 June 1982 the IDF launched Operation Peace for

Galilee, designed to destroy the Palestine Liberation

Organization (PLO) in southern Lebanon. The contribution of

the IAF was constrained by the presence of the SAM batteries

to the east in the Bekáa Valley. Syria had deployed SA-6 units

there in April 1981. By 1982 the position of every one was

known, as were the missile acquisition and guidance frequencies. On this occasion there were no diversions from a carefully coordinated strike plan. On 9 October the 19 missile batteries were engaged first by long-range artillery and

surface-to-surface missiles which were to destroy the majority

of them.21 Subsequent attacks were delivered by a variety of

IAF aircraft with free-fall bombs and antiradiation missiles. In

a peculiar operational sequence, the Syrian Air Force then

rose to defend the air defense batteries and massacre ensued.

This was indeed a copybook air operation. Target intelligence was comprehensive and precise and, with battle damage

assessment, was provided by battlefield drones. The mini

remotely piloted vehicles Scout and Mastiff were controlled

from the ground by soldiers who took three months to learn

and six months to become expert in their craft. Photographic

data was relayed 60 miles to ground stations by data link.

Ground and air fire were completely coordinated. Thorough

signals and electronic intelligence enabled electronic victory

also as ground control, fire control, acquisition, and every

other ground-based and airborne Syrian radar was either

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jammed or destroyed. On the Golan Heights in 1973, the electronic support aircraft had become separated from the

Phantoms and Skyhawks seeking to engage the SA-6s. In

1982 they were in position and contributed greatly to the F15s’ and F-16s’ one-sided victory. This was a combined arms

victory on the ground and in the air.

It marked a complete recovery by the IAF to the levels of

effectiveness traditionally associated with it after the two single

spectacular operations: the hostage rescue from Entebbe in

1976 and the attack on the Osirak nuclear installation in 1981.

On 27 June 1976 Air France Flight 139 was hijacked

between Athens and Paris and diverted to Entebbe in Uganda.

Seventy-seven Israeli citizens and many other Jews were

among the 256 passengers. They were rescued on 3 July in a

brilliantly executed commando raid in which four C-130s flew

in radio silence for 2,000 miles at low and medium level,

through violent African storms, arriving 30 seconds behind

schedule and prepared to land on a blacked-out runway, with

command and control executed from an accompanying Boeing

707 with a second 707 carrying medical staff. Exercise

Thunderball was conceived, planned, and executed in four

days. Its success denied the terrorists victims, the freedom of

their colleagues, and a propaganda coup. Instead the world

was reminded that IAF professionalism extended well beyond

fighter cockpits, and its reach extended far beyond Israel’s

own frontiers.

The extent and potency of that reach was reemphasized in

the IAF attack on the Iraqi Osirak nuclear installation at Al

Tuwaitha, 12 miles southeast of Baghdad in June 1981. Eight

F-16s escorted by six F-15s flew 635 miles through Saudi

Arabian and Jordanian airspace 100 feet above the desert.

They achieved such complete surprise in their destruction of

the installation that Iraq was unaware who was responsible

until the Israeli government announced the success. The Al

Tuwaitha raid checked Iraqi nuclear weapons development

long enough for it to be still nonoperational in 1991, when first

the United Nations (UN) Coalition air forces, and then the UN

inspection teams, completed the task.

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Although very different in kind, the Entebbe and Osirak

operations, together with the attack on PLO headquarters in

Tunisia in October 1985, demonstrated that the IAF had a

flexible strategic capability which could be used either independently or with other arms. It was in every sense a national

instrument of power and diplomacy.

In 1975 IAF Commander in Chief Benjamin Peled had laid

out IAF mission priorities as:

• air superiority,

• strategic,

• deep interdiction, and

• close support.22

In Yom Kippur the IAF retaliated heavily against Syrian military, industrial, and economic targets after Scud attacks

against Galilee. As already noted, one response to Nasser’s

War of Attrition comprised free ranging attacks deep into

Egypt. If the original meaning of strategic and tactical are

adhered to, where the former relates to the war as a whole and

the latter to a specific combat area, General Peled’s priorities

are not only very logical, they illustrate the fact that to a country the size of Israel they are very often one and the same.

In 1991 there was an oblique postscript to the Arab-Israeli

conflict. The overt action was the launching by Iraq of Scud

missiles against Israel in an attempt to provoke retaliation

which would have jeopardized the anti-Iraq coalition by making the position of its Arab members well nigh impossible.

Of longer term significance, however, was the strategic posture adopted by Iraq. It made no sense in pursuit of the retention of Kuwait in the face of the UN Coalition. It would have

been well suited to a further round in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The massive Iraqi airfields, with redundant runways and

taxiways and dispersed hardened shelters, would have been

impossible to close for any length of time by the comparatively

small IAF. The hardened and duplicated command, control,

and communications structure would have been difficult to

disrupt. The carefully rehearsed Scud deployment and deception plans were laid well before the attack on Kuwait in July

1990. The multiple layers of thousands of SAMs and AAA were

far more than required to cope with the Iranian air force. The

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subterranean location, camouflage, and dispersal of mass

destruction weapon installations were designed to reduce vulnerability to air attack and effect concealment from airborne

reconnaissance. This was a strategic infrastructure designed

to sustain a war with a state dependent upon airpower. The

link between the Gulf War and Israel was explicit in Saddam

Hussein’s appeal to his fellow Arabs in early 1990 to turn the

oil weapon against Israel and her Western allies. His mistake

was to go to war against the United States with an infrastructure designed to reduce the effectiveness of the IAF.

Sometime perhaps the Iraqi air force generals who survive

may write their memoirs, and Iraq’s attempt to cope with the

IAF may be compared with that of Egypt’s. It will be interesting to see if Syria, at much closer range, begins to prepare its

own counter airpower structure and strategy after enduring so

many air-to-air humiliations.

The Blueprint

In 1994 the IAF is still superior to the neighboring air forces,

and to most of those in the rest of the world, for that matter.

Its continued success over 45 years can be traced to a number of specific ingredients. No single one is unique to the IAF,

but the combination is, and therefore when the IAF is held up

as a role model to emulate, the interaction between the ingredients should also be noted. There are several.

Not only is there conscription in Israel for everyone over 18,

there is ample motivation for it. One distinguished retired IAF

officer observed, “Our success, our high motivation and quality are based on the special situation of our nation, the Zionist

movement and the high priorities that the government has

given us for a long time.”23 The IAF recruits from among the

best of the conscripts. Recent waves of Soviet immigrants have

widened the pool for maintenance engineers. Promotion

depends solely on merit, with competence in the air a primary

requirement, although “somebody who is just a good ‘stick

and throttle’ jockey will not get too high.”24 Character, leadership, and intellect have consistently been distinguishing features of IAF commanders. Perhaps significantly, IAF promotion is based on a “mutual valuation” system in which every

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officer has to answer questions not just about his subordinates but also about his commanders.

Many air forces extol the importance of the human factor in

their operations, but somehow it gets overlooked in funding priorities and the subordination of personnel management to operational necessity. The IAF represents a nation in arms, both

male and female. Females are not called upon for reserve duty,

and if they enlist for regular service, marry, and have families,

they will not be called for night maintenance shifts. In crisis and

conflict, the ground crews are amplified by reservists.

Aircrews are selected for technical skills and the ability to

make difficult decisions quickly in high-stress situations. They

complete an initial eight-year engagement, followed by periods

of three years with apparently an unlimited reserve commitment thereafter. It is difficult to imagine any other air force

dispatching a previous commander in chief as a reservist to a

regional subordinate position, as happened to General Hod in

1973. In the event, his presence and ability to implement delegated tasking authority on the Golan Heights proved critical.

Nevertheless, in recent years the fighter squadrons have been

fully manned by regulars,25 while all reservists fly once a week

and in crisis no distinction is made, in theory at least.

The product has obviously succeeded in blending strong

individuality with corporate responsibility, reinforced by

habits of constructive self-criticism. Doctrinal guidelines, for

example, are reevaluated annually, and after the major conflicts special research studies were undertaken.

For the greater part of its history, the IAF has been better

equipped than its opponents. The Super Mystere, Mirage,

Phantom, F-15, and F-16 have all been superior to their Soviet

produced contemporaries. In later years aircraft superiority

has been matched by missiles and electronic warfare systems.

As a consequence, the IAF has not yet flown against an enemy

similarly equipped.

Such superiority is not bought cheaply. Ezer Weizman’s

request for 100 Mirages in 1959 was costed at $200 million.26

In 1973 the 130-aircraft F-4 force had cost approximately

$600 million.27 Israel is not economically self-sufficient and

relies on foreign assistance and borrowing to maintain its

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economy. Fifteen percent of the total population (46,500) was

employed in defense industries in 1988, compared with 10

percent in the UK, 11 percent in the USA, 3 percent in West

Germany, and 6 percent in France.28

Israel has been fortunate in receiving financial assistance

from the US government since its formation in 1949. In 1974,

when the armed forces’ losses in the October War were made

good, military assistance jumped from $307.5 million the previous year to $2.482 billion after President Nixon had asked

Congress for emergency aid, including loans for which payment

would be waived. Coincidentally, a modest military loan program began in 1959, the year of Weizman’s search for Mirages.

From 1971 to 1994 US aid to Israel averaged $2 billion per

year, of which two-thirds has been military assistance. After

1987 military assistance leveled off at $1.8 billion per year.29

In the Arab-Israeli conflict, Israeli airpower dominated

because it was in complete harmony with the strategic environment. For 45 years airpower was Israel’s chosen security

instrument. It was suited to the topography and climate. It

capitalized on a literate and technologically advanced population. It offered defense and attack around 360 degrees against

all manner of external threats. It derived the maximum effectiveness from superior technology wielded by highly motivated

professionals, who remained professionals when they became

reservists. Funding was not unlimited, as the cancelled Lavi

project illustrated, but in Israel’s case, without provision for

security, there could be no provision for anything else.

But even for Israel, airpower could not provide complete

security, especially against enemies within her own frontiers.

In airpower’s second century, the IAF will face three emerging

challenges, none of them in the air. They will be the new generations of mobile SAMs, mobile surface-to-surface missiles,

and targets concealed in a civilian population. If any air force

has the skill, determination, and imagination to meet such

challenges, it will be the IAF.

Discussion

Mr. Ben Cowen: To what extent will the dimensions of the ArabIsraeli conflict be affected by the acquisition of state-of-the-art

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Western aircraft by so-called moderate Arab states, and if the

dimensions are changed, will they permit the return of strategic ground such as the Golan Heights and the West Bank?

Air Vice-Marshal Mason: As I understand the question, you are

referring to the purchase by countries like Saudi Arabia of

equipment such as Tornado, the F-15, and AWACS.

For quite some time the Israelis have kept a very uneasy eye on

developments in Saudi Arabia, and they have relied heavily on

the Jewish lobby in the United States to constrain sales of that

kind of kit. I’m not quite sure of the current state of the F-15

deal. I don’t think it’s gone through yet, but I know it was causing some concern. I also know from my conversations with officers from both sides that one of the reasons which has led Israel

into talking peace has been the awareness that in the longer

term, in an open market, their technological advantage will be

eroded. Right now it is Egypt and Saudi Arabia who are buying advanced systems. But there’s no reason why somebody

shouldn’t start selling kit to Syria. For example, France will not

be the slightest bit inhibited about selling Rafale wherever it can.

So I think the point you make is a very important one. There

is no immediate threat to Israel from Western arms sales, but

there is a clear perception that if they continue, as seems

likely, then ultimately the Israeli Air Force would have far

more serious problems than it’s had in the past.

Wing Comdr John Benjamin: One of the factors which contributed to the IAF’s success in the Yom Kippur War was their

ability to keep their aircraft flying, while their opponents were

less successful in dealing with attrition and unserviceabilities. Do you think that with improving technology, the ability

to keep aircraft serviceable, to improvise fixes, will become

less important?

Air Vice-Marshal Mason: I tried very hard to get accurate statistics on Yom Kippur. I still don’t know exactly how many

Israeli aircraft were lost in the first two days or how many

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replacement F-4s and A-4s were flown in by the United States

in the first four or five days. The evidence suggests that there

were no maintenance problems per se.

I mentioned at the end of my summary that one of the great

advantages Israel enjoys is the technological quality of the

population, which extends to IAF ground crew. The question

mark I would flag—and it’s been a question mark now for at

least 10 years—is how effective Israeli maintenance would be

if it were ever attacked. And I think if I were an Arab and I was

preparing for round four, I’d be looking long and hard at logistics support in the Israeli Air Force because no air force in this

world could sustain the turn-around rates, the intensity of

operations achieved by the IAF, with interruptions.

But to return to your question. First, there is no evidence of

any maintenance slow down, in fact, just the opposite. The

modification work associated with the electronic warfare kit

during the Yom Kippur War was quite astonishing. The Israeli

Air Force takes new aircraft in its stride, just as you would, we

would, or the United States would. On the other hand, new

technology presents tremendous problems for the Arab air

forces who still do not have the necessary depth of technological base in their population to sustain both their military and

their economic and industrial development.

Dr. Ben Lambeth: Could I add one comment regarding the

introduction of Western systems to moderate Arab states? It

has been declared US government policy from the beginning to

maintain Israel’s technological advantage. If you look at the

history, there was about 10 years difference between the introduction of advanced systems in Israel and the Arab states. The

F-4 went to Israel in the early 1970s, it was the early 1980s

when it went to Egypt; the F-15 went to Israel in 1976, it was

about a decade later before it went to Saudi Arabia. Of course

that’s narrowing now with a down-rated F-15E going to Saudi

Arabia. The F-15I, which Israel has very recently agreed to

buy, will include some Israeli add-ons which will contribute

substantially to the capability of that system in the region.

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Secondly, the Israeli Air Force has recently declined the opportunity to acquire the AMRAAM missile, in order to keep it out

of the hands of other players in the region. That also stems

partly from their self-confidence. They think they can get by

well enough without it as long as no one else has it.

Squadron Leader Despina Tramoundanis: We heard from a previous speaker about the dysfunctional relationship which existed

during the Vietnam War between the US military and political

leaderships. Could you comment on the Israeli relationship?

Air Vice-Marshal Mason: It’s not my specialist field, so my comments will be very much eclectic. Usually there has been complete harmony in terms of political, strategic, and operational

thinking since 1948. To the best of my memory, the only time

there has been a mismatch was the occasion in 1973 that I

mentioned. There was great debate about Operation Galilee in

1982. Not all the military were keen on going north, and there

have been occasional signs of strain since then over government

policy on the West Bank and the Intifada. I’ve talked on a few

occasions with current conscripts, reserves of various kinds,

and the average Israeli soldier does not like doing counterinsurgency duties. In the later days of Menachim Begin’s regime,

when Ariel Sharon was exercising considerable influence, there

were signs of strain there between the Israeli high command

and the government. But as I said right at the start, the country regards itself as a state still at war or at armed truce, and

even with a trusted friendly foreign face they are loath to pass

comments on that kind of relationship. So I do say, my answer

is very tentative.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Patrick Hine: Tony, you said you didn’t have

any accurate figures for the attrition rates during the Yom

Kippur War. I got involved with that in a study a few years ago,

and there’s no doubt that in the first 24 to 48 hours on the Golan

Heights, in particular, but also on the Suez front, the Israelis’

loss rates were quite alarming. They were in the order of 3 to 4

percent. By the third day they had sorted out their electronic

warfare countermeasures and had also got assistance from the

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United States to counter the SA-6, which appeared for the first

time in that war. From then on there was a real downturn in the

loss rate, and by the end of the fighting—which went on if I

remember rightly about 24 days—they had flown something like

11,000 sorties for an overall loss rate of about 1 percent. The

research that we did showed that their loss rate during Yom

Kippur was in fact very slightly lower than for the Six Day War.

I have a question to follow from that, and that is, what lessons

did the Israelis draw from the bad fright Yom Kippur gave them?

And in particular, have they now got, other than through smart

bombs, a hard-kill capability against modern SAM systems?

Air Vice-Marshal Mason: First of all those attrition figures. I

hadn’t heard that source before, and it’s very interesting

because my figures from different sources are almost exactly

the same. My best guess is that the IAF lost about 40 aircrew

on the first day and about 100 overall, which coincides almost

exactly with your statistics. [Dr. Lambeth indicated his concurrence from the audience.]

As far as the lessons are concerned, the first problem was that

they hadn’t had a chance to exercise their plan. They thought

they knew how to take the defenses in the Sinai. They grossly

underestimated SAM-6, and they grossly underestimated the

ZSU-23/4. As you correctly say, those faults were largely

remedied by American assistance within the first few days.

But their subsequent analysis was complicated by the fact

that they couldn’t identify which particular SAM had done the

damage. Interestingly enough, neither could the Egyptians

when they did their analysis. Indeed, the best guess I’ve had

from Egyptian sources is that in fact it was the old SAM-2 that

was doing the bulk of the damage. That conclusion was based

on the supposition that the SAM-2 crews were older and more

experienced; they were steadier and handled their weapons

better under Israeli pressure. There has tended to be a fixation

with the new equipment—the SAM-6s, the ZSUs—people have

tended to forget about the SAM-2s. The second problem was

that although the attack aircraft were quickly switched to the

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AIRPOWER AS A NATIONAL INSTRUMENT: THE ARAB-ISRAELI WARS
Golan Heights, backup EW kit was not switched. Why not? I

don’t know, but it wasn’t. The Skyhawks carrying the jammers, and one or two other aircraft carrying other kit were not

coordinated. This was a tremendous lesson which was not forgotten for the Bekáa Valley. So bringing those points together,

they realized that you must combine strike and electronic warfare tactics when you take on this kind of defense.

But the lesson above all was the need for ground and air synergy,

which is why the first attacks in the Bekáa Valley were launched

by the ground forces and surface-to-surface short-range missiles. The second lesson was that you must go after the enemy

tactically as well with EW. The third lesson was the introduction

of different kinds of forward air control. And, of course, the most

important one of all was revising air intelligence and making sure

you had your asset in the right place at the right time.

Dr. Ben Lambeth: The SA-2 was a player because the F-4s had

gotten, I think, the ALQ109 ECM pod. They were flying

medium-altitude fighter formations, greatly suspicious about

how tactically reliable that was. As I recall, the threat information was not what it should have been, and some of those

F-4s with the pod were shot down at medium altitude. This

quickly resulted in a tactical change where they would carry

the pod but fly the mission as though they didn’t have it. A

chief of intelligence in the air force told me about 10 years ago

that you never know whether it’s ECM or luck that keeps you

alive in a situation like that.

Notes

1. Interview in Ma’ariv, 23 October 1970, cited in Ehud Yonay, No Margin

for Error (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993), 104.

2. Yonay, 45–46.

3. Ibid., 103.

4. Ibid., 118.

5. Ezer Weizman, On Eagles Wings: The Personal Story of the Leading

Commander of the Israeli Air Force (London: Wiedenfeld and Nicolson,

1976), 103.

6. Yonay, 118.

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7. Liddell Hart received several testimonies from IDF commanders after

the 1967 war attributing the adoption of Israeli strategy to his concepts.

Excerpts were received by the present writer.

8. Yonay, 208–13.

9. Ibid., 212.

10. Marouf Bakhit Nader, The Evolution of Egyptian Air Defence Strategy

1967–1973, DSS, King’s College London, 1990, 45, citing several Egyptian

sources.

11. Yonay, 212.

12. See Nader for a comprehensive analysis of the Egyptian debate over

the position of air defense in the nation’s overall security posture and the

rationale for the selection of the strategy for the October War. His account is

based primarily on interviews with Egyptian decision makers in this period

and on Arab sources.

13. Ibid., 139.

14. Ibid., 226.

15. Even-Nir and Oded Marom, Mirage squadron commanders, interviewed by Ehud Yonay, 305.

16. Nader, 257.

17. For a detailed description and analysis of the air war and superpower

involvement, see M. J. Armitage and R. A. Mason, Air Power in the Nuclear

Age, 2d ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985), chap. 5, “Air Power

in the Middle East.”

18. Ze’ev Schiff, The Israeli Air Force (Tel Aviv: Rivivim, 1981), quoted by

Uri Dromi in “Where Was the Air Force,” IDF Journal, no. 17, 1989, 22.

19. Yonay, 341.

20. Schiff in Dromi, 21.

21. See Benjamin Lambeth, “Moscow’s Lessons from the 1982 Lebanon

Air War,” in War in the Third Dimension: Essays in Contemporary Air Power,

ed. R. A. Mason (London: Brassey’s Defence Publishers, 1986).

22. Benjamin Peled at International Symposium, Jerusalem, October

1975, in Lon O. Nordeen, Fighters over Israel (Guild, 1991), 150–01.

23. Brig (Res) Giora Furman, correspondence with author, January

1994.

24. Brig (Res) Oded Erez, correspondence with author, January 1994.

25. Furman.

26. Weizman, 179.

27. Murray Rubenstein and Richard Martin Goldman, Shield of David;

An Illustrated History of the Israeli Air Force (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall, 1978), 107.

28. Statistical Abstract, Combat Bureau of Statistics, IDF Journal, no.

21, 1990, 26.

29. Clyde R. Mark, Israel: US Foreign Assistance Facts, Congressional

Research Service Issue Brief Series (Washington, D.C.: Congressional

Research Service, 1990, updated 27 January 1994).

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It Was a Bit of a Close Call:

Some Thoughts on the

South Atlantic War

R. G. Funnell

Warfare is almost as old as man himself, and reaches into

the most secret places of the human heart, places where self

dissolves rational purpose, where pride reigns, where emotion is paramount, where instinct is king.

—John Keegan

The events in the South Atlantic in the period April to June

1982 were of consuming interest to most of the world at the

time. This was especially so for students of military and political affairs. In the 12 to 24 months thereafter, the literature

was full of description and analysis, and many “lessons

learned” were developed and displayed both for experts and

lay people. I had the good fortune to head a group within the

Australian Department of Defence which, in that period, conducted a study of the war. It was a demanding task but it was

also professionally very satisfying. The world has, however,

changed considerably since then. Consequently, when I was

asked to reflect for this conference on the events of 1982 in the

South Atlantic and their implications for the use of airpower, I

wondered aloud to the organizers how many of the lessons

learned have stood the test of changing times and whether my

reflections on the use of airpower in that conflict would be relevant to the conference.

My difficulties were the outcome of my feeling that the diplomatic, political, and strategic aspects of the conflict had more of

enduring value to analysts and practitioners than did the airpower aspects. This is not to say that the airpower aspects were

either unimportant or insignificant. I felt, however, that there

was little that had not been previously and very thoroughly analyzed and commented upon. Certainly, I could review that body

of thought for the conference. That can be useful for we all tend

to forget even important ideas and concepts under the impact of

221
what is new and what is urgent. Still, given all that had happened with airpower since that conflict, I wondered if my review

might not seem somewhat “old hat.” As my work on the presentation developed and I reviewed what has been studied and

what has been written on this conflict in the 10 years since I last

looked closely at it, I saw that the topic still offers areas in which

further thought can be beneficial for both the student and the

practitioner of the application of airpower. I will set out to prove

that point for you.

In this presentation, I will review the events which preceded

and led to the conflict. I will similarly review and remind you

of what occurred, and I will offer some views of how airpower

was used and of its effectiveness or otherwise. Then, I hope to

spur some thinking about airpower and its application by

sketching an exercise for your consideration on how airpower

might have been applied better.

Let us now move back to 1982. The events in the South

Atlantic in the first six months of that year were so dramatic

and so totally unexpected that they took our collective breath

away. Who would have or could have predicted at the beginning of 1982 that the world would soon witness a major conflict between two nations who had never previously been at

war with each other and whose capital cities were more than

6,000 miles apart? Even more outlandish would have been a

prediction that the world was soon to see, for the first time

since the Second World War, a major naval vessel sunk by a

submarine, in fact the first time that a nuclear-powered attack

submarine would be used in combat, the first naval vessel to

be lost to a helicopter, and the first major conflict involving

sustained use of such weapon systems as vertical short takeoff and landing (VSTOL) aircraft and antiship missiles.

Coupled with this were the extraordinary political and diplomatic events which saw the resignation of the British foreign

secretary and the involvement of the United Nations (UN)

Security Council, the secretary-general of the UN, and the US

secretary of state. Reality seemed to defy the imagination of

the novel writers, daring them to come up with some series of

events as wildly unpredictable.

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When you looked carefully at the conflict after the smoke of

the various battles (military, political, and diplomatic) had

cleared, you saw that few changes of significance had

occurred. Please do not get me wrong. I am not saying that

military conflict between two developed nations is insignificant; even less am I saying that the loss of hundreds of lives

is insignificant. Military conflict is to be deplored, and the loss

of so many lives is something which we all must regret.

However, little that was new or startling about military operations was revealed. It was more a case of old ideas being

recalled and some newer ones revised, and one of my aims this

afternoon will be to review those ideas. Before we do so, however, let me remind you of the geographic, historic, diplomatic,

strategic, and military context in which all of this occurred.

The Falkland Islands or as the Argentines describe them,

Las Islas Malvinas, are predominantly two largish islands separated by a narrow strait in the South Atlantic Ocean at

roughly 52o south latitude, 60o west longitude. They are some

400 nautical miles off the coast of Argentina, which is the

nation closest to them. The total area of the islands is 13,000

square kilometers, which is about five times that of the

Australian Capital Territory. The climate is unpleasant being

characterized by cloud, cold, and wind. Conditions are usually

that of wet underfoot, low-cloud overhead, and 30 knots blowing from the west. The land is undulating and low-lying, and

populated mainly by millions of penguins, seals, and sea

birds. Until 1982 the economy of the islands depended almost

entirely on the production of wool for export. In 1982 the

sheep population was estimated to be 650,000 and the human

population 1,800. Almost all Falklanders were of British background, and most had been born on the islands. About a thousand of them lived in Stanley, the only settlement of any size,

and the remainder on outlying properties and in small settlements. The infrastructure was rudimentary. Most settlements

could be reached only by boat or air or along dirt tracks. The

islands had 30 airfields that were usable by light aircraft and

about five that were usable by C-130 aircraft. Only the airfield

at Stanley was sealed and it was just 4,100 feet long.

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The islands were uninhabited until the mid-eighteenth century when the French established a small colony on East

Falkland. This was followed soon thereafter by the establishment of a British colony on West Falkland. Neither was successful. In the following years, other attempts at settlement

were made. The Argentine flag was first raised on the islands in

1820, and the first Argentine settlement occurred in 1826. It

was accompanied by British protests. The Argentines were

forcibly evicted by the US corvette Lexington in 1831, and their

attempt to reestablish the settlement in 1833 was bloodlessly

but forcefully denied by the British, whose continuous occupation of the islands dates from then. The islands were accorded

the status of a colony by the British government in 1840.

The islands have been a matter of dispute between the

Argentine and British governments for a long time. Until

recent times, however, it had been mainly a low-level diplomatic irritant rather than a matter of serious concern. This

changed in the mid-1960s with a resurgence of Argentine

interest in the islands with a matching increase in diplomatic

activity in support of its claim to them. In 1964 the Argentine

government raised the matter in the United Nations with the

Special Committee of 24, which deals with the granting of

independence to colonial countries and people. That led to a

resolution of the General Assembly (No. 2065) which referred

to the ending of colonialism in the islands. However, finding an

acceptable solution to the dispute between two of the founding members of the UN has proved beyond the capabilities of

the organization or anyone else.

The dispute has many facets, and the legal issues it raises

are quite complex. Diplomatically, the difficulties have been

summarized neatly by G. M. Dillon: “The United Nations was

in favour of ‘decolonisation’ and the Falkland Islands, of

course, were a Crown Colony. But, equally, the UN was in

favour of ‘self-determination,’ and there seemed little doubt

about the Falkland Islanders’ determination to remain under

British rule. Not surprisingly, therefore, the two parties were

left to find their own reconciliation of the political principles

involved.”1 This they have been unable to do.

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Strategically, the islands, while once of some value, were by

1982 of little importance. In the nineteenth century the

islands functioned as a naval base where ships traveling to

and from the Pacific Ocean could obtain provisions and

repairs. With the advent of the steamship, they became a coaling station. Long before 1965, however, these functions were

of no consequence. Moreover, the economy was small, narrowly based, and had little or no potential. In addition, as

Britain contracted its overseas military involvement and

focused its strategic and military attention much closer to

home, its capability to defend the islands also contracted. That

capability depended primarily on the Royal Navy (RN). In the

1981 Strategic Defence Review, the defence secretary, John

Nott, announced a number of major cuts in defense, the

majority of which fell on the RN and especially on the RN’s

capabilities for amphibious operations. The aircraft carriers

HMS Hermes and HMS Invincible were to be sold, the

amphibious support ships Fearless and Intrepid were to be

scrapped, and numerous other ships were to be paid off or

scrapped. Of significance to the dispute in the South Atlantic,

the Antarctic patrol vessel HMS Endurance was to be withdrawn without replacement in March 1982.

In Argentina in December 1981, the three-man military

junta of Gen Leopoldo Galtieri, Adm Jorge Anaya, and Brig

Gen Basilio Lami Dozo ousted the president, Gen Roberto

Viola, and installed General Galtieri as president.

Significantly, Galtieri retained command of the Argentine

army. Soon thereafter the heat being applied by Argentina to

the Falklands/Malvinas dispute, already at one of its cyclical

high points, was increased. In March 1982 a party of

Argentine scrap-metal workers and some military personnel

landed at Leith Harbour on South Georgia Island to fulfill a

contract with a British company.2 They raised the Argentine

flag which was subsequently sighted by a member of the

British Antarctic Survey team on the island and reported to

London and Stanley. That set in train a series of diplomatic

and military events which culminated in the Argentine seizure

of the Falklands/Malvinas on 2 April 1982 and South Georgia

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on 3 April, and the dispatch from Portsmouth on 5 April of the

main body of an RN task force to reclaim the islands.

In summary, the major events of the rest of the conflict were

as follows: The British, through their task force, recaptured

South Georgia on 25 April. On 1 May the action to recapture

the Falklands commenced with air attacks on Stanley airfield,

first by a Vulcan flown from Ascension island and then by

Harriers from the task force. On 2 May the Argentine cruiser,

General Belgrano, was sunk by the British nuclear-powered

attack submarine (SSN), HMS Conqueror. Two days later the

HMS Sheffield, a Type 42 destroyer, was severely damaged by

an Exocet AM-39 antiship missile fired from an Argentine navy

Super Étendard aircraft.3 Sporadic air, sea, and special forces

operations occurred over the next three weeks. On 21 May the

task force landed more than 5,000 troops who established a

beachhead at San Carlos Water. The landings were unopposed

at sea and only lightly opposed on land. Air attacks were

intensive, a total of 54 sorties being flown by the Argentines

with considerable success but with high losses. Incredibly, the

SS Canberra, which sat in the middle of San Carlos Water

throughout the day, was not attacked. Also incredibly, the

attacks of 21 May were not followed up. The subsequent 36-

hour respite allowed the beachhead to be swiftly and successfully consolidated.

From 23 to 25 May the task force was subjected to renewed

Argentine air attacks resulting in the loss of or damage to a

number of ships and many Argentine aircraft. The British land

forces suffered few attacks from the air. On 27 May the British

land forces started to move out of the beachhead and, in a series

of successful actions, conducted mostly at night, moved from

San Carlos Water across East Falkland and isolated the majority of the Argentine land forces within the Stanley area. On 14

June the Argentine commander in the islands surrendered.

I believe that few people would doubt that the war which

occurred in the South Atlantic in 1982 was totally unnecessary. Neither side in that conflict can look back on the prelude

to the war with satisfaction. Even more unsatisfactory for both

sides is the position in which they now find themselves. The

Argentines are further than they have been in decades from

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achieving their aim of incorporating Las Islas Malvinas into

their republic. For their part the British now have a degree of

commitment to the islands and the islanders beyond any

which they have previously had, needed, or wanted. The costs

of maintaining that commitment are great and lead to distortions in British military structures and activities. Meanwhile,

the dispute remains.

The British failed to conduct and connect their diplomacy

and politics with an eye to the long term, and no British government was willing to bear the political costs of a negotiated

settlement with the Argentines on the highly emotional issue

of sovereignty. As part of this, the wishes of the Falkland

Islanders were given primacy of place over their interests and,

by giving the Falkland Islands Legislative Council virtual

power of veto over any action, the interests of the British people at large were discounted.

For their part, the Argentines failed to see the virtue of

patience. Even if they wished to conduct a coup de main operation before the 150th anniversary of their forcible removal from

the islands, the timing they had apparently established before

or soon after achieving power in December 1981 was undoubtedly correct. That called for an operation in the southern winter, at sometime between July and October. In the words of the

British task force commander, Adm John “Sandy” Woodward:

They intended to execute this military coup de main sometime between

July and October of the year, for reasons still unknown to me in detail.

It was likely, however, that they had surmised that certain factors

would be in their favour by July: Britain’s Fleet would be seriously

weakened by then; our lone patrol ship down south, HMS Endurance

would have finally gone home at the onset of winter, to scrap; and anyway, the Royal Navy would be most unlikely to tackle the worst of the

winter in the South Atlantic with a force large enough to remove

Argentina from her “rightful territories.” Above all, there was every

indication that, by then, we would probably have no operational aircraft carriers, with Hermes and Invincible both victims of Mr. John

Nott’s Defence cuts. As far as Galtieri and Anaya were concerned the

situation was now simple: no British carriers means no air cover, no

air cover means no British surface ships, no surface ships means no

British landing force, no landing force means “No Contest.” Their reasoning was perfect. Their timing? That was the make or break factor.4

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As it occurred, however, the junta first allowed events to

carry them away. Then they embarked on two courses, one

self-delusory and the other militarily inept. Firstly, they did

not believe that the British would respond militarily. Perhaps

they were influenced by their embassy in London which

reported that “the British were militarily weak” and that its

navy is “virtually non-existent,”5 and further that “the English

public will not fight for the Malvinas. The English will never

again go to war for a colony.”6 The Argentine foreign minister,

Dr. Nicanor Costa Méndez, an ardent Anglophile, stated in a

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) TV interview on the

day of the Argentine seizure of the islands that the British

were “too civilized” to use force.7 The mismatch of perceptions

between Buenos Aires and London could not have been more

stark. The Argentine view throughout April was that they were

engaged in diplomatic crisis management; the British view

was that they were at war. The language of the two leaders is

instructive. In the House of Commons debate in the emergency session of Saturday, 3 April 1982, Mrs. Margaret

Thatcher stated, “It is the Government’s objective to see that

the Islands are freed from occupation and are returned to

British administration at the earliest possible moment.”8

General Galtieri believed that “English reaction was scarcely

possible and totally improbable.”9

Militarily, Britain quickly assembled and sailed a naval task

force with the aim of supporting the prime minister’s determinations. British planning for the conduct, the support, and the

sustainment of operations in a difficult area of operations was

intense and thoroughly professional. The Argentines, failing to

comprehend in any serious way the depth of British resolve,

did little other than pile men and materiel onto the Malvinas

in the hope that the British would see that the mathematics of

combat would preclude a successful landing. It had no such

effect. In warfare, numbers are not enough; it is how you

deploy and use your numbers that determines the outcome.

The use of airpower by both sides also offers a contrast in

military professionalism. The Fuerza Aerea Argentina and the

Comando Aviacion Naval Argentina, which I will hereafter refer

to as the Argentine air force and naval air arm respectively,

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while decidedly more active in preparing for combat than the

Argentine army, were nevertheless underprepared for what

was to follow. On the other hand, the British quickly saw both

the need for and the major difficulties in achieving control of

the air when and where they would need it and swiftly

actioned numerous initiatives to satisfy their needs. The result

was that the Argentines failed to capitalize on the major

advantages available to them while the British were able to

work around or compensate for the major disadvantages of

their position.

The British planners appreciated from the very beginning—

in fact from before the task force was assembled—that to

achieve the aims of the government might well require the

landing of a substantial land force on the Falklands. This

would be a difficult and hazardous task the success of which

would depend critically on control of the sea and airspace at

the time of the amphibious force’s approach, landing, and consolidation. Airpower would be the key, for ships alone could

not provide the control required. Surface ships and submarines could defend against a surface or submarine threat,

but they could not reduce sufficiently the vulnerability of the

amphibious force to air attack. This vulnerability would be

particularly stark at the time of the landings. To achieve control of the air would require airpower, and this could only be

effectively achieved organically. The aircraft carriers and the

Sea Harriers were, therefore, the sine qua non for the success

of the amphibious operation. Once ashore and consolidated,

the land force would need to be supported and sustained. Here

again airpower would be crucial, and planning had to ensure

it was available to the land force in the quantity and of the

quality required.

British planning was both broad and comprehensive. The

land, sea, and air forces, which might be needed if conflict

occurred, immediately began intensive training for the roles and

missions they might have to conduct. Industrial, scientific, and

logistic support agencies were similarly brought into the planning and preparatory phases. On the diplomatic front, major

efforts were made—and very successfully so—to obtain the supplies and the support needed. At the same time, diplomatic

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effort was directed—and again successfully so—to denying the

Argentines the supplies and support they needed. Two dramatic

examples will illustrate this point. US logistics support of the

British forces was crucial to the outcome. Mainly due to the personal efforts of the US secretary of defense, Caspar Weinberger,

this was obtained. In fact it was given effect at Weinberger’s

insistence well before congressional approval to do so was

obtained. The commander of the task force, Adm Sandy

Woodward, believes that this support was so crucial that, without the Sidewinder AIM-9L air intercept missile and access to

Ascension and its facilities, the result would have been

reversed.10 On the other side of diplomatic activity, British

efforts largely isolated the Argentines. One result was the withdrawal of French support to the Super Étendard aircraft of the

Argentine naval air arm and to the Exocet AM-39 missile.11

With airpower, the RN concentrated on the preparation of the

carriers, Harriers, and helicopters. This preparation and training were conducted within the United Kingdom (UK) and in the

task force on its passage to the area of operations. The Royal

Air Force (RAF) prepared a wide range of its aircraft and personnel for possible conflict. The aircrews and support crews for

Harriers, Vulcans, Victors, VC-10s, C-130s, Nimrods, and a

variety of helicopters were those most heavily involved.

The Argentines were also determinedly active but less successful. The realization that the British might be serious about

the recapture of the islands seems to have hit the Argentine

forces well before it sunk in with the junta and such senior

officials as Costa Méndez. A massive airlift of personnel and

materiel to the islands was quickly planned and conducted

throughout the month of April 1982. The Argentine Air Force

and Naval Air Arm separately concluded that no airfield on the

islands, including Stanley, was suitable for operations by fast

jets. This ruled out the Mirage III, Dagger, A-4, and the Super

Étendard, in effect almost all the Argentine combat airpower.

These aircraft operated only from the mainland throughout

the war, not even using Stanley in an emergency. The only aircraft which tried, a Mirage III that had been badly damaged in

a confrontation with the very effective Sea Harrier/AIM-9L

combination on 1 May, was shot down and its pilot killed by

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Argentine antiaircraft artillery (AAA).12 The only Argentine aircraft of any combat capability to operate from the islands during the war were 24 Pucaras, six Aermacchi 339s, and four

Beechcraft Mentors, a very modest capability indeed.

During April the Argentine Air Force developed a retaliation

plan to use in a major operation in the event that the British

attempted a landing. It involved an attack force of 28 A-4s flying as seven flights of four, six Canberras in two flights of

three, and 12 Daggers and 10 Mirage IIIs flying in pairs as

escorts. In the event, the plan was never actioned. If it had

been—and that would almost certainly have required better

intelligence than the Argentines ever possessed—the British

defenses would have been sorely tested.

I do not intend to work through the 50 days of combat operations from 25 April, when South Georgia was retaken, until

14 June when the Argentines on the Falklands surrendered.

That is covered in detail in a number of excellent works on the

subject. Instead, I will concentrate on just a few significant

days and events, for they bring out most of what this conflict

can tell us about the use of airpower. Also worth pointing out

is that, although the conflict in the air was frequently intense,

it was also sporadic, never being sustained by the Argentines

for more than a few days at a time.

The first day of significant use of combat airpower was 1

May 1982. The British targets were—for eminently sound military reasons—the airfields at Stanley and Goose Green. In a

predawn attack a single Vulcan dropped 21 1,000-pound

bombs on Stanley. The mission took 15 hours and required

the support of a back-up Vulcan and 11 Victors. The immediate results were not overly impressive. The first bomb in the

stick had impacted and cratered the runway. The runway was

quickly repaired to a standard sufficient for operations by

Aermacchi 339, Pucara, and C-130 aircraft. Other than that,

damage was minor. This attack was followed soon thereafter

by attacks on Stanley and Goose Green by Sea Harriers from

the task force, specifically, HMS Hermes, which had been

brought within 70 miles of the islands. Three Pucaras were

destroyed on the ground at Goose Green. All the British aircraft recovered successfully to the carrier which immediately

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headed further out. The Sea Harriers were quickly turned

around, now equipped with AIM-9Ls for fleet air defense.

Meanwhile a bombardment group of a destroyer and two

frigates moved to within 12 miles of the East Falkland coast

and shelled Stanley from the sea. As they withdrew they were

attacked by three Daggers of the Argentine air force. All three

ships were damaged, none substantially so. The three Daggers

recovered successfully to their base on the mainland.

As that day progressed, other Argentine aircraft and their

pilots were not so fortunate. The higher command in Argentina

was all but totally confused. As the reports flowed in, and

anticipating a British landing, the command considered that

this must be the planned-for landing. Its response, however,

was disjointed and ultimately disastrous. Instead of the 56-

sortie, coordinated attack it had planned, a series of disjointed

responses was initiated. No A-4 mission found a target; a flight

of three Canberras did, only to lose one of their number to an

AIM-9L fired by a Sea Harrier. A similar combination

accounted for one of a pair of Daggers engaged on an escort

mission. Late in the day a pair of Mirage IIIs was engaged by

a similar number of Sea Harriers. One Mirage was destroyed

and the other badly damaged. It was the latter aircraft that

was mentioned previously as the victim of its own forces while

attempting to land at Stanley.

The Argentine navy’s carrier, Veinticinco de Mayo, had put to

sea in mid-April with eight A-4s, six S-2 Trackers, and three

Sea King helicopters. The next two weeks were spent in operational training to have the ship and its complement combat

ready by 30 April. In the event, the carrier and its aircraft contributed little to the actions of 1 May. The Sea Kings were airborne throughout the day on antisubmarine warfare (ASW)

missions, and the A-4s flew nine air defense sorties. The

Trackers found and then lost the British task force. The loss

of contact was mainly the result of confusion caused by the

presence of 30 to 40 Soviet fishing vessels which were operating between the Argentine and British carrier groups!13

At the end of that day, the events were both shattering and

confusing to those planning the use of Argentine airpower. The

British had shown their ability to bomb targets accurately at

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extreme range; the Canberra had shown that it was extremely

vulnerable; and neither the Mirage III nor the Dagger was the

equal of the Sea Harrier/AIM-9L combination, and neither had

the range to operate with any true effectiveness in the area of

the islands. The inability of these aircraft to be refueled in

flight had exposed a major operational limitation on the very

first day of operations. The wins and losses scoreboard also

did not look good: one Dagger, two Mirage IIIs, one Canberra,

and three Pucaras for, at best, some minor damage to three

ships. Even more devastating for aircrew morale was the loss

of three senior pilots and a navigator.

The outcome of what had been a confusing day for both

sides was significant. The British were buoyed by their successes, the Argentines devastated by their failures and especially by their inability to seize the initiative and dictate the

terms of the tactical contests. Their reactions demonstrated

clearly the psychological blows they had suffered. Noting the

Vulcan’s capabilities and the Mirage III’s ineffectiveness in the

area of the islands, the Argentines withdrew the Mirages north

to protect the national capital and heartland. The Canberras

were thereafter confined to night operations, and the Daggers

were not subsequently used as escorts.

On 2 May the results were, if anything, worse, and airpower

played no part in the most significant event of that day, the

sinking of the Argentine cruiser, General Belgrano, by the SSN,

HMS Conqueror. Airpower was, however, affected by that event.

The warships of the Argentine navy, including its only carrier,

were immediately withdrawn to the mainland and never again

ventured beyond the 12-mile limit imposed by the British. The

aircraft and crews of the naval air arm were the only elements

of the Argentine navy to play a part in further combat.

The sinking of the General Belgrano was a defining event in

this conflict. It established that the RN through its SSNs commanded the seas. The Argentine navy, which had always

assumed the major part in the planning of Malvinas operations and whose commander, Admiral Anaya, was undoubtedly the strongest advocate within the military and the junta

of direct military action in support of Argentine claims, was

pushed to the sidelines. The broader effect of the sinking of the

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General Belgrano was that on world opinion. Any notion that

this was some minor post-imperial scuffle that would eventually be acted out with few casualties and no great losses had

to be discarded. I remember well my own feelings as I first

learned of the sinking of the General Belgrano by car radio on

my way to work in Headquarters Australian Defence Force. I

had this sickness in the pit of my stomach as I listened to the

account of the action and thought of the hundreds of young

sailors dead or dying in the ice-cold waters of the South

Atlantic. This was bitter, bloody conflict from which there was

no smooth and simple way to work back.

The second defining event of the war came just two days

later. It had a similar effect on world opinion and a major effect

on both British opinion at home and British combat planning

in the war zone. In the early afternoon of 4 May, in conditions

of low cloud and poor visibility 85 nautical miles south of Port

Stanley, the Type 42 British destroyer, HMS Sheffield, was

struck by a single AM-39 Exocet fired from a range of 25 miles

by one of a pair of Argentine navy Super Étendard aircraft

operating from Rio Grande air base on the Argentine mainland. Although the warhead did not explode, the fire created

within the ship spread very swiftly and could not be controlled. The ship was abandoned five hours later with a loss of

20 of its 268-man crew. Twenty-four others were injured.

This was a stunning blow to the British. To date, all had

gone so well. Public opinion had been rallied and now stood

firmly behind a government which, up until this time, was

Britain’s most unpopular of the twentieth century.

International opinion had also been effectively mobilized in

Britain’s and against Argentina’s favor. The task force had

planned and trained well with the result that morale and confidence were high. The events of 25 April at South Georgia, of

1 May on and around the Falklands, and of 2 May with the

sinking of the General Belgrano confirmed the validity of that

confidence. However, 4 May showed that this was not to be a

one-sided conflict. The vulnerability of the task force to modern weapons systems had been dramatically exposed.

From 4 to 20 May the conflict went into a lull. The British

were waiting for the rest of the land force to join the task force.

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The Argentines were reviewing what had occurred, regrouping

their forces, and planning a maximum air effort in opposition

to the British landings. The significant event of that period for

the air forces was the loss to the Argentines of six Pucaras,

four Beechcraft Mentors, and a Shorts Skyvan on the ground

at Pebble Island in a raid mounted by British special forces.

During this lull the Argentine planners developed a 75-sortie effort to launch against the British as they landed, reasoning that maximum confusion in the British defenses would be

created if they were flooded with aircraft. Sixty-three of the

sorties were to be mounted in A-4s and Daggers of the

Argentine air force and 12 in A-4s of the Argentine naval air

arm. On the day of the landings, 21 May, an estimated 60 sorties reached the Malvinas in pursuit of the tactical aim, but

the confusion that was planned was only partially realized.

Journalists’ accounts of the day’s actions talk of unending

waves of Argentine aircraft sweeping through San Carlos

Water throughout the day. The truth is otherwise. No

Argentine aircraft appeared until the morning was well

advanced and then, having had to work their way through the

outer defenses and having little tactical freedom due to lack of

fuel endurance, they appeared a few at a time at widely separated intervals of time. Ten Argentine aircraft were lost, nine

to the Sea Harrier defenses and one to a surface-to-air missile.

The British forces lost HMS Ardent, HMS Argonaut was seriously damaged, and HMSs Antrim, Brilliant, and Broadsword

were damaged to a lesser extent.

The greatest frustration to the Argentine airmen was that

the damage should have been much greater. Many bombs hit

their targets but failed to detonate due to delayed-action fuses

that failed to operate.14 Some bombs bounced off the water and

over their targets. One bounced off the water, passed upward

through the flight deck of HMS Broadsword, and demolished

all in its path, including the nose of Broadsword’s Lynx helicopter, before falling into the sea without exploding.15

An important statistic from that day of turmoil in San

Carlos Water illustrates well the importance of airpower in the

support and sustainment of operations. A detachment of Sea

Kings ferried 520 troops and 912,000 pounds of stores from

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ship to shore.16 Another important statistic was the Argentine

loss rate. The Argentine forces had achieved much, but they

had suffered greatly. Five Daggers, five A-4s, two Pucaras, one

Chinook, and one Puma were their losses for the day. That

rate of attrition could not be sustained.

Then came the seemingly inexplicable respite granted by the

Argentines to the British, which allowed them to complete and

consolidate their landings. One explanation for this is that so

many Argentine aircraft had been damaged on 21 May that the

mounting of a substantial effort the next day was beyond their

capabilities. Lawrence Freedman and Virginia GambaStonehouse offer a different explanation:

The delay was the result of an argument that morning between the Air

Force and the naval aviators over how air power should be properly

deployed in these circumstances. . . . The Air Force wanted to make a

decisive strike of their own, by attacking large targets, such as the carriers and major warships, with the hope of success having a commensurate political impact in London. . . . As a result, and to immense

British relief, the supply ships were left alone.17

The Argentine air attacks resumed on 23 May. That and the

next two days saw intense Argentine air activity resulting in

British losses of HMS Antelope and HMS Coventry and substantial damage to HMS Sir Galahad. The latter’s sister ship,

HMS Sir Lancelot, was also damaged. The most significant

British loss of the period was not, however, a naval vessel but a

merchant vessel supporting the operations. On 25 May, by flying at very low level and using deceptive routing, two Super

Étendards equipped with Exocet AM-39 missiles closed on the

British task force undetected. The task force appears to have

received about six minutes warning. This was not enough to

deflect the attack, and the Super Étendards each fired one

Exocet from a range of 31 miles. Subsequent analysis suggests

that both missiles were effectively deflected by electronic countermeasures and chaff from their aimed targets. However, the

container ship, MV Atlantic Conveyor, which had no such

defenses was hit and caught fire. Twelve lives were lost.

Fortunately for the British, all the Harriers and Sea Harriers the

ship had brought south plus one Chinook and one Wessex had

already been flown off. Nevertheless, the materiel losses were

severe: 10 helicopters (six Wessex 5s, three Chinooks, one

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Lynx), aircraft parts, ammunition and bombs, tentage for 4,000

men, aluminum planking for airstrips, a water desalinization

plant, and many vehicles. Salvage of some of this was contemplated, but before it could be attempted the ship foundered.

Twenty-seven May, the last day of intensive Argentine air

attacks in San Carlos Water, saw the most successful

Argentine strike against a land target in the war. Argentine A4s hit the British main logistics area and medical dressing station at Ajax Bay, which was on the other side of San Carlos

Water from the beachhead. Guns, mortars, and ammunition

being loaded into helicopter nets were destroyed, as were all of

45 Commando Battalion’s antitank missiles and launchers.

Several men were killed and wounded. The dressing station

was rendered unusable for the rest of the war through two

unexploded bombs having lodged there.18

These were not the only problems confronting the commander, 3 Brigade, Brig Julian Thompson, during this period.

He was under great pressure from the heights of both political

and military command to move out of the beachhead. High

command seemed to have little appreciation of the operational

and logistical circumstances on the islands. To quote

Freedman and Gamba-Stonehouse: “Thompson was beginning

to doubt that anybody in London had any conception of the

logistical task he faced or the real risks his men were already

running. From the standpoint of those facing daily air raids

the opposition did not seem so weak as it appeared in

London.”19 Although the British commander on the Falklands

did not know it at the time, his plight was soon to be shared

with his opposite number, Brig Gen Mario Benjamín

Menendez, who was also unable to convey to his high command the true circumstances he faced.20

With the move out of the beachhead and a major lull in the

Argentine antishipping campaign, the emphasis of air operations shifted to British support, both combat and logistic, of

their land forces. I will use two illustrations, one descriptive

and the other statistical, to emphasize the importance of both

types of support. The first concerns the use of close air support

in the battle for Goose Green. The paratroops’ advance on that

settlement had ground to a halt. They were moving against a

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considerably larger force, and one that was being very effectively supported by artillery. In addition, Argentine Pucaras

were creating havoc among the British support helicopters. The

attack had stalled and ammunition was running low. The commander, Maj Chris Keeble, called for air support. It was provided by two GR-3 Harriers of the RAF. In Keeble’s words, “The

attack gave a great boost to the morale of our troops. I think

some of them thought the Harriers had come in a bit too close

for comfort, but that is war.”21 To quote Ethell and Price: “[The]

attack was a textbook example of a close air-support mission:

a hard-hitting surprise attack against a target of great importance to the enemy, launched at a crucial time in the land battle, whose results were clearly seen by the ground troops—thus

strengthening the resolve of those on one side and demoralising those on the other.”22 The Argentine attacks slackened

markedly and, after dark, ceased. The next morning Keeble

opened negotiations for a surrender which duly followed. The

Argentine force was more than twice the size of the British and

was amply supplied with weapons and ammunition.

The statistical illustration can be expressed more succinctly

but it is no less telling. More than 80 percent of all sorties

flown by the British were those of their helicopters and, of

those, more than 80 percent were moving people and stores.

The RN helicopters flew 10,381 sorties for a total of 21,049 flying hours.23 The RAF’s lone helicopter performed splendidly. In

a single month that one Chinook—the only one to be flown off

the MV Atlantic Conveyor—lifted 1,530 troops, 650 Argentine

prisoners, and 600 tons of cargo, and it did so in often

appalling weather conditions and frequently when under fire.24

The last instance in the war which I wish to highlight is that

of the amphibious landings at Fitzroy-Bluff Cove late in the

war. The plan was to move 1,200 troops of the Scots and Welsh

Guards to the east coast of East Falkland rather than having

them walk there. Doing so would save time and effort. It was

also, however, hazardous. Admiral Woodward did not like the

plan, but he considered that they would probably get away

with it “as long as they were swift, spent as little time as possible in unloading the LSL [landing ship, logistic] and the

weather stayed favourable.”25 In the event, none of these

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applied. The landing was detected by the Argentines who

moved swiftly to mount an air attack utilizing Daggers and A4s. The A-4s found Sir Galahad and Sir Tristram unloading in

Pleasant Bay. Sir Tristram had disembarked many of its troops

but, unfortunately, Sir Galahad had not. Both ships were

bombed and strafed, suffering serious damage and loss of life.

The most damage and carnage resulted from the detonation of

a bomb deep within Sir Galahad. In total, 50 men were killed

and another 57 wounded.

The Argentine Daggers did not even reach Pleasant Bay. En

route they came upon HMS Plymouth leaving San Carlos Water

alone and without air cover. They attacked and badly damaged

the ship before returning safely home. In fact, all of the

Daggers and A-4s involved in these missions recovered safely.

Such was not the case for the follow-up missions now

mounted by the Argentines. The defenses had been alerted

and Harriers were deployed on combat air patrol (CAP) overhead. The result was no further damage inflicted on the ships

and three A-4s lost.

Admiral Woodward speaks strongly of this whole incident

in his book. One particular passage is worth quoting at

length because it raises an issue of great importance in modern warfare:

One of my deep regrets about the “Bluff Cove Disaster” is that it will

always remain some people’s abiding memory of the Falklands War—

because television was there, filming horrific live pictures of burnt and

badly injured soldiers. As a military disaster it was not, in context, so

earth-shakingly dreadful. . . . I suspect we all have to learn to live with

the fact that television magnifies drastically what is already awful and

somehow diminishes in importance that which it does not see.26

At 9:00 P.M. local time on 14 June 1982, the Argentine commander and governor of the Malvinas, Brigadier General

Menendez, surrendered all Argentine forces on the islands to

the commander land forces Falkland Islands, Maj Gen Jeremy

Moore. At the loss of 1,002 lives (256 British, 746 Argentine)

and more than 2,000 wounded,27 British administration of and

sovereignty over the Falkland Islands had been restored.

Was it worth it? Who can say? It depends on the values

you hold and the weight you allot to the criteria you use.

As Michael Howard has pointed out, “That is the kind of

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hypothetical question which laymen put and historians cannot answer.”28 He also points out, however, that we can ask

another and less impossible question; namely, what did the

respective governments think would happen to them if they

did not go to war.29 I leave that for you to contemplate.

What can be said without question is that, in retaking the

islands, Britain acquired a commitment to them that she did

not previously have. In military terms, having previously been

unwilling to place a deterrent force of moderate size on the

islands, she has now had to spend hundreds of millions of

pounds and distort her military structure to deter future

Argentine aggression. For its part, Argentina had been beaten,

perhaps to the point of humiliation, but her determination to

incorporate the Malvinas into her republic had not been

diminished. The status quo antebellum has not been restored;

the status is much different. Even if one accepts the

Clausewitzian dictum that war is the continuation of politics

with the addition of other means, one must acknowledge

that war is more than just another policy option. Once military action has been taken and blood spilled, a discontinuity

has been introduced which makes it impossible to move

back smoothly to previously possible positions. Argentine military power was used to seize the islands; British military

power was used to retake and secure them; what military

power has been unable to do is solve the problem of the

Falklands/Malvinas.

What can be said about military power in this conflict is that

the outcome was an affirmation of the value of military professionalism. The military task the British set themselves was

daunting: transport a land force 8,000 miles to the South

Atlantic, land on a bleak and unfamiliar group of islands

defended by more than 10,000 troops, and reestablish British

administration. Many factors, including good fortune, combined to bring the British victory. In a summary comment on

the conflict, Adm Harry Train stated, “Mass, firepower, and

logistics support are still the essentials in a military campaign,”30 but he also remarked that “in the end it was British

military professionalism that pulled the fat out of the fire.”31

One factor quoted by many observers as the key to victory was

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the British capability in joint operations. On that point

Admiral Woodward and General Moore have been quite specific, stating that: “The ability to operate central joint command of our national force was war winning.”32 And further

that: “We won because we were unified, the enemy was not.”33

I well recall, however, that when visiting Whitehall soon after

the end of the war, the strong feeling was that, while joint

operations had been conducted reasonably well, many weaknesses had been exposed, and there was much that needed to

be improved.

If one accepts the adage that defeat is a better teacher than

victory, the lessons which the Argentines learned have special

significance. Brig Gen Ernesto Crespo, who became the

Argentine air force’s chief of staff, conducted a study of the

war. His report was published in various editions of the

Buenos Aires Herald in 1985. His report concludes with a

series of recommendations that, in the words of Anthony

Cordesman and Abraham Wagner, “are virtually the mirror

image of the reasons for Britain’s success”; namely:

• The responsibilities of each service must be clearly

defined.

• Intensive permanent joint planning and training must be

fully institutionalised.

• Joint planning at all levels must be implemented in the

form of an integrated command, control, and training

organisation.

• Operations must be commanded on the basis of a joint

command for a specific theatre of operations.34

In all of this, however, the quality of the British forces stood

out. They were determined, adaptable, physically fit, well

trained, and well led. The mobility and the expertise of their

ground forces in night operations are especially noteworthy. In

contrast, the Argentine forces tried hard—and in some areas

with considerable success—but they were outclassed.

Nevertheless, as Admiral Woodward points out, echoing the

Duke of Wellington after Waterloo, “It was a bit of a close call.”35

The conflict has been a treasure trove for students and

analysts.36 It was the first conflict of its type for decades. Many

of the weapons and systems involved were either in or being

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contemplated for the inventories of other nations, and many

of them were being used in combat for the first time. “Lessons

learned” became a growth industry of which I was a part.

However, as I remarked, in the equivalent conference to this

in 1991 on the subject of extracting lessons from military

conflicts, “A common tendency is to extract data and form

conclusions which accord with one’s preconceptions.”37 I reiterate that. In doing so, I have the full support of no less an

authority than Michael Howard who, in referring to the

Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05, states: “As usual, the

experts tended to read into the experiences of the war very

much what they wanted to find.”38

With those statements standing guard over us all, let me

chance my arm with some summary remarks on the use of

airpower in the South Atlantic in 1982.

In basic terms the air war in the South Atlantic was one in

which land-based air forces attempted to prevent a naval task

force from firstly putting a land force ashore and then supporting it. Consequently, the areas which stand out in any

study of this war are maritime strike and fleet air defense.

With the first, the vulnerability of surface vessels to air attack

was again demonstrated in the South Atlantic. Ships are easy

to find—if not always easy to identify—and, if undefended,

easy to hit. Once hit, they are easily damaged and the damage

is difficult to control. These factors worked in favor of both

Argentine and British air attackers in this conflict.39 Working

against the Argentine forces were the facts that their attacks

were ill conceived and tactically inept. This in no way detracts

from the extreme courage shown by many of the Argentine aircrews. It does show, however, that the combination of personal

bravery and professional ineptitude is frequently fatal.

Argentine targeting, as remarked above, was inexcusably

bad. They targeted the pickets and not the ships they were protecting. The real prizes, apart from the carriers, were the two

amphibious support ships, the support ships such as the MV

Atlantic Conveyor, and most particularly the SS Canberra. I

remember well being told in London in 1983 that, if the

Canberra had been lost or badly damaged on the way into the

Falklands, the British would not have continued the campaign.

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Even when the Argentines targeted the carriers, they lost sight

of their aim in the heat of combat. Postwar analysis indicates

that the Argentine pilots in general attacked the first ship or

ships they saw—and they were, by the very nature of naval

combat dispositions, the pickets.

The Argentine planning was equally poor in not attempting

to swamp the British defenses and confuse their tactical command and control. Despite operating toward the limits of their

radii of action, the Argentine air forces still had the capacity to

run a large number of maritime strike aircraft, plus escorts

and other airborne support, against the British task force. A

combination of spoof raids, feint attacks, escorted raids, and

multidirectional attacks by 30 plus Daggers and A-4s against

a high-value target—and that was well within the physical

capabilities of the Argentines until the very end of the war—

would have been very difficult to defend against. Yet nothing

like that was ever attempted. Although up to eight Argentine

aircraft would be in the area of operations at any one time,

never more than five were used in a single attack. Even then

they usually all attacked from the same general direction; to

quote Cordesman and Wagner: “This normally allowed the

British to focus all of their anti-aircraft defences on a comparatively few intruders.”40

The most successful maritime strike unit was No. 2

Squadron of the Argentine naval air arm. It was equipped with

five Super Étendard aircraft (one of which was used exclusively for spares) and five AM-39 Exocet missiles. The

squadron had 10 qualified Super Étendard pilots. In the war

they destroyed the HMS Sheffield and the MV Atlantic

Conveyor with no damage whatsoever to any aircraft.

Operating at extreme range (the mission which accounted for

the MV Atlantic Conveyor was a round trip of 1,650 nautical

miles) and often in poor weather, they showed themselves to

be a highly professional outfit.41 If more aircraft, crews, and

missiles had been available, the Super Étendard/AM-39

Exocet combination might have been as effective for the

Argentine in attack as the Sea Harrier/AIM-9L was for the

British in defense.

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The significance of the availability of the AIM-9L Sidewinder

has already been commented upon. The missile proved to be

both reliable and effective. Without it, the air-to-air contest

would have been played to different rules. Equally, if the combat power represented by the Sea Harriers had not been available, the whole contest would have been played to different

rules. Dispatching a task force would have been an act of futility and, instead, a diplomatic solution would have been

sought. As it was, the Sea Harrier/AIM-9L overwhelmed the

Argentines in the air. The exchange rate supports this statement: Sea Harriers 24, Argentines 0.42 After that first day, 1

May, the Argentines never again attempted to oppose the

Harriers in air-to-air combat.

Impressive as the figures are, as mentioned above, the task

force was vulnerable to a properly planned and executed maritime strike. The reason was that the British did not have the

wherewithal to defend the task force effectively against such

an attack and that, in turn, was because the necessary measures had not been taken to provide defense in depth. What the

British required was the capability for early warning of attack

and continuous tracking thereafter of the attackers. That

needed to be coupled with a layered series of antiair weapons

systems to protect the high-value assets of the task force. The

British had neither the early warning system nor true defense

in depth. That they were able to compensate for those deficiencies shows both their skill and their ability to improvise,

but it also shows a lack of operational insight on the part of

their opponents. The summary conclusion, which is as pertinent today as it was in the South Atlantic in 1982, is that, if

you have to operate your ships where they might be subject to

air attack, you must provide them with all the elements of the

system described above or your losses could be severe.

A major factor within the operational calculus of both sides

was the range and endurance of their aircraft. The South

Atlantic war showed yet again that aircraft of low fuel

endurance are operationally inefficient. Unless an aircraft has

a fuel endurance which is appropriate for its role and its tasks,

extraordinary measures have to be taken to compensate.

Endurance can be traded as circumstances dictate for range,

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speed, load, loiter time, or turning radius. Air-to-air refueling

(AAR) can help to overcome the disadvantages of low fuel

endurance, but it is only a partial corrective.

AAR presents planners with complex problems to ensure

that the AAR aircraft are where they are needed when they are

needed. Refueling aircraft are not only valuable air assets but

also highly vulnerable ones, a fact which adds to the planners’

problems. Nevertheless, the reactions of both sides in the

aftermath of the war are instructive. The British white paper

of 1983 highlights AAR as being vital in supporting operations

at long range, stating that “large capacity strategic tanker aircraft are needed to provide greater operational flexibility in the

future.”43 For its part, the Argentine actions speak as loud as

words; after the war they retrofitted their Mirage IIIs and

Daggers with AAR capability.44

Support operations were vital to British success and, with

airpower, the role of support helicopters is worth special attention. Their significance to British operations has been commented on above. Despite the British success with helicopters,

there is still much to learn about their use. In combat a

Parkinsonian imperative applies with support helicopters: the

tasks for which they are needed always exceed the capacity of

those available. This makes the availability and the tasking of

support helicopters critical to success. The British had the

support helicopters, and they used them well; neither comment applies to the Argentines. Despite the British success,

their tasking of helicopters could have and should have been

much better. When I visited the RN Naval Air Station at

Yeovilton in 1983, helicopter pilots told me of their extreme

frustration as they waited for tasking which never came while,

throughout the day, they were hearing radio requests from

ground forces desperately in need of their services. As with all

other forms of air assets, allocation and tasking are keys to

their successful application.

The comments on support helicopters are part of another old

lesson reemphasized, namely, the vital importance of logistics.

The logistical chain which ran from the Falklands through the

critical support base of Ascension island to the United Kingdom

was a vital element of British combat power. The chain, in fact,

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went even further, namely, to the United States for many vital

items, especially fuel, bombs and precision-guided munitions

such as Sidewinders, Stingers, and Shrikes.45

A vital link in the British logistics chain was airlift. The

British support base of Ascension had an airfield, Wideawake,

but no port. Airlift of personnel and stores to Ascension was

an important task throughout the conflict. During the campaign more than 5,500 personnel, 7,000 tons of supplies,

almost 100 vehicles, and more than 20 helicopters were airlifted into Ascension island in operations that absorbed

17,000 flying hours.46 A smaller but no less vital part of the

total airlift effort was the airdrop from C-130 aircraft of critical spares and stores to the task force throughout the operation.47 Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Armitage considers that

the transport force was vital to the success of the whole operation for the reconquest of the Falklands.48

The Argentines also used strategic airlift very effectively in

difficult conditions. After the war, many people, myself

included, were surprised to find that the Argentines were able

with relative impunity to operate C-130s into Stanley right up

until the night before the surrender.49 The aircraft brought in

personnel and stores and carried out wounded personnel. No

aircraft were lost on these missions. The one Argentine C-130

that was lost was engaged in an unfortunate attempt by the

Argentine air force to use the aircraft for maritime reconnaissance and raid direction. On 1 June the third such mission

was flown. When the aircraft popped up from low level north

of Pebble Island to make a radar sweep, it was detected by

radar and a pair of Sea Harriers was directed onto it. The C130 was destroyed with an AIM-9L. No further missions of this

type were flown.50

Now I come to the exercise of which I spoke in the introduction. I consider that the South Atlantic war offers the airpower

student or analyst an ideal opportunity to learn about campaign planning and the operational art. The trick is to place

yourself not in Sandy Woodward’s shoes but in Lami Dozo’s. If

what he had was yours, how would you have used it to thwart

the British and achieve the national aim?51

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For me, this is both an interesting and a relevant exercise,

especially for Australians. In our nation’s defense, we are most

unlikely to be required to attempt what the British did. For as far

ahead as we can see, however, we will be required to control an

air/sea gap and defend a coastline. So let us look at the problem.

The British are coming, and we have a good idea of what

their combat air assets are. In a nutshell, they have 28 Sea

Harriers, gun and missile equipped, supported by shipborne

radars and little else. The ships are well equipped for defense,

but the only power the British can project until they land the

amphibious force is that possessed by the Harriers. For our

part, if I can put it in those terms without offense, we have 20

Mirage IIIs, 25 Daggers, 70 A-4s, five Super Étendards, 55

Pucaras, six Aermacchi 339s, seven Canberras, and four

Beechcraft Mentors.52 The A-4s and the Super Étendards are

air refuelable. We have two KC-130s, and the A-4s can also

buddy-refuel. We have numerous support aircraft and two

mobile control and reporting radars, a TPS-43 and a TPS-44.

We also have an aircraft carrier and a number of mainland

bases. Having seized the Malvinas, we now have a 4,100-foot,

sealed runway and numerous grass fields available to us there.

I have played this game many times and I am convinced

that, properly used, airpower could have achieved the

Argentine national aim. I leave it to you to contemplate how

you would do so, but I will offer a few tips.

Your first task will be to devise a campaign plan and, within

that, an air campaign plan to achieve your strategic aim. In

doing so you will need to determine the operational and logistics concepts that you will employ. The tip I offer on planning

your campaign is to seek out the Air Power Studies Centre’s

paper on the subject.53 It gives an excellent framework within

which to work.

The key to success is the airfield at Stanley. Lami Dozo has

said that he contemplated using it but concluded that it was

not possible.54 On 17 October 1982, F-4 Phantoms of the RAF

flew into Stanley, which had been lengthened with 2,000 feet

of AM2 matting!55 F-4s operated continuously from Stanley

until the new airfield at Mount Pleasant was built. The

Argentines had AM2 matting, and the equipment needed to

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prepare the ground and lay the matting. With Argentine fast

jets operating from Stanley, the operational calculus is transformed. Who now is forced to operate at the limit of range in

conducting offensive operations? Adm Harry Train considers

that “had the Argentines achieved the capability of flying A-4s,

Super Étendards and Mirages out of Port Stanley, the course

of the war would probably have been quite different.”56

Cordesman and Wagner draw a conclusion which they consider is of wide applicability in stating that, in any remote-area

conflict, it is important to base as far ahead as possible.57

Another tip: fuel, bombs, and ammunition are a problem for

operations from Stanley; you will have to determine a solution.

In like fashion, maintenance for your fast jets, other than relatively simple on-aircraft maintenance, is a problem. The

British submarine force is an insurmountable barrier for your

surface navy and a major problem for your merchant shipping. The navy’s own submarine force, however, can—as it did

in the actual war—cause the British sailors great concern.

If you play the exercise seriously, I believe that you will gain

much from it. The Australians among you will find that it

offers insights that will assist your thinking on how we should

use our airpower in similar circumstances.

The short but intense war in the South Atlantic in those 73

days in 1982 deserves serious consideration from a number of

points of view. How two mature nation-states allowed a seemingly minor issue to escalate to war is a question that needs to

be addressed. G. M. Dillon has summarized this aspect of the

dispute quite neatly:

The dispute was an apparently uncomplicated international disagreement between two otherwise friendly states, which historically have

shared some mutual regard, transformed by military gamble and political misjudgment into crisis and war. It ought to have been resolvable,

and yet it proved intractable. One might reasonably have thought also

that even if no solution was immediately negotiable or foreseeable, a

sense of proportion ought to have been sufficient to contain the disagreement below the threshold of violence.58

In the cold, harsh spotlight of hindsight, this unnecessary

war shows once again that military action is truly the option

of last resort. Both sides were too swift to resort to it; the

Argentines in seizing the islands and the British in retaking

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them. Both sides allowed events to sweep them along without

sufficient consideration being given to policy alternatives. A

capacity for and a willingness to think in strategic terms, to

take the long view and consider Michael Howard’s question of

what is likely to be the result—in broad and not narrowly

political terms—of not taking military action would have

served both sides well.

The British failed to deter the Argentinians from invading

because they did not, and ultimately could not, demonstrate

clearly that they were serious in retaining sovereignty over the

islands and, to that end, were willing to commit major

resources. They believed that, if the Argentines escalated the

conflict beyond diplomacy, they would do so at the low end of

the conflict spectrum. This is brought out in many sections of

the Franks Report.59 The line of thought was that, if diplomacy

failed, extra-diplomatic action would be of a minor nature,

such as severing postal and communications links or harassing aircraft and shipping. Moreover, a parallel line of thought

was that any forthright British action would be provocative,

would complicate diplomacy, and might lead to Argentine military action. There is no evidence of the contrary line of thought

that not to take forthright action might encourage the

Argentines to take action at the high end of the conflict spectrum, a line of thought with as much historical support as any.

This is not to say that the Argentine invasion was predictable. Although modern wars are almost always predictable, they are notoriously difficult to predict. The key to

coping with this fact is not to seek to achieve an impossibly

high level of predictability, but to act in such a way that, if the

unpredictable should occur, you are prepared for it. That

requires acting with circumspection and prudence before the

event and swiftly and appropriately after it.

With airpower, we see once again its fundamental importance

in modern military conflict. Control of the air was seen by both

sides as one of the keys to success. The British started with few

assets, but their thinking on how to use them to obtain control

of the air was excellent; the Argentines began with most of the

advantages and failed to capitalize on that fortunate circumstance. Airmen of both sides fought determinedly, frequently

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displaying courage of the very highest order. Unfortunately, in

doing so, many fine young men lost their lives. That the war was

fought at all was the fault of no airman, but the fact that many

airmen and others lost their lives needlessly can be traced to air

commanders, planners, and operators who did not know their

basic business well enough. Let us hope that through studies of

these conflicts and through convening conferences such as this,

criticisms of that type can never be made of us.

Discussion

Air Commodore Bob Richardson: I think the Falklands showed

that you don’t fight the war you prepare for and that the ability to modify, to adapt, to meet the changing circumstances of

any individual conflict is very important. I’m thinking of the

mounting of Searchwater radars on naval helicopters, of air

refueling modifications to transport aircraft, and most particularly, of the electronic warfare modifications that were introduced at very short notice. They all showed an ability to adapt

to circumstances which is most important for us also. I wonder if you would agree with that.

Air Marshal Funnell: Yes, I do, Bob. I address those issues in

my paper, but I didn’t have the time to mention them. Just a

point of clarification: although the British did have

Searchwater radar adapted to fit on a Sea King, it wasn’t used

in the conflict. That occurred afterwards.

At the end of my paper I speak of reacting swiftly and appropriately to an event which you haven’t predicted. You have to have

that sort of capacity within your defense structure if you’re going

to react in effective and appropriate ways to the unexpected.

Dr. Ben Lambeth: Harking back to your title, “It Was a Bit of a

Close Call,” the war seemed to demonstrate how random luck

can be a factor governing the outcome of war. I’d ask you to

speculate first on what the operational consequences would

have been had the Atlantic Conveyor gone down before the

Harrier GR-3s went off rather than afterwards, and beyond

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that to reflect on what other key events besides Argentine

ineptitude contributed to this being a close call.

Air Marshal Funnell: At the end of the study I gave a presentation at Whitehall, and I can remember remarking that perhaps

the overriding conclusion I’d reached was something people

have been saying in that part of the world for a very long time:

God really is an Englishman.

Yes, random luck did have a lot to do with the British victory.

In fact it was close in other respects as well. If the Argentine

ground forces could have held out for another couple of weeks,

I don’t know how the British forces would have coped with the

huge logistical problem that was building up for them. Many

of their ships in the South Atlantic were barely operational. It

would have been a very tricky business indeed.

If the Atlantic Conveyer had lost the Sea Harriers, that would

have had a very serious impact, but I don’t think it would have

changed the outcome. But what I did learn in London was that

if the Canberra had been lost on the way down—and it could

well have been—the British would have abandoned the military operation. That was the significance of the Canberra, and

as I said, it sat in San Carlos Water throughout the 21st of

May and was not attacked. Since the war, some of the

Argentine commanders—and I think this once again demonstrates their capacity for self-delusion—have said they deliberately didn’t attack the Atlantic Conveyer or the Royal Fleet

Auxiliaries because they “didn’t do that sort of thing.” My conclusion was that because the Argentine aircraft were operating

at the extremes of their radius of action they would attack the

first target they saw, and those targets naturally tended to be

the pickets, not logistics support ships.

Professor Richard Overy: You’ve talked about this as an unnecessary war. I wonder whether you feel strongly that the reason

it became a military conflict so early was because both Galtieri

in Argentina and Thatcher in Britain had domestic political

considerations which governed the choices they were making,

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rather than considerations based on military or international

grounds. The second thing I wanted to ask is whether you

could talk more about air intelligence. I think we haven’t

talked sufficiently about the development of air intelligence

and the role it plays in operations. Is it that intelligence did not

in fact govern the behavior of the two air forces very much in

the Falklands conflict, or is it something that we don’t know

enough about yet?

Air Marshal Funnell: On the unnecessary war. There’s no

doubt that for both sides it’s difficult to interpret international

actions without understanding the domestic forces and the

interplay between diplomacy and domestic politics. The

Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey has examined that as a

general proposition and thinks that the relationship is somewhat overemphasized as an explanation of why wars occur.

However, there’s little doubt that the Argentine junta was in

domestic trouble at the time, and they perceived the retaking

of the Malvinas as something which would attract strong

domestic support and that’s the way it turned out. The initial

Argentine plan was that they were going to take the islands

bloodlessly—which they succeeded in doing, the only life lost

was on their own side—and with very little harm to civilians,

just to force the British back to the negotiating table. They

then were going to withdraw. But, of course, the invasion was

received with such acclaim in Argentina, in comparison to the

riots the junta had had on their hands the week before, that

there was no way in the world they could ever have withdrawn.

On the British side, as I mentioned, this was the most unpopular government of the twentieth century. In an opinion poll

published in the Times in the middle of April 1982—this was

after the task force had sailed—Margaret Thatcher was rated

as the worst prime minister in history. She even beat Neville

Chamberlain, who had held that position for the previous 50

years. So there also was an extremely unpopular government

faced with major domestic problems. In the House of

Commons the prime minister met with the chief of naval staff.

He told her something like, “I can fix this, I can retake these

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Islands, I’ve got a task force I’m putting together, and it can

sail in 48 hours.” That, I think, shows the way in which

domestic politics can interact and bring about a decision

which you might personally rationalize in other ways.

On intelligence. It was a war fought without good intelligence

on either side and that’s in a range of areas, not only on the

air side. For example, the Argentines had only one submarine

in operation, and it was scurrying around the South Atlantic,

only occasionally coming in contact with British ships. The

one occasion it did fire torpedoes against British shipping, it

appeared they malfunctioned. Yet, because of the mere presence of the submarine, and mainly in reaction to false alarms,

the Royal Navy task force had all but expended every single

antisubmarine weapon they had in their armory during those

50 or so days down there. They just didn’t have the intelligence to work with. Similarly, because they didn’t have airborne early warning, their intelligence on incoming Argentine

air raids was poor. Also, the British got very little intelligence

from satellite systems. In the main, the information they got

was very broad and didn’t have the detail they sought. By contrast, they used signals intelligence very well after their landings on the 21st.

Another interesting thing about intelligence is that as soon as

something like this comes along, you just do not have the staff

to cope with it. The British forces brought in intelligence officers and reservists from everywhere, but now instead of operating in a peacetime environment—9 to 5, Monday to Friday—

now it’s 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and the volume of

material coming in has expanded hugely. I can recall talking

with some of the intelligence people. They were setting up

camp stretchers in the hallways because people couldn’t

afford to go home: there was no one to handle the intelligence

for them if they weren’t there all the time.

One last comment on intelligence, although I don’t know how

much weight you can put on this. After the war, the Argentines

maintained that their chief source of intelligence throughout

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the war was the BBC World Service. The BBC came in for a lot

of flak in that war, and some of it I think was deserved. For

example—although once again it appears that the Argentines

didn’t take advantage of it—the attack on Goose Green was

announced by the BBC before it occurred. Lt Col H. Jones,

who was in charge, said that when he got back to the UK he

was personally going to initiate legal action against the BBC.

Unfortunately, as you may recall he was killed. In like fashion,

it was the BBC who informed the Argentines that their bombs

weren’t exploding.

Notes

1. G. M. Dillon, The Falklands, Politics, and War (Houndsmill,

Basingstroke, Hampshire: Macmillan Press, 1989), viii.

2. South Georgia Island is about 800 nautical miles east-southeast of the

Falklands. It is administered separately from the Falklands. It is also

claimed by Argentina, but the claim is of post-World War II origin.

3. HMS Sheffield was subsequently lost while under tow.

4. Sandy Woodward and Patrick Robinson, One Hundred Days: The

Memoirs of the Falklands Battle Group Commander (London: HarperCollins,

1992), 68.

5. John E. Marr, War in the Falklands: Perspectives on British Strategy

and the Use of Air Power, Air War College Research Report (Maxwell Air Force

Base, Ala.: Air University, 1988), 18.

6. Ibid.

7. Peter Calvert, The Falklands Crisis: The Rights and the Wrongs

(London: Frances Pinter, 1982), 59.

8. Dillon, 130–31.

9. Interview with Miss Oriana Fallaci, Times, 12 June 1982, cited in Sir

James Cable, “Surprise and the Single Scenario,” RUSI Journal, March

1983, 33.

10. Woodward, xviii.

11. Anthony H. Cordesman and Abraham R. Wagner, The Lessons of

Modern War, vol. 3, The Afghan and Falkland Conflicts (Boulder, Colo.:

Westview Press, 1990), 243.

12. Rodney A. Burdon et al., Falklands, The Air War (London: Arms and

Armour Press, 1986), 145.

13. The information in this section is drawn mainly from a number of

sections within Burdon.

14. Information in this section has been extracted from numerous

sources with most reliance being placed on the accounts in Burdon.

15. Burdon, 121.

16. Cordesman and Wagner, 253.

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17. Lawrence Freedman and Virginia Gamba-Stonehouse, Signals of

War: The Falklands Conflict of 1982 (London: Faber and Faber, 1990),

359–60.

18. Ibid., 369.

19. Freedman and Gamba-Stonehouse.

20. Ibid., 402–6.

21. Jeffrey L. Ethell and Alfred Price, Air War South Atlantic (London:

Sidgwick & Jackson, 1983), 65.

22. Ibid., 165.

23. Cordesman and Wagner, 326.

24. M. J. Armitage, The Royal Air Force: An Illustrated History (London:

Arms and Armour Press, 1993), 238. See also Burdon, 389.

25. Woodward, 319.

26. Ibid., 323–24.

27. Cordesman and Wagner, 267.

28. Michael Eliot Howard, The Lessons of History (New Haven: Yale

University Press, 1991), 115.

29. Ibid.

30. Adm Harry D. Train, “An Analysis of the Falklands/Malvinas Islands

Campaign,” Naval War College Review, Winter 1988, 50.

31. Ibid.

32. Maj Gen Sir Jeremy Moore and Adm Sir John Woodward, “The

Falklands Experience,” RUSI Journal, March 1983, 31.

33. Ibid.

34. Cordesman and Wagner, 329.

35. Ibid., xvii.

36. Adm Harry Train believes that, as a case study, it is one that is also

rich in political and military mistakes. Train, 33.

37. Air Marshal R. G. Funnell, “The Essential Place of Conventional Air

Power in an Uncertain 21st Century,” in Smaller but Larger: Conventional Air

Power into the 21st Century: The Proceedings of the Conference held by the

Royal Australian Air Force in Canberra, 25 March to 27 March 1991, ed. Alan

Stephens (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1991), 15.

38. Howard, 108.

39. A fact which is often overlooked in studies of this conflict is that,

despite the low level of effort expended by the Argentine navy, British air

attacks against Argentine shipping resulted in the destruction of two patrol

craft, two transports, a trawler, and a submarine and damage to two further

patrol craft and two transports. This was accomplished without the loss of

a single British aircraft.

40. Cordesman and Wagner, 312.

41. The information is gleaned from Burdon, 34–38.

42. Ethell and Price, 245.

43. British Ministry of Defence, The Falklands Campaign: The Lessons

(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office [HMSO], 1982), 25.

44. Cordesman and Wagner, 352. In this same period, Australia, having

vacillated over the issue for decades, decided to acquire a tanking capability.

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45. Of at least equal importance was the intelligence support provided by

the United States to the British.

46. Armitage, 237.

47. A total of 35 such missions were flown. Cordesman and Wagner, 303.

48. Armitage, 237.

49. Two missions were flown to and from Stanley on that night, the last

departing at 2335Z (2035 local time) carrying 72 sick and wounded. Burdon,

81–82.

50. Ethell and Price, 175.

51. For this exercise, we assume that the Argentine national aim is to

force the British to negotiate seriously on the issue of sovereignty with the

end in mind of transferring it to the Argentine.

52. The numbers are approximate rather than precise. Exactly how

many aircraft of these types were available to the Argentines in the war is

the subject of much speculation. However, for this exercise, the important

factor is conceptual not numerical.

53. Alan Stephens and Gary Waters, Operational Level Doctrine: Planning

an Air Campaign, Air Power Studies Centre, Paper no. 18 (Fairbairn Base,

Australia: Royal Australian Air Force Air Power Studies Centre, October

1993).

54. Train, 39.

55. Burdon, 418.

56. Train, 39.

57. Cordesman and Wagner, 313.

58. Dillon, 230–31.

59. Baron Oliver Franks, Falklands Islands Review: Report of a

Committee of Privy Counsellors (London: HMSO, 1983). The committee,

under the chairmanship of Lord Franks, was appointed by Prime Minister

Thatcher to review the way in which the government discharged its responsibilities in the period leading up to the Argentine invasion.

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Airpower in Peripheral Conflict:

From the Past, the Future?

Dennis M. Drew

The stellar lineup of papers for this symposium would seem

to leave little to discuss, even under the nebulous heading,

“Airpower in Peripheral Conflict,” provided by the conference

organizers. Nearly every conflict of note during the airpower

age has received special treatment, and the organizers of the

symposium have even commissioned a look at the future of

airpower. But as interesting and enlightening as these major

conflicts of the airpower age may be, they may provide few

insights to the future employment of airpower. The era of

thousand-bomber raids is long past, doomed by the economics of modern airpower and the destructive efficiency of modern weapons. Further, some noted analysts, such as Richard

Simpkin1 and Martin van Creveld,2 argue with fervor and considerable logical justification that the entire concept of major

military contingencies involving large, sophisticated military

forces may be a thing of the past, or at least an aberration.

Although this observer does not entirely agree with Messrs.

Simpkin and van Creveld, their observations about the possible future of armed conflict cast some degree of doubt upon

the relevance of the most commonly studied past conflicts.

The purpose of this paper is to briefly examine the role of airpower in recent but often overlooked conflicts which may have

more relevance to the future if the theses of Simpkin and van

Creveld prove accurate.

To accomplish this purpose I have chosen three conflicts in

which airpower played an important, sometimes dominant

role. One stands alone in terms of its future relevance. The

Malayan Emergency, and how the British quelled that postWorld War II uprising, provides a classic example of successful counterinsurgency and the defeat of an enemy using

strategies based on Maoist principles. Although the Malayan

Emergency was unique in many ways and thus not easily

compared to Vietnam, Algeria, El Salvador, Nicaragua, or many

257
Libya remains classified. The same holds true for much of the

source material concerning the Israeli raid on Osirak. The

author has been forced, in those cases, to rely heavily upon

published reports from reputable news organizations.

The Malayan Emergency

Background

The surprisingly rapid defeat of British forces in Malaya by

the Japanese created the opportunity for the Malayan

Communist Party (MCP) to assert itself as the principal opponent of the Japanese occupation. The MCP took to the junglecovered backcountry and formed the Malayan People’s AntiJapanese Army (MPAJA). Eventually trained and armed by the

British, it was never a serious threat to Japanese control

although it harassed the invaders and provided a rallying

point for the people.

The equally sudden collapse of the Japanese in 1945 created another opportunity for the MCP. After the Japanese surrender, MPAJA units quickly took control of much of the interior country. Seizing the moment, they took full credit for the

collapse of the Japanese. As Edgar O’Ballance put it, “The

Japanese were beaten and bewildered, and the Europeans discredited and humiliated.”3

The British were slow to react. The first elements of the

British military administration did not return to Kuala

Lumpur until nearly mid-September. Once established, however, the British methodically spread their control to the interior areas.4 The British were aided in reestablishing control by

the composition of the MCP and its military arm, both of which

were almost totally Chinese. Chinese had immigrated into

Malaya since the 1850s to work the tin mines and later to

work the rubber plantations. Because they were never

accepted by the Malays as first-class citizens, they were susceptible to the blandishments of Marxism and the MCP. But

the racial divisions and tensions between the Chinese immigrants and the native Malays which gave rise to the MCP also

meant that the MCP would have little appeal for the majority

of Malays.5

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Facing potential problems of this magnitude, British counterinsurgent strategy was of critical importance, providing the

coup de grâce for the MCP insurgency.

Key to the British victory was their clear and accurate

understanding of the nature of the war. Almost from the beginning, the British authorities realized that the key to their counterinsurgent effort was to separate the rebels from the population that might support them, control that population and

provide appropriate security (thus cutting off any support), and

combine these efforts with military operations designed to find,

harass, demoralize, and kill the insurgent fighters.11

Although some early progress was made during the tenure

of High Commissioner Sir Henry Gurney, the British counterinsurgency program began to take definitive shape when Lt

Gen Sir Harold Briggs arrived in Malaya as the first director of

operations in April of 1950. The so-called Briggs Plan combined civil and military action. It exploited the dependence of

the rebel forces on money, supplies, intelligence, and recruits

from the local population, particularly from the clandestine

civil arm of the insurgents, the Min Yuen, which operated

among the landless Chinese squatters to whom the objectives

of the insurgency had some appeal.

The Briggs Plan sought to control the vulnerable portions of

the population, destroy the Min Yuen elements within that

population, prevent the flow of important supplies from the

Min Yuen into the hands of the insurgent fighters, raise the

confidence of the population that the government had the situation under control—and then concentrate on military action

to destroy the guerrilla forces.12

By mid-1951 the government had resettled about 80 percent

of the Chinese squatters, provided them with security, schools,

land, and self-determination which effectively isolated the insurgent movement from its potential base of popular support.13 On

the military side, intelligence activities were increased, and coordination with local police improved. However, large-scale military

sweeps in search of insurgents proved a disappointment, and

terrorist activities continued to increase, including one ambush

which killed the high commissioner.

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area about the size of England and Wales combined. The second problem was lack of experience. Far different from most of

the aerial campaigns in World War II—even those conducted

against the Japanese in other parts of Southeast Asia—and far

different from the air control and policing campaigns pioneered by the RAF between the two world wars, the RAF would

have to learn on the job how to effectively conduct operations

in a counterinsurgency campaign. The third problem, intertwined with the first two, was simply the task of finding the

insurgents. Less than 10,000 (normally considerably less)

insurgents, operating in groups of less than 100, were spread

over a large area of which 80 percent was covered by dense

jungle. These problems, and a steep learning curve, would

shape the air campaign.16

To understand the air campaign over the entire length of the

emergency, the most logical organizational scheme is to sequentially discuss four of the major roles played by airpower—air

attack, air transport, psychological warfare operations, and aerial spraying. In each role airpower had differing degrees of success and impact on the overall counterinsurgent effort.

Aerial Attack. It was in this role, direct attack on insurgents,

that the airmen faced their biggest challenges, received their

greatest criticism, and in the aftermath generated the greatest

debate. The challenges have already been alluded to in terms of

resources, area, jungle growth, and dispersed enemy formations.

As the official RAF history of the campaign noted: “Successful air

strikes normally depend on a number of factors, including high

grade intelligence information giving the exact location of an

identifiable target, an accurate method of pinpointing this target

and an attacking force capable of accurate navigation to the target and carrying a weapon suitable for its destruction. In Malaya

all these conditions were problematical.”17

Two main types of offensive air attack were used—both with

the basic intention of killing as many rebels as possible. The

first type was against pinpoint targets, particularly insurgent

campsites in the jungle. The second type was against area targets in which intelligence had reported concentrations of guerrilla forces. In the early days of the emergency, the former were

lucrative targets, but as the insurgent forces realized the danger

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the air had a fearfully demoralising effect on terrorists who

were already suffering from the rigours of life in the jungle,

and was the agent that persuaded many to surrender.”22 The

RAF official history supports Jackson’s contention by noting

that “testimonies of captured or surrendered terrorists bore

witness to the effect it had and the fall in surrender rate after

the cessation of area bombardments in 1953 substantiated

their claims.”23

Jackson goes on to claim that offensive air strikes also had

a salutary impact on civilian morale in that they provided “a

demonstration of power that persuaded many civilians to resist

the terrorists and cooperate with the security forces.”24 Philip

Towle agrees citing an after action report on a bombing raid

which stated, “It was most stimulating for the local population

and has raised their morale considerably. The air strike is still

one of the main topics of conversation in the coffee shops and

everyone is convinced that if the strike is repeated . . . the bandits will soon lose heart.”25

However, that sanguine appraisal is not held universally.

Gen Richard Clutterbuck, for example, noted: “Hundreds of

tons of bombs were dropped on the jungle every month, particularly in 1951–52; they probably killed fewer than half a

dozen guerrillas a year—more by accident than design. Such

senseless swiping induced a feeling of contempt for the power

of modern weapons, and the enemy made full use of this contempt in their propaganda among the villagers and aborigines

who had heard all the noise.”26

Clutterbuck was a veteran of the emergency and spoke from

at least some firsthand knowledge of the controversy. His

opinion is seconded by Air Marshal Michael Armitage and Air

Commodore R. A. Mason when, after noting that 35,000 tons

of bombs and nearly 10 million rounds of cannon and

machine-gun ammunition were expended in over 4,000 sorties, they judge that “in terms of firepower delivered by air on

to terrorist targets . . . the meagre results were out of all proportion to the extensive effort engaged.”27

A final point in this controversy is left for the reader to

interpret, because the meaning of the data is anything but

clear. During 1952 air operations in Malaya were subjected to

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and their preparation often meant that the element of surprise was lost. The British Special Air Service (SAS) regiment

maintained the element of surprise by developing a method of

parachuting into the jungle treetops, which did away with the

need for a prepared landing zone. Originally developed by forest fire fighters in North America, the technique called for

each man to steer himself into the densest foliage and then

lower himself to the ground with a length of strap made of

canvas webbing.32

The crushing operating tempo of the RAF transport

squadrons indicated the importance of the aerial transport

mission—a crushing tempo even though the RAF squadrons

were assisted at intervals by RAAF and RNZAF squadrons stationed near Penang at Butterworth. So intense was the pressure that RAF crews spent a maximum of six months on flying duty before rotation. Three RAF squadrons took turns

bearing the burden, and during the emergency dropped more

than 25,000 short tons of food, medicine, clothing, ammunition, and other equipment. Often they had to contend with

very small drop zones (less than 200 feet in diameter) surrounded by jungle trees of 150 or more feet in height.33

The net result of these aerial transport efforts was the

continual harassment of insurgent forces, the infliction of

casualties which the guerrillas could not replace because of

the success of the nonmilitary portions of the Briggs Plan,

and the destruction of insurgent morale as they realized

there were no sanctuaries. Towle, with the advantage of 30

years of hindsight, goes so far as to declare that air transport was the RAF’s key role in the Malayan Emergency.34 The

evidence indicates that Towle has not reached an unwarranted conclusion.

Psychological Warfare Operations. The government,

understanding the nature of the enemy it faced, waged a massive psychological warfare campaign as part of the Briggs

Plan. Briggs and his successors understood that both insurgency and counterinsurgency are essentially struggles for the

hearts and minds of the population.35 Airpower played a significant role in that struggle in many ways, but most directly

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action and were capable of doing so. The messages had to be

brief and clear, with words and phrases carefully chosen.”39

As to overall success, it appears that a significant percentage

of insurgents who surrendered to the government authorities

were influenced by the sky shouters. There is some disagreement as to the exact impact,40 but it is clear that voice aircraft—

along with leaflet distribution—contributed significantly to the

overall counterinsurgent effort.

Crop Spraying. A key element in the Briggs Plan was to

separate the insurgents from their base of support within the

population and, thereby, cut their flow of food, money, intelligence, and recruits. Resettlement of the Chinese squatters

accomplished this purpose. The insurgents, cut off from their

supply source and forced ever deeper into the jungle-covered

backcountry, attempted to grow their own food. To counter

this adaptation by the insurgents, the RAF began spraying

insurgent crops with toxic chemicals.

At first, the insurgents brought trouble on themselves by

planting their crops in tidy rows, a pattern easily spotted by

RAF reconnaissance aircraft. Eventually realizing their mistake, the insurgents began planting in random “non-arrangements.” However, in the long run RAF reconnaissance aircraft

would usually spot many, if not most of the plantings.41

Sodium arsenite was the first toxic potion used to kill the

insurgent crops. Although effective, it was also poisonous to

humans, which posed a considerable risk to the native population among whom the insurgents often lived. The risk to the

native population was politically unacceptable in a battle for

“hearts and minds.” As a result, sodium arsenite was replaced

by a mixture of trioxene and diesoline, which was not only an

effective herbicide but also made the ground temporarily

unusable for cultivation.42

There is some controversy about the contribution of crop

spraying to the counterinsurgent effort. To the extent that

crop spraying denied the insurgents their food and kept them

on the run, the spraying program was a boon to the overall

Briggs Plan. Jackson, for example, contends that crop spraying was a “significant” factor in the overall counterinsurgent

campaign.43 Towle, on the other hand, notes that because the

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exposed to the herbicide may be the most important legacy of the

defoliation effort. The final judgment has not yet been rendered.

The Israeli Raid on Osirak

Background

Israel has been in a precarious strategic situation since it

became an independent state. For much of its short history,

Israel has been surrounded on three sides by sworn enemies

who have often combined themselves in various shifting

alliances. This strategic problem is compounded by the fact

that in facing such coalitions, Israel is outmanned and outgunned (quantitatively if not qualitatively) and lacks any kind

of strategic depth.

Faced with such perilous circumstances, the Israeli government has not been loath to take aggressive military action to

forestall what it perceived to be particularly threatening situations. This “offensive defensiveness” was demonstrated both

in the 1956 Sinai campaign and again (and more famously) in

the 1967 Six Day War. Such was also the case in the air raid

on the Osirak nuclear reactor.

The danger the Israelis attempted to avert was the acquisition of nuclear arms by the hostile Iraqi government. With

nuclear arms mounted on readily available theater ballistic

missiles (most notably the Scud missile originally developed by

the Soviet Union), all of Israel would be hostage to the Iraqis.

And there was considerable evidence, gathered by the Israeli

intelligence organization, Mossad, that Iraq was attempting to

develop its own nuclear capability.

Alarm bells sounded in 1976 when Iraq’s Atomic Energy

Commission budget increased to $70 million per year from $5

million. Saddam Hussein turned to two of the biggest customers for Iraqi oil, France and Italy, for sophisticated nuclear

technology, including a powerful research reactor and a plutonium-separation plant that would enable Iraq to develop

weapons-grade plutonium. France signed a contract with the

Iraqis for $275 million to build the Osirak reactor and bring it

on-line by 1981.45

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can be attributed to Israeli intelligence may never be known.

However, the Mossad was suspect in each case.48

The stories of Israeli intelligence prowess and involvement

have grown to almost legendary proportions. It is widely held

that on 30 September 1980, Israeli Air Force F-4 Phantom jet

fighter-bombers were over the Osirak site during the confusing early days of the Iran-Iraq War. One account indicates that

the aircraft bore Iranian markings and launched an ineffective

attack on the reactor, and although ineffective, the aircraft

gathered important intelligence about the site. Another

account claims that unmarked Israeli aircraft flew over the

site on an intelligence-gathering mission and that the attack

on the reactor was launched by Iranian aircraft. Whatever the

truth may be, any and all of these incidents added greatly to

the mystique of the Mossad and the Israeli Air Force.49

Preparations50

An air raid deep into Iraq to destroy the Osirak reactor

would require superior intelligence, detailed planning, and

flawless execution—not to mention considerable chutzpah

(the Yiddish term seems particularly appropriate in this

instance). Planning for Operation Babylon began in earnest

as early as 1979.51

If indeed the Israelis were in possession of Osirak’s engineering blueprints, they would have been able to locate the

precise position of the reactor’s core, the computer control

facilities, and the appropriate stress points that would be most

vulnerable in the concrete cupola which protected the core.

From those plans and aerial reconnaissance photos, the

Israelis built a full-scale concrete model of the facility in the

Negev desert against which hand-picked aircrews flew practice

bombing runs from the nearby Etzion air base. According to

one senior officer, before the raid the Israeli pilots knew “every

tree and house” on the route of attack.52

Getting to the attack site posed the most vexing problems.

Any realistic route to Baghdad from Israel required overflight

not only of Iraq but also of either Saudi Arabia, Jordan, or

Syria. Further, American airborne warning and control system

(AWACS) aircraft were orbiting over Saudi Arabia as part of the

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bombs detonated within the interior. The roof collapsed and

buried the reactor core under hundreds of tons of concrete

and other debris from the explosions. The damage was such

that US experts estimated that at a minimum, the Iraqis would

require 18 months to recover. In reality, the reactor had been

destroyed.57 The bombing was so precise that many believe

some version of “smart” weapons was used. However, the

Israelis have denied that they used anything other than iron

“dumb” bombs.58

After one pass by each F-16, the entire strike force headed

back to Israel. Apparently a much more direct route was taken

on the return flight, but sources disagree on whether or not

aerial refueling was required. No Iraqi fighters gave chase, no

surface-to-air missiles (SAM) were fired, and only light antiaircraft fire was encountered at the target—all of it off the

mark. Nor did any Jordanian or Saudi (depending on the

egress route) fighters try to intercept on the outward leg of the

mission, even though one would think that by this time both

would have been fully alert and realized that their airspace

had been violated.

Aftermath and Results

There is no question that the Israeli raid on Osirak was a

serious setback for Iraq’s plans to build a nuclear weapon.

However, rather than discourage Saddam Hussein, he seems

to have redoubled his efforts to reach the nuclear goal.59 It is

also likely that if the Israelis had not struck, the Iraqis would

have possessed nuclear weapons when they invaded Kuwait

and faced the US-led Coalition a decade later.60 If true, the

implications are very significant.

The raid had almost predictable diplomatic results. It was

roundly condemned by nearly everyone, including the United

States.61 However, given the stakes involved and the distrust of

Saddam among many Arab states, some of the condemnations

would appear to be pro forma. On the other hand, at least one

analyst claims that the raid heightened Arab apprehensions

and distrust since “the Arabs are convinced that Israel is a

nuclear power, the raid . . . also signified that Israel was asserting an exclusive right to nuclear weapons in the Middle East.”62

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Three particularly despicable events seemed to have been

the factors which convinced the Reagan administration that

the United States must take action against Libya. The first was

the suspected Libyan involvement in the terrorist seizure of

the cruise ship Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean on 7

October 1985. Next, on 27 December, came nearly simultaneous attacks on the Leonardo da Vinci airport in Rome and the

Schwechat airport in Vienna which left a total of 20 dead and

over 100 wounded, including several Americans.65

The immediate result was to increase US naval presence in

the area to conduct operations (Operation Prairie Fire) near

the Gulf of Sidra, which Libya had claimed as territorial waters

since 1973. Although operating under rules of engagement

(ROE) that forbade firing unless fired upon, it was clear that

the United States was baiting the Libyan strongman. On 25

January 1986, Qaddafi responded theatrically from the deck

of a Libyan patrol boat where he declared the parallel 32o 30’

north latitude (the approximate northern boundary of the Gulf

of Sidra) to be a “line of death where we shall stand and fight

with our backs to the wall.”66

Beyond nonviolent aerial intercepts, the situation remained

reasonably calm until 24 March when a US surface action

group steamed across the “line of death.” The Libyans ineffectually fired SAMs at long range against the group’s supporting

combat air patrol, an action that satisfied the ROEs and provided clearance to fire. Within about a 12-hour period beginning on the night of 24–25 March, US carrier aircraft sank two

Libyan missile patrol boats and attacked shore-based surfaceto-air missile sites with high-speed antiradiation missiles. No

further contact with the Libyans resulted, and the surface

action group retired north of the line of death on 29 March.67

The longer term Libyan reaction was to foment further terrorist violence which culminated with the bombing of the La

Belle Discotheque in Berlin, a favorite gathering place for US

troops. The bomb exploded at 1:49 A.M. on 5 April when about

500 people were crowded into the nightspot. Amazingly, only

three died (two American servicemen) while over 200 were

wounded, including 79 Americans. The United States believed

it had solid evidence that Libya was behind the attack.

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area—the Jumahiriya army barracks (an alternate command

center) and the Benina military airfield (which housed MiG23 interceptors).70

There is some controversy over the selection of these targets

and the results the United States hoped to obtain. There is no

quarrel with the concept of inflicting “high-visibility” damage

at Benghazi, Benina, Tripoli International Airport, and Sidi

Balal. However, the amount of attention lavished on the Bab

al Azizia barracks has drawn attention because it was a principal residence of Qaddafi. Originally nine F-111s, each dropping four 2,000-pound laser-guided bombs, were targeted on

the complex. However, for a variety of reasons ranging from

mechanical failures to navigational errors, only two F-111s

found the target. The United States flatly denied the target

selection and original weight of effort were made in an attempt

to kill Qaddafi, noting that Bab al Azizia was the headquarters

of Qaddafi’s loyalist guard and a nerve center for his entire

command and control structure. However, unofficially, administration officials admitted the target was selected with a reasonable expectation that Qaddafi might have been there. One

official reportedly said that if Qaddafi had died in the raid, “I

don’t think it would have been considered collateral damage.”71

Beyond the high-visibility damage, Secretary of State George

Shultz noted that the president hoped the air raid would

“encourage Libyan officers to overthrow their leader.”72

Although this latter result might seem somewhat far-fetched,

there had been as many as 10 internal efforts to remove

Qaddafi from office in the years leading up to the air raid.

Further, the economic situation in Libya was rapidly deteriorating. Libya’s oil production was at half the levels it had been

at six years previously, its exports had been reduced by 50

percent, and the country was deeply in debt thanks to

Qaddafi’s profligate spending on foreign military hardware.73

What should have been a rather straightforward operation

was severely complicated by a diplomatic failure. Only Great

Britain of the US’s major European allies backed the use of

force against Libya. France went so far as to deny overflight

rights for the F-111s and tanker aircraft stationed in Great

Britain. Spain followed suit. The result was a roundabout

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America) cruising in waters off Sicily began a high-speed passage

through the Strait of Messina south toward Libya and their

launch positions. Five hours later, at 00:20 A.M. Libyan time,

the carriers began launching 70 Navy and Marine Corps aircraft. Included in the naval air armada were A-6 strike aircraft, EA-6B electronic warfare aircraft, and A-7E and F/A-18

defense suppression aircraft, as well as other support and

fighter cover forces.

The melding of the Air Force armada and Navy airpower

worked exceedingly well, even with tightly controlled radio

communications and other electronic emissions. About 10

minutes prior to the scheduled bombing attack (H hour), the

radio waves were filled with Libyan chatter about confusing

radar returns as heavy electronic countermeasures began to

take effect. Defense suppression (suppression of enemy air

defenses––SEAD) aircraft launched devastating attacks with

antiradiation missiles on Libyan SAM sites. The result of all of

this preattack preparation was that

• the Libyans were taken almost completely by surprise,

even though they had received warnings from Malta,

• there were no passive defensive measures taken by the

Libyans—in the cities, street lights continued to glow and

even at the military airports, the runways were fully illuminated,

• SAMs were launched but in unguided modes and to no

effect, and

• the Libyans did not launch a single aircraft in defense of

the two target areas.

In the Tripoli target area, the attacking F-111s split into

three groups as they crossed the Libyan coast at 200 feet and

540 miles per hour. Two groups turned quickly to the east to

attack Sidi Balal and Bab al Azizia. The third group continued

inland and then circled around to approach the military side

of the Tripoli airport from the south. The F-111s made their

bombing runs after climbing quickly above 500 feet to acquire

their targets. Damage at all three targets was extensive, in

spite of the fact that several of the aircraft did not deliver their

ordnance because of very restrictive rules of engagement

designed to limit collateral damage.

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There was, however, unfortunate collateral damage near

both target sites. The most highly publicized damage was in

the middle-class Bin Ashur district which included the French

Embassy. The Libyan government claimed 17 died in that

area. Nearly a month after the raid, the Defense Department

admitted that bombs intended for Bab al-Azizia had caused

the damage in the Bin Ashur district, apparently because the

aircrew had picked up the wrong offset point on its radar. The

Libyans also claimed much more widespread damage to civilian areas, but much of this was probably due to Libyan antiaircraft ordnance. Indeed, one Libyan “showpiece” of collateral

damage included what the Libyans claimed was wreckage of a

downed US aircraft. It was later identified as a booster stage of

a Libyan SA-3 surface-to-air missile.78

The world reaction, both officially and unofficially in newspapers, et cetera, was extremely negative. Only a handful of

governments supported the US operation including Great

Britain, Israel, Singapore, Australia, and Canada. However, a

significant number of governments refused to take a position

publicly, the most notable being Japan.

The more important question in the aftermath has to do

with reaction in Libya, particularly in relation to the sponsorship of terrorist activities. Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to correlate terrorist activities (or the lack thereof) to the

Libyan air raid. In the first two weeks following the raid, there

was a small flurry of terrorist attacks, but there is some evidence that many of these had been in work well before the

raid. After that two-week period, things seem to have quietened considerably on the terrorist front. It is also true that

Libyan-sponsored terrorist activity, particularly against US

targets, declined significantly during the remainder of 1986

and all of 1987. It is also evident that the boldness of the US

attack encouraged European security officials to take stricter

measures in opposition to terrorism—particularly the expulsion of many Libyans from various “People’s Bureaus”

throughout western Europe. But again, a direct cause and

effect relationship is impossible to prove and can only be suggested by juxtaposition of events. However, Brian Jenkins,

renowned expert on international terrorism, stated, “Clearly

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an enemy’s center of gravity by putting fire and steel on target.

Finally, insurgents use time as a weapon to sap the strength of

governments which must have quick victory to preserve their

popular support.

Protracted revolutionary warfare is a fundamentally different kind of warfare that has been exceedingly difficult to

defeat. In its various forms it succeeded in China, in Vietnam

twice, and in Cuba. The issue remains somewhat in doubt in

Nicaragua, El Salvador, Peru, Cambodia, and Angola among

other places. And yet, despite its widespread use and despite

its widespread success, for the United States and many others

in the West, it remains lost among the debris we have cast into

the stewpot of low-intensity conflict. Thus we should look on

the British experience in Malaya with admiration and renewed

interest.

Unlike the French and Americans in Vietnam, the British

understood the nature of the conflict they faced from the

very beginning. Their strategy suited the situation and provided an apt counter to the unique “duality” of Maoist-based

insurgencies—isolate the guerrilla fighters from their base

of popular support (e.g., resettle the Chinese squatters), coopt the populist goals of the revolution to defeat the nonmilitary portion of the insurgency (e.g., provide the squatters with security and the title to land), and then relentlessly

pursue the guerrilla fighters with shot, shell, and propaganda. Eventually, those guerrilla fighters who survived just

gave up and went home. The emergency ended with a whimper, not a bang.

The British use of airpower during the Malayan Emergency

sat well with the overall strategy. British and Commonwealth

airmen did not try to refight World War II European air campaigns in the jungles of Malaya. Rather, they tailored the use

of airpower to fit the situation, the strategy, and the enemy.

The military side of the British strategy did not overwhelm the

nonmilitary side, and the application of airborne firepower,

although important, was not the central thrust of the military

side of the strategy.

There is little doubt that airlift was of prime importance to

the successful application of force against the insurgents.

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Area bombing, too, became more directly effective in Vietnam

if we put any credence in the reports coming from captured

enemy soldiers. The technological improvements cited above

helped in this effort. However, the major improvement may well

have been in the load-carrying capacity of the B-52 bomber,

particularly the Big Belly modification of the B-52D, which

allowed the aircraft to carry as many as 105 500-lb bombs.

Often flying in cells of three at altitudes too high for the enemy

to see or hear their approach, their attacks could have a shocking and deadly impact on insurgent forces in the area.

Although technological advances may make the role of aerial firepower much more effective in future insurgencies than

it was in the Malayan Emergency, the reader must remember

that it will never be the dominant factor. The unique duality of

Maoist-based insurgencies requires a dual military/nonmilitary counterinsurgency strategy in which both halves of the

strategy have equal importance. Airpower can only play a significant role in half of the overall strategy, no matter how effective a weapon it becomes. The British understood this fundamental tenet and wove the use of their airpower into a much

broader tapestry of counterinsurgency strategy.

The raids on Osirak and Libya illustrate what might become

the most common use of airpower in the new world disorder.

The proliferation of nuclear weapons, particularly to so-called

rogue states, may be the plague of the twenty-first century.

The Cold War—with both sides armed to the teeth with

nuclear weapons—was a dangerous game for all to play. It was

made safer by the fact that those who possessed nuclear

weapons understood the dangers, understood the unwritten

rules of international power politics, and played by those

rules. This was particularly true after the Cuban missile crisis

in 1962. After both sides approached the edge and peered into

the nuclear abyss, neither side seriously tested the other. The

Cuban experience chastened everyone. After 1962 the “delicate balance of terror” was much less delicate.

In the political chaos of the new world disorder, nuclear

capabilities threaten to spread to those who may not understand the rules of international behavior or, worse yet, may not

care about the accepted norms. Driven by unbridled ambition,

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maneuvering, the state in question actually produces a

nuclear weapon or brings a reactor on line, it may be too late

for military reaction. Weapons in hand mean that nuclear

retaliation is possible if military action fails to destroy all of the

weapons available. Attacks on an operating nuclear reactor

may result in a catastrophic nuclear incident affecting not

only those in the target area but also those who undertook the

attack. In either case, waiting to use military force as a last

resort after the weapons are produced or until fragile reactors

are on-line could result in exactly what the use of military

force was trying to prevent. In short, the use of military force

may not be the last resort in counterproliferation situations.

Further, once the decision to use force is made, time may be

critically important. Airpower, of all the military forces, is the

most time sensitive in terms of both force preparation and

mission execution.

The Libyan case illustrates that even when other forces

could perform the required function, airpower often remains

the means of choice. Significant “high-visibility” damage could

have been brought to Qaddafi by having surface ships bombard Libyan coastal targets. The naval battle groups stationed

in the Mediterranean had already demonstrated they could

enter the Gulf of Sidra at will, and important Libyan targets

would have been in range of naval gunfire.

But why put ships of the line in needless jeopardy? Why risk

attacks by Libyan torpedo boats, submarines, and aircraft?

Why put all of those sailors at risk (no matter how small the

risk) when airpower—land and sea based—could deliver the

blow with minimum risk to US blood and treasure? The

answers to these questions were obvious, and airpower

became the weapon of choice.

The Libyan raid also demonstrated the inherent limitations

of both sea- and land-based airpower. Sea-based airpower is

limited by the capacity of the ships upon which it is based (i.e.,

numbers of aircraft that are available), design limitations of

aircraft which must take off from and land on carrier decks

(i.e., generally shorter range and smaller payloads), and priority missions that limit the type of aircraft available (i.e., the

priority given to fleet defense which limits the attack aircraft

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cooperation. However, it was costly in terms of lives (two F-111

crew members) and treasure (one aircraft lost). Further,

although the raid did result in the desired high-visibility damage, it resulted in less damage than desired on some targets

and more collateral damage than desired. The luxury of more

planning time might have been put to use profitably.

The second point is the importance of intelligence. Neither of

these raids would have been possible without timely, accurate

intelligence. It is almost a truism that airpower is targeting, and

targeting is intelligence. But the intelligence required goes far

beyond accurately identifying targets. Detailed knowledge of

hostile defense systems is an absolute requirement if costs in

blood and treasure are to be kept at acceptable levels.

Intelligence becomes of paramount importance in a raid such as

that on Osirak, where the Israelis planned to penetrate to the

target with a very small force that depended on daring, stealth,

and a detailed understanding of the air defenses of Saudi

Arabia, Jordan, and Iraq. The raid on Libya also depended on

daring and stealth, but the force was large enough and powerful enough to fight its way to its targets and, in fact, did so with

its defense suppression efforts. But, effective defense suppression also relies on superior intelligence.

Although the military future of the new world order may continue to contain the possibility of large-scale conventional conflict, it is conceivable that the more probable use of military

forces will be in very different circumstances. So long as those

out of power seek power, so long as there are haves and have

nots, so long as there are the weak who oppose the strong,

there is the strong possibility that protracted revolutionary

warfare will flourish. As demonstrated by the British in Malaya,

there are effective counterinsurgent strategies, and airpower

can play a significant role. The importance of airpower may go

far beyond that achieved by the British because so many of the

problems they faced have been overcome by technology.

However, even the most powerful and sophisticated airpower

employment will come to naught if it is not applied as part of a

comprehensive military/nonmilitary strategy designed to combat the peculiarities of Maoist-based insurgencies.

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run-in point, and the bombs straddled that target perfectly.

Sixteen people were killed, including Goh Peng Tuan who was

the head of the Malayan communist organization in southern

Johore. It’s significant that two days previously, Chin Peng,

who was the head of the whole Malayan communist organization, had made his first appearance in public in the north

ready to parley. I think it was in a matter of five or six weeks

thereafter that the final talks leading to the cessation of what

had been called the emergency were held.

Air Commodore Garry Garrisson: First of all may I congratulate

Colonel Drew on a wonderful presentation of the situation in

Malaya and the use of airpower during the emergency. I take

issue with Air Commodore Spurgeon and would like to make

a few comments. First of all, the plan was to protect the villages so that the insurgents were not able to get any help from

the people. The other thing was that airpower—the air bombing—kept the CTs off balance all the time. If a campsite was

discovered, we’d go and bomb it, and after the bombing raid,

we’d go down and strafe it. The idea was to keep the CTs on

the move all the time. Also, as Colonel Drew mentioned, we

could drive the terrorists into the hands of our army forces.

Finally, I would say that a key to success in Malaya was the

establishment of areas which were deemed “black” or “white,”

depending on whether or not they had been cleared of CTs,

and which were in fact methodically cleared and made safe

through joint air/land operations.

Colonel Drew: That’s interesting, particularly when you look at

the Vietnam experience. In Vietnam we never had a secure

operating base anywhere. They were always insecure. Areas

were cleared and then immediately infiltrated again once our

troops left. We did not fight that war very smartly, and we

didn’t learn a lot from what went on in Malaya. I appreciate

that the two situations were very different, but I don’t think we

did a very good job in trying to translate the lessons from one

war to the other.

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Notes

1. Richard E. Simpkin, Race to the Swift: Thoughts on Twenty-First

Century Warfare (London: Brassey’s Defence Publishers, 1985). See in particular chap. 18, “The Relevance of Organised Forces,” 283–96.

2. Martin L. van Creveld, The Transformation of War (New York: Free

Press, 1991). Although this notion lies at the heart of van Creveld’s thesis,

it is perhaps best summed up in a short chapter entitled “Postscript: The

Shape of Things to Come.” In that postscript van Creveld cleverly states, “If

no nuclear holocaust takes place, then conventional war appears to be in

the final stages of abolishing itself; if one does take place, then it will already

have abolished itself.”

3. Edgar O’Ballance, Malaya: The Communist Insurgent War, 1948–1960

(Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1966), 64. For other sources of background

information, see Daniel S. Challis, “Counterinsurgency Success in Malaya,”

Military Review, February 1987, 56–58.

4. O’Ballance, 63.

5. Challis, 57.

6. O’Ballance, 66; and Challis, 57.

7. Challis, 58–59.

8. O’Ballance, 78–79.

9. Challis, 60; and O’Ballance, 129. In Vietnam, both the Vietminh and

later the Vietcong used terror tactics with considerable success. The difference in success had to do with the careful planning and targeting of terror.

Rather than random violence, in Vietnam the terror was targeted to punish

those who cooperated with the government. The result was that it became

very unhealthy to be a village chief or other local official loyal to the government, or an agent of the government stationed in the countryside. To widen

the terror, common villagers were also killed or kidnapped in those villages

that resisted Vietcong infiltration and control. See George McTurnan Kahin

and John Wilson Lewis, The United States in Vietnam, rev. ed. (New York:

Dell Publishing Co., 1969), 137–39; Bernard B. Fall, Viet-Nam Witness,

1953–66 (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1966), 279–83; and Guenter Lewy,

America in Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 88.

10. Philip Towle, “The RAF and the Malayan Insurgency,” Air Clues,

August 1989, 290.

11. The British level of understanding about the nature of Maoist-based

insurgency is in sharp contrast, according to many analysts, to the US failure to understand the nature of their struggle during the Vietnam War, particularly during the period from 1965–1968. See Mark Clodfelter, The Limits

of Airpower: The American Bombing of North Vietnam (New York: Free Press,

1989); Lewy; Earl H. Tilford Jr., Setup: What the Air Force Did in Vietnam and

Why (Maxwell Air Force Base [AFB], Ala.: Air University Press, 1991); and

the author’s Rolling Thunder 1965: Anatomy of a Failure, CADRE Paper

(Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, 1986).

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34. Towle, 288.

35. O’Ballance notes, “Templer’s policy was to gain the hearts and minds

of the people. . . . This was indeed taking a leaf from the communist insurgent handbook. Mao Tse-tung had always insisted that the most important

aim in the struggle was to win a person’s mind, which was far more important than military victories.” O’Ballance, 129.

36. Towle, 287.

37. Jackson, 110–11.

38. Towle, 288; Jackson, 112–13.

39. Jackson, 112–13.

40. Towle (page 288) states, “Some 70 percent of the guerrillas who surrendered said that their decision to do so had been influenced by the

skyshouters.” Jackson (page 114) says, “70 percent of all surrendered terrorists who had heard an aerial broadcast stated that it had influenced their

decision to give themselves up, and in many cases it had been the major factor involved.” [Emphasis added.] These are two very different statements

about the overall effectiveness of the loudhailing program.

41. O’Ballance, 136; and Towle, 287.

42. Jackson, 102–3.

43. Jackson.

44. Towle, 287.

45. “What Israel Knew,” Newsweek, 22 June 1981, 25.

46. Lucien S. Vandenbroucke, “The Israeli Strike against Osiraq: The

Dynamics of Fear and Proliferation in the Middle East,” Air University

Review, September–October 1984, 36–37.

47. George Russell, “Attack—and Fallout,” Time, 22 June 1981, 26.

48. Russell, 26; “What Israel Knew,” 25. Russell maintains that the damage done to the nuclear reactor core was so extensive that the reactor’s delivery was delayed for two years. The editors of Newsweek maintain that the

bomb only caused “minor damage.”

49. Russell, 26; “What Israel Knew,” 25–26. The US Department of State

believed the actual attack on the reactor on 30 September was carried out

by the Iranian air force. House, Israeli Attack on Iraqi Nuclear Facilities:

Hearings before the Subcommittees on International Security and Scientific

Affairs, on Europe and the Middle East and on International Economic Policy

and Trade of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, 97th Cong., 1st sess., 17 and

25 June 1981, 17.

50. The reader should note that the actual preparations for the raid

remain shrouded in secrecy and disinformation. The news sources cited in

the following paragraphs are both reliable and knowledgeable and have used

extensive on-the-scene sources. Further, the author has attempted to cite

only material that seems plausible given the stunning success of the raid

and to identify those issues over which the news reports provided conflicting information.

51. One source (“What Israel Knew,” 26) indicates that serious planning

did not begin until the summer of 1980, when Israel took delivery of the first

F-16 fighter-bombers it had ordered from the United States in August of

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65. Konrad Alder, “An Eye for an Eye, A Tooth for a Tooth,” Amada

International, January 1987, 35; and Davis, 76–78.

66. Lt Comdr Robert E. Stumpf, “Air War with Libya,” US Naval

Proceedings, August 1986, 42–48; Alder, 35; and Davis, 89, 101–4.

67. Stumpf, 46–47; and Alder, 36.

68. William R. Doerner, “In the Dead of the Night,” Time, 28 April 1986,

28; and Davis, 115–19.

69. Davis, 119–20; and Doerner, 28.

70. Doerner, 29; “US Demonstrates Advanced Weapons Technology in

Libya,” Aviation Week & Space Technology, 21 April 1986, 19–20; and

“Reagan’s Raiders,” Newsweek, 28 April 1986, 26–27.

71. “Getting Rid of Kaddafi,” Newsweek, 28 April 1986, 18; Doerner, 29;

and Davis, 36.

72. “Getting Rid of Kaddafi,” 18.

73. Anthony H. Cordesman, “After the Raid: The Emerging Lessons from

the US Attack on Libya,” Armed Forces, August 1986, 36.

74. Doerner, 28–29; and “A New Kind of War,” Newsweek, 28 April 1986,

16–17.

75. The following paragraphs which outline the details of the air raid execution are compiled from the following sources: Davis, 133–34; Doerner,

28–31; “Reagan’s Raiders,” 26–28; Adler, 37–39; Stumpf, 48; “US

Demonstrates Advanced Weapons,” 19–21; and Cordesman, 360.

76. The difference in the number of refuelings required was caused by (1)

a lighter load on the return trip because of expended ordnance and (2) some

legs of the flight inbound to the targets were flown at very low level while the

return trip was flown at much more fuel-efficient altitudes.

77. Davis, 141–42.

78. Richard Stengel, “So Close, Yet So Far,” Time, 28 April 1986, 32;

Ruth Marshall, “A View From the Bull’s-eye,” Newsweek, 28 April 1986, 30;

“Reagan’s Raiders,” 26; Davis, 140–42; and Doerner, 30.

79. Brian Jenkins quoted in the Los Angeles Times, 11 October 1987,

and in Davis, 168.

80. Cordesman, 358; and Doerner, 28.

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Soviet Airpower in the

New Russian Mirror

Benjamin S. Lambeth1

In his masterful account of the Red Air Force’s epic rise from

near-disaster following the German onslaught in the summer

of 1941 to its triumphant recovery four years later as the

world’s largest tactical air arm, Von Hardesty ably described

how this trial by fire had the ironic effect of providing Soviet

combat aviation with “an accelerated passage to modernization and power.”2 In the immediate wake of the Soviet Union’s

sudden implosion in December 1991, almost exactly five

decades after the start of Operation Barbarossa, the Soviet air

force (Voenno-vozdushniye sily, or VVS) experienced an all too

similar, if less apocalyptic, trauma. Almost overnight, it plummeted from its lofty status as a giant of some 20,000 pilots

and 13,000 aircraft to become a new, and greatly impaired,

organization of 13,000 pilots and only 5,000 aircraft, mostly of

obsolescent design.3

To make matters worse, the VVS, like the other four services

of the former Soviet Union, found itself possessed of few

resources with which to catalyze and sustain a prompt recovery. To this day, more than two years later, it remains

embarked on an uncertain quest for renewed vitality and a

new operational role in the post-Soviet and post-Cold-War

world. For its current leaders, as for their predecessors in

1941, the crucial question concerns whether the blend of crisis and opportunity that circumstances forced upon them portends a fate of inexorable decline or, in Hardesty’s formulation,

offers a fortuitous springboard from which they might discover

anew “an accelerated passage to modernization and power.”

The abortive coup attempt of August 1991 that started the

clock ticking toward the collapse of communism four months

later affected the VVS much as it did the other Soviet services—and Soviet society across the board. With the old order

roundly discredited and stripped of any lingering claim to

legitimacy, the path was cleared for “new looks” at all aspects

301
of the VVS’s repertoire that had been driven by the idiosyncrasies of the Soviet state. At the same time, most remaining

strictures against freedom of expression within the military

were lifted. As the VVS’s monthly magazine later commented

in this regard, “glasnost continues to uncover an interminable

stream of problems that used to be kept silent in the life of our

armed forces.”4

The first consequence of note for the VVS was a change in

leadership at the top. From his first days as commander in

chief starting in July 1990, Col Gen Yevgeny Shaposhnikov

had shown ample signs of being a reform-minded leader with

little patience for the hidebound ways of communist bureaucracy. Even Alexander Zuyev, the former VVS captain who

defected to the United States via Turkey by flying a stolen

MiG-29 from his base at Mikha Tskhakaya in Soviet Georgia

to Trabzon on the Black Sea in May 1989, later remarked that

Shaposhnikov was well regarded among squadron pilots.

Commenting on Shaposhnikov’s role in thwarting the 1991

coup attempt, Zuyev characterized the VVS chief as “a real

reformer, a patriotic professional officer who knew where his

true loyalties lay.”5

This impression was validated when, among all the Soviet

military chiefs, Shaposhnikov drew the line most forcefully

against Defense Minister Dmitri Yazov and others on the high

command who had supported or sympathized with the plotters. For refusing to abide the coup attempt, Shaposhnikov

was selected to replace the disgraced Yazov once the back of

the putsch was broken. Shortly thereafter, he was elevated to

the rank of marshal of aviation.6 To take over his vacated post

as VVS commander in chief, he picked his first deputy, Col

Gen Petr Stepanovich Deinekin.7

Unlike many previous VVS commanders, whose background

had been in fighters, Petr Deinekin rose through the ranks of

the Soviet bomber community. The son of a fighter pilot who

died in 1943 while flying a LaGG-3 during the Great Patriotic

War, he aspired to the Balashov VVAUL (Vysheye voennoye

aviatsionnoye uchilishchye letchikov, or Higher Military

Aviation School for Pilots) and eventually earned his wings as

a bomber pilot, later serving on squadron duty and, in time,

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commanding a Tu-22M Backfire regiment. After that, he commanded an air division, an air army, and ultimately LongRange Aviation (LRA) before being tapped by Shaposhnikov to

become first deputy VVS commander in chief in 1990. During

his career progression, he attended the Gagarin Air Academy

and later graduated with honors from the Voroshilov General

Staff Academy. He has 5,000 hours of flying time, including an

initial qualification checkout in the Tu-160 Blackjack.

What kind of new Russian Air Force, under General

Deinekin’s command, is now emerging from the wreckage of

communism and the old Soviet system? A full treatment would

explore planned VVS reorganization, force development, pilot

training, unit operations, and roles and missions as Russia’s

air arm slowly rebuilds itself for the post-Cold-War world. This

chapter is mainly an initial damage assessment aimed at

addressing those preoccupations that weigh most heavily on

General Deinekin’s mind as he seeks, first and foremost, to

ensure his air force’s survival as an institution. Because of its

high-technology orientation and the special demands on

resources that this focus naturally entails, the VVS is

arguably hurting more than other services from Russia’s economic crisis. It bears noting, however, that much of what will

be etched out below regarding the VVS’s post-Soviet tribulations can be said of the Russian armed forces as a whole. In

this respect, General Deinekin is scarcely alone among his fellow service chiefs in the many difficulties he faces.

The Soviet Legacy

Military aviation has enjoyed a long and prominent tradition

in Russia, predating—and thus far surviving—the 74-year

intercession of Soviet communism. To note some of the high

points, the world’s first loop maneuver was performed by Maj

Petr Nesterov in 1913. Russia developed and successfully flew

the world’s first four-engine strategic bomber, Igor Sikorsky’s

Ilya Muromets, over the eastern front in World War I. Valery

Chkalov commanded a pioneering flight in 1937 from Moscow

to Vancouver via the North Pole.8 Soviet airmen fought

valiantly in World War II and played a key role in the defeat of

Nazi Germany.9

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The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) led the way

in jet aviation as well, with the introduction of the MiG-15

fighter in 1948. This was the world’s first high-performance

combat aircraft by modern standards, and it proved to be at

least a technical match for the American F-86 in the skies over

Korea. In 1961, a Soviet fighter pilot, Yury Gagarin, became

the first man to orbit the Earth. Throughout the Cold War, the

VVS was uniformly recognized by Western defense experts to

be a formidable fighting force. By any measure, it and the

Soviet aircraft industry, from their austere beginnings in the

early 1920s to the enthralling flight demonstrations of the

MiG-29 during its Western debut at the 1988 Farnborough Air

Show, earned the USSR—and now Russia—legitimate pride of

place as an aviation giant.

Despite this rich background, most Westerners were only able

to follow developments in Soviet military aviation from a distance until recently because of the Communist Party’s obsession with secrecy and societal closure. To all intents and purposes, the VVS was a denied area, a central component of the

Soviet threat, and thus an object, first and foremost, of Western

intelligence concern. Other observers had to view it darkly in an

effort to understand what was going on beneath the often tantalizing, but rarely satisfying, appearances provided by the

Soviet press and by periodic Western threat portrayals.

Because of this indistinctness, two noted British aviation

experts pointed out as recently as 1986 that “any attempt to

describe the way aircraft are incorporated into the Soviet Air

Forces, how they train, how they contribute to Soviet operational doctrine, and above all, how militarily effective they are,

must be circumscribed again and again by conditions that

apply in few other areas of military study.”10 These analysts

offered four compelling reasons why any sweeping statements

about the VVS needed to be advanced with the greatest care:

First, Russia goes to great lengths to conceal evidence of a kind which

in the West may be found in technical journals, obtained from conversations, and observed on airfields. Second, much of the evidence which

does become available is fragmented, sometimes contradictory, and

frequently open to varying interpretations. Third, interpretation of that

evidence, like any other, is susceptible to the preconceptions of the

analyst. Finally, even if the evidence was comprehensive and the

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analysis always well judged and objective, the factors making up the

equation of Soviet military effectiveness are so variable that a wide

range of solutions would still be possible.

That was wise counsel at the time it was written. Today,

however, with the Cold War over and the Soviet Union a fading

relic of history, such obstructions to analysis have substantially receded. As a result, we are now increasingly able to

study airpower developments in Russia much as we would

study military aviation in any other country. The Russian

media, including the military and technical press, have more

and more become an open book. More important yet, Russia’s

military and industry leaders have become increasingly accessible to their foreign counterparts and have shown a steadily

expanding willingness to engage in dialogue with Western

defense experts.

These newly opened doors have revealed a Russian Air Force

in the throes of a painful but determined metamorphosis. It is

unmistakably embarked on a course of post-Soviet reform, yet

it remains uncertain of its future as it strives to embrace the

twenty-first century as a renewed institution. Even before the

collapse of communism, there were gathering signs that the

VVS, like the Soviet military as a whole, was entering its most

turbulent time since its wartime trials in the early 1940s.

Foremost among its challenges was adjusting to the radically

changed setting of the post-Cold-War world at a time of deepening domestic political and economic duress.

For one thing, the end of the Cold War and the demise of the

Warsaw Pact had left the VVS with no obvious threat and no

clear mission beyond homeland defense. The “Warsaw Pact Air

Operation,” for which Soviet pilots and commanders had purportedly planned and trained for years, had become moot

almost overnight. At the same time, the fact that air defense

was now obliged to begin at Russia’s western edge meant that

the VVS and VPVO (Voiska protivovozdushnoi oborony, or Air

Defense Forces) had assumed new responsibilities for which

they were ill configured or prepared.

Beyond that, the freedom of expression made possible by

President Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost introduced in

1986 had prompted an unprecedented venting of complaints

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throughout the armed forces. As a result, the VVS found itself

besieged by a multitude of pressures from below. Among the

issues with which its leadership now had to contend were

declining aircrew morale and retention, the eroding quality

and number of recruits to flight academies, severe housing

shortages and an appalling quality of life for pilots and their

families, a growing acknowledgment of deficiencies in tactical

air training, mindless administrative detail and paper-chasing

at the squadron and regiment level, problems of honesty and

integrity within flying units, increasing concerns about the

quality and reliability of the equipment provided by the aviation industry, and a mounting recognition among Soviet pilots

of the substantial inequalities between their own and Western

equipment and training.

Fortunately, the information explosion occasioned by glasnost and the collapse of the Soviet state has made developments in the armed forces of the former USSR much easier to

read in detail. In the case of the VVS, the result has been to

bring to the surface a number of issues concerning aircrew

training, tactics development, and flight operations at the

squadron and regiment level that had long simmered but

remained largely suppressed by the Communist Party’s intolerance of open dissent. In the process, some questions that

were hotly debated among Western analysts in the 1980s

without resolution have been put to rest by the frank admissions that Soviet—and now Russian—airmen have freely

offered in more recent years. For much of this, we can thank

the honesty and candor of the VVS leadership itself.

A Growing Crisis in Soviet Fighter Training

To review that background briefly, Western fighter pilots

and threat assessors began paying serious attention to Soviet

air combat training for the first time during the mid-1970s,

when the United States Air Force’s (USAF) Aggressor

squadrons became operational and Red Flag was introduced

as a routine training activity at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada.

For most of the decade that followed, Soviet tactical air activity remained an object of intense interest, as well as extensive

guesswork, in Western tactical air circles. It was commonly

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assumed that the Soviet pilot was bound by a heavily scripted

tactical repertoire that was all but completely dominated by

ground control. This, it was generally thought, left him little

room for the free-form initiative and adaptability that had long

been a hallmark of Western tactical air practice.

Because first-hand information on Soviet training and tactics was largely unavailable, this impression was based heavily on the observed practices of the air forces of Moscow’s military clients, notably North Vietnam, Egypt, and Syria. It

gained further reinforcement from the informed comment of

occasional defectors and from various inferences one could

draw from a careful reading of articles appearing in Aviatsiia i

kosmonavtika, the Soviet air force’s monthly journal, and

other military publications.11

There was anything but agreement, however, over the extent

to which this assumed deficiency in Soviet tactical air prowess

was an inherent condition of Soviet fighter aviation, let alone

a weakness that mattered much in a military organization that

was widely believed to be ready as a matter of practice to trade

high loss rates for victory. Intense debates ensued among

Western fighter pilots and threat assessors as protagonists for

various points of view sought to justify their respective interpretations of the Soviet tactical air challenge. Each school of

thought was able to draw sustenance from the inherent ambiguity surrounding much of the hard data on the Soviet tactical air arm and its operational activities.

A pointed attempt to discredit the view widely held among

American and NATO European pilots took sharp exception to

their inclination to dismiss their Soviet counterpart as “virtually a puppet, rigidly controlled by GCI [ground controlled

intercept] and acting as little more than flying artillery.”12 This

argument maintained, “The situation has changed considerably in the last few years. The Soviets have entered a period of

intense study and discussion of their theory of tactics and are

beginning to implement changes in their operational training.”

A similar contention was reflected in the claim of a US Defense

Department publication in 1983 that “the Soviets have

recently made significant changes in their air combat tactics

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and training programs. Pilot independence and initiative are

now stressed.”13

A starkly contrasting view was this appraisal offered by a

USAF Aggressor squadron commander no less well informed

on Soviet fighter weapons and tactics: “Exactly how good is the

enemy? Is he a ten-foot giant? Not exactly. In fact, without

exaggerating, one could place him in the mediocre to poor category when it comes to air combat capability. Certainly his

equipment has not improved at nearly the rate ours has. Most

important, however, Soviet training is so inferior to ours that

this could well be the deciding factor in the outcome of the

next conflict.”14

This latter appraisal was based in part on the poor Soviet

showing a decade earlier, when five Soviet-flown MiG-21s were

summarily downed by Israeli F-4s and Mirages, with no Israeli

losses, in an intense aerial engagement over Suez during the

1970 War of Attrition. It was further supported by the known

fact that Soviet air doctrine required most sorties to be flown

under the close control of a ground-based mission supervisor,

with the added proviso that if contact with the controller were

lost, the mission was to be aborted.15

Such was the evidence that largely informed the prevailing

Western view that the typical Soviet fighter pilot was an

acknowledged professional in his basic flying skills, yet

remained largely untutored in the ingrained situation awareness, free-form tactical moves, and ability to think ahead in a

dynamic, multiparticipant engagement that made the crucial

difference between winning and losing in aerial combat.16

Contention persisted among American fighter pilots and threat

assessors, almost up to the demise of the USSR, over the ultimate meaning of that fact for Soviet war-fighting capability.

Most American pilots, however, seemed ready to accept as

axiomatic this characterization offered by a US naval reserve

F-4 pilot: “I have found that asking two US pilots for their tactics in a given situation elicits three different answers. By contrast, it is my understanding that three Russian fighter pilots

will all give the same answer.”17

That impression gained powerful backing from an account

in 1986 by a British aviation writer based on interviews with

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Indian air force pilots, who spoke freely of their experiences

and frustration while undergoing MiG-21 conversion training

in the USSR during the early 1970s.18 Although those interviews reflected dated information, they dovetailed nicely with

the picture offered by more current indicators, including periodic veiled complaints voiced by operational pilots in the VVS’s

monthly journal. The essence of that picture was that continuity far outweighed change during the intervening years.

According to this report, the VVS followed a syllabus

approach throughout the service life of the MiG-21 which assumed that the student had an almost complete lack of understanding of fighter aircraft, as well as an entrenched incapacity

to learn other than through repetitive instruction over a prolonged period. This was most unsettling to the Indians, who

were experienced pilots brought up in the manner of the Royal

Air Force. Although they did not “buck the system,” they were

facing an imminent war with Pakistan and needed to know the

MiG-21 to its limits. Yet they literally had to beg to try anything

of tactical relevance or value.19 All in all, they said, the Soviet

approach was to instruct “rather in the way small children learn

multiplication tables,” with students frequently “chanting the

correct answers in unison. Any deep thought about how to get

the best out of one’s aircraft, or even hack an unusual situation,

was simply not part of the syllabus.”20

Fortunately for our understanding of this once-elusive subject, the fruits of glasnost and democratization have more and

more made Soviet—and now Russian—operational style an

open book to attentive outside observers. In so doing, they

have helped break down much of the mystery that, in previous

years, shrouded all but the broadest outlines of Soviet fighter

employment practice.

The Enduring Importance of Russian Airpower

Why should anyone care today about an air force that has

been declared to be no longer a threat to Western security—

and, indeed, that finds itself operating in virtually a survival

mode? For one thing, the frank admissions of VVS pilots and

commanders at all levels since the beginning of glasnost give

us an unprecedented chance to update and, where necessary,

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correct our past impressions of the VVS. Beyond that, better

knowledge of where the air arm of the former USSR stands

today can shed useful light on the future course it may take

once the current post-Soviet reform effort establishes an even

keel. Whatever difficulties and transition pains the VVS may

be experiencing today, there is little doubt that Russia will

eventually emerge from the collapse of communism as a

strong nation. There is also little doubt that the VVS will constitute an important part of its military capability.

By far the greatest value to be gained from the recent opening up of the Russian armed forces, including the VVS, however, is the prospect that this unprecedented access offers us

for becoming better acquainted with a potential fellow air force

at a time when markedly improved, if still turbulent, EastWest relations portend closer contacts between the VVS and

its former adversary air forces around the world. To cite one

notable example, the current tone in the relationship between

the US Air Force and the VVS was established by the two service chiefs in separate interviews during a visit by the USAF

chief of staff, Gen Merrill A. McPeak, to Moscow in October

1991. General Deinekin remarked first that “it is important

today to strengthen friendship not only among ministers, commanders in chief, and generals, but also among officers.

[General McPeak] and I talked about the fact that pilots are a

special fraternity. . . . I am in favor of beginning visits with the

US Air Force in the future.”

When later asked for his thoughts on when “friendship and

exchanges among our aces will become commonplace,” the

USAF chief replied:

I believe it will be some time before we arrive at that point. But I hope

that relations between the air forces of our countries will become

stronger. We constantly exchange pilots with France, Great Britain,

Germany. . . . I am confident that your country will be no exception.

There is a respectful attitude toward Soviet military pilots, and we

could learn a lot from them. I do not see any obstacles to improving

relations. We will treat each other with mutual respect and even, I

hope, become friends.21

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Against the reasonable chance that such contacts will become

more and more routine in the months and years ahead, it

behooves Western airmen to do as much as possible now to

become better informed about their Russian counterparts.

This argument takes on added strength in light of the striking similarity between many of the problems currently faced

by the VVS and its most advanced Western counterparts.

Among the most acute concerns confronting the VVS today are

a need to harness new technology to mission requirements at

an affordable cost, enlisting and retaining high-quality people,

keeping the defense industry accountable to the expectations

of VVS planners, sustaining the morale and motivation of VVS

personnel, especially aircrews, at a time of major budget and

force reductions, and assuring that the VVS develops the organizational adaptability it will need to survive as a healthy institution in the twenty-first century.

These problems are not, in their fundamentals, all that different from those facing most Western air forces today. Indeed,

they are compounded many times over in the case of the VVS

by Russia’s continuing political and economic crisis. All the

more so for that reason, it may be instructive for Western

planners to observe how the Russians are grappling with

familiar challenges in a much more demanding situation than

anything we have had to confront, at least so far.

Many of the complaints expressed by Russian pilots and unit

commanders since the onset of glasnost sound remarkably

similar to those voiced for seemingly time immemorial by their

Western counterparts. Indeed, they tend to bear out the popular notion that some such complaints simply go with the trade.

These include, among other things, such perennial vexations

as overly intrusive higher-headquarters meddling in day-to-day

flight operations, seemingly endless paperwork and bureaucratic overlay at the squadron and regiment level, burdensome

additional duties for line pilots, and the continuing tension

between the demands of flight safety and the often conflicting

imperatives of operational realism in peacetime training.

Russian pilots and commanders have also become increasingly outspoken with regard to more fundamental concerns,

such as misplaced service priorities, rampant careerism and

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compromises of integrity by commanders looking mainly to

“get ahead” within the system, and a consequent loss of vision

and sense of purpose by the institution as a whole. These, too,

are problems of a sort not unknown in other air forces around

the world. To varying degrees, they seemed to dominate VVS

practice right up to the end of the Soviet experience in 1991.

The one problem that remains unique to the VVS, however,

is the top-down rigidity in both operations and thought which

the communist system, for years, imposed on line pilots and

commanders, who knew better but were obliged to pretend

otherwise. This is the legacy of the now-discredited Soviet

approach to operations and training that Russian airmen will

have to work the hardest to overcome.

New Priorities and Concerns

General Deinekin faces an array of headaches and challenges as least as thorny as those besetting any other air chief

in the world today. Upon his assumption of command of the

Russian Air Force, he inherited a near-total inversion of the

priorities that typically concern a peacetime military aviation

establishment. Matters like force modernization, training and

tactics, and similar mission-related preoccupations have

taken a back seat to the more pressing demands of simply

housing and caring for badly deprived personnel. Among other

vexations, General Deinekin has been saddled with a severely

curtailed procurement and operations budget, a fuel shortage

of crisis dimensions, a bloated pilot-to-aircraft ratio further

aggravating the insufficiency of available flying hours for

Russian aircrews, widespread maintenance problems caused

by a dearth of spare parts and the failure of the conscription

system, a rising aircraft accident rate as a result of these negative influences, and a precipitous drop in the former prestige

and respectability of air force service, with potentially grave

implications for future officer recruitment.

The Collapse of State Financing for Defense

During the final days of its existence in late 1991, the Soviet

Defense Ministry reported that outlays for weapons and associated procurement had fallen by 23 percent, or by 7.2 billion

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rubles, from the previous level in 1990. It anticipated that a

comparable reduction would occur in 1992, meaning that

defense production would be effectively halved from the baseline 1989 level.22 In the end, the VVS received only 15 percent

of the allocations for research and development (R&D) and

procurement that it was expecting in 1992. This forced it to

buy equipment at the barest minimum level required to

ensure that Russia’s aircraft industry would not become completely moribund. Even such elementary provisions as flight

suits and helmets are in critically short supply.23

Shortly before his appointment as first deputy minister of defense,

Andrei Kokoshin, then-deputy director of the USA and Canada

Institute, predicted that Russia’s defense industry would receive virtually no production orders in 1992, since all available funds had to be

used to clothe and house military personnel.24 By late 1993, promised

funding allotments from the Ministry of Finance had fallen so far

behind, complained Kokoshin, that the Defense Ministry was a full trillion rubles in arrears to the defense industry for goods and services

already delivered.25

The inertia of the old Soviet system, which routinely favored

strategic missiles and armor, still dies slowly. Today, according to General Deinekin, aviation equipment accounts for only

12 to 15 percent of Russia’s arms purchases, as contrasted to

an asserted 25 to 30 percent in the United States. Since the

USSR’s collapse, the VVS has been forced to cancel any further purchases of the MiG-29. It has also had to defer production of several improved variants of the Su-27, which have

been designated by the VVS as the intended mainstays of

Russia’s fighter inventory for at least the remainder of this

century. Galloping inflation since President Boris Yeltsin’s

elimination of state price controls in January 1992 has driven

up the cost of current-generation aircraft more than 20-fold.

Research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E) on new

aircraft have largely been frozen, and the financing of several

promising prototype programs has reportedly been halted.

A Growing Pilot Surplus

The VVS’s pilot-to-aircraft ratio has more than doubled

since the collapse of the USSR. General Deinekin stated in early

1992 that it had risen to three pilots for each flyable aircraft

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because of force reductions and accelerated unit withdrawals

from Eastern Europe and the former Baltic republics.26 He

later remarked that in some units, the ratio had become as

severe as five pilots per aircraft.27

This pilot glut is especially concentrated in fighter and

ground attack units. One approach toward grappling with the

problem that has been aired at VVS headquarters has been to

encourage fighter pilots who wish to remain on flight status to

volunteer for other aviation branches or to accept navigator

assignments. As a “triage” technique for managing its aircrew

reduction plans, the VVS is treating those pilots who have

served three to four years in a given assignment as a “reserve”

pool for potential selection to higher positions. Others, with

five or more years in the same posting, who are considered

poor prospects for promotion will most likely end up being

released into the reserve.

The VVS is striving to reduce its pilot contingent to a stabilized norm of three pilots for every two aircraft. In the meantime, the pilot surplus is imposing a perceptible burden on

day-to-day continuation training in operational squadrons. A

case in point was the instance of a senior lieutenant who

described taxiing out for a long-awaited range mission to

reestablish his mission currency, only to experience an avionics system failure immediately prior to takeoff. The result was

a noneffective sortie. The lieutenant later remarked:

The aircraft situation here is really like a free-for-all. You should see

how emotions flare up when we are preparing our little “plan.” Each

pilot and flight commander thinks that his problems are the most

important. What happens is that everyone keeps pulling the blanket

over to his side. . . . All these gyrations are prompted by the growing

number of pilots arriving from VVS units undergoing reductions and,

for other reasons, from various areas of the former USSR. But the aircraft pool remains the same.28

The Crisis in Flying Hours

Following President Yeltsin’s lifting of price controls in

January 1992, fuel costs escalated 2,000 percent just during

the remainder of that year alone.29 The first deputy head of the

Defense Ministry’s Main Budget and Finance Directorate

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reported that because of reduced appropriations for fuel,

pilots were typically getting less than one-third of their annual

flying norm.30

General Deinekin confirmed in early 1993 that largely

because of the fuel shortage, VVS fighter pilots were averaging

40 flying hours a year, bomber pilots 80 hours a year, and VTA

(Voenno-transportnaia aviatsiia, or Military Transport Aviation)

pilots 150 hours (the differences reflecting variations in mission

type, with LRA and transport crews flying fewer sorties of longer

duration).31 General Deinekin further reported that the VVS has

roughly two assigned pilots for each single-seat aircraft, since

“several thousand” fighter pilots stationed in the former

republics had returned home following the USSR’s collapse.32 In

most cases, the fuel shortage has required regimental commanders to preclude their headquarters staff officers from flying

altogether so as to assure the most rational distribution of their

meager fuel allotments to their neediest line pilots.

Conditions are scarcely better with those few remaining VVS

fighter units awaiting final withdrawal from eastern Germany.

The air commander for the Western Group of Forces (WGF),

Lieutenant General Tarasenko, remarked that to give each pilot

an equal chance to fly in such circumstances would be, in

effect, to provide an opportunity to no one, since “letting everyone fly, but no more than once or twice a month, would mean

taking everyone to the brink of losing his professional skills.”33

WGF sorties in 1992 were apportioned at the regimental

commander’s discretion such that those pilots representing

the VVS’s core talent pool were given the greatest amount of

time. Other Band-Aid fixes included reducing the average

duration of scheduled sorties, eliminating repeat passes at the

weapons range, combining multiple mission events on a single

sortie, curtailing afterburner use and flight into marginal

weather to save fuel, and greater reliance on flight simulators,

even though Russia’s defense industry has radically curtailed

their manufacture and technical support.

A later account of WGF training indicated similar currency

and proficiency concerns as forward-based VVS units

approached the midpoint of their three-year phased withdrawal

from former East German territory. The deputy commander of

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Russian forces in Germany, Maj Gen Nikolai Selivorstov,

reported that available flight time for WGF pilots had been cut

back to the bone and that missions “in zone” had grown progressively more rudimentary as a result of the disappearance of

any operational purpose behind the lingering Russian presence

in Germany.

In a revealing snapshot of where things stand today, a military reporter provided an arresting account of VVS flight

activity during a typical 24-hour day in the fall of 1993. A conversation with Maj Gen Aleksandr Slukhai, senior duty officer

in the central command post at VVS headquarters in Moscow

on the day in question, indicated that VVS flight schools and

fighter aviation recorded 845 sorties that day for a total of 459

flying hours, with LRA registering 183 sorties for 115 hours

and VTA logging 117 sorties at training centers for 58 hours in

the air. The total came to slightly more than 1,000 VVS flights,

for an average sortie length (including in LRA and VTA) of

around one-half hour each. The reporter tried hard to put the

best possible spin on these figures: “There is no basis for the

idle conjectures of certain mass media that the VVS has neglected combat training. . . . A total of 1,145 training flights in

a 24-hour period—is that not combat training?” The bitter

truth, however, was laid bare in General Slukhai’s more disquieting observation, “Some days the flying time for the entire

VVS adds up to the number of hours the regiment I previously

commanded would have flown in a 24-hour period.”34 In a

telling contrast, General Deinekin earlier reported that on a

typical flying day in August the preceding year, the VVS had

registered 6,798 sorties.35

Maintenance and the Accident Situation

Aircraft maintenance in all services has suffered notably as

a result of the failed conscription system in post-Soviet

Russia. This has occasioned a drop in noncommissioned manning to the 50 percent level or below in many VVS and VPVO

units. “This is an alarming indicator,” said the VPVO’s commander in chief, Col Gen Viktor Prudnikov, “because it was

always felt that a unit was not operationally ready if it fell

below 70 percent. We have now crossed that line.”36 Even

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before the August 1991 coup, the VVS’s deputy commander

for logistics complained that maintenance manning remained

hung up at approximately 1972 levels. He said that as a

result, the VVS was able to provide only some 60 percent of its

needed rear service support for training and readiness.37

Cannibalization of parts from some aircraft to keep others

flying has become common in many fighter units, even though

it is in direct violation of safety rules. Such reliance on socalled donor aircraft (a polite term for hangar queens) was

bound to happen sooner or later as a result of the declining

availability of assemblies and spare parts. The impetus behind

this flouting of published rules and good judgment has been

to keep the greatest possible number of aircraft flyable at any

cost, since flying hours are meted out according to the number of serviceable aircraft in a given unit. Even with cannibalization, considerable flight time has been lost to many units as

a result of delays in the delivery of petroleum, oil, and lubricants (POL), tires, and other consumables.38

All of this has had a predictable impact on the VVS’s flight

safety situation. A report in June 1992 declared that “the aircraft accident rate is threatening to shift from isolated

instances to a landslide.”39 It noted that there were 26 major

mishaps in VVS operating units in 1991, with eight mishaps

recorded during the first three months of 1992 alone. The article added that in some regiments, pilots were not even getting

a minimal allocation of 40 flying hours a year and that it was

precisely in those units where the accident rate was most disturbingly on the rise. It implored the VVS to take a hard look

at proven foreign aviation safety practices in search of a better

way to ramp down the incidence of flight mishaps. It also

stated that in 1968, the Soviet air force roughly matched the

USAF in the number of accidents per 100,000 hours, whereas

today the VVS exceeds the USAF’s number by a factor of two,

even with “many times” fewer flying hours.

The Declining Quality of VVS Life

Six months before the coup, then-VVS commander

Shaposhnikov attacked the inadequate provision of housing

and social amenities for the families of VVS officers. Some of

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this he blamed on the return of Soviet units from Eastern

Europe at an unexpectedly rapid rate. However, General

Shaposhnikov complained that responsibility for the VVS’s

housing conundrum lay primarily with local civilian councils,

which had failed to make good on their pledges to provide

housing for the VVS. To take up at least part of the slack, the

VVS committed 80 percent of its capital construction funds in

1991 for family housing. It also established a Main Engineering

Administration to accelerate the resolution of the housing

problem.40 Yet today, over 22,000 VVS families remain without

living quarters. More than 3,500 of these are families of pilots.

Even for those VVS families lucky enough to be blessed with

adequate living accommodation, all too often their daily existence is bleak. Shortly before the coup, the VVS’s chief political officer noted that around one-half of all officers’ wives possessed special work qualifications, yet lacked any realistic

chance of finding gainful employment in the often remote

parts of the country where their husbands were stationed.41

Such deprivation has had a predictable impact on morale.

Acknowledging that many officers have remained hardworking

and devoted professionals in the face of mounting adversity,

the deputy commander of the Chernigov VVAUL confessed

that “one feels frankly ashamed to reproach people for their

deficiencies” when they sit at their workstations on air bases

for up to 12-14 hours a day.42 Much the same sentiment was

reflected in a Defense Ministry poll of 1,100 officers in all of

Russia’s services, including the VPVO and VVS, indicating

that many “are losing their social and moral reference points

and values, and their confidence in tomorrow is dying away.”43

At the time of the coup, a Moscow bus driver typically got

paid more than a trained Soviet fighter pilot. Since then,

Russia’s economy has deteriorated to a state where operational pilots now have to work the fields on weekends to help

bring in the crop. VVS officers are being forced to harvest their

own agricultural produce. Base commanders must cultivate

plots and maintain subsidiary farms on their airfields. Even at

prestigious Kubinka, fighter pilots often spend their weekends

weeding and hoeing. The former commander of the VVS’s Su27 flight demonstration team, Col Vladimir Basov, said, “All of

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us are forced to tend our kitchen gardens because we don’t

have any other source of food.” He added, “It’s a shame our

pilots get lower pay than a plumber or a mechanic.”44 General

Deinekin himself has commented that cadets at the Barnaul

VVAUL live in such austere conditions that they are forced to

use parachutes as blankets during winter time.45

Sadly to say, Russia’s pilots are watching their professional

pride slowly leach away as a result of these pernicious influences. Smoking is said to be the rule among them, and drinking to excess has become more and more commonplace. “The

whole country drinks, after all, and do they ever!” wrote one disgusted pilot. “Why should aviation be any better?”46 Only a few

officers reportedly take part in regular physical exercise, and

many work out only enough to get ready to pass their semiannual evaluation—if it is given. Even these tests are typically a

charade because of the widespread prevalence of cheating.

Faltering Service Prestige and Pilot Recruitment

During the banner years of the Soviet Union, appeals to

patriotism and the romance of high-performance flight were

nearly all it took to entice the best of Soviet youth to seek a

VVS career. Today, squalid living conditions and rapidly dwindling opportunities for pilots to fly have become increasing

barriers to VVS recruitment. Consistently low pay for officers

and the badly tarnished image of a military career in postSoviet Russia, set against the precipitous decline in the quality of service life, have resulted in a virtual disappearance of

competition for pilot training slots in both the VVS and VPVO.

Even before the USSR’s collapse, the commandant of the

Kharkhov VVAUL reported that “the influx of young people

into flight academies has recently fallen drastically.” He noted

that 790 applicants were accepted to Kharkhov in 1989,

whereas only 312 cadets entered the program in 1990. He

added, “There was practically no competition after the medical

board’s findings. In some cases, we were even forced to reexamine those who received ‘twos.’”47

During the early 1970s, six to eight applicants typically vied

for each available pilot training slot nationwide. Today, the

VVS is forced “to accept adolescents who have shown only fair

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knowledge on the entrance exams. The criterion for their

enrolment is just good health, and even that with certain

allowances.” One colonel complained, “There is essentially no

weeding out after psychological testing. There is no one to

choose from!”48 Another pilot cynically joked that VVAUL

acceptance standards had fallen to such a low state that there

are now only two criteria: “The applicant must be able to hear

thunder and see lightning—and one of these is waiverable!”

Many junior officers have simply quit out of disillusionment.49 In July 1992, for example, all 48 graduates of the

Barnaul VVAUL declined to honor their service commitments

because of “no prestige and no prospects.” Upon being

awarded their commissions and aeronautical ratings, they

were immediately released into the reserves.50 In trying to

come to honest grips with this arresting trend, the VVS’s chief

of education, Major General Yanakov, frankly conceded,

“Today’s youth have begun looking harder and deeper into

life’s questions. They can no longer be won over simply by slogans and appeals. Firm assurances of a dignified social status

of officership are now required.”51

Trends and Prospects

In light of the daunting problems outlined above, coupled

with continued uncertainty over the long-term prospects for

political and economic change in Russia, one might fairly ask

whether the sun is rising or setting on General Deinekin’s

VVS. To this question, General Deinekin would almost certainly answer with cautious optimism born of conviction. He

has repeatedly declared that the VVS has the needed talent,

an appreciation of its past failings under communist rule, a

vision of what needs to be done to correct them, and an abiding determination that, in due course, Russian aviation will

recover to full health. The hard reality, of course, is that the

main factors that will determine the ultimate course and outcome of the VVS’s resurrection lie largely beyond General

Deinekin’s control. At bottom, the fate of the VVS, like that of

the military establishment as a whole, is inseparably tied up

with the fate of post-Soviet Russia.

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One of the first hints of the new course the VVS will follow

in its quest for post-Soviet reform may have been reflected in

a statement by General Deinekin while he was still first deputy

commander of the Soviet air force. In an interview in early

1991, Deinekin remarked that the sharp rise in the pilot-toaircraft ratio prompted by force reductions and wholesale unit

withdrawals from Eastern Europe had occasioned “a harsh

need for converting combat training from extensive methods to

intensive ones. Every minute of flight time,” he said, “should

be used for maximum return,” with the main emphasis being

placed “on the quality of assimilating the training programs.”52

General Deinekin pleaded for patience and cooperation up

and down the command hierarchy in the interest of weathering the turbulent times yet to come: “Intelligent initiative and

a creative approach to realizing military reform are most

important during this difficult period. One cannot simply sit

and fold one’s arms, waiting for all the answers to hard questions to emanate from the center. The High Command will do

everything within its power. But supervisors must themselves

analyze the situation and take appropriate steps.” He added,

“I believe that the air force will emerge from this difficult situation with honor. The main thing is not to yield to pessimism

and despair.”

Later, after the August 1991 coup attempt fell apart,

General Deinekin left no room for doubt about where he felt

the blame belonged for the many years of stagnation in VVS

practice. He said, “The processes of de-partyization and depoliticization . . . that have been initiated actively reflect the

long-standing attitude of most military fliers. The party political structures that existed interfered constantly and quite persistently in the conduct of virtually all aspects of our combat

training, tying the hands of commanders and specialists.”53

Asked later what he felt the effects would be on the VVS as a

result of the dismantling of these structures, General Deinekin

replied: “Regardless of the final shape the reform will take, the

air force will benefit from it. This country’s air force suffered

the burden of communism for 74 years. Now that burden has

finally ceased to exist.”54

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With the communist system firmly repudiated and a new

horizon looming ahead, the VVS now stands on the threshold

of potentially the most radical departure from its familiar ways

of doing business since the earliest days of the Soviet state. As

the deputy chief of the VVS’s higher educational institutions,

Major General Yanakov, remarked in late 1991, “The events of

August 1991 have accelerated the process of radical change in

the country’s armed forces. It is gratifying to note that commonsense is returning to us, albeit slowly.”55

This reflection bears out the important fact that throughout

the history of the VVS, the main problem was communism, not

the man or his equipment. The Soviet pilot was selected by

exacting criteria, and he represented the best talent for his

calling that Soviet society had to offer. For their part, Soviet

aircraft and air-to-air missiles have always been respectable

threats from a technical standpoint. Especially today, the

fourth-generation MiG-29 and Su-27 and the Alamo and

Archer missiles, properly used, are a match for any comparable systems the West currently operates. In some respects,

they command a definite performance edge. The reason the

VVS has long had such trouble getting the most out of these

assets is that the Soviet pilot was, inevitably, a product of his

training environment. Naturally, his techniques and skills

were heavily conditioned—and circumscribed—by the inhibiting effect of a uniquely “Soviet” operational culture.

Given the many restrictions on pilot initiative that hampered the VVS’s operational adaptability throughout the long

years of the Cold War, it was all but inevitable that the Soviet

MiG-21 pilots who were lured into battle by the Israeli Air

Force over Suez in July 1970 would be so completely outmatched. The difference was not in the quality of the people

who were pitted against one another in that engagement, but

rather in their diametrically opposed approaches to training

and force employment. With their heavy dependence on GCI

close control and their unfamiliarity with anything beyond the

broadest essentials of free air combat maneuvering, the

Soviets lacked the situation awareness and implicit knowledge

of appropriate moves and countermoves that are crucial for

surviving and winning in a highly dynamic, multiparticipant

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air battle. That said, it is a safe bet that a typical Russian

fighter pilot today could be picked virtually at random from

squadron service, detrained of his most counterproductive

habits acquired through exposure to Soviet influence, enrolled

in a USAF F-15 conversion course or its equivalent, and

emerge with creditable air-to-air skills by any standard.

Exactly how the VVS will respond to its unprecedented

opportunity for change remains hard to say with assurance.

Much will depend, in the near term at least, on the extent to

which Russia’s weakened economy will permit the channeling

of enough funds into the VVS’s operations and maintenance

accounts to underwrite a training program commensurate

with the new latitude for improvisation the VVS appears to

have acquired. Farther down the road, much will also hinge on

the extent to which the dismantlement of the old communist

order will yield a permanent change in the daily pattern of

organizational life for Russian pilots and commanders.

It remains too early to predict what the future holds beyond

the broadest of generalizations. With respect to force modernization, General Deinekin and other VVS leaders have openly

stated their near-term intentions and goals through the year

2000. These goals are not unreasonable for the sort of VVS

that would seem appropriate for post-Soviet Russia, given its

likely operational challenges in the immediate years ahead.

Yet, because of the continuing budget crisis, it is hard to see

how the VVS can take more than the first steps in this direction, when it is having trouble just providing its pilots with

enough monthly flying time to keep from killing themselves.

On the books, the VVS has a declared requirement for a follow-on to the MiG-29 and Su-27. As recently as late January

1994, the deputy VVS commander in chief, Col Gen Viktor

Kot, reported that the main efforts of VVS acquisition planning

were being targeted on “the priority development of fifth-generation aviation complexes and the procurement of spares.”56

Yet, given the bleak outlook for financing of new systems and

the problems the VVS currently faces in funding even the

improvement of existing types, that may be a pipe dream, at

least for the near term. This holds particularly true in light of

a pronouncement only a few weeks earlier by First Deputy

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Defense Minister Kokoshin that upcoming R&D and procurement for all the services would focus mainly on reconnaissance, command and control, supply to mobile forces, and

precision-strike munitions.57

Much the same can be said with regard to training and tactics development. Without question, the VVS has been freed of

the organizational choke hold that limited its capacity to innovate under communist rule. In principle, it is now at liberty to

cast aside its old ways and develop a new operational repertoire aimed at extracting the fullest leverage from its highly

capable equipment. Yet, with a shoestring operations and

maintenance budget that forces unit commanders to bend

every effort simply to maintain their pilots’ basic aircraft handling proficiency, it defies logic to imagine how they might conduct anything even remotely like the sort of graduated and

structured training, from the simple to the complex, that

would be required, at a minimum, to bring Russia’s pilots up

to accepted Western mission readiness standards.

Finally, with respect to doctrine and concepts, the VVS has

discarded its canonical Warsaw Pact Air Operation Plan (if,

indeed, it ever paid more than lip service to that plan in its dayto-day training) and now confronts a need to develop new strategies consistent with the emerging mission requirements of postSoviet Russia. However, Russia has yet to develop a coherent

and fully articulated foreign policy, or, for that matter, even an

agreed set of national interests upon which such a policy might

be based. Accordingly, its much-vaunted “new military doctrine”

published in late 1993 remains little more than a statement of

broad principles for an ideal world. In the absence of a clear

threat or readily definable operational challenge, any attempt to

produce a more detailed repertoire for Russian airpower would

come close to putting the cart before the horse.

There is no clearer testament to the acuteness of the many

problems the VVS faces today than its continued inability to

do much beyond intellectualize about the implications of the

1991 Persian Gulf War. As the fall of communism neared, the

VVS had a ringside seat from which to watch the allied

Coalition’s successful air campaign against Iraq. That campaign opened the eyes of Soviet airmen not just to what

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Western aviation could accomplish, but to what airpower in

general (including Russian airpower) could do if properly

equipped, configured, and applied.58 Unfortunately for the

VVS, however, that realization dawned precisely as its own

operational and institutional moorings had become cast

almost completely adrift by the winds of international and

domestic change.

The powerful role model provided for Russian air tacticians

by the Coalition’s performance in Desert Storm, coupled with

the subsequent lifting of many of the former inhibitions that

blocked any serious effort at tactical reform in the VVS, makes

it fair to speculate that at least some of the impending changes

in Russian operational practice, once they take root, will show

a heightened Western orientation. The air-to-air arena warrants special attention in this regard. Since improvement in

air combat prowess is relatively inexpensive (in that it turns

largely on altered procedures for sorties that will be flown in

any case, rather than on new equipment), the VVS is now positioned to begin applying whatever inclinations its best tacticians may long have harbored by way of desired changes in

air-to-air training.

One constraint here, possibly a serious one in the near

term, entails the extent to which even seemingly “low-cost”

changes in tactical training may be preempted by a diversion

of already scarce operations and maintenance funds toward

providing housing and other needed quality-of-life improvements for officers and their families. Another constraint has to

do with where the VVS’s Combat Training Directorate will find

a suitable homegrown experience pool from which to develop

and pass along to Russian pilots a fundamentally new air

combat repertoire. Such skills cannot be acquired simply by

reading the right books.

Despite the difficulties outlined above, the VVS’s situation is

far from hopeless. For one thing, it has been granted a decisive end to political controls, new individual liberties and freedoms of expression, active encouragement of initiative and

independent judgment from below, and an easing or elimination of the most odious former Soviet operating rules and

restrictions. All of this has been expressly geared toward

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enhancing opportunities for talented pilots and commanders

to achieve their fullest potential. The system remains slow to

change, and old habits linger on. But at least the door to

reform is now open.

There is good news for the West as well. Old patterns of

Soviet secrecy are gradually yielding to a new interest in dialogue. President Yeltsin’s military adviser during the early

months following the coup, Gen Konstantin Kobets, expressed

the readiness of all Russian services to reach out and embrace

proven practices of other military establishments around the

world. He admonished each to “apply the experience of all civilized countries which have undergone reforms at one time or

another in their own fashion, adopt the best and least expensive things, and apply these with the greatest possible effect.”59

General Deinekin likewise acknowledged the value of going to

school on the West’s experience: “There is something to adopt

from abroad. We must train our pilots to world standards.”60

However the VVS’s current leaders and their successors will

eventually choose to exercise their new options, they are

entering a historic phase in their professional growth. The best

of its new leaders, first and foremost General Deinekin, have

freely admitted their problems and indicated what they believe

needs to be done to start fixing them. This has removed a

major obstacle from the road to recovery. It has also set the

stage for a time of creative ferment that could begin at any

moment once the Russian armed forces emerge from their current crisis with a measure of fiscal solvency.

Discussion

Air Marshal David Evans: Will the changes in Russia’s situation call for a different structure in their air force? Did you get

a feel for their future strategic thinking? For example, are they

going to need a long-range strike force?

Dr. Lambeth: The central theme of Soviet doctrine for conventional war in Europe was the offensive, based on mass, on

surprise, on shock, and sheer weight of numbers. It was a

war-winning strategy from beginning to end. With the demise

of the Cold War, that’s all gone and they are looking now at a

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fundamentally new mission set that has to do mainly with the

projection of power into remote areas around the periphery of

the former Soviet Union. They talk about the former republics

as the principal hotbeds of tension that may call for the application of Russian power in a peacemaking role. That raises

some questions about whether the requirements the Russian

Air Force has put on the table are really entirely appropriate

to the operational needs the political leadership is likely to

feel in the near term, which are mobility, projection, and

heavy airlift. They face a severe shortfall in those capabilities

right now. They lost, as I mentioned, one-half of their best

transports to the other former republics. Why the Russian Air

Force would want to continue to operate the very costly and

technically troublesome Blackjack bomber is an interesting

question. Why it really needs a fifth-generation fighter, other

than to just remain at the leading edge of technology, is

another fair question. But, clearly, you will not see anything

like the numbers or the weight of airpower in Russia 10 years

down the road that we grew up with for two generations.

Apart from the cost, the operational requirement is simply no

longer there.

Air Vice-Marshal Peter Squire: We in NATO are now working

toward opening a program under the title of Partnership for

Peace as a way of trying to bridge the gap with the Russians,

particularly in terms of the way we operate, because clearly

with systems which are poles apart, it will be very difficult to

do more than simply offer encouragement at the moment.

What do you think the Russians’ greatest aspirations will be

for the program?

Dr. Lambeth: You’ve raised a very important question. I believe

it is absolutely essential that we, not just in the United States

but the Western powers generally, reach out and seek to bring

the Russians into a community in which they are regarded as,

and encouraged to act as, a normal player in world affairs.

Much as we did with Germany and Japan after World War II,

I believe we have both the opportunity and the obligation to try

to do the same with Russia today. A critical difference, of

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course, is that, despite those who insist that the West “won the

Cold War,” Russia is not a defeated power. It is a proud country in profound domestic turmoil over which the West has very

little direct control.

To your specific question of what’s in it for them, I believe first

and foremost what they’re looking for is nothing more

demanding than acceptance as fellow professionals. They

want to be taken seriously. They want to be respected. The

West has a tremendous opportunity to rise to that challenge

and show both the Russian high command and rank-and-file

Russian operators that they are regarded as brother warriors.

That alone, I think, would take us a long way toward establishing a common hailing frequency from which we could then

develop common procedures for interoperability and for getting to know each other better.

Quite apart from the premature political symbolism, I think

we’re a long way yet from the point where, for example, we

might want to invite the Russian Air Force to participate in

Red Flag, not least of all because they could make for an accident hazard of the first order with their current shortcomings

in operational proficiency. I don’t believe they’re in a position

today even to begin to assimilate the richness and intensity of

what goes on in that kind of training environment. But short

of that, there are a number of things that can be done, such

as sharing insights into the way we train undergraduate flight

instructors and helping them with aircraft maintenance and

their mounting accident problems. The sky’s the limit in this

regard, and Partnership for Peace offers an ideal framework in

which to develop those kinds of ties. This is, of course, a counsel of hope to some degree. But I believe that if these kinds of

initiatives are pursued, we’ll be pleasantly surprised at the

kind of response we get. I would encourage you in your NATO

capacity to do all you can to press for that.

Back to Air Marshal Evans’s question. The Russian Air Force

last year conducted an exercise, which it called Voskhod ’93,

in an effort to validate its emerging power projection strategy.

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It involved a package of eight Su-24 Fencer fighter-bombers,

plus a number of Tu-95 bombers with tanker support. General

Deinekin was aboard an airborne command post for two days,

and they generated that package all the way from the western

part of Russia out to Lake Baikal. There were also six or eight

Flanker escorts. They all went out and delivered simulated

weapons at a range and came back. I think there were at least

two rationales for that. First, to demonstrate both to the

Russian Air Force and to everyone else that they were very

serious about developing this projection capability; and second, to attempt a first-order validation of their new strategy.

General Deinekin later said that this was the most complex

strike package that had been put together in the Russian Air

Force in over 10 years. It wasn’t even a shadow of what takes

place at Red Flag on a regular basis. So they’ve got a long way

to go yet. What matters is that they are trying hard in a situation of great adversity.

Professor Robin Higham: Ben, I liked your paper very much.

Perhaps you’d like to comment a little about what’s happening

to the aircraft industry, since that’s going to be one of the fundamental bases of airpower.

Dr. Lambeth: The aircraft industry today is moribund. It really

is in danger of going under because of the financial crisis. The

head of the Mikoyan Design Bureau, Rostislav Belyakov, is a

personal friend of mine, and he’s been very candid in lamenting the lot of his people. The chief of their advanced development division also told me that out of 120 engineers, he had

lost around 40 of his best in just a year. There is no easy way

to replace them. You can make more money today selling

Coca-Cola off Red Square than you can as a salaried engineer

in the aircraft industry.

It doesn’t necessarily require the mass production of aircraft

to keep the aviation industry alive. At some point soon, they

really are going to have to face up to the excesses and the

slack that were permitted by the communist system, which

were inexcusable. They employed three times as many people

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as they needed. If they intend to be serious competitors in the

international aviation market, they’re going to have to develop

much more efficient standards of design and production management. That won’t happen overnight.

Beyond that, Mr. Belyakov was our guest at RAND in the fall

of 1989, before the USSR collapsed. He stated then, and I

believe this was a harbinger of things to come, that given the

increasing cost of major weapons systems, it will be harder

and harder for industry to persuade the air force to buy new

systems without an ironclad requirement. However, he added,

it will be essential to maintain the R&D effort, because that’s

where new ideas come from. They can manage, in the near

term at least, to weather the crisis in production funding. What

they can’t afford, even for a very short time, is a continued

lapse of support for research and development, without which

there may be no follow-on systems produced for a generation

or more. Here again, they’re facing a very steep uphill climb.

Mr. Carlo Kopp: Can you please elaborate on the influence of

Luftwaffe doctrine on the development of the post-World War II

Soviet air force, particularly on Frontal Aviation? Also, the

Soviets deployed the Su-27 Flanker during the 1980s, an aircraft

which arguably has the capability to function as a strategic

fighter escort with a combat radius in the order of several hundred nautical miles. Have you seen any evidence to suggest that

the Soviet air force would in fact capitalize on that capability?

Dr. Lambeth: There are people better qualified than I to take

your first question, including Robin Higham, who is here

today. I think the short answer regarding the Luftwaffe is that

the Russians learned the hard way in 1941 what a massed,

combined-arms offensive can do, and they went to school on

it in a determined way, in the wake of recovering from the Nazi

onslaught, in developing their own operational concepts for

the Cold War. I would assert as a point for discussion that,

shorn of its ideological trimmings, Soviet military doctrine for

conventional warfare in Europe was almost a mirror image of

the doctrine that animated Operation Barbarossa in 1941.

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With regard to the Su-27, this is a most interesting airplane. I

think of it almost as a fighter-equivalent of Battlestar Galactica.

The airplane carries 22,000 pounds of fuel internally. It is not

even configured to carry external tanks, because it doesn’t need

them. When the airplane went to the Paris Air Show in 1989, it

flew nonstop from Moscow clean and landed with fuel to spare.

How would the airplane be employed? It’s operated by both the

Air Defense Forces and the air force. The airplane was conceived as a counterpart to the F-15. Russian designers have

repeatedly stated over the past few years that it took a development in the West to spark a comparable development in the

former Soviet Union. There really was an almost pure actionreaction phenomenon at work here. The Su-24 was an answer

to the F-111, and the Su-25 was a reaction to the A-9/A-10

development. It’s interesting that they would react to an aircraft type rather than to a mission need, but that’s the way

their requirements have been generated. The operational

application of the Su-27, first and foremost, was in a home

defense role, particularly in the far north. I’m speculating a bit

here now, but one of its principal missions, I believe, was to

force SAC [Strategic Air Command] bombers down to low altitude far enough out that they would not be within range to

release their cruise missiles.

With regard to Frontal Aviation’s use, would Su-27s have been

employed to escort Backfire bombers, for example, in a war in

central Europe? You can probably find doctrinal writings that

would suggest the possibility of that. They spoke repeatedly of

soprovozhdeniye, or “accompaniment.” But don’t forget that

the Backfire and the Flanker are operated by separate service

branches in the air force. There is not a great deal of crosscommunication between those two communities. To my

knowledge there has not been, until recently at least, anything

like the kind of escort role demonstrated in practice that’s

been occasionally hinted at in the doctrinal literature. The Su27s that the Soviets deployed in central Europe, in Poland, for

example, were mainly there in a battlefield air support role. I

believe their mission was to provide offensive CAP [combat air

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SOVIET AIRPOWER IN THE NEW RUSSIAN MIRROR
patrol] for the Fencers that were targeted against NATO air

bases in Western Europe.

Group Capt Andrew Vallance: Ben, just one comment and then

a question. The comment concerns Partnership for Peace. In

my previous appointment, I was chief of military cooperation

at SHAPE [Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe] and

therefore responsible for the military element of the

Partnership for Peace program. I would have to say that for

two years we worked very hard with it, but that we produced

a lemon. We knew that, first of all, we had to engage Russia as

the key to those 22 countries in central Eastern Europe. That

was the key to it, but finding a center of gravity for meaningful military cooperation proved elusive. The second element,

finding concrete proposals for future cooperation, again

proved elusive because it’s very difficult to find something

substantial which is acceptable to the 16 NATO nations and

also acceptable to the 22 nations of the central Eastern

European bloc. I think from that point of view, Partnership for

Peace is going to continue to be a very difficult program to

mount, particularly if we can’t identify a center of gravity that

we can deal with in Russia itself.

My question concerns threats that the Russian Air Force sees

and, in particular, the potential threat from Ukraine. Do they

see a threat? And if so, how do they intend to cope with it?

Dr. Lambeth: First on your comment. I can appreciate how, as

an operator who had to deal with such things on a daily basis,

you would encounter the experiences you described. I received

a letter a couple of weeks ago from the US defense attaché in

Moscow commenting on some work I had done espousing the

development of an East-West strategic partnership. He

remarked that it’s all well and good to talk at a macro level

about these great ideas, but that as he’d learned from his dayto-day experiences, the devil will be in the details. We don’t

readily appreciate these difficulties until we’ve had to deal with

them face to face.

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One of the problems the Western democracies confront in trying to nurture this kind of a dialogue with the Russians is getting over some profound institutional paranoia that has developed over a lifetime of conditioning. The Russians are still

operating very much in a mode in which old secrecy habits die

hard. One of the biggest hurdles I’ve worked hard to surmount

in my own dealings with Russian military aviation professionals has been to be completely above board and honest about

what I’m trying to accomplish, lest I project a false impression

that I’m out there working someone else’s collection requirements list. Clearly, that’s not what it’s all about, but those

kinds of suspicions are going to take time to get over. I would

venture to guess that this lies partly at the root of the problem

you’ve described.

With regard to threats, you’ve got to have threats to justify

forces, and the Russians will develop notional adversaries to

the extent necessary to justify their budget requests. I believe,

however, that the problem with Ukraine first and foremost is a

political and strategic one rather than one that would, in the

foreseeable future, call for the application of force. The

Russians are rightly concerned over Ukraine’s retention of

nuclear weapons. Nobody wants more than the Russians to

see those forces stood down and returned to Russia. I am not

a closely read specialist in Russian-Ukrainian political relations, but what I see is a Ukraine tottering today on the brink

of economic and political collapse. One possibility we could

observe over the next couple of years is a slow but steady

process of economic reintegration of Ukraine with Russia. In

other words, Ukraine’s lack of autarky could drive the threat

away. Whatever the case, it is a turbulent cauldron of political

chemistry right now. Anybody who would venture to speculate

on the outcome would be rolling the dice.

Notes

1. This chapter is an excerpt from a more extensive study on the outlook

for military aviation in post-Soviet Russia that is now being written by the

author under the auspices of RAND’s Project Air Force. Any views expressed

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SOVIET AIRPOWER IN THE NEW RUSSIAN MIRROR
are solely those of the author and should not be attributed to RAND or any

of its governmental or private research sponsors.

2. Von Hardesty, Red Phoenix: The Rise of Soviet Air Power, 1941–1945

(Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1982), 7.

3. Because of the USSR’s western strategic orientation, much of the best

of its combat equipment had been fielded on Ukrainian soil. As a result,

Ukraine emerged from the union’s collapse, among other things, as the possessor of over 1,000 military aircraft, including between one-quarter and

one-third of the former Soviet air force’s MiG-29s and Su-27s, one-half of its

40 Il-78 tankers, almost one-half of its Il-76 transports, and all but two of

its serviceable Tu-160 bombers. These assets instantly endowed Ukraine

with an air force considerably larger than that of any West European country, including Britain, France, and Germany.

4. Col (Res.) V. Dudin, “Through a Mass of Stereotypes,” Aviatsiia i kosmonavtika, no. 1, January 1992, 4–6.

5. This notwithstanding the fact that as first deputy VVS commander,

Shaposhnikov reportedly headed the inquiry into Zuyev’s theft of the MiG29. See Alexander Zuyev, with Malcolm McConnell, Fulcrum (New York:

Warner Books, 1992), 354. Later, Shaposhnikov even claimed his readiness

to attack the Kremlin had the putschists sought to take the white house by

force. See Michael Evans, “Marshal Was Ready to Bomb Kremlin,” London

Times, 13 September 1991.

6. By far the richest English-language account is David Remnick, Lenin’s

Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire (New York: Random House, 1993).

Shaposhnikov has told this story himself in a remarkably honest retrospective on his experiences during the coup and the subsequent collapse of communism in his recently-published Vybor: zapiski glavnokomanduiushchego

(A Time for Choice: Notes of a Commander in Chief) (Moscow: Nezavisimoye

Izdatel’stvo PIK, 1993).

7. See Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), Eurasia Report, 3

September 1991, 54.

8. That event and its background are chronicled in Georgy Baidukov,

Russian Lindbergh: The Life of Valery Chkalov (Washington, D.C.:

Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991). See also Valery P. Chkalov, V. P.

Chkalov (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Planeta, 1984).

9. For a particularly engrossing memoir, see Marshal of Aviation E. I.

Savitskii, Polveka s nebom (A Half-Century With the Sky) (Moscow: Voen

izdat, 1988).

10. R. A. Mason and John W. R. Taylor, Aircraft, Strategy and Operations

of the Soviet Air Force (London: Jane’s Publishing Co., 1986), 9–10.

11. To cite but one example from the pre-glasnost era, the air commander for the North Caucasus Military District, in criticizing an exercise

failure that stemmed from blind pursuit of rote procedures and an incapacity for improvising, faulted his pilots in 1976 for having “simply not thought

out the situation. How can one go into real combat,” he lamented, “without

the necessary skills?” Lt Gen A. Pavlov, “The Inexhaustible Reserve,”

Krasnaia zvezda, 4 August 1976.

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12. Capt Rana J. Pennington, USAF, “Closing the Tactics Gap,” Air Force

Magazine, March 1984, 83. A year later, Captain Pennington similarly wrote

that “rather than painting the Soviet pilot as ten feet tall, we have consistently depicted him as a midget—a dwarf at best. It has long been a matter

of reassurance to the Air Force that no matter how many aircraft the Soviets

had, the poor skills of their pilots would significantly hamper their ability to

use those aircraft effectively.” “Another Look at the Soviet Fighter Pilot,” Air

Force Magazine, April 1985, 83.

13. Soviet Military Power, 1983 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing

Office, 1983), 43.

14. Lt Col Mike Press, “Aggressor Reflections,” USAF Fighter Weapons

Review, Summer 1981, 4.

15. Michael Skinner, USAFE: A Primer of Modern Air Combat in Europe

(Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1983), 122.

16. This image was reinforced by the manner in which Soviet air defense

forces downed Korean Air Lines Flight 007 in September 1983. As indicated

in detail by the published transcript of air-to-ground communications

between the Su-15 pilot and his GCI controller, the intercept was a model of

confusion and directed behavior from start to finish. It took the pilot a full

14 minutes to down the 747 after his initial reported visual contact. During

this period, he was vectored all over the sky by his controller even as he had

the aircraft in sight. At one point during the intercept, he closed to within

6,000 feet of the target. But he never positively identified it or showed any

other sign of initiative in the situation. See “US Intercepts Soviet Fighter

Transmissions,” Aviation Week & Space Technology, 12 September 1983.

17. Robert L. Shaw, Fighter Combat: Tactics and Maneuvering (Annapolis:

US Naval Institute Press, 1985), x.

18. Bill Gunston, Mikoyan MiG-21 (London: Osprey Publishing, 1986),

36, 47, 64, 88–92.

19. The Finnish air force, which also acquired (and continues to operate)

the MiG-21, reports a similar experience. According to its current commander, Maj Gen Heikki Nikunen, introductory training on the aircraft for

the initial Finnish cadre at Lugovaya included no tactical flying and proceeded so slowly that the Finnish team leader finally called a halt to it and

brought the group home to complete the process on its own. The MiG-21

was thoroughly evaluated at the Finnish air force flight test center, and optimum tactics were then developed based on those results (letter from General

Nikunen to the author, 16 April 1993).

20. This aspect of the Soviet approach to flight training has more

recently come under criticism. As one instructor wrote in 1987, “Obviously

the ‘grandfather’ approach, which entails drilling students with the notorious ‘do as I do’ principle, is a significant shortcoming in cadet training.

Experience shows that in flight training, the instructor pilot should devote

more attention to letting the cadet develop his habits independently under

the instructor’s supervision.” Lt Col N. Litvinchuk and Maj V. Kozlov, “How

Do You Adapt to an Airplane?” Aviatsiia i kosmonavtika, no. 11, November

1987, 17.

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SOVIET AIRPOWER IN THE NEW RUSSIAN MIRROR
21. Col Gen Petr S. Deinekin and Gen Merrill A. McPeak, interviewed by

Yelena Agapova, “The Skies Are the Same—the Concerns Different,”

Krasnaia zvezda, 26 October 1991.

22. Radio Moscow Domestic Service, 30 November 1991.

23. Lt Col V. Rudenko, “Russia Scrambles the Tu-160,” Krasnaia zvezda,

4 August 1992.

24. John Lloyd, “Sharp Cut in Soviet Defense Orders,” London Financial

Times, 28 October 1991.

25. Nikolai Poroskov, “The Time for Stating Problems is Past. Initiatives

and Quests for Reserves Are What Is Needed,” Krasnaia zvezda, 9 December

1993.

26. Colonel General Deinekin, interviewed by Yu. Dmitriyev, “A Country

Without Wings? No,” Trud, 10 March 1992.

27. Lt Col A. Vetakh, ‘Waiting for an Aircraft: Combat Pilots Await Their

Turn,” Krasnaia zvezda, 15 May 1992.

28. Quoted in Vetakh, “Waiting for an Aircraft.”

29. Aviation Week & Space Technology, 11 January 1993. With the military’s loss of its privileged position and the fuel industry increasingly starved

for funds, the VVS’s fuel costs probably rose in parallel with those of the

civilian airline industry.

30. Maj Gen Vasily Kuznetsov, interview in “Inflation Devours the

Military Budget Before It Can Be Approved,” Krasnaia zvezda, 15 October

1992. Kuznetsov also noted that there were delays in pay raises and paycheck deliveries due to inflation, which had made it impossible for the

Defense Ministry to make good on decisions approved by the Supreme

Soviet. He further stated that there were no immediate savings to be had

from the massed discharge of officers, since it would cost R500 million to

cover terminal allowances for 10,000 officers released to the civilian sector.

31. General Deinekin has stated that in the best of times, he used to fly

500 hours a year when he was a line pilot in LRA. That would be a dream of

any LRA pilot today. After I flew a MiG-23UB with the Mikoyan Design

Bureau at the Zhukovskii Flight Test Center in August 1993, my pilot, Col

Vladimir Gorbunov, told me that there was no shortage of jet fuel per se in

Russia today. The problem, he said, was a shortage of adequate financing to

pay for it.

32. Report by ITAR-TASS correspondent Vadim Byrkin, 16 February

1993.

33. Lt Gen A. Tarasenko, interviewed by Colonels V. Markushin and S.

Pashayev, “In a Holding Pattern: Comments on Problems of the 16th Air

Army,” Krasnaia zvezda, 27 March 1992.

34. Quoted in Aleksandr Manushkin, “Things Are Never Boring for the

Duty General,” Krasnaia zvezda, 23 October 1993.

35. Weather may have been an extenuating factor here, at least at the

margins, considering that the sortie number provided by General Slukhai

was recorded in October, while that given by General Deinekin was in

August, when flying conditions in Russia are best. Nevertheless, the difference speaks for itself. General Deinekin further noted that on that same

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flying day in August 1992, 980 sorties were reported by VPVO, 409 by the

Strategic Rocket Forces, and 432 by the navy. Deinekin, interviewed by

Yelena Agapova, “A Russia Without Wings Is Not Russia. It Does and Will

Have Them,” Krasnaia zvezda, 15 August 1992.

36. Colonel General Prudnikov, interviewed by Col A. Belousov and Maj

A. Ivanov, “A Unified System Is Needed,” Krasnaia zvezda, 11 April 1992.

37. Militarywide, Russian operational units today are reportedly manned

at only around 60 percent of their assigned strength on the average.

Statement by the chief of the General Staff, Col Gen Mikhail Kolesnikov, cited

in Viktor Litovkin, “The Army Pins Hopes on the Help of Legislators . . . and

Women,” Izvestiia, 17 October 1992. During the first half of 1992, nearly 70

percent of Russian youths who were eligible for service dodged the draft.

Sergei Ostanin, ITAR-TASS, 15 October 1992.

38. Lt Col A. Vetakh, “Donor Aircraft,” Krasnaia zvezda, 15 April 1992.

Colonel General Kalugin singled out the Tu-160 as a maintenance nightmare because of its unusual complexity. The aircraft requires a dedicated

air base equipped with special ground-support equipment, high-pressure

hydraulics, and an extensive supply train. General Kalugin complained that

it is still being debugged of design problems and that a more user-friendly

and less expensive bomber is needed.

39. Comment on a letter to the editor from a Zhukovskii Air Force

Engineering Academy student by Col A. Andryushkov, “We Are Flying Less

and Less. We Are Crashing More Often. Will Russia Become Wingless?”

Krasnaia zvezda, 19 June 1992.

40. Colonel General Shaposhnikov, interviewed by Yelena Agapova, “So

When Will Pilots Get Apartments?” Krasnaia zvezda, 3 March 1991.

41. Lt Gen Gennady Benov, interview on the program “I Serve the Soviet

Union,” Moscow television, 18 August 1991.

42. Col V. Sobolev, “Stop Teaching in a Retrograde Way,” Aviatsiia i kosmonavtika, no. 3, March 1991, 4–6.

43. Lt Col Nikolai Pechen, “With What Do We Fill the Void?” Vestnik protivovozdushnoi oborony, no. 9, September 1993, 30.

44. Daniel Schneider, “Russian Fighter Pilots Wax Nostalgic for Days of

Top Gun Status,” The Christian Science Monitor, 5 August 1992. Defense

Minister Grachev has tried hard to do something about this. In early 1993,

he announced that pay for junior officers had been increased six-fold, and

12-fold for those posted in the far north. Grachev interviewed by V. Starkov

in “General Grachev on the Military and on the Soldier,” Argumenty i fakty,

no. 5, February 1993. Grachev also revealed a becoming disdain for “looking good” for show in his barbed comment that “as VDV [Airborne Troops]

commander, I got them out of the habit of painting everything for my arrival.

Whenever I smelled fresh paint, I would give the unit commander hell.”

45. General Deinekin, interview in Krylia rodiny, March 1993.

46. Lt Col V. Vysotskii, “A Stumbling Block, Or Problems of Combat

Training,” Aviatsiia i kosmonavtika, no. 11, November 1991, 4–7.

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SOVIET AIRPOWER IN THE NEW RUSSIAN MIRROR
47. Col V. Shevstsov, interview in, “Pilots Who Never Developed: Can We

Halt the Outflow of Cadets from Military Schools?” Krasnaia zvezda, 12

March 1991.

48. Things at the end of 1991 were a little better in VPVO. According to

its chief of fighter aviation, then-Lt Gen Vladimir Andreyev, there was a maximum of 1.5 applicants competing for each position. But this was not much

of an improvement over the VVS’s situation. General Andreyev said that in

1966, when he entered the VPVO flight school at Armavir, he had already

flown 40 hours on light aircraft in the Lugansk DOSAAF aero club and that

the VVAUL only accepted applicants with prior DOSAAF training. He also

noted that the competition then was seven applicants per slot. Lt Gen

Vladimir I. Andreyev, interviewed by Col A. Andryushkov, “We Need to Know

the Threat By Sight,” Krasnaia zvezda, 22 November 1991.

49. General Deinekin told me in December 1991 that he would not hold

back any officer who wished to leave the VVS.

50. “Military Pilots Are Reluctant to Serve,” Izvestiia, 4 July 1992.

51. Maj Gen Ya. Yanakov, “From the Retrograde to the Modern,” Aviatsiia

i kosmonavtika, no. 1, January 1992, 2–3.

52. Col Gen of Aviation Petr S. Deinekin, interview in “A Time for

Fundamental Solutions,” Aviatsiia i kosmonavtika, no. 2, February 1991,

2–3.

53. General Deinekin, interviewed by N. Belan, “Gaining Altitude,”

Sovetskaia Rossiya, 6 September 1991. General Deinekin recalled how in

earlier days the VVS might wish to advance a promising young officer, only

to hit a brick wall in the party’s Central Committee, where “some young man

in a gray suit and blue shirt would pick up a special telephone and say that

this candidacy did not suit them.”

54. Quoted in Alexander Velovich, “Soviet Forces Face Restructure,”

Flight International, 25 September–1 October 1991. Later, Deinekin added

with pride that “the spirit of democracy is inherent in aviators.” Interviewed

by Yelena Agapova, “The Skies Are the Same.” He also affirmed, during a

press interview in Germany, that the new leadership in Moscow had broken

with communism once and for all. Rudiger Moniac, “All Commitments

Regarding Germany Will Be Precisely Honored,” Die Welt, 12 December

1991.

55. Yanakov, 2–3.

56. Col Gen Viktor Kot, interviewed by Sergei Babich, “The Air Force

Acquires a New Image,” Krasnaia zvezda, 27 January 1994.

57. ITAR-TASS World Service, 24 December 1993.

58. A detailed assessment of the Soviet and Russian reaction to the Gulf

War is presented in Benjamin S. Lambeth, Desert Storm and Its Meaning:

The View from Moscow, RAND Report R-4164-AF (Santa Monica, Calif.:

RAND, 1992).

59. Gen Konstantin Kobets, interview in “The Future of the Armed

Forces,” Voenniye znaniye, no. 1, January 1992.

60. Colonel General Deinekin, interview in “Who Will Take Up the

Sword?” Krylia rodiny, March 1993.

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Air Operations in the Gulf War

Sir Patrick Hine

First, let me say how pleased I am to have this opportunity

to address you on air operations in the Persian Gulf War. My

own role as joint commander of the British forces came right

at the end of 40-plus years service in the RAF, and it was particularly gratifying to take part in a war that was won principally through the effective application of airpower.

Most of you will have heard of Gen Jan Smuts—a South

African. In 1917 he commented with great prescience that “the

day may not be far off when aerial operations become the principal operations of war to which the older forms of military and

naval operations may become secondary and subordinate.”

However, airpower has not until recently become the dominant factor in modern warfare that Smuts foresaw. That is

because technology hitherto could never quite match adopted

concepts of air operations. But there can be no doubt following

the Gulf War that airpower, correctly applied, can now enable

wars to be won, even against enemies with large forces, quickly,

decisively, and cheaply in terms of friendly lives lost. Certainly,

it is no longer possible to conduct effective land or naval operations without first creating air superiority. Airpower is pervasive, and at last it is beginning to realize its full potential.

The initial reaction amongst the Gulf states to Saddam

Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990 was one of

deep shock. But on 6 August, by which time Iraq was beginning to mass some of its 11 divisions and 200,000 troops in

Kuwait along the border with Saudi Arabia, King Fahd asked

both the United States and United Kingdom to deploy forces.

Thus began Operation Desert Shield, or Operation Granby as

the British called it.

The American response to the wider threat from Saddam

was rapid and impressive, with both air and ground forces

arriving in Saudi Arabia within 48 hours of the decision to

deploy. On 9 August the first (15th) wing of F-15s began flying

combat air patrols, having flown nonstop from the United

339
States for more than 14 hours and with seven aerial refuelings. Initial British forces consisted of a squadron of Tornado

F-3s (air defense) and a squadron of Jaguar ground attack aircraft. The Tornados were flying combat air patrols within two

hours of arrival at Dhahran.

Central Command’s forward headquarters, under Gen

Charles “Chuck” Horner pending the arrival of Gen Norman

Schwarzkopf later in the month, was set up in Riyadh in the

Saudi Ministry of Defense and Aviation, with its much smaller

British counterpart being located nearby.

Time was needed to build up the Coalition’s ground forces

to a level where Norman Schwarzkopf could be confident of

defending Saudi Arabia against an Iraqi attack, and thus for

the first two months of the crisis, the allies would have had to

rely very heavily on airpower to stem any Iraqi advance. That

it would have succeeded, I have no doubt for the American

build-up of air forces (including those on two aircraft carriers)

was quick and effective. Moreover, the RAF deployed two

squadrons of Tornado GR-1s with their JP 233 specialist airfield denial weapons in the early weeks of the crisis.

Planning of an air campaign to defeat Iraq and to oust

Saddam’s forces from Kuwait began very early on and by the

end of August was well advanced. The responsibility for drawing up and developing the air campaign plan (ACP) in theater

was vested by General Horner (the joint force air component

commander) in one general (now lieutenant general), Buster

Glosson. He and his number two, Lt Col David Deptula, did a

splendid job.

The objectives of the ACP were simply stated but very clear:

• Establish air superiority

• Isolate and incapacitate the Iraqi leadership

• Destroy Iraq’s nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC)

warfare capability

• Eliminate Iraq’s offensive military capability

• Eject the Iraqi army from Kuwait

The planning concepts adopted by Buster Glosson and his

team were as follows:

• Create strategic paralysis among the enemy leadership

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• Destroy the enemy’s will and capacity to fight

• Conduct the campaign over a relatively short time span

(weeks not months)

• Target the Saddam regime, not the Iraqi people

• Minimize civilian casualties and collateral damage

• Pit Coalition strengths against Iraqi weaknesses

The aim was to create strategic paralysis by making it

impossible or very difficult for the Iraqi leadership to communicate with or influence either its military forces or the civilian

populace, followed by the destruction of the enemy’s capacity

and will to fight. Successful prosecution of that aim through

intensive air attacks, day and night, would, it was thought,

limit the war to no more than 60 days. There was no intention,

unlike in Vietnam, of applying airpower (or any other combat

power) against Iraq incrementally—force would be used massively from the outset in order to maximize the shock effect.

It was the Iraqi regime that was targeted, not the Iraqi people with whom the Coalition had no quarrel. In fact, the planners went to great lengths to minimize civilian casualties and

collateral damage. Finally, it was important to pit allied

strengths against Iraqi weaknesses and, by observing Suntzu’s guidelines for warfare, not to allow the enemy to fight the

battle he wanted.

It is interesting to observe that the focus of the air campaign

planners was consistent with some principles of airpower

drawn up by Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Hugh (later

Lord) Trenchard when he became the RAF’s first chief of the

air staff in 1918:

• Obtain mastery of the air, and . . . keep it

• Destroy the enemy’s means of production and communications by strategic bombing

• Maintain the battle without any interference by the enemy

• Prevent the enemy from being able to maintain the battle

Iraq’s critical nodes were judged to be its leadership, military, and infrastructure. Large and quite well-equipped armed

forces, and a huge military infrastructure, including the

capacity to develop and produce nuclear, biological, and

chemical weapons, had been built up over the previous decade

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or more, together with extensive command, control, and communication (C3

) and integrated air defense systems. However,

C3 was highly centralized under Saddam himself, which was a

major weakness that was exploited to the full in the early

hours and days of the air war.

It was against this background then that the ACP was

drawn up. By mid-September it was ready and had been

briefed to Schwarzkopf and in Washington. It was basically a

three-phased plan:

• Phase 1: Strategic air operations against Iraq

• Phase 2: Suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) in the

Kuwait Theater of Operations (KTO)

• Phase 3: Destroying the battlefield

General Glosson’s instructions were to prepare an ACP that

was stand-alone and not associated with any Coalition ground

campaign. But when I first saw General Schwarzkopf around

the beginning of September, he briefed me in outline on an

ACP that had a fourth phase, which was “Air support of

ground operations.” He also referred to phase 3 as

“Preparation of the battlefield”—a small but not unimportant

difference from “Destroying.”

I formed a close relationship with Schwarzkopf over the

months that followed. I both liked and respected him, and I

know that he understood the importance of airpower and how

vital it was to him as the overall commander. I remember asking him at that first meeting how he saw an offensive operation going if political pressure and economic sanctions failed

to persuade Saddam to withdraw from Kuwait. He answered

that if the president required him to mount such an operation,

then he would insist on:

• Having sufficient ground forces available, and properly

supported logistically, to complete the task quickly, and

• To achieve that objective with minimum allied casualties,

the air force would be required to reduce the enemy’s combat strength—and here he specifically mentioned tanks

and artillery—by some 50 percent during the preparation

of the battlefield phase.

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He added that, once his overall operational plan had been

approved by the president, he would insist on minimal political interference with its execution and look to Gen Colin

Powell, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff in

Washington, to shield him from such pressures. Schwarzkopf

never wavered from these conditions, although at times he

came under considerable pressure to do so from the

Washington end.

By the end of October, the American force level in the

Persian Gulf had built up to its planned 230,000 level. The

British 7th Armoured Brigade Group and many other

Coalition forces were also in theater. At a meeting I had with

Schwarzkopf towards the end of October, I discussed with him

the operational plan to regain Kuwait.

I explained that we, in my headquarters in the United

Kingdom, had been doing some serious thinking about this.

Options we had considered included a wide “left hook” maneuver by the land forces, with the disposition of Saddam’s elite

Republican Guard forces a key consideration there. We did not

favor amphibious operations because of the possible high

casualties. Overall, there were risks associated with a precipitate land action because of the adverse force ratios and the

difficulty of protecting our flanks, notwithstanding the

assumption that we would have air superiority. General

Schwarzkopf’s response was that he held similar views. The

risk was that the Coalition could get bogged down in a war of

attrition with mounting casualties.

There was a growing realization in Washington that economic sanctions were unlikely to work within a realistic

timescale and that any Coalition military operation would

need to be mounted during the coming winter.

But there was reluctance by some in the US administration

(Scowcroft) to authorize further extensive reinforcements.

Schwarzkopf asked: Couldn’t the air forces weaken Saddam

Hussein to the point where only mop-up operations would be

required? What was my view?

I replied that airpower might well defeat Iraqis without the

need for a ground campaign, but was it sensible to rely on

that? Saddam Hussein had proved to be an obdurate leader

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who had shown that he was prepared to sustain high casualties and to use chemical weapons. He might not buckle under

a heavy weight of air attack, and then the Coalition would

have to go in with the ground forces available and could face

mounting casualties. What would the effect be on public support for the war, particularly in the United States? Frankly,

while I was confident that allied airpower would prove very

effective, if not decisive, I felt that the risks of going to war with

such an adverse ground force ratio were too high. We would

almost certainly only get one shot at removing Saddam from

Kuwait. We had to take advantage of the winter window of

opportunity—before Ramadan and before temperatures rose

significantly (which would increase the chemical threat)—and

we also had to win quickly and with minimum loss of Coalition

lives. So I favored further reinforcement.

Schwarzkopf had already come to the same conclusion and

had secured Colin Powell’s support for major US reinforcement of the gulf, and notably by armored forces. He thought

that despite some still conflicting views, the president would

agree, which he did two days later. As for a further British contribution, Schwarzkopf put as his top priority a second

armored brigade and then yet more Tornado GR-1s.

The British government agreed to both requests a few days

later, and our ground forces were brought up to divisional

strength.

The allied reinforcements, which included the powerful US

VII Corps from Germany, could not be all in theater before

mid-February.

Diplomatic activity and the embargo operations continued

but failed to persuade Saddam to withdraw from Kuwait. The

UN deadline of 15 January passed. There was concern that

Saddam might announce a partial withdrawal or just start to

withdraw. President George S. Bush did not want to delay, so

air operations began on the night of 16–17 January.

The Coalition had very clear advantages in the air:

• The Iraqi air force had no track record.

• The Coalition had better aircraft, weapons, command and

control (C2

), doctrine, tactics, training, and a 3:1 numerical advantage.

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• The advanced technology developed during and since the

Vietnam War, particularly with regard to precision-guided

munitions (PGM), stealth, electronic warfare (EW), and

SEAD, was clearly going to be a big plus. Also in the

Coalition’s favor was the high reliability of allied aircraft

and their round-the-clock/night capability.

Despite these advantages in the air, the threat faced by the

Coalition was numerically formidable. At H hour, we faced a

threat array twice as dense as Eastern Europe during the Cold

War including:

• Seven thousand radar missiles

• Nine thousand infrared (IR) missiles

• Eight hundred fighter aircraft

• The fourth largest army in the world

• Chemical and biological weapons

• Ballistic missiles

It was not a benign environment.

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Table 1

Strike Forces

United States United Kingdom Other Allied

98 F-14 18 Tornado F-3 85 F-5

96 F-15C 40 Tornado GR-1 82 F-15

48 F-15E 12 Jaguar 12 F-16

210 F-16 6 Buccaneer 24 CF-18

162 F/A-18 70 Mirage

64 F-111 8 Jaguar

36 F-117 57 Tornado

105 A-6 20 A-4

22 A-7

60 AV-8

144 A-10

42 B-52

4 AC-130
Against the threat, the Coalition had almost 1,750 fighter,

ground attack, and operational support aircraft. The cutting

edge of the offensive element was the F-117s, F-15Es, F-111s,

and Tornado GR-1s, especially for the strategic operations

against Iraq, while the EF-111 Ravens, F-4G Wild Weasels, and

Alarm-equipped Tornados were amongst the key support assets.

For several weeks before the war started, Iraq was shown

the same allied air activity picture every night, which included

quite regular force packages, including tankers, that flew to

within about 25 miles of the Saudi-Iraqi border. The idea was

to achieve the maximum tactical surprise when the initial

raids started on 17 January by presenting enemy radars with

broadly the same picture. But there was, of course, a great

deal more that he did not see.

The initial raids were as follows:

• H hour minus 30 minutes: Cruise missiles launched from

the Persian Gulf and Red Sea.

• Ten minutes later: Eight Apaches took out two forward radar

sites in southern Iraq to allow F-15Es through to attack

static Scud sites (which were pretargeted against Israel).

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Table 2

Support Forces

United States United Kingdom Other Allied

48 F-4G 6 GR-1 (Alarm) 5 E-3

18 EF-111 6 GR-1A 20 C-130

50 EA-6 9 VC-10 7 KC-130

7 EC-130 7 C-130 5 C-135

10 E-3 4 Nimrod

6 RC-135

9 U-2R/TR-1

18 RF-4

224 KC-135/10

128 C-130

40 SOF
• The F-117s went in—we believe totally unobserved—to

drop the first bombs on key C2 targets in and around

Baghdad—at H hour.

• A few minutes later the cruise missiles began to arrive.

• Twenty to twenty-five minutes after that, the EW packages

(there were two main ones) arrived to suppress enemy

defenses in preparation for the strike aircraft.

• The raids by the initial attack packages.

The Iraqi integrated air defense system was severely disrupted—indeed almost neutralized as far as providing effective

C2 was concerned—within the first 24 to 36 hours. Furthermore, the SAMs were rendered virtually ineffective by a combination of hard- and soft-kill SEAD.

The Iraqi main operating bases were attacked by force packages that included Tornado GR-1s dropping JP 233s from very

low level—the aim being to disrupt operations and to reduce sortie rates, rather than to close the airfields altogether which, given

their size, was beyond the capability of the resources available.

The Iraqi air force virtually failed to show, except for a few

air defense fighters. Lacking any kind of effective control, they

were quickly picked off by Coalition fighters, mainly F-15s

directed by AWACS. After three to four days, it was clear that

Saddam was holding his air force back for the ground battle,

which he expected to begin within a week or so. His ploy was

almost certainly to draw the Coalition into a battle of attrition,

inflict high casualties, and then withdraw with honor.

The Coalition’s response was to bring forward its attacks

against Iraqi air force hardened aircraft shelters (HAS), using

smart bombs. As the HAS destruction rate mounted, many of

Iraq’s remaining most capable aircraft were flown to Iran,

never to return. The air superiority quickly attained became

air supremacy.

After that, there was a change of emphasis in the follow-on air

attacks that were sustained until the end of the war. The aim

was to dismantle as much of the huge Iraqi military infrastructure as we could—NBC facilities, C3 nodes, the power grid, petroleum refineries and storage, et cetera—while in parallel interdicting the KTO and preparing the battlefield—what General

Powell appositely called “cutting him off and killing him.”

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There were, of course, some problems, particularly with the

weather, which in terms of cloud cover below 10,000 feet was

about three times worse than normal (39 percent of the time),

and suppressing the Scuds. The main difficulty here was locating the mobile Scud launchers and then attacking them before

they had fired and retreated to some kind of hiding place.

However, a combination of keeping up an intensive effort against

the Scud, the deployment to Israel and perceived success of the

Patriot missile, intense diplomatic pressure on Israel to stay out

of the war and not play into Saddam’s hands, and the notable

part played by British and American special forces in western

Iraq, enabled us to contain this largely “political” weapon threat.

The progressive attrition of Iraq’s ground forces in the KTO

gathered pace in the two weeks leading up to the commencement of the land battle. The B-52s did an excellent job in

undermining the morale of enemy troops, particularly those in

the forward infantry divisions, whilst the smart bombers

steadily took their toll of his armor and artillery. It was, however, very difficult to get accurate bomb damage assessment

(BDA) from overhead imagery—to assist in determining

whether or not we had reduced the combat strength of the key

Iraqi divisions, notably the Republican Guard, down to

General Schwarzkopf’s stipulated 50 percent. This was particularly frustrating, but by 21 February the general judgment

was that the air forces had adequately prepared the battlefield,

and the decision was taken to launch the ground campaign. It

began on 24 February and was all over in four days. Very considerable direct air support of Coalition land forces was given,

despite at times very poor weather.

The Gulf War is sometimes referred to as the 100-hour war,

but in reality it was the 1,100-hour air war that enabled the

Coalition to defeat the world’s fourth largest army and sixth

largest air force in only six weeks and with the loss of only 240

allied lives. This war clearly illustrated the tremendous impact

that modern airpower can have in major conflict. There is no

other way to keep casualties down which, given the glare of

publicity today from the media, especially TV, is essential to

maintain public support.

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I should like to finish off by touching on what I saw as the

main air lessons to emerge from the Gulf War.

But first, let me pay tribute to the Americans for providing

outstanding leadership and higher direction of the war. That

they were able to lead such a disparate Coalition so successfully throughout a lengthy crisis and a major conflict was a

tribute to skillful diplomacy and to General Schwarzkopf’s

qualities as the overall commander. From the president downwards, through Secretary of State James Baker, Secretary of

Defense Dick Cheney, and Chairman Powell of the Joint

Chiefs, the administration functioned very efficiently—helped,

it has to be said, by some gross misjudgments by Saddam

Hussein who, if he had had six feet, would have shot himself

through each more than once! But without that firm American

leadership, and the clear articulation of political objectives

and military aims, the Coalition’s forces would not have been

anything like as cohesive and successful as they were.

At the operational level, we saw a classic example of centralized and effective planning and control of air operations. The air

effort was sharply focused, firmly directed, and well executed by

professional operators whose skills had been developed and

honed through realistic and varied training. The emphasis on

flag exercises, air combat maneuvering, electronic warfare

training, and tactical leadership courses really paid off. The lesson I draw from this is that we cut back on training at our peril.

Next, airpower certainly came of age, largely as a result of

technology at last being able to underpin our air doctrine, tactics, training, and professional skills.

Through satellites, high- and low-flying reconnaissance

systems, and ELINT and SIGINT aircraft, the Coalition was

supplied at the strategic level with a diverse and virtually constant flow of intelligence. AWACS provided airborne early

warning and control for our force packages over Iraq and

Kuwait, and the new Joint Surveillance Target Attack and

Radar System (JSTARS), together with ABC3 Hercules,

enabled us to allocate offensive air support aircraft in the

KTO to best effect. The use of specialist EW and SEAD aircraft

helped enormously to keep the attrition rate of allied aircraft

down to an almost unbelievable figure of 0.035 percent over

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about 110,000 offensive sorties. Thirty-nine aircraft were

lost. The breakdown is given in table 3.

The extensive use of precision-guided weapons enabled the

allied air forces to inflict high levels of destruction and damage against key point targets, with minimum loss of civilian

lives and collateral damage to civilian property. One interesting statistic: 10 percent of the munitions (all smart) did 75

percent of the damage.

Stealth, through F-117s which flew over 1,250 sorties without loss, proved its value. They were the only aircraft to attack

targets in downtown Baghdad, and on the crucial first night,

they achieved total surprise and, albeit representing only 2.5

percent of the force, hit 31 percent of the targets. While stealth

technology is likely to become cheaper in real terms over the

next 10 to 20 years, very few nations can at present afford it.

Moreover, it may be that effective counters to stealth—or some

facets of it—will be developed.

And so, force packaging and SEAD will remain essential

when mounting raids against versatile, layered, or point air

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Table 3

Aircraft Combat Losses

US Air Force US Navy Royal Air Force

3 A-10 5 A-6 6 Tornado

1 AC-130 1 F-14

1 F-4G 2 F/A-18

2 F-15E

5 F-16

2 OA-10 US Marines Other Allied Forces

6 AV-8 1 A-4

2 OV-10 1 F-5

1 Tornado

Totals: 30 US

6 UK

3 Other
defenses. But SEAD, unless it is totally effective, has the disadvantage of signaling the approach of the force package (or

gorilla as it is known), especially if used against point

defenses; and thus it needs to be applied with care if the

attacking aircraft are forced to operate at low level, as was the

case with the Tornado GR-1s when on JP 233 offensive counterair missions early on in the gulf air campaign.

Although a number of Coalition aircraft delivered dumb

bombs from medium altitude with praiseworthy accuracy, it

was only those with a precision-guidance capability that

achieved more damage. Without smart weapons, it is simply

not possible to conduct effective offensive air operations from

medium altitude or to obtain the full cost benefits of airpower.

That and the need to design as much flexibility as possible into

weapon systems, so that they can be effectively dropped or

fired from either low or medium altitude, were two of the main

lessons to come home to me from the Gulf conflict. Moreover,

if they can be afforded, standoff smart weapons confer further

advantages in terms of reducing vulnerability to target

defenses or, alternatively, of extending effective range.

It is already possible, by using a combination of inertial and

GPS, to achieve standoff weapon accuracies of around five

meters without any in-flight correction by the crew; in short,

we are getting close to acquiring the adverse/all-weather

“smart” weapons capability for which the Gulf War clearly

showed the need. Yet greater accuracies can only be achieved

with some form of terminal seeker, such as laser radar, millimeter wave radar, synthetic aperture radar, double-imaging

IR, or IR-laser radar. I am confident that we will see this near

total all-weather precision-bombing capability in service in the

next five to 10 years.

The need to improve warhead effectiveness, particularly

against very hard concrete targets, was another requirement

to emerge from the Gulf conflict. And here, I believe that the

Royal Ordnance Division and BAe [British Aerospace] have

something promising to offer. I will not go into any detail, but

suffice to say that I expect to see a warhead developed before

the year 2000 that will enable a single 1,000-lb laser-guided

bomb to penetrate up to three meters of reinforced concrete.

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There are other lessons to emerge from the air operations in

the Gulf War, but time does not permit me to mention them

all. However, we can pursue any that are of particular interest

to you, either collectively or individually, during the question

period. I will cite but four.

First, the importance of space systems, be they for warning,

C3

, weather, navigation, the cuing of ground-based weapon

systems, or intelligence. Second, the importance of tactical

reconnaissance. The ball in the sky is not a panacea, and the

few all-weather tactical reconnaissance aircraft that we had in

the Persian Gulf more than proved their worth. Third, the need

to improve our BDA techniques and dissemination of the

results to the combat forces. Finally, the vital importance of

mobility in all its aspects—through air transport, both fixed

wing and rotary, and air-to-air refueling.

Let me conclude by saying that it was a privilege and honor

to command the British forces committed to the Gulf War and

to witness the total vindication of airpower. It was applied with

imagination and skill, exploiting in the process the capabilities

that advanced technology has at last provided. I can just see

Jan Smuts smiling with satisfaction from across the ether.

Discussion

Air Vice-Marshal Gary Beck: Could I ask you to elaborate on

the relationship between the air objectives for the campaign

and the overall strategic objectives?

Air Chief Marshal Hine: The strategic air campaign objectives

were established as early as August 1990. Air superiority is of

course a sine qua non for any further operations. That, and

the isolation and incapacitation of the Iraqi leadership, both

political and military, was always seen as something that

would be extremely important to do if we could, early in the

operation. The need whilst we were at war to do our best to

take out the NBC capability, both in terms of research and

storage facilities, was another top priority. The reduction of

the Iraqi ground forces’ offensive capabilities by 50 percent

was an extremely important consideration for Schwarzkopf.

And the final strategic objective, of course, was what was

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achieved: the ejection of the Iraqis from Kuwait. For all objectives, those strategic objectives of the air campaign plan never

varied. There was a difference of view between the air commanders, and maybe even Schwarzkopf, on the one hand, and

the corps commanders on the other, concerning how air

should be allocated in the final few days, in particular, to

attacking targets within the KTO. The air force wanted to continue to pound the Republican Guard, whereas I think the

corps and divisional commanders were very concerned about

pounding the forward artillery and the Iraqis’ defensive positions, which we thought were well prepared and through

which, of course, our own breakthrough would have to take

place. So I think it would be fair to say that there was some

difference of view there which was resolved.

I have heard one army commander say that when they went in

through the breach, they found that something like 80 percent

of the Iraqi artillery had been destroyed by the Coalition

ground force’s organic firepower from MLRS. Where the truth

lies I’m not too sure. But there was an awful lot of effort put

into the preparation of the battlefield and, through close

examination of all sorts of intelligence, Schwarzkopf and

Horner were, I think, quite convinced by the 20th of February

that the combat effectiveness, if not the numbers, of tanks and

artillery pieces was below the 50 percent level.

Squadron Leader Owen Hammond: You alluded to reports which

stated that despite an extensive air and special forces effort, not

one mobile Scud launcher was destroyed. Because the Iraqis

moved and buried chemical agents, the amount destroyed by air

could be measured in kilograms while the stocks amounted to

hundreds of tonnes. These unsuccessful efforts can be extended

to include biological and nuclear facilities. The survivability of

the Iraqi assets speaks volumes for the passive defense tenets of

mobility and concealment. You spoke of the need to improve

hardened target construction, but could you comment on passive defense and its use by the Iraqis?

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Air Chief Marshal Hine: You’re quite right in saying that airpower

was relatively ineffective in suppressing the mobile Scuds, and

since then a great deal of thought has gone into how that might

have been improved. We didn’t have too much trouble in finding

and attacking those NBC facilities which our intelligence had

already located. I think you were implying there was quite a lot

found after the war that we didn’t actually know about during

the war itself. I wasn’t quite sure about your question concerning passive defense. What are you after there?

Squadron Leader Hammond: The lessons you drew were all

based on active defense. I was wondering if you could draw

any lessons regarding passive defense. I know we had to

develop a new penetrator bomb to replace the I-2000 for

bunkers; for example, at one location there were eight bunkers

and only one was actually destroyed although three others

were extensively damaged. So hardened shelters were one

form of passive defense that was perhaps effective. Dispersal,

redundancy, concealment, deception, and mobility were used

quite effectively by the Iraqis, and I think that we often miss

this lesson by concentrating on our own side, as opposed what

happened on the other side.

Air Chief Marshal Hine: Well, the hardened aircraft shelters did

not, of course, prove to be effective as a passive defensive

measure. The deeper bunkers were extremely difficult to take

out, as you indicated, and it was only right at the end of the

war, actually the last day, that the Americans dropped the two

GBU-28 5,000-lb bombs which had been developed very

quickly over a matter of weeks and flown from the continental

United States to the theater. One of those two bombs actually

hit its target and took it out. I did refer during my presentation to the need to develop warheads which are more capable

of deep penetration into these very hard targets.

Dispersal, yes, the Iraqis used dispersal as one method of hiding their aircraft. They tended to put them into villages or

towns and close to schools where they knew it would be more

difficult for us to attack them, and indeed we let them go when

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they were so located. Dispersal can be effective, particularly in

forested areas, although infrared systems should help you find

what you’re looking for unless it’s been cold for many days.

Deception, yes, they were extremely successful with the mock

Scud launchers that they had, and we have some wonderful

gun-sight film of these mobile Scuds being destroyed by both

fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, only to find out after the

war that they were only dummies. So I think there is scope

there for us to learn some lessons.

Passive defense is something to which we in NATO have paid a

great deal of attention, particularly survival against chemical or

biological attack. I think it behooves all military forces to take

that kind of threat seriously. I was very surprised, frankly, that

chemical weapons were not used during this war. I was convinced that Saddam might well use them during the actual

breach operations, chemical artillery against our concentrated

forces in much the same way that he had previously in the

Iran-Iraq War. But this was a classic case of deterrence working. Saddam and his generals had worked out that if they were

to inflict very high casualties on Coalition forces through using

chemical weapons, they would get something back in spades.

Mr. Maurice Horsburgh: I’d appreciate a few comments about

the handling of the media. If I could go back firstly to the

Falklands War, we were subjected nightly to a barrage from a

civil servant who was capable of making any major victory

sound like the greatest defeat the British military had ever suffered. However, it seemed in the gulf that the military had got

their act together, and we saw excellent presentations nightly.

I would be interested in your comments on how the media

were handled during the Gulf War.

Air Chief Marshal Hine: Basically, in theater we had two levels

of media presence, one in Riyadh itself where there were the

daily press briefings to which you refer. The Americans held

one and the British held their own, and I think we were generally pretty successful in giving the media what they wanted.

The other level was the mobile reporting teams where you had

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media syndicates covering radio, television, and the newspapers out with the operational forces. They would be with a

brigade headquarters, for instance, or on board a ship or at an

air base, and they were free with little censorship to report on

what had happened and to interview the combat people, the

commanding officers, and so on and so forth. So I think on the

whole, the media this time were very much happier with the

way they were treated by the military than had been the case

in the Falklands.

The problem modern commanders face with the media is that

given the speed with which bad news can be relayed through

satellites into capitals, it can often be the case that the public

are seeing what is happening on some part of the battlefield

before commanders in the rear area, or certainly back in the

UK, or politicians back in the UK know what is happening. In

my case I had a very nervous secretary of state for defence who

was concerned about being bounced in the House of

Commons if something awful had happened, and he was not

in a position to make a statement. I had to say to him: don’t

phone up the brigade commanders or the battalion commanders, they’re in the middle of a battle; we will find out as soon

as we can for you exactly what’s happened, and in the meantime you’ll just have to face any press at home or colleagues in

the House of Commons and say you’ve only just heard about

it, you don’t know, but as soon as you get the information

you’ll make a statement. There’s no doubt that the politicians

are very nervous about the media portraying things that could

be happening in theater almost immediately and before they

can be properly briefed. This is a fact of life, and all commanders in future are going to have to fight modern war in the

full glare of publicity.

Air Marshal Ray Funnell: Firstly a comment on the last question,

and I bring this out in my paper on the Falklands War. It’s a comment from Sandy Woodward, and it’s something we all should

contemplate. What Sandy had to say came out of the Bluff Cove

disaster: one of the unfortunate side effects of having a battle

fought out in your living room is the impression it creates that

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what television shows is important and what it doesn’t show

must be unimportant. That isn’t necessarily the case.

My question is that while wars of the future may be fought in

very different geographic, diplomatic, and political circumstances to the Gulf War, two aspects are likely to be common

to almost any conflict. First, we are likely to fight as part of a

coalition; and second, the use of airpower is likely to be central to achieving the coalition’s operational and strategic aims.

The Americans find it difficult even to get their four air forces

to work together effectively, and in the gulf a number of other

air forces had to be integrated into a coherent whole. From

what I’ve read it wasn’t quite as easy, quite as simple, or quite

as effective as some people believe.

Air Chief Marshal Hine: I have no doubt there were one or two

cases where one or more of the junior partners within the

Coalition were not entirely happy with the way their

squadrons were tasked, but I think that would be the exception rather than the rule. Certainly the Royal Air Force was

involved very closely with the planning of the daily task order.

The RAF commander in theater had to be entirely happy with

all of the missions he was going to be tasked with. In other

words, you weren’t just given a task; there was a consultative

process so that the capabilities and limitations of your aircraft

and crews were taken into account. And the junior members

of the Coalition only undertook those sorties which they were

perfectly happy to undertake. So I thought on the whole, it

worked pretty well, and I know of no major disagreements

from any of the other members of the Coalition with the way

that the Americans put the air campaign and the daily task

order together.

Air Marshal Funnell: Let me follow up. You mentioned the

RAF’s experience. Did the system work as smoothly for other

air forces like the French and the Italians? Also, I wondered

about the use of Marine air assets. In the past, Marine air has

tended to be reserved solely for Marine surface forces. What

was the arrangement in the gulf?

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Air Chief Marshal Hine: Again, if they were unhappy with what

Glosson and Deptula wanted them to do, they could hold up

the red card and there would be no acrimony. The smaller air

forces only undertook those tasks that they were happy with

and which they were competent to undertake.

As far as Marine Corps aviation was concerned, it was brought

under Horner and, in fact, contributed to the overall air campaign objectives. The nature of Marine aviation, particularly

the AV-8Bs, limited them to operations within the Kuwaiti

Theater of Operations, but they were part of the daily ATO. It

was not until the last few days before the ground campaign

started that they became intimately associated with specific

Marine Corps objectives. During those last three or four days,

if I remember correctly, they were swung onto targets which

would be immediately in front of the two US Marine Corps

divisions which were going in to one of the better-defended

parts of Kuwait. But it was much more the case in this war

than any previous war that the Marines put their aviation

under the operational control of an overall air commander,

who happened to be light blue. It was something they, perhaps, were not comfortable with, but were quite clearly

directed to do by Schwarzkopf.

Air Vice-Marshal Alan Reed: It’s apparent that intelligence

played a major role in both targeting and damage assessment.

You had platforms varying from aircraft to satellites.

Obviously an air force like the RAAF has a limited budget. If

you had a limited budget, where would you put your money?

And if I may ask another quick question, the RAF had the job

of attacking runways with the JP 233. Following the Gulf War,

is that still an RAF role?

Air Chief Marshal Hine: If you have very limited funds, I would go

for the tactical reconnaissance capability. Now that can be provided either by manned aircraft, in our case the Tornado GR-1A,

or by unmanned aircraft or a combination of the two. Regardless

of which you choose, I don’t think you can fight a ground campaign of this sort effectively without tactical reconnaissance. It

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also is critical to find out exactly what damage you’ve caused

with deeper penetration air missions, be they interdiction or

offensive counter air. If you are relying solely on satellites and

you have got cloud cover, as we had much of the time, you will

not get the battle damage assessment intelligence you’re looking

for. For smaller air forces, which may become involved in coalition warfare, they’re almost certainly going to have to look to the

Americans to provide the strategic intelligence from satellites and

other sources. So modest investment, in my view, should go on

tactical reconnaissance aircraft and/or drones.

Your second question was on the RAF’s Tornado GR-1s and

the JP 233 attacks. Those were successful. The loss rate was

of some concern; as you know, we lost four aircraft during the

first five days of the war. These were some of the more

demanding operations, carried out at very low level at night,

and they were very dark nights. We lost two of the aircraft to

SAMs, and the other two aircraft, we believe, actually flew into

the ground. Only one aircraft, incidentally, came back with

antiaircraft artillery damage, so there wasn’t an impenetrable

wall of fire, although it must have looked like that to the crews

with tracer coming up and so forth. It remains a role which we

would have to conduct in certain wars if we’re involved in the

future. There is no alternative but to drop JP 233 from low

level, and it can be extremely effective for interdicting airfields

for a matter of hours, if not days. But in this particular war,

after four or five days, it was quite clear the Iraqi air force was

not going to show; they were laid up inside the hardened aircraft shelters. There was no point in continuing these disruptive attacks against runways and taxiways, so we moved the

Tornados up to medium altitude, initially doing radar bombing at night and then day bombing, and, ultimately after about

a week, bombing with laser designation provided by

Buccaneers. But the low-level option is one of those which will

remain in my view. There will be certain circumstances where

it is preferable and actually makes the aircraft less vulnerable

than medium-level attack.

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Air Vice-Marshal Tony Mason: I have two questions if I may.

What if any intelligence did we have on 23 February about the

imminent withdrawal of Iraqi forces from the Kuwait sector

before a single soldier had crossed the start line? The second

question is looking to the future. What are we going to do

about looking and striking below big, wet trees?

Air Chief Marshal Hine: I don’t think we had any good intelligence that the Iraqis were about to withdraw on the 23d. There

had been some statement made by Saddam Hussein in

Baghdad, setting out certain preconditions for withdrawal,

and this stemmed from negotiations that continued throughout the early weeks of the war between the Russians and the

Iraqis. But Saddam attached certain conditions to the withdrawal which were quite unacceptable to the Coalition, by

which I mean linkage into the broader Arab-Israeli question,

and there were other conditions which we found unacceptable.

So nobody took any notice of it, and the ground campaign

began the following day.

The second one is very difficult. I honestly don’t have an

immediate answer to it other than that you have to get intelligence from one source or another which pinpoints the target.

Once you know the position, it can be attacked from the air

using systems like precision-guided munitions and GPS.

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New Era Warfare

Charles A. Horner

Air Marshal Gration, ladies, and gentlemen. It’s an honor for

me to be here. [This paper was the conference after-dinner

speech.] I think that what you’re doing in holding this series of

conferences is admirable and something that we need to do.

We must always examine how we do business in the military

because what we do is so important to our nations. Quite

frankly, it’s the survival of our nations that we’re about.

I talk a little about Operation Desert Storm everywhere I go

because I think that it is very, very interesting. It represents

what I call new era warfare. I coined that phrase because if you

don’t have a catch phrase then people don’t catch on. When I

talk about new era warfare, it doesn’t mean that I have any

great insights. We have some great historians present. I think

they would agree with me that you need about a hundred years

to study an event in order to get the proper perspective. So,

some of you younger people will be able to get a full account of

Desert Storm. I don’t think I’ll make it. But I do think there are

things in Desert Storm that are worth examining. They’re

glimpses of the future for military operations. There are things

that are as old as Napoleonic operations, but there are others

that are much different. They are primarily things like the timeliness and the strategy and the political aspects of modern warfare. Gen John Baker used a term today that I’m going to steal,

which was knowledge warfare. Everybody wants to talk about

information warfare, but, in fact, it is knowledge warfare. I

think we learn everywhere we go.

To understand Desert Storm from the American side, I think

you must also study Vietnam. They’re inseparable. We came

out of Vietnam confused in terms of putting a title on it. We

said Vietnam was low-intensity conflict, and quite frankly I

never understood that. Because to me getting shot at is highintensity conflict. It didn’t really make sense. But I think some

of the things that we did in Desert Storm were a direct result

of our Vietnam experience. So, if you want to draw a line on the

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big historical board, maybe Vietnam is the place to draw it and

not Desert Storm. Desert Storm is just the logical outcome.

But what are we talking about? Is it a product of technology? I think the answer to that in some cases is “yes.”

Technology cannot be ignored. Precision munitions, global

navigation systems, computers, communications, the range,

speed, and survivability of modern aircraft, stealth, and the

use of space have changed warfare.

There’s no doubt about it, Desert Storm indicated that the

nature of warfare has altered. Some of the changes are worth

examining. First of all, there is some measure of efficiency. I

think we all know that war is horrible, setting aside the moral

aspects, setting aside the pain and suffering. War is horrible

because it is inefficient. It’s obscene to people who want to do

things in an orderly fashion. We have brought to modern warfare some measure of efficiency. I talk about timelines, which

relate to the decision-making process. We must understand

that in war now we must be decentralized. It’s absolutely necessary. In World War I, we were decentralized where sergeants

and captains were making decisions. Our system wasn’t deliberately designed that way; we did it because there were gas

attacks, no communications, and because of the fog of war. In

Desert Storm we decentralized consciously, and we did that

because it’s the only way you can accommodate the timelines

of modern warfare. Our longest timeline in air operations in

Desert Storm had to do with retargeting the B-52s. That was

three minutes. Anything inside of that we would never hesitate

to change the plan in order to get more efficiency or to take

advantage of information if something became available. So,

when we talk about modern warfare, we talk now in terms of

seconds—not days, months, or years that characterized war in

the past. And I think that it’s important we keep that in mind.

There are other things in terms of data demands. For example, in the past you wanted to know where the tanks were

stored. Now you want to know where the load-bearing wall is

in the building where the tanks are stored. You want to

know—is the overburden on the bunker 26 feet of concrete or

26 feet of earth? The data demands of modern warfare are just

going out of sight, but it’s important.

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I think it’s important to talk about these things at your airpower conference because airpower is the one force that is

really capable of taking advantage of these new elements of

modern warfare—because of its speed, its lethality, its flexibility of employment.

I think it is also important though that we not concentrate

solely on the military. The political aspects of modern warfare

have really come into their own. I think one of the main reasons

for this is that the human race is mature. I do believe that people—I realize this is a dangerous thought—are growing up. I

believe they are recognizing that war is a horrible thing and

shouldn’t be glorified. It shouldn’t be sought after as a means

of political will. It may come to that, but it is abhorrent and

ghastly. If you’re involved with war—and I think the military

people in this room understand that better than anyone—when

it’s all over with, you’re the ones that somebody has to face at

the graveyard.

Another thing is that our public has a much lower acceptance of war than in the past. That probably comes from two

reasons: one, the world is obviously a much smaller place

because of jet travel, because of television, things of this

nature. The other is of course the media. We all know the

impact of CNN on modern warfare. Quite frankly, I think those

of us in the Persian Gulf War spent as much time watching

CNN as the people at home. People all over the world watched

the war, not just any one country. You got things like the

“Highway of Death”—a perfectly legitimate military operation,

conducted very efficiently and in terms of loss of life very low.

Nonetheless, it also meant that we could not sustain the war.

The bombing of the command bunker in Baghdad is an example. We believed it to be a command and control facility, while

in fact it was being used as an air raid shelter. We probably

killed 200 to 400 civilians. It had a profound impact on our

targeting thereafter.

Now to understand the political reasoning in modern warfare, you must understand something about setting goals. I’ll

ignore the goal of survival for the nation whose survival is at

stake. In the case of the Gulf War, it was Kuwait. There’s no

getting around that. You’re going to fight with everything you

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have, anyway you can. That’s understandable. But I think the

rest of us, particularly countries like Australia and the United

States, which have large oceans, are unlikely to be involved in

a national survival war. We’ve got to keep in mind that first of

all our entrance into combat should have some selfish aspect

to it. As much as we’d like to be seeking the greater good, we

wind up with things like Somalia, chasing after the images of

starving children on television, and suddenly find ourselves in

a very difficult situation. In fact, we have withdrawn. So, I

think, first of all the nation needs to pick a side, which is selfserving as well as altruistic, as we did in Desert Storm. It was

all right to take up the cause of Kuwait, which was overrun

and being tortured, raped, and plundered. On the other hand,

it was also right to protect access to oil vital to our industrial

society. There is nothing immoral about protecting your

nation’s vital interest. We need to do that.

There is one crucial issue that we in the military must train

our political leadership to understand. This is a big step

because it involves all kinds of nuances that are antidemocratic if you’re not careful. But we must always insist that the

goals we’re given by our political leadership are militarily

achievable. In Desert Storm we were blessed. George Bush gave

us the job of ejecting the Iraqi army from Kuwait and, while we

were at it, crippling the nuclear, biological, and chemical operations in Iraq. He did not give us the job of fixing Iraq. People

back in the United States love simple answers to complex problems. We’re very much like Australia. People said, “If we just

had gotten Saddam Hussein that would have solved the whole

thing.” Well, it would be like wiping out the head of the Mafia.

It really wouldn’t solve things. We would have had our people

still controlling the streets of Baghdad getting shot at by people who were concerned about their homes, their families, and

their children. It would have been an absolute mess. So, none

of us had a problem when it came time to stop the offensive

operation. We were all relieved. We’d done the job that we could

do, and the problem with Iraq is going to have to be solved by

the Iraqis. They’ve had 300 or 400 years of this kind of

internecine warfare between the Shiites and the Kurds. They’re

going to have to take care of it themselves.

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One thing we really didn’t do well in Desert Storm was termination of conflict. It was presumed by the military, when we

were planning the offensive operations in August, September,

and October, that somebody in the State Department was

burning the midnight oil writing out the peace treaty. The day

we stopped offensive operations against the Iraqis, we had a

call from Washington, and they said, “Would you please go and

negotiate a meeting some place.” We sat down with a yellow

pad—Norman Schwarzkopf, John Yeosock, and myself—the

three of us sat there and said, “What do we negotiate?” And

then we said, “Well, first thing from Vietnam—prisoners and

MIAs—full accounting—and also, the return of Kuwaiti citizens who had been kidnapped and imprisoned.” And next,

“How do we separate the forces so we don’t bump into each

other with loaded weapons and continue the killing and things

of this nature?” Eventually, I will say this, the diplomatic corps

caught on and very rapidly after Safwan there were negotiations that led to substantial agreements which were very, very

important. Unfortunately, we made some mistakes at Safwan.

That could have been avoided. So, to all of you who are in the

military, if you get involved in one of these situations, you

should demand that you know what the “end-game” should

look like before you begin the “game.”

There are practical aspects of Desert Storm that were

brought to us, primarily to me, by President Bush at Camp

David. We went out there on Saturday morning—the invasion

had occurred Wednesday night. There was a great deal of confusion as to what should be the proper course of action. The

cabinet sat around the table, and Schwarzkopf presented

ground options and I presented air options. We then sat down

and people started questioning us. Bush didn’t say a thing. He

sat there and held his own counsel. I was watching him. The

rest of them were firing questions. Then President Bush

started asking questions after they all finished. His questions

first had to do with the loss of life. He was absolutely fixated

on the concept of how do we avoid the loss of life. Obviously,

we were all thinking “body bags/Vietnam/American lives.” But

he wasn’t talking only about American lives. He wasn’t even

talking only about allied lives. He was talking about the loss of

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lives on both sides, Iraq and Coalition. Believe me, it colored

everything we did thereafter. Every target was examined on

how to approach it with minimum loss of life.

We could have bombed the Iraqi army to death. Instead, we

went after their equipment. Normally before we would strike

their tanks and artillery, we would drop leaflets that would

say, “Get away from your tanks.” After the war we talked to the

Iraqi generals. They would say things like, “In the Iranian War,

the tank was my friend because I could put my troops in it,

and they would be safe from artillery strikes. In this war, the

tank was our enemy. The minute we would park it, we would

get away from it.” You’d see them on the film digging slit

trenches about one-half a kilometer away. If we didn’t hit the

tank that night, we got it the next day or the next night.

The other thing that I think is very instructive in modern

warfare, in new era warfare, is the international relationships.

I don’t want to go into World War I or World War II, but I think

Vietnam tended to be mostly an American show. The strongest

ally we had other than South Vietnam was Australia. But

Bush in his questioning kept asking the cabinet, particularly

Jim Baker, “What do other nations think about this? What do

they think should be done?” In the high councils of America,

that question was not asked often enough. I don’t know where

it came from. I don’t know whether it came from his time as

ambassador to China, or his time with the UN, or his time with

the CIA, but President Bush really pushed that point hard.

There’s a book out called The Commanders. I just read it. It’s

exactly wrong on this subject. At that table Bush turned to

Cheney and he said, “Dick, I want you to talk to King Fahd. He

has the most at stake in this.” So, Secretary Cheney flew to

Riyadh to do that.

What did we gain from this experience? What did we find

significant, of interest, in the planning and execution of Desert

Storm? I think one thing that we must keep in mind is that

planning must be done in theater. There’s lots of data flow that

must come from the outside. But Washington, D.C., is the perfect example of what can go wrong with out-of-theater planning. They call Washington “Ants on the Log.” It’s a giant log

floating up the Potomac River with 10 million ants on board,

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and each one of them thinks it’s steering the log. We must be

careful about headquarters not in the theater running the war.

Again, in Vietnam, the president picking the targets in

Washington and our flying them in Vietnam was just a ludicrous way to fight—a terrible waste of life. We were bound and

determined that was not going to happen. The problem we

have is that historically our intelligence in peacetime gets centralized. Because if you’re an intelligence person, the way you

get promoted is taking pictures and putting them in front of

the prime minister or the president, and then everybody says

what a good boy you are and promotes you. So, as a result,

intelligence people flock to Washington. The trouble is, they

don’t work to meet the war fighters’ requirements. Instead,

peacetime intelligence does things like national estimates,

technology analysis, and economic estimates. So, we had a

rule. The targets had to be picked in the theater. We made that

an article of faith. It did not mean we did not get good targeting from Washington or elsewhere. We did, but the targets had

been picked in theater.

Another thing I wouldn’t let them do was to plan the war

beyond the first two days. The captains and majors who did

the planning wanted to take it through the first weeks. But the

problem is that modern war is so uncertain and so fluid that

you must develop the capacity to react. If we had built that

plan beyond the first two days, we would have become slaves

to it, and we would have missed all the opportunities. So what

happened was our efficiency in air operations was very high

the first two days, dropped off drastically the third and fourth

days, and then began to gradually go back up. We then

achieved levels of efficiency which would not have been possible if we hadn’t given people the chance to learn how to operate in this uncertainty called war. So, you must do that for

your planning.

In terms of the Coalition, I can tell you that you must recognize that national prerogatives are important. We had a whole

variety of vastly different nations there. Now with the NATO

people, we work together in Europe and have common ways of

doing business and common training. But on the political side,

for example, some of the European nations sent combat forces,

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some sent support forces, some sent equipment, and some just

sent monetary support. That was fine. We could accommodate

all that, and it helped make a strong coalition in terms of being

there—being a participant whether it was risking life or risking

resources. Participation is important. You must be able to recognize the prerogatives of each nation.

You also must have some flexibility in your operation of a

coalition. People want to create command chains. And, particularly, land forces live for command chains. They love boxes

with lines. By contrast, airmen like unity of effort. What we do

is we sit down and ask, “What needs to be done?” We decide

on an approach. Then what airmen do, is they say, “OK, well

my kind of airplane flies best at night, flies these kinds of distances, has these kind of munitions.” So they just divide up

the workload. It’s like a big job jar. You just pull out what’s

appropriate to your capabilities. Before the war—I’ll never forget this—we were always getting all this heat about “Why don’t

you have the usual command organization?” and “Its all going

to come unglued.” Absolutely false, wrong, and dumb. We

never had a single problem. We all worked very well together.

We also had an advantage because airmen all speak English.

It was more difficult on the ground side because many of the

countries could not communicate with one another.

I talk about decentralization and execution. It is the fundamental way you release the initiative of thousands of people. If

one person tries to run things, you get one person’s initiative.

What we did is we said, “The most important place where things

are happening is over the target.” So we pushed decisions as

close to that as we could. The air tasking order was constructed

in detail, but it was only a plan from which people could depart,

so when they made a decision they had some basis for that

decision. And that’s a big one. It’s very difficult for military people to learn to let go. We want to be in control. The generals want

to be generals. I’m going to tell you something. Generals don’t

amount to a hill of beans. It’s the captains and the sergeants

who do. When that sergeant goes out to load bombs, and he’s

“fragged” to put 2,000-pound bombs on an F-16 and he gets out

there and there’s no more 2,000-pound bombs, if you have a

very centralized system, he will sit down and do nothing. If you

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have a decentralized system he says, “Those guys are so dumb,

I can’t believe it. We’re going to put eight, 500-pound bombs on

the airplane.” Well, the mission takes off and the target is

destroyed—not as efficiently as planned, but the job gets done.

I have a statement I use; I stole it from Bill Creech. It’s called

“nose in, hands off.” The commander, the leader, must know

in detail what’s going on, but he cannot tell people how to do

it. One of the best cases was Dick Cheney. He knew in detail

everything we did. For example, we needed to bomb the biological storage area. We were in a terrible dilemma. There were

two white papers—one from England and one from the United

States—that said if you bomb those biological storage areas in

Iraq, every living thing on the peninsula of Saudi Arabia would

die. Since we were located there, we tended to think that was

a serious business. Cheney came in and I had 15 minutes to

discuss with him the decision to bomb those sites. After three

hours of intense discussion, it was decided that we should

attack the target. The discussion involved detailed data on

weapons effects designed to preclude the fallout of hazardous

material. He knew in detail what we were doing, approved

what we were doing, but left the tactics up to us.

On the other hand, with modern communications it’s very

easy to distribute information; therefore, the risk is to centralize decisions. The best example I can think of is the “Joint

STARS picture” that was being plugged into various command

centers around the theater. The Joint STARS picture is the big

radar that shows moving objects on the ground. It’s for tanks,

trucks, and things like that. One night I got a phone call from

Schwarzkopf, and he said, “There are 20 trucks at such and

such location.” I said, “We’ll get on it,” and I just turned to the

duty officer next to me and said, “Divert this flight here onto

that target.” He did that. They got through, and there was nothing there. And, of course, if you divert a flight lead onto a target

and there’s nothing there, you have one angry flight lead who

proceeded to give me a phone call. That’s pretty interesting, for

a captain to chew-out a three-star general. However, it was

appropriate. So then I looked into it. What had happened was

the picture had come in and had gone hard copy off the TV

screen, and a young corporal looked at it. The corporal gave it

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to his sergeant and said, “Look at this, look at all these trucks.”

The sergeant says, “Hey, I can make points with the captain.”

He went running and found a captain who just came back from

dinner. They looked at it and the captain said, “I’ll bet the

colonel will be interested in this.” So, he waited around for the

colonel, who gets up from his nap, and showed him. The

colonel, wanting to be a brigadier general, went right to

Schwarzkopf and said, “Look at this.” And Schwarzkopf said,

“Hit that thing.” Only now it was four-hours old. So after that,

every time Schwarzkopf called about a Joint STARS picture, I

said, “We will go after it if it’s valid.” And he said, “I accept that.”

Another example involves the AWACS. I would sit there and

have the air picture of everything that was going on from the

Mediterranean to Teheran and from Turkey to Riyadh. I could

see the minute an Iraqi aircraft broke ground. I can’t tell you

the number of times I wanted to reach for that microphone

and call the AWACS and put “Eagle Flight” onto those two

Iraqis who just broke ground. I didn’t do it, and it was always

some other flight that got vectored on, and the targets always

got shot down. It’s a very, very difficult thing to learn to let go,

but we have to do it.

The other thing is that in modern warfare, there’s something

you cannot overlook and that’s the environment you’re in.

When you sit in a tactical air control center, you hear things.

Things that wash over you. As you walk into your post, you go

by the search and rescue center, and you’re checking on the

Tornado guy who got shot down or on the A-10 guy who’s

missing in action. The individual in the theater, when he or

she sits down, has an attitude, a feeling, a sensitivity for the

game you don’t get outside the theater. We lose sight of that

because we have wars so seldom, thank God. I think my best

example is when [USAF Chief of Staff Merrill A.] “Tony”

McPeak would call me up. He always wanted to know what

was going on. We would chat, usually in the afternoon—it was

morning in Washington, D.C. We’d talk about how things were

going, and pretty soon he’d say, “What we need to do is this

and this.” I would listen, and I’d listen carefully. Not because

it was Tony McPeak, but because you’re always looking for

good ideas. One day he was talking to me and said, “You’re not

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saying anything.” I said, “I’m listening.” And he said, “No

you’re not, you’re telling me I’m not in charge.”

Let me give you another example—and I share this with you

because I think it is very instructive concerning something we

came out of Vietnam with—of this business of the theater versus the rear echelon. We felt in some ways betrayed by our

leadership in Vietnam because they did not stand up. It’s fun

to criticize the generals of the past, but then one day you’re a

general and then criticism starts coming close to home. In this

case, I had a wing commander call up, Rick Parsons, from up

in northwest Saudi Arabia. They had just shot down two airplanes about 30 miles inside Iran. What had happened was

that two Iraqis had taken off from the Baghdad area to go to

Iran for asylum. Rick got vectored onto them, turned in, lit the

burners, and they finally caught these guys, splashed them

both. When they got back home and looked at their inertial

navigation system (INS) coordinates, they were a good 30 miles

inside Iran. In Vietnam our first casualty was integrity—we

didn’t talk. We didn’t ever tell the ugly things. But Rick

Parsons called me and said, “Boss, I hate to tell you this, but

we just shot down two Iraqi airplanes in Iran, and we know we

weren’t supposed to be there.” So I said, “OK.” I called

Schwarzkopf and said, “We just shot down two Iraqi airplanes

in Iran. We know we weren’t supposed to be there. I will try not

to do it again. The guys know what the rules are. These things

happen.” And he said, “No problem.” And he called [Chairman

of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin] Powell, who told Cheney.

Well, I knew inside the Pentagon there would be someone who

would say, “No good deed can go unpunished” and would conjure up something called a “buffer zone” because we had one in

Vietnam. It worked wonderfully in Vietnam in terms of making

us inefficient. So, I sat there and suddenly my criticisms of the

generals in Vietnam came to haunt me. Because now I was

faced with trying to refute this buffer zone that they were going

to put up. There wasn’t enough room to have one—the distance

from Baghdad to the Iranian border is very, very short. I was

marshalling my arguments, getting them all lined up and ready

to go. But I knew I’d fail because I’d be arguing with the

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tion. Here I was at the epitome of a professional military career,

and I was going to have to quit. I was going to have to resign. I

was going to have to walk away. I had no other choice.

Fortunately, the phone call never came. After the war I asked,

“How come we weren’t told to establish a buffer zone?” I was told

it was brought up, but it was decided that the guys in theater

will know what to do; if they need a buffer, they’ll go make one.

Two areas where all the military people in this room have

failed are in exercising logistics and intelligence. They’re the

two most important aspects of warfare you will face when the

real time comes. So, pay attention to that.

Friendly fire—I’ll talk a little about it. Probably over one-half

the casualties ground-to-ground were friendly fire. In the case

of air, we had one where we destroyed a Marine vehicle,

marines bombed a Marine column, and two A-10s shot two

British vehicles. In terms of absolute numbers, friendly fire

incidents were very, very low. In terms of percentages of the

casualties, they were very high because the casualty base was

so low. I think that we have not paid enough attention to this

problem. In the past, that was probably acceptable and probably had to do with the inefficiency of warfare. In Vietnam, if

you bombed a friendly convoy, you probably disabled a truck

and may have killed somebody. If you put a modern Maverick

missile into an armored vehicle, you’re going to kill everybody

inside that vehicle because today’s weapons are so lethal. So,

the friendly fire or fratricide, or whatever term, must be

worked absolutely assiduously. You must pay absolute attention in detail to it because of the lethality of modern weapons.

And, remember, if you have casualties, you lose the war.

The media. The media are everywhere and cause military

people a lot of problems. We, as a group, are intimidated by

the media. Particularly because if we do something stupid,

they tell the whole world we did something stupid. The other

thing is they’re always seeking information, and they’re always

asking probing questions. In Desert Storm, they wanted to go

with the body count thing because people wanted to know how

we were doing. We live in a statistical age. So, they wanted to

know how many people did you kill—like it was something to

be proud of. We refused to do that. We never hesitated to tell

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the media where we believed we had good facts and it did not

reveal our plans. Sometimes we were wrong afterwards, and

that’s kind of hard to swallow and admit. The thing about the

media that we in the military must understand is that, in our

societies, the media are fundamental, and we must not be

afraid of them. If you don’t want to answer a question, you

don’t answer a question. If you think it is a stupid question,

you say, “Well, that’s the dumbest question I ever heard, Sam.

You got another one?” And it’s amazing how they retreat when

you stand up to them.

Don’t always try to please the media. They are people trying

to earn a living. Help them earn their living. They’re just like

the rest of us. They have children to feed and people to educate.

Always deal with them from a position of confidence and on a

factual basis. Another thing that is fundamental in the media

is this: understand if you do something stupid and they identify it as stupid, in some ways they’re helping you because you

can correct your mistakes or say you were wrong and you won’t

do it again. That’s good. If you’ve done something right, you can

stand up for it. You can’t trust the media to always have

integrity, but I can tell you that you can trust 95 percent of

them to have integrity. Because integrity to the media is just as

important as it is to a historian or a military officer. They are

lost without it. But the basic thing about the media is this: if

you distrust the media, it isn’t the media you are condemning.

It’s the people who read the papers, who watch the television

programs—the very people who pay your salary. They’re the

ones you’ve lost faith in. So, let the media take their most savage shot. Let them have their worst, most unjust shot at you

and just keep faith in the people you work for—the people who

pay your wages, the people you’re serving. Because they’re also

the same people the media are really serving and representing.

If Saddam Hussein had one thing that worked in Desert

Storm, it was the Scud missile. I think that we failed to learn a

lesson from that. It had no military value. It had lousy accuracy, and he did not have a fuse for a gas warhead. In fact, he

would have been wise to put poisonous material in front of the

Scud because the Patriot missile would have dispersed it for

him. So, we dodged a bad situation there. We will not continue

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to be able to dodge that situation, as evidenced by what is going

on in North Korea. Believe me, the impact of the ballistic missile is not understood by military people. It is only understood

by civilians. In the city of Riyadh, in Bahrain, in Israel, they

understood it in spades. I asked after the war, “Why didn’t we

learn that lesson?” The other night they had the F-117 film

here on TV. In the film, the guy who did the stealth technology

was an English fellow who had grown up in London during

World War II. He had learned the lesson—he said, “I can imagine how terrifying it is to have the F-117 fly over your country.

You don’t know it’s there, and suddenly you have a bomb

explode. It’s like the V-2 over London.” We must come to grips

with the ballistic missile threat, particularly when it’s coupled

with nuclear, biological, or chemical warheads.

I’m traveling around our country and talking about the war

that’s going to replace the Cold War. It’s the war of nonproliferation. It’s going to become the most significant struggle we’ll

face internationally. It must be fought as a coalition, not necessarily on a battlefield, but in terms of deterrence, defense,

diplomacy—those kinds of things.

Now, I’ve come to the conclusion that war has profoundly

changed. I think that airpower is equal to land and sea power.

I don’t think it’s superior. I think it has the things like speed,

lethality, and flexibility to take advantage of modern warfare,

so it’s very, very important and very significant. But each war

must be determined on the circumstances involved in that

war—the environment, the aims, the political goals, the nature

of the enemy forces, and the nature of the friendly forces. But

there are those who still believe that airpower is subservient,

particularly to land, and also to sea power. That is absolutely

wrong. I think we proved that in Desert Storm.

The political aspects of war are still crucial. We must have a

good leadership. We must understand the limits of military

power, and we need adequate forces. It’s too late when the crisis begins. You lose your options. Then, the situation becomes

as it was in Korea or in World Wars I and II. And we paid for it

with the blood of our men and women. Every military person

in this room has an obligation to go through his or her chain

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and demand credible, capable military forces. You owe it. You

can’t wait until the last minute.

I think there are drastic changes in conflict. Every target in

Desert Storm was reviewed by a lawyer. The law of armed conflict is something that all military people need to know. I never

found it constraining. There were some targets we wanted to

hit that we couldn’t. But nonetheless, we must abide by some

level of morality because the nations that are involved in a war

are still going to be left on the earth together. They’re still going

to have to live together. You’re still going to have to think about

what’s going to happen 300 or 500 years from now. The nature

of war doesn’t change—but the efficiency of operations, the

importance of information, and the importance of command

and control have changed. The need to decentralize the way

you do business is most important. You must give people decision authority; give them room to make the right decision. You

must have adequate planning and be able to take decisive

action on the battlefield. And before the war you must emphasize joint and coalition training.

The things that the military are doing in Australia will serve

this country well into the far future, not necessarily on the battlefield, but in nations working together, building ties, trust, and

confidence. You must understand that modern warfare has to

be quick and lethal—that aspect does not change. And that all

of us, when we prepare for war—as horrible as it is—must keep

in mind that we have really one major obligation in our military

profession, and that is to be loyal to those people we send into

battle to die—that we send them prepared, equipped, and well

led. That is our reason for having conferences like this and

that’s why they’re so important. Thank you very much.

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The Future of Airpower

Richard P. Hallion

It is a great pleasure to be speaking to you today on the subject of the future of airpower.1 We have heard some distinguished authorities on its evolution, from both historians and

practitioners. Therefore, it is with some trepidation that I

stand before you. The business of prediction is, after all, a

dangerous one.

I’ll just offer you two examples. The first is from Lord Kelvin,

president of the Royal Society, who wrote to Maj B. F. S.

Baden-Powell of the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain

(later the Royal Aeronautical Society) in 1896, after having

been invited to membership. “I have not the smallest molecule

of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning,” he lessthan-graciously replied.2 The second example is from the

noted futurist and science fiction author H. G. Wells. In contrast to Lord Kelvin, Wells was an aviation enthusiast. He

wrote in 1901, “Long before the year 2000 A.D., and very probably before 1950, a successful aeroplane will have soared and

come home safe and sound.”3

What both these statements reveal—one from a skeptic, one

from a true believer—is that very often the state of technology

and the state of societal development can move so rapidly that

even highly regarded experts can be woefully wrong. Neither

Kelvin nor Wells, for example, recognized that the state of

aeronautical inquiry was so advanced that the Wright

Brothers—already busily at work when these two men were

writing—would fly within a few short years. Indeed, a mere 10

years after Wells made his statement, the Italians would carry

out the first bombing campaign in military aviation history,

against rebelling tribesmen in Libya. Wells himself lived to see

the widespread use of airpower in both world wars. And by

1950 (four years after Wells died), the first ballistic missile, the

first jet fighter, the first jet airliner, the first air-delivered

atomic bomb, the first cruise missiles, the first guided bombs,

the first surface-to-air missiles (SAM) and air-to-air missiles

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(AAM), the first antishipping missiles, and the first supersonic

airplanes had all made their appearance. So the task of the

prophet is a daunting one.

There are some striking continuities that one notices when

looking at defense matters. For example, let’s cast our minds

back to the heady days of late 1989 and the fall of the Berlin

Wall. I daresay many of you remember some of the bolder pronouncements in academe, the media, and by certain politicians

who chided the West for having wasted the economic resources

of various nations by building massive defense organizations

over the previous 40 years, organizations now without a purpose or reason for existence. Many of these individuals proclaimed a millennial age of peace or, even, the “end of history.”

Yet less than a year later, there were over one-half million

troops deployed to confront Saddam Hussein, and prepared to

fight a war very much like that which had dominated European

and American defense thought for nearly one-half century. The

millennial age of peace had lasted about nine months. Indeed,

many smaller conflicts had continued unabated by the end of

the Cold War, or have followed since, from the Horn of Africa to

the shambles of the former Yugoslavia. Today, not quite 80

years after Sarajevo first came to public prominence, we find an

eerily reminiscent quality to what is happening there, with a

pastiche of national identities attempting to sort themselves

out, in the shadow of Slavic interest. Indeed NATO, only

recently held by some to be an organization without purpose,

fired its first shots in anger a few weeks ago, when two F-16

pilots offered the Serbs a lesson in airpower application. It

seems, then, that the new world order is increasingly more like

the old; history, while it may not repeat itself, sure does rhyme:

The most notable enduring certainty about defense affairs is

their basic and inherent uncertainty.

We are three years beyond the most successful air war in military history, yet still within the first century of powered flight.

Over the last 90 years of winged aviation, we have seen the airplane transformed from a crude hopping machine to a globegirdling engine of societal change. In this period of time, the

rocket has gone from a firework to an arbiter of global nuclear

deterrence, and the bomb has evolved from a crude shell with

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fins to a sophisticated precision munition capable of hitting a

target within a negligible distance from its aiming point.

The reputation of airpower itself has changed, from the

myths and misunderstandings surrounding its use in earlier

wars to the more positive sentiments often echoed today.

Consider the following: A popular history on the Vietnam War

written in the 1980s concluded that “over and over again we

have to learn the lesson that airpower cannot win wars.”4 In the

fall of 1990, primarily because of this “conventional wisdom,”

official skepticism regarding airpower was a constant concern

of airpower planners, who believed—not without reason—that

it might act to limit the military options being presented to the

president.5 Media portrayals and images of airpower stressed

“carpet bombing,” “friendly fire,” and massive civilian casualties. In January 1991, on the eve of the Persian Gulf War, an

outspoken airpower critic, John Kenneth Galbraith, stated that

Americans “should react with a healthy skepticism to the

notion that airpower will decide the outcome of a war in Kuwait

and Iraq,” even though the United States Strategic Bombing

Survey that he himself had participated in 45 years earlier had

taken a far more optimistic view of air warfare.6

Then came the war itself, and virtually at once the tenor of

airpower discussion changed. President George S. Bush remarked, “Gulf lesson one is the value of airpower.”7 Numerous

other spokesmen—including those from the non-aerospace

community—opined that air had been the dominant force in

the war. As a result, even if there was a debate over whether

or not a “revolution” in military affairs had occurred (my personal opinion is that yes, there was, and one a long-time coming), airpower nevertheless had a credibility and an awareness

in the minds of decision makers that it lacked for decades previously.8 A cautionary recent assessment of American airpower

concludes that it has a deservedly earned “mystique,” noting

that “airpower dominated the Persian Gulf War as no other

conflict since World War II. . . . In the end airmen were probably correct in their belief that this war marked a departure.”9

What does all of this say for the future? Is faith in airpower a

justifiable mystique or a dangerous mistake?

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The easy answer, of course, is that it is situational and

depends upon what one is trying to do and what the circumstances surrounding the use of airpower are. There is a strong

theme of continuity in airpower application going back to its

very roots. We should remember, for example, that the contemporary missions of air forces today are those first promulgated, explored, and then standardized in the First World

War—air superiority, bombardment, reconnaissance, maritime

operations, to name just a few. We still fulfill them, and we are

likely to do so well into the future. Technology has transformed them, has changed their capabilities, but not the basic

intent of the missions themselves. For example, the Second

World War gave us our first experience with electronic, turbojet, and atomic warfare, and it shaped the nature of the postwar world. But the missions remained the same. The revolutions and revolutionary techniques since midcentury—the

afterburning turbojet/turbofan, the supersonic breakthrough,

the liquid-and solid-fuel rocket, “avionics,” aerial refueling, the

practical helicopter, nuclear weaponry, computers, electronic

controls, composite structures, stealth—added ever-increasing capabilities to military and commercial aircraft systems.

But the missions have remained the same.

One of the greatest challenges we face in the airpower community is education of the non-airpower specialist, particularly those individuals charged with responsibility for maintaining the national defense. When one is contemplating a

field of military endeavor in which, literally, lives, treasure,

and national security are at stake, it is obvious that this is a

serious responsibility for us all, particularly, I think, for historians. It is not one, I may say, that we have done particularly

well. The price of failure to adequately undertake such analyses can doom an air force to obsolescence. The failure to

appreciate the need for an air force, or to understand what an

air force brings to a fight, can doom a nation—look at Nazi

Germany or, more recently, Hussein’s Iraq.

In the post-Cold-War era, these are not idle questions. Right

now, the United States is poised on the brink of a return to the

roles and missions debates of the post-World War II years. In

the exchanges that will no doubt accompany those debates,

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salient points and perspectives on both the current state of

airpower and its legacy of use should be kept uppermost. In

particular, I recommend a provocative group of 10 propositions derived from historical experience by Col Phillip S.

Meilinger, the commander of the Air Force’s School of

Advanced Airpower Studies (SAAS) at Maxwell Air Force Base,

Alabama.

• Whoever controls the air generally controls the surface.

• Airpower is an inherently strategic force.

• Airpower is primarily an offensive weapon.

• In essence, airpower is targeting, targeting is intelligence,

and intelligence is analyzing the effects of air operations.

• Airpower produces physical and psychological shock by

dominating the fourth dimension—time.

• Airpower can conduct parallel operations at all levels of

war, simultaneously.

• Precision air weapons have redefined the meaning of

mass.

• Airpower’s unique characteristics necessitate that it be

centrally controlled by airmen.

• Technology and airpower are integrally and synergistically

related.

• Airpower includes not only military assets but also an

aerospace industry and commercial aviation.

Certainly, there will be those who quibble and question some

of these, but they constitute, I think, an important beginning.

For my own part, airpower attributes that I think are of particular importance include the following; I present them in no

particular order lest they be construed as “rank orderings.”10

First: Airpower today, and for the foreseeable future, possesses some innate synergistic qualities and advantages that

have matured over a one-half century of development and

refinement, which add new vigor and value to the traditional

missions air forces have prosecuted and which offer a nation

a unique and special ability to project power and presence. In

June 1990 these were recognized and enumerated in a United

States Air Force white paper under the rubric “Global Reach—

Global Power,” and they were important underlying assumptions in the subsequent revision of Air Force Manual 1-1,

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Basic Aerospace Doctrine of the United States Air Force, March

1992 edition.11 They consisted of “virtues” associated with airpower, most from the beginnings of air warfare—speed, range,

flexibility, precision, and lethality.

Speed and range were generally mature concepts by the

mid-1950s, as hinted earlier, but even they benefited from the

expansion of turbojet technology, refined high-speed aerodynamic design, and aerial refueling after that time.

Interestingly, the implications of the air weapon’s reach were

enunciated in 1945 by the distinguished military theorist J. F.

C. Fuller, who noted that range was, throughout military history, “the characteristic which dominated the fight.”12 In the

airpower era, he believed, the “fulcrum of combined tactics”

had to be shaped around the airplane. Such indeed, as exemplified by the Gulf War, has come to pass.

Reach today is critical, for it means not only global power

but global presence. The air-refueled aircraft of the present

day exert a power and presence previously attainable only by

expensive overseas basing of troops, aircraft, and fleets, and,

in most cases, without the vulnerabilities to enemy action and

terrorism that accompanied such foreign basing. Through

them, one can exert presence, demonstrate will, and obtain

influence from a home-based force.

The others—flexibility, precision, lethality—had been at best

imperfectly realized. The flexibility of airpower only came of age

in the era of air refueling, coupled with more reliable engine

and systems technology, though occasionally it had manifested

itself in earlier conflicts, such as the strategic implications of

fighters in World War II or the tactical applicability of longrange bombers. Precision had undergone the greatest change.

In World War II, examples existed of precision attack, but it was

always the exception, never the rule. One thinks of the Royal

Air Force’s (RAF) Mosquitoes—surely the F-117s of their day—

against Amiens prison and various Gestapo headquarters or

George Kenney’s skip-bombing B-25s or the use of divebombers (with their attendant disadvantages) by the Luftwaffe

and various navies. The daily reality of the war, however, was

imprecise dumb bombing. In the Second World War, only 7 percent of all bombs dropped by B-17 bombers fell within a

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thousand feet of their aim point—and this was not only considered acceptable, but good.13 In the late 1980s—on the eve of

the Gulf War—self-designating, precision bomb-droppers such

as the F-117, F-111F, and F-15E were routinely placing laserguided bombs (LGB) less than 10 feet off target.

Coupled to precision weapons was, of course, precision navigation which, by the time of the Gulf War, not only meant

reliance upon both mature radio navigation aids and more

recent technologies, such as the ring-laser gyro, but also

space-based navigation, such as the now-famous Global

Positioning System (GPS). Hand-in-hand with precision came

lethality—the ability of air attack to deliver overwhelmingly

destructive force against pinpoint targets via air weapons. By

the onset of the Gulf War, the ability existed for air forces and

other airpower projection organizations to strike a range of

targets with sophisticated autonomous or near-autonomous

munitions. For example, in that war, the Air Force’s Maverick

and the Army’s Hellfire missiles both proved devastating

against mechanized forces, even when they were on the move.

One Apache helicopter unit, for example, scored 102 hits for

107 missiles fired, a rate of better than 95 percent.14

In sum, then, the synergistic coupling of these five attributes ensures that an air force today can undertake the traditional missions discussed earlier with a certainty of success

that our predecessors—the Trenchards, Burnetts, Joneses,

Harrises, Spaatzs, and, yes, the Goerings—would have found

remarkable. To place this in context, a global jet airlifter, supported by air refueling, can rapidly deliver precision munitions

into a theater, hand them off to an air-refueled strike aircraft,

and, scant hours later, those munitions can be applied to a

high-value target. This is not some dream from a technothriller. Rather, that exact scenario was played out in the Gulf

War when a C-141 delivered two 4,700-lb GBU-28 LGBs,

whose casings were still warm from their freshly poured bomb

mix when two F-111Fs took off with them for delivery against

a deep bunker at Taji.15

This particular example also indicates a second important

attribute: The time compression inherent to airpower.

Airpower, as our distinguished RAF colleague Air Vice-Marshal

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“Tony” Mason has noted, is “war in the third dimension.”16 But

I would also suggest that in its ability to respond quickly to a

crisis and to respond in such a fashion that it counters an

enemy’s ability to react by non-airpower means, it is really

“war in the fourth dimension”—time—as well.

This flows from the inherent qualities of aerospace technology itself. Two-dimensional surface forces—those moving on

land or sea—operate at a mobility disadvantage compared to

three-dimensional air and space forces. This relates to the

physical environment in which they operate: the viscosity and

turbulence of the sea or the convoluted terrain of land, as well

as the nature of movement while restricted to a geometric

plane. In contrast, atmospheric flight systems are constrained

only by the dynamic pressure (q) limits of the vehicle itself and

by its designed range, speed, and altitude limitations. Space

systems above the atmosphere are constrained only by the

natural laws of Newtonian and Keplerian physics governing

spatial movement.

To put this in military terms, in the deployment phase of a

crisis, airpower reacts in hours versus weeks. For example,

land-based airlifters and combat aircraft deployed directly from

the continental United States to the Gulf region in nonstop

8,000-mile, 15-hour journeys. In contrast, aircraft carriers

took an average of three weeks to a month to reach the Gulf

region from East Coast ports, and even designated “fast” sealift

ships took 10 days.17 This is the difference of late twentieth century rates of mobility and engagement—the airplane—with

rates more typical of the turn-of-the-century—exemplified by

the steam-turbine-powered ship.

The difference is even more dramatic when compared to land

combat rates of movement and engagement.18 In several seconds, an aircraft can orient itself to confront a mechanized surface opponent who has taken several hours to shift position. In

the attack phase, an aircraft can have as much as a 10 or 12:1

velocity advantage over a surface vehicle. (Again, essentially late

twentieth century versus early twentieth century rates of

engagement.) Against individual troops, this advantage is as

much as 200:1. (Late twentieth century versus third century

B.C. rates of engagement.) The rates of engagement of aerospace

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missile systems—for example, air-to-surface or surface-tosurface weapons—are even more extreme, in the order of 60 or

even 80:1 against moving surface vehicles. The implications are

clear: Once such a weapon is unleashed, the opportunity for a

two-dimensionally constrained surface opponent to detect,

assess, and evade such a threat is essentially nonexistent. In

the Gulf War, Iraqi mechanized forces intuitively recognized this.

Confronted by air attack, they reacted in the best possible way

for their survival—they simply abandoned their vehicles under

attack, even while those vehicles were on the move.19

Thus, an opponent unable to confront an attacker in the air

finds eventually that he is operating out of sequence with his

enemy. His decisions take longer; his pace of operations (as

compared to his foe) is diminished. In Boyd “ObservationOrientation-Decision-Action (OODA) Loop” terms,20 this is the

natural result of a more capable attacker taking advantage of

his higher rates of operation to achieve effects or results that

increasingly slow his opponent’s ability to function within his

own OODA Loop. Eventually, the summation of the cumulative differences in operation generates dramatic disparities

and discontinuities, rather like comparing the operations of a

late-1980s Cray supercomputer to, say, a 1960s-vintage IBM

360. Even more apt, it is as if an individual uses a virus-free

computer while another “makes do” with a similar one inflicted

by a virus that increasingly slows its operations.

These effects of air attack were evident as early as the

Second World War—even at that relatively primitive stage of

airpower utilization. For example, the Nazi general, Frido von

Senger und Etterlin, complained that Allied air attacks had

reduced him to the level of a chess player able to make only

one move to an opponent’s three.21 The same situation recently

occurred in the Gulf War, when communications attacks

denied Hussein the ability to effectively control or move his

forces, preventing him from exercising the various nuances of

control required to confront the rampages of the Coalition’s air

and land assault on multiple levels and in multiple locations.22

Airpower is far more than the ability to put fire and steel on a

target. It is relevant to a wide range of operations and concerns. Nevertheless, it is, of course, in combat operations that

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most of us think of an air force having to show its stuff. And

this brings us to a third attribute: Only airpower has the ability to bring strategic and other high-value targets an enemy

holds most dear under rapid attack in simultaneous or nearsimultaneous fashion. It is, in the words of Col John A.

Warden, USAF, “death by a thousand cuts,” for even if any one

particular sortie by a strike aircraft is not of great significance,

in and of itself, the combination is deadly. Once again, this is

only possible because of the maturity of modern airpower, particularly precision navigation and attack, and stealth.

The best example of this in practice was the Gulf War, typified by the opening night strikes across Iraq.23 In earlier air

wars, because of the immaturity of precision, air attacks had

to be sequential rather than parallel. For example, the strikes

by the Eighth Air Force against Nazi Germany in 1943 and

1944 were complex, unwieldy, unfocused, and characterized

by a slow pace of operations. An entire bomber stream of up

to 600 B-17s operated essentially against one aiming point. In

all of 1943, the Eighth Air Force hit less than 50 targets, causing weekly damage equivalent to, say, a destructive tornado in

the American Midwest. Yet, in the Gulf War, in one 24-hour

period, there were 150 targets hit, roughly equivalent to a

major earthquake every day. Nearly 700 attackers on opening

night struck hundreds of different aim points with literally

shattering effect.24

The implications of this particular attribute for a nation’s

ability to achieve its war aims are significant. There are, of

course, many different kinds of war, and it is a truism that airpower works best against a high-technology opponent, for

such an enemy is particularly vulnerable to the kind of devastation that air warfare can wreak. (This is not merely a lesson

of modern airpower, but one that goes back in time as well; it

was recognized even by De Seversky as early as the 1940s.)

Nevertheless, historical experience from multiple conflicts

involving national survival indicates that as a war continues

from weeks to months to years, the potential of casualties and

collateral damage increases dramatically, while the likelihood

of a nation achieving the aims it set out to fulfill declines as an

enemy adapts and friendly losses mount. Conversely, in a

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short war, the likelihood of achieving war aims is at its highest, as is the expectation of suffering minimal losses. Recent

experiences suggest that nation-states that possess hightechnology, robust air forces operating to insightful doctrine

can greatly increase the expectation of achieving the goal of a

short war, and with it, the rapid, overwhelming destruction of

an enemy force.

Fulfillment of this parallel, simultaneous attribute of airpower requires information mastery of such magnitude as to

constitute a fourth attribute itself: Airpower is dependent

upon the power of information. Information has a value and a

worth all its own, and, without it, modern airpower cannot

function effectively. Indeed, one could go so far as to say that,

in the modern postindustrial nation-state, information constitutes its own “center of gravity.”25 To a degree, of course, this

is not a modern lesson, but one that dates to the dawn of warfare—it involves knowing one’s craft, knowing one’s abilities,

being able to communicate easily and understandably, and

knowing one’s enemies. The lack of information has always

been costly in air warfare, both tactically and strategically.

The Battle of Midway is probably the best example of how communications limitations, prior knowledge, and knowledge

deficits combined to hamper and help both American and

Japanese operations. Fortunately, their implications were

more serious for the Japanese side than for the American one.

Today, the amount of information available to commanders

has increased in direct relationship to the growth and widespread distribution of data-processing systems. To show how

the pace of information generation has grown, one need only

do a (very) rough comparison of just the print data available to

American air commanders from the Second World War and the

Gulf War. Second World War US Army Air Forces (USAAF) air

operations generated a combined average of 220 documents

per day from all theaters, a total of approximately 26,000

pages of material. In the Gulf War, from one theater of operations, the Air Force generated a daily average of 340 documents totaling nearly 49,000 pages of material.26 Given the

time constraints upon modern commanders, and the speed

and rapidity with which events can change, it is obvious that

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information mastery becomes a considerable challenge. To

this end, modern airpower requires the internetting of intelligence, administration, and communications to a degree

unknown in previous conflicts. But while this challenge is

great, if successfully met, the resulting increase in operational

efficiency generates benefits all its own, as one opponent

achieves information dominance over another.

The extraordinary success of two particular airborne platforms—the E-3 airborne warning and control system (AWACS)

and E-8 joint surveillance target attack radar system

(JSTARS)—offers a powerful confirmation of what information

dominance means in modern war. AWACS deconflicted the air

war, preventing “blue-on-blue” fire even as thousands of daily

sorties were flown by aircraft from several different air forces.

JSTARS—even though a rudimentary brass-board system

hastily kluged together for operational use—constituted an

AWACS for the ground war. The two E-8 aircraft in theater

played a decisive role in the outcome of the Battle of Khafji and

the rout of the Iraqi occupiers of Kuwait.27

Conversely, the rapid pace of war in the face of information

generation can induce its own problems. For example, one of

the major disconnects in the Gulf War was the poor turnaround time of intelligence information from sensor systems

through the analysis process and back to the operators. In

part, this was driven by the tempo of the air war—it was,

essentially, a 24-hour war, with no time for intelligence to

“catch up” as it had in previous conflicts when air operations

generally slowed at night. Another weakness highlighted in the

war was the slow pace of data transmission from classified fax

machines, though the data they sent were critical, particularly

during the early deployment phase of the confrontation. One

of the real strengths, however, was the widespread availability

of secure telephones.

In sum then, to wage a modern air war successfully, commanders must have access to reliable, secure communications,

the best possible intelligence, streamlined administration, the

most exacting information on their own forces, and the ability

to exchange and use information without undue meddling from

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organizational elements that are not directly involved in the

decision-making and combat-operations process.

The acquisition, exchange, and exploitation of knowledge in

the modern world have been revolutionized by the onset of the

space age, not yet 40 years old. Thus, a fifth aspect of modern

airpower is that airpower is really air and space power. The

demarcation between air and space is increasingly irrelevant,

for a modern air force must be prepared to operate in both.28

I’m not alluding here to Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon fantasies. We must recognize that we have already fought our first

space war, even though the current state of space operations

could be compared to, say, the use of submarines or aircraft

in the First World War: Just a hint of what is to come.29

In the Gulf War, the Coalition forces relied upon space-based

communications, space-based navigation, real-time weather

analysis, intelligence from space, and space-based cuing for

Patriot SAM ground-defense systems. These capabilities will be

even more significant for us in the future than they have been

in the past, particularly as space takes up the challenge of confronting theater missile defense (TMD) issues. Further, the benefits of space-based information dominance run across the

spectrum of conflict from low- to high-intensity war.30

An air force that can call upon space-based assets is one that

can dramatically improve its efficiencies and abilities to prosecute a war quickly and with minimal risk. For that reason, it is

disturbing to note the dependency we have upon aging space

systems. For the most part, the launch vehicle technology

employed by the United States today and for the future dates

to the dawn of the “space age,” the precomputer, preelectronic,

presystems, precomposite structures era.31 The three primary

launch vehicles—the Atlas, Titan, and Delta—are derivatives of

early ballistic missile systems (Atlas, in fact, predates the space

age by three years). Further, the space community needs—as

United States Space Command (USSPACECOM) commander,

Gen Charles Horner, has noted—to develop an operational

mind-set as opposed to a research and development one. Only

then will the space community have legitimacy as a full-fledged

war-fighting player. To do this will require a significant investment in a space-based future, precisely at a time when calls

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continue for a steady decline in apportionment of national

resources to defense. With a proliferation of nations operating

in space, some with cheap and reliable launch systems, we

must remember—to paraphrase an old science-fiction movie—

“We are not alone.” Finally, there is yet another cautionary

note. High technology builds in its own high-tech dependencies

and vulnerabilities. An air force accustomed to having the

advantages that space assets offer could find itself having to

scramble to maintain its efficiency if those assets were, somehow, negated or denied by enemy action or misfortune.

Confronting threats to space assets—whether from surface- or

air- and space-based platforms—is thus one issue requiring

major consideration now and in the future.

A sixth attribute of airpower is its duality, for both combat

and humanitarian purposes. In some situations, one has to do

both—for example, today, the airlifters of Operation Provide

Promise into Bosnia-Herzegovina are capped by NATO fighters

which, in turn, are controlled by AWACS. They make use of all

the accoutrements of modern warfare—secure communications, GPS, et cetera. Given this, one could be flippant and say

that one of the messages of modern airpower is “Bread or

bombs: We do both.” Air-refueled airlifters bring munitions or

humanitarian food rations at transonic speeds into a crisis

region. Weapons can be handed off to strike aircraft. Food can

be delivered directly, or handed off to theater airlift. In any

case, the message here for our air commanders is that the

United States Air Force must be prepared to do both combat

and noncombat missions: the major regional contingencies

(MRC) as well as military operations other than war (MOOTW),

perhaps even multiple ones at the same time. It cannot justify

itself exclusively only in combat projection terms.

This duality has, of course, existed for quite a while. (For

example, this year—1994—marks the 75th anniversary of

American humanitarian air operations, and many will recall the

efforts at the end of World War II by the RAF and USAAF to airdrop supplies to the Dutch, as well as the better-known Berlin

Airlift.) But the combination of the large-capacity jet airlifter

coupled with air refueling has given it more significance today

than at any previous time. This dual war-and-peace capability

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was never better demonstrated than after the fall of the Soviet

Union, with the emergency food airlift into the former USSR,

Operation Provide Hope. It is worth noting that the key individuals in initiating and organizing that food relief effort were, in

fact, Air Force personnel detailed to the Department of State,

because they appreciated what modern airlift could accomplish.

As the food relief planning effort began, it was obvious that deficiencies in the Russian transportation infrastructure would

limit the value of merely shipping food to Russian ports.

Airpower offered a way out—direct flights from the continental

United States or Europe to the Russian heartland. It was this

flexibility that made the food resupply effort of substantive, as

opposed to merely symbolic, importance.32

Yet, as extensive as that operation was, it could have been

even greater still. (In the Gulf War, for example, airlifters delivered an average of 17 million ton/miles of cargo per day into

the Gulf region.) But while the Air Force had the airlift capacity and global reach to make the resupply effort work, Aeroflot,

on its own, did not. Had the crisis worsened, and had it been

necessary to do so, the following scenario could have been

played out: Assisted by KC-10s and KC-135s, massive airlift

by C-5s and C-141s could have delivered key food items, such

as canned goods, refined grains, and breads, directly into the

former USSR, landing at airheads and then transferring cargo

(if necessary) to C-130s and Aeroflot aircraft and helicopters

for in-country resupply. In this scenario, Aeroflot would have

functioned in the same “on call” role as the Civil Reserve Air

Fleet (CRAF) did during the Gulf War. Such was not required.

But, in any case, the Russian food supply effort of 1991–93 set

an important post-Cold-War precedent for subsequent global

humanitarian airlift operations. Last year, 1993, Air Force Air

Mobility Command (AMC) aircrews operated in 96 percent of

the world’s countries: 186 out of a total of 193 nations.33

A seventh attribute of airpower is its dominance over other

forms of warfare. Today and for the foreseeable future, it is no

longer possible to state with any certainty that surface forces

are the primary instruments whereby a nation secures victory

in war. This has led to a recognition that there is a “new calculus” in military affairs, so that even in joint operations in

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far-flung regional contingencies, it is the air component that is

the most critical and, indeed, the linchpin of victory. As RAND

investigators have noted:

The results of our analysis do indicate that the calculus has changed

and airpower’s ability to contribute to the joint battle has increased.

Not only can modern airpower arrive quickly where needed, it has

become far more lethal in conventional operations. Equipped with

advanced munitions either in service or about to become operational

and directed by modern C3

I [command, control, communications, and

intelligence] systems, airpower has the potential to destroy enemy

ground forces either on the move or in defensive positions at a high

rate while concurrently destroying vital elements of the enemy’s warfighting infrastructure. In short, the mobility, lethality, and survivability of airpower makes it well suited to the needs of rapidly developing

regional conflicts. These factors taken together have changed—and will

continue to change—the ways in which Americans think about military

power and its application.34

As Gen Michael J. Dugan, USAF, noted in 1989, “Modern

warfare is joint warfare.”35 But while there will always be a

need for joint combined arms forces to function in a war-fighting

environment, surface warfare traditionalists are engaging in

wishful thinking when they proclaim the dominance of older

forms of sequential power-projection forces. In particular, air’s

ability to enter a crisis quickly and to employ high-leverage

force against an enemy’s centers of gravity means that military

power has, at last, entered what might be termed the “postClausewitzian era.”36

The command relationship implications are very significant,

for a joint force air component commander (JFACC) thus

emerges as the dominant arbiter of power simply by the power

projection capability that he commands. In the future, it would

be a wise theater commander in chief (CINC) who would defer to

his JFACC the broadest possible latitude in the planning and

execution of the air campaign. While this runs counter to the

views of traditional surface force adherents, who argue that air

operates only “in support” of a surface campaign, the JFACC can

point to notable CINCs whose efforts were crowned by success

when they adopted just such an approach: Montgomery in the

Western Desert, MacArthur in the Southwest Pacific, Eisenhower

in western Europe, and Schwarzkopf in the gulf. Conversely,

where air has been tied too closely to ground commanders—

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notably the French in 1940 or the Americans at Kasserine in

1943—the result has been disaster. Indeed, in the future it may

well be increasingly difficult to argue for the appointment of a

CINC or joint force commander who does not come from within

the airpower community.37

This, of course, brings up an eighth attribute: Historically,

airpower works best when it is projected by a genuine air

force. While many military organizations can project limited

forms of airpower, only a dedicated air force has the doctrinal

underpinnings, mind-set, infrastructure, accumulated expertise, technological base, and ability to use it to its greatest

effect. Surface forces using helicopters or other short-range

aviation systems may use them profitably in land warfare or

“across the beach” situations (for example, the dramatic use of

helicopters in Iraq and Kuwait or the use of carrier-based aviation in Vietnam). Though these surface forces have also historically invested in longer-range technologies, including

cruise missiles and battlefield missile systems such as the

Army tactical missile system (ATACMS) and multiple launch

rocket system (MLRS), these are at best poor substitutes for

long-range, land-based stealthy or otherwise precision-strike

platforms. They typically lack the accuracy of the manned aircraft, or its ability to undertake multiple mission taskings, or

its ability to deliver devastating force or penetrating weapons

capable of gutting an opponent.

But of more significance is the organizational structure itself:

Surface forces traditionally think not in long-range theaterwide

terms, but in shorter-range “front” or “beachhead” terms. This

was evident in the Gulf War, in the near-constant battle

between General Schwarzkopf and his corps commanders over

the “proper use” of airpower and in the after-action examination of carrier aviation undertaken within the naval historical

community.38 Further, surface forces traditionally lack the

infrastructure to support a fully robust and sustainable air

campaign force because their assets have to be split among so

many different war-fighting communities. Likewise, the deployment of airpower elements by surface warfare forces tends not

to take fullest advantage of the capabilities of aerospace systems: They traditionally deploy at the speed of the surface force

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itself, not at the speed of the airplanes involved. As previously

noted in this paper, this is the difference between 15-hour nonstop continental United States to theater deployments of landbased air and three-week cruises by carriers transiting the

Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and the Suez Canal to get on station.39 It is vitally important, then, that decision makers and

military commanders alike recognize the difference between a

service having an air branch and an air force. It is right and

proper for all military branches to incorporate airpower elements within them—indeed, they would be remiss if they did

not do so—but a nation, to take fullest advantage of the aerospace environment must have, first and foremost, an independent, well-led, and well-equipped air force.

The dominance of air warfare in the modern era reaffirms—

if it were somehow yet still needed!—a ninth attribute: That in

the airpower era, loss of air superiority equates to loss of the

ability to exercise national prerogatives. Today, more than ever

before, the penalty for losing air superiority is too great to risk.

When a high-technology society is stripped of air superiority,

it is utterly vulnerable to an enemy, which can attack it as it

wishes. Put another way, the damage inflicted by precision

weaponry to the Iraqi leadership and key military targets in

Baghdad on opening night would have been virtually equally

devastating against the capital of the United States. In the

Iraqi case, loss of air superiority over its own homeland has

forced Iraq’s leadership to live with an “air occupation” that

has exposed the very core of Iraqi military capabilities to outside inspection and destruction.40

The tenet—indeed, truism—that air superiority is, first and

foremost, the most vital mission of an air force is increasingly

questioned by defense analysts writing in the post-Cold-War

era, many of whom suggest that modern air forces do not

require the latest-generation fighter or strike aircraft technology. Yet it is equally arguable that (because of the extreme

threat that loss of air superiority poses and because of the

proliferation of advanced air-to-air missiles that can, when

married to older-generation aircraft, act as “force multipliers,”

enabling these older generation aircraft to successfully confront current-generation ones) the quest for higher performance

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and more survivable aircraft—particularly fighters—is no less

critical now than it has been in the past.

The dramatic surge in dangerous surface-to-air missile and

antiaircraft artillery (AAA) threats—first dramatically highlighted by the experiences of the Israeli Air Force over the

Golan Heights in 1973—forces its own concern upon planners. In the Gulf War, for example, 87 percent of losses came

from radar and infrared SAMs and AAA.41 Essentially, the lowaltitude environment was “off limits” to the Coalition from

opening night onwards, which degraded the ability of nonprecision “dumb-bomb” droppers to do a credible job. Further,

these systems have forced greater reliance upon night air war,

in which advanced air forces now excel. But the proliferation

of increasingly lethal longer-range SAMs and sophisticated

night sensor systems will undoubtedly force a technology race

for the future between defender and attacker.

This is particularly true of the air-to-air quest for “first look,

first shot, first kill” systems blending sensors, stealth, and

weapons in a synergistic package that can enable a small,

deploying high-technology force to offset a more numerical

enemy. One study, for example, suggests that the combination

of an F-15C and AIM-120 advanced medium-range air-to-air

missile—a force structure advocated by some defense analysts—offers no better than a parity of threat between the

United States and potential foreign enemies after the year

2000, largely because of foreign missile developments. But the

combination of the projected F-22 and the AIM-120 offers to

maintain an air superiority edge for the United States beyond

the year 2010.42

Why is it that the air superiority issue, in particular, is so

difficult to “sell” to the defense analysis community or, worse,

to many individuals who might have to evaluate, by dint of

political or organizational position, contemporary military airpower capabilities? It may be because, to the untutored eye,

one airplane or missile type more or less looks like every other

airplane of the same type (think, for example, of a 1950’s 707

and a 1990’s A-340, or a 1970’s AIM-7 Sparrow and a 1990’s

AIM-120 AMRAAM). This is, of course, dangerously misleading. For aircraft today, traditional parameters—speed, range,

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and payload—are increasingly less relevant or satisfactory

than measuring the overall systemic benefits that the synergistic packaging of modern technology produces.

For example, the basic Mach 2 plus/60,000-foot envelope of

the modern jet fighter was established by 1958, with the F-104.

So we have an apparent—though illusory—plateau here: No

production fighter aircraft since then, be it the F-4, the

Mirage, the MiG-21, or the F-15, has really ventured beyond

this. But would a fighter pilot today willingly choose an F-104

over, say, an F-22? Hopefully, the answer is obvious. The combination of low observables, electronics, modern air-to-air

weapons, air refueling, maneuverability and agility, advanced

structures, and high-performance propulsion systems weight

this decision in favor of the modern fighter, even though the

“top end” performance, on paper, does not seem all that

remarkable or different.

The difficulty of selling counterair systems may also have to

do with a misperception of airpower itself: That, somehow, the

air-to-air war between opposing fighters is a “sideshow” compared to the “real war” occurring on the ground or over the

front or somewhere else. Similar dangers lurk, incidentally,

when simplistically looking at bombers, such as the B-52 versus the B-2, or airlifters, such as the C-17 versus the C-5, or

some conventional widebody transport, such as a 747. In particular, the notion that bombers are, somehow, only creatures

of strategic nuclear war (and thus negated by the new international order), is one that is dying hard. This myth gains

apparent credence because of the long association of “fighters”

with “Tactical Air Command” and “bombers” with “Strategic

Air Command,” and (by implication) the notion that strategic

war must only mean nuclear war. Here, as in so much of airpower matters, education of decision makers is critical.

My tenth attribute of airpower is its inherently dynamic

character and dependency upon high technology. The Gulf

War reaffirmed the leverage that high technology offers a

nation confronting a sophisticated opponent. And, contrary to

the dire predictions of the “defense reform” community of the

1980s, there was essentially no difference in the missioncapability rates of high-technology (for example, F-15E) and

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low-technology (for example, A-10) aircraft: The rates were well

above 90 percent for fighter and strike aircraft and, in the case

of the two aircraft mentioned here, 95.5 percent for both.43 In

particular, airpower today benefits from not only the now-

“ancient” revolutions of the turbojet and high-speed aerodynamics but from less obvious ones, such as the tremendous

advances in miniature electronics, computational design tools,

and composite structures.

In particular, the stealth revolution and the revolution in

precision attack—both the precision of finding and fixing a

target, and the precision of hitting it—have transformed military affairs in a way remarkable by the standards of military

history. For example, in previous warfare, nations tended to

develop comparable systems quickly or, at most, within a few

years. The steam-turbine-powered ship, the dreadnought, the

fighter, radar, the jet engine, jet fighters, supersonic aircraft,

the atomic and hydrogen bombs, and earth satellites constitute relatively recent examples. But in the case of stealth,

which “went operational” in 1983, the future seems clear of

rival systems until well past the turn of the century. Thus, at

the least, the F-117 will have given the United States a 17-year

lead over any potential rival.

Technological development is, of course, inherently unstable, and the quest for antistealth systems is a vigorous one.

But stealth proponents can take comfort in the experience of

the submarine—an early stealth system—which, though

engagable and sinkable even as far back as the First World

War, has remained a viable and, indeed, most serious threat to

surface systems ever since. Such will, I am confident, be true

of stealth aerospace systems as well, despite the plethora of

detection systems that may be arrayed against them.

In this characteristic challenge-and-response struggle

between threat and counter, which in World War II was termed

the wizard war, certain adjustments will have to be made. We

will have to develop the ability to do greater distance stand-off

attacks with precision munitions capable of destroying hardened targets. The combination of space-based navigation, precision seekers for terminal engagement, and, perhaps, hypersonic impact velocities courtesy of high-energy booster

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systems will, I predict, prove valuable. Hypersonic weapon

velocities also potentially offer a high degree of survivability

against SAM air-defense systems, something slower velocity

systems, such as transonic nonstealthy cruise missiles

already lack. Above all, we will have to equip more of our

forces to deliver precision munitions, for in the war-fighting

environments of the present-day and foreseeable future, dumb

bombs move earth, not minds. This situation is particularly

acute when one looks to confronting simultaneous or nearsimultaneous multiple regional contingencies. In the Gulf War,

for example, the United States Air Force deployed over 90 percent of its aircraft capable of self-designating and delivering

precision munitions. Had a second crisis arisen—say, in

Korea—we would have been hard pressed to meet the needs of

both. Precision-attack aircraft, in this case, not weapons, were

the potential limiting factor.44

We will have to extend far greater attention to nonlethal

systems, which hold great promise both for military effect and

for the humanitarian implications of their use. For the latter

reason, if some of these nonlethal systems, nevertheless, cause

egregious injury that smacks of cruelty—for example, the

deliberate use of laser systems to blind or disable an opponent or systems that cannot themselves be precisely targeted—

it will raise serious ethical issues that will—and should—

force reconsideration of their development and use. The issue

of nonlethal weaponry is an interesting one, insomuch as, in

part, it stems from a growing concern within Western nations,

in particular, to minimize both enemy and friendly casualties

in war. The reaction to the Al Firdus bunker strike in

Baghdad at the height of the Gulf War illustrated this perfectly; a single bomb, placed on a high-value and clearly

defensible target, succeeded in forcing a redirection of the air

campaign away from Baghdad almost until the end of the war,

thanks to the casualties to civilians occupying it at the time

it was hit. For this reason, in today’s world, every bomb is

potentially a “political bomb” or “media bomb” as well as a

military one. Nonlethal weaponry capable of destroying an

opponent’s infrastructure—for example, airborne systems

that enable the exploitation of an enemy’s communications

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network, nonnuclear electromagnetic pulse weapons, or computer viruses capable of insertion in key enemy facilities—

represent an evolutionary step in warfare that is potentially

no less significant than the invention of gunpowder itself.

Now that airpower is firmly embedded in the information

age, we will have to refine our ability to measure what we do.

Measurement of airpower effects is directly related to apportionment of effort, and that, of course, is directly related to

duration of conflict and intensity of attack. We saw in the

recent Gulf War how deficiencies in the intelligence process—

particularly the bomb damage assessment process—nearly

derailed the air campaign in early February as a heated and,

ultimately, pointless debate broke out between the intelligence

community, the national political leadership, the military

leadership, and the forces in theater. Fortunately, in this case,

a strong-minded and insightful CINC, with the support of the

chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the secretary of defense, and,

ultimately, the president, made the correct decision. But will

we be so fortunate in the future? We will if we plan for it now.

In closing, I wish to affirm the obvious: Wars are won by

individuals and by individual will, heroism, and sacrifice.

Certainly that has been true of all the air wars which have

occurred to date. We have an obligation to educate ourselves

about our profession so that we guarantee that the individuals who go to war are the best trained, the best led, and the

best equipped.

I am disturbed, for example, at how few senior air leaders—

from all nations—have addressed airpower issues since the

Second World War, in contrast to the sometimes furious scribbling of their brethren in other, more traditional services. I personally feel that is why the expectations of many in the political leadership and media about what an air war in the Persian

Gulf would mean were so wrong: They were thinking in terms

of Berlin or Tokyo in 1945, not in the realities of post-Gulf-War

Baghdad. It is also why today we face surprising difficulties

persuading some in the political arena that aircraft are as

much a vital part of the national industrial base infrastructure

as, say, tanks, aircraft carriers, or submarines and must not be

allowed to become an “endangered species.” We must not risk

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that misperception again. We must not be—and cannot afford

to be—a series of air forces that continue to draw our doctrinal

and strategic sense from the great airpower prophets of the

past—the Douhets and Trenchards and Mitchells—men who

wrote over 60 years ago. We need to be as dynamic in our

thought as our profession itself is. And that is why I am particularly honored to have been invited here to present this talk

to you. I make no claim for it to be revealed truth. Rather, if it

stimulates discussion and critique, I will be satisfied that it has

served its purpose. Thank you all very much.

Discussion

Professor Richard Overy: I enjoyed your paper enormously. One

rather intriguing thought occurred to me. If this paper had

been given 50 or 60 years ago, I think that a lot of it would have

been concerned with what we came to call the military-industrial complex, the idea that airpower could only be exercised

effectively by states with a very large manufacturing capacity.

There would be high losses, but those losses could be replaced

fairly rapidly from the factory as they were in the Second World

War, when a great deal of organizational and economic effort

went into the production and supply of a continuous flow of

weapons. But I’m struck by the fact that you didn’t talk a great

deal about economic and supply backup. Further, the kind of

air war of the future that you’re describing is one which will be

very difficult to resupply quickly and effectively if for some reason or another, once you’re engaged in war, you experience

extremely high loss rates. Now I don’t think this would affect

the United States, and I think that your paper, in a sense, puts

the United States right at the vanguard. A lot of smaller and

weaker economies will remain extremely reliant on American

technology. But imagine a war between medium or small states

with limited airpower, sustaining fairly high losses as we heard

the Egyptians did in the war with Israel. Without effective

depths of production and supply, there’s a danger that your

airpower, on which you spent a great deal of money, may

become virtually worthless in a matter of hours. Do you have a

view on the future of supply and production and what sort of

depth might be necessary?

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Dr. Hallion: I think the issues you’ve raised are very insightful.

We are in a very interesting situation now with modern airpower in that its lethality is so high it can very quickly wipe

out an opponent’s forces and accumulated stocks. We are

dealing with high-technology systems in virtually all air forces

now, even smaller ones, that cannot be rapidly replaced. There

was a study done a number of years ago within the United

States Air Force into what would happen if we decided to go to

surge production on the F-16—how long would it be before we

rolled out the first aircraft beyond what had been already

planned in the pipeline. The answer was three years. Now by

World War II standards, that’s absurd. I think the point is a

serious one because what it shows is that nations which may

confront an air attack have to be able to fend off the attacker

in such a way that they do not lose their investment. To highlight the problem, look at the difficulties Iraq faced with the

immediate destruction of aircraft, war stocks, hardened aircraft shelters, and so on, things that previously would have

been fairly easily protected.

However, the implication that only countries with very high

technology bases can engage in this kind of war is flawed, I

think. The combination of older aircraft and modern

weapons systems which are readily available in the postCold-War environment—precision munitions, air-to-air

weapons, air-to-ground weapons—means that even smaller

powers can expect to have not only reasonable defense capabilities but also very reasonable attack capabilities. And for

this reason you might see a Gulf War on a smaller scale but

with the same sort of decisive outcome. But the problem

you’ve alluded to, that we’ll see airplanes that can be very

quickly destroyed or put out of service, and because they are

so complex and expensive are not readily replaced, is a serious issue.

Air Vice-Marshal Tony Mason: Could I endorse Richard Overy’s

comment. Thank you for a magnificent paper. It struck me also

that when you were referring to air forces, you were in fact referring to one in particular, the United States Air Force. If we had

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met here in the 1920s, we could perhaps have had representatives from Britain, France, Australia, Germany, Italy, the United

States, the USSR, Germany, Japan, and many more. And when

they talked about airpower, they would have all been talking

about the same thing. I’m not sure that we are all talking about

the same thing any more. In my introduction to my own paper

yesterday, I used the expression “differential airpower,” because

many of the applications you mentioned depend upon a synergy

of advanced technology—space, stealth, information systems,

and so on—which none of us in the foreseeable future can

aspire to. If that supposition’s correct, it poses three questions

about airpower which the medium powers should be thinking

about long and hard. The first one is how would we use airpower as a national instrument in cooperation with the United

States? Second, how should we develop our own airpower as a

national instrument to be applied independently, not necessarily with interests which were synonymous with those of the

United States? And third, while most of us will be happy most

of the time to harmonize our interests with the United States, it

is by no means the case universally. There will be many countries who see the United States and the “new world order” as

something antithetical to their regional interests. The lessons

they take from the gulf will not be ours. Our lesson from the

gulf, generally speaking, is: How can we apply those capabilities

nationally and make them more effective? Other countries will

ask, what lessons can we derive from the gulf which will discourage the United States from using its airpower in similar circumstances in the future? I think those three questions are

worthy of more study.

Dr. Hallion: At any particular point in the history of aerospace

development we have had a leader-follower relationship

between certain nations in terms of what they were able to do,

both commercially and militarily. Then because you have this

leader-follower relationship, at some later point, those capabilities wind up being spread over a larger group of nations.

For example, when the first supersonic jet fighters came out,

they were really the province of only the United States, the

Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France. But we very quickly

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got to the point where we were exporting those aircraft, so

eventually other nations developed the capability to design

and build their own jets. Sometimes that development was

undertaken within a very constrained industrial or economic

base. So my feeling here is that while countries like the United

States, Great Britain, and France might have an advantage in

technological capabilities right now, it will not last. It will very

quickly change. It will change as a result of the commercial

exploitation of systems, and it will change as a result of

increased access for all countries to technological education

through the Western university system.

Now the three questions you raised. First, how should a small

or medium state plan to use airpower in cooperation with the

United States? I think it would be foolish for any nation to

seek a particular form of airpower application—say maritime

patrol or army cooperation—and rely on the United States for

air superiority, airlift, and so on. My belief is that nations

understand their own geostrategic environment very clearly.

They should plan to undertake all the missions appropriate to

that environment, with the necessary adjustments of scale.

For example, in Australia your needs in many ways are very

much like ours. You need to have the ability to operate at very

long ranges. You also have a very small military force, therefore, that would tend, at least in my mind, to drive you

towards precision weapons platforms and systems. So you’re

looking right away at medium- to long-range airlift and, if necessary, medium- to long-range strike operations.

Second question. Assuming that a conflict became more serious or there were such strong regional or global implications

that the United States had to become involved, your existing

force structure presumably would be utilized to best advantage as part of a coalition air force.

The third question is the most intriguing. What lessons could

other countries derive from the gulf about discouraging the

United States from applying airpower at long range? Some of

aspects of that question really relate to a larger issue, and I

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think it’s one we have recognized in the United States since

the Vietnam War. I refer to the criteria proposed by Caspar

Weinberger in the mid-1980s, which stated among other

things that the United States will not make a commitment to

go to war without the support of the American people. In other

words, the weapon of choice for a nation seeking to discourage

the United States from getting involved in a war is to win the

war of public opinion within the United States itself. I think

you will find that within the United States there’s a great deal

of reluctance among our population to involve ourselves in

what are perceived to be foreign adventures. The Gulf War

debates were acute and absolutely critical. I think that if

George Bush had tried to fulfill the United Nations mandate

without first having had a public debate, major protests would

have ensued. But this battle of public opinion may be the most

effective way for a nation to try to influence American action.

Air Vice-Marshal Alan Reed: It seems that over the past three

days the lessons we’ve derived are those that relate to air

forces. Militarily, there is a much broader sense that I think

we should accommodate. We heard yesterday from Air

Marshal Funnell about the vulnerability of surface ships in the

Falklands, and the example from the Gulf War indicates that

ground forces also are very vulnerable. You alluded in your

paper to some aspects of this, but would you comment about

the navies and armies of the world: have they recognized that

airpower has come of age, if so what are they doing about it?

Dr. Hallion: I’ll give you some background from my own experiences. I taught at the Army War College at Carlisle Barracks

in Pennsylvania for a year in the late 1980s, and I found a very

interesting thing. I found that within the United States Army

community there was a great gulf between Army aviators and

Army nonaviators. Basically the tank, the infantry, and the

artillery communities were very skeptical of the value of

organic army aviation. More often than not, when we talked

about the future of war and the role of airpower, I found that

my natural allies were the Army aviators. I felt that I was in

the Air Corps Tactical School in the 1930s.

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The implication—and I believe that this is largely driven by

physical science—is that a two-dimensional opponent has difficulty confronting a three-dimensional opponent. If you take

a look at “Sandy” Woodward’s book on the Falklands War,

you’ll find that he saw this from both ends. As a submarine

commander, he was able to sneak up on surface ships with

relative ease. As a surface force commander, he had very great

difficulty dealing with 1950s aircraft and weapons technology,

even though he had 1980s technology to confront it. You folks

here saw this first hand: you saw it in the Battle of Coral Sea,

in the fighting around New Guinea, at Milne Bay where the

RAAF operated very successfully against Japanese surface

forces, at the Battle of Bismarck Sea, which was a classic.

Ultimately, as a result of those and other actions, an air blockade was essentially inflicted on New Guinea. The vulnerability

of ships goes back a very long time. The vulnerability of surface mechanized vehicles goes back a very long time. Rommel

in the Western Desert complained that air attack pinned him

down so he couldn’t move. He made the same complaint several years later at Normandy, where he said that enemy air

attacks were so overwhelming that his army had become

immobile, and there was nothing he could do about it. And yet

when we look back, we realize that the aircraft systems that

we are talking about from those days—the Typhoon, the

Thunderbolt, the Hurribomber, things of that sort—were very

immature systems. They were carrying at most two or maybe

three 250- to 500-pound bombs, or they had small caliber

cannon, and yet they were already having a powerful impact

on surface forces. Now we are in the precision-munitions era,

and air forces have an even greater leverage against mechanized surface forces, land and sea.

My personal feeling is that armies and navies need to think

very seriously about what constitutes robust military force in

the present era. For example, for an army to place priority on

the development of armored fighting vehicles doesn’t make

much sense. Helicopter gunships, troop transports, observation helicopter systems—those make perfect sense—but to

waste effort developing another main battle tank or something

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of that sort makes little sense. You do need a small number of

those vehicles if you’re in a Bosnia or a Somalia situation,

basically to keep the small arms fire out so to speak. But to

think that wars are going to be won by main battle tank

encounters in the future is, I think, really somewhat ludicrous. This has gone beyond strategy and thought; it’s now

become in some army circles dogma and theology. Long-range

power projection using army systems would be not an airlifter

carrying a tank into a crisis area, but an airlifter carrying a

helicopter gunship or something of that sort because you get

the flexible attributes of airpower. And that ties in with a comment I made at the end of my paper, which was that all military branches have an obligation to exploit the air weapon

consistent with their larger purposes. I happen to believe that

the overwhelming use of airpower is best left in the hands of

air forces, but it is absolutely obligatory that other military

forces make the maximum use of air weapons, because the

more traditional forms of power projection that they have

relied upon—surface vessels with cannons, tanks, things of

that sort—I think really represent an older paradigm of war.

Dr. Ben Lambeth: Let me take my cue from the last words in

your presentation and ask you a question which I know does

not have an easy answer. How can airpower theorists and professionals around the world better educate their principal constituencies, namely, the services? How do we get people to

think of airpower in functional rather than service terms, and

understand it as a supremely effective instrumentality of warfare rather than something that necessarily air forces do? And

here I might take issue with your comment about air forces

being the only appropriate repository of airpower. It seems to

me that if airpower professionals can cross that bridge, we can

go substantially towards getting beyond these parochial

squabbles that we see over force structures and budgets, and

think in terms of getting the done job rather than who gets the

credit.

Dr. Hallion: A very good question. First of all, don’t misunderstand what I’ve said. I didn’t say that air forces should be the

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only repositories of airpower. I think they are the only repositories for the decisive use of overwhelming airpower, but

everybody brings some airpower to the fight.

Turning to your question. This gets back to education. We

have a very serious challenge confronting us; we can see it by

looking around at the audience here; this is an air force audience. It would be far better if this was not an air force audience, it would be far better if the air force people here were in

a minority.

I think that basically the emphasis in the air force has been on

the operator as a pilot rather than on the operator as a thinker

or a writer. With rare exceptions, we have not seen our own

people carrying the message to the broader world on what air

brings. And in fact that’s also true for naval and army aviators.

We need a lot more operators as thinkers and writers in our

respective governments, with our respective political decision

makers, and in our university environments, not just in the

professional military education environment but also in civilian

universities. There needs to be more of a debate; we need more

of our senior officers writing pieces for newspapers. We need to

get this message out. On the eve of the Gulf War I was working

on Secretary Don Rice’s staff group, and what really shocked

me at that time was that peoples’ expectations of airpower were

so outdated. They were looking to a World War II model; they

were looking to massive collateral damage, tens of thousands

of civilian casualties, bombs wildly off target as a routine, the

savaging of friendly forces by airborne friendly fire.

Incidentally, the preconceived notion about friendly fire was, I

think, in some ways the most tragic aspect of the Gulf War.

While the services were trained to deal with the problem of

friendly fire in terms of air versus ground, they were not as

well prepared for the far greater danger of ground versus

ground friendly fire. Again, thinking was outdated. Ground

versus ground friendly fire incidents in the Gulf War outnumbered the air versus ground friendly fire incidents by 250 percent and were much more lethal.

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We have to take this education challenge very seriously. Once

again that’s why I think these conferences are so important,

but looking around the audience I wish I were seeing less blue

out there and a lot more green or tan.

Air Marshal Ray Funnell: I was taken by your remarks about

the political aspect of war in the modern era. When you look

at the interactions between and among public opinion, the

mass media, and political will, you realize that even low-level

conflicts, if they’re protracted, will quickly exhaust the popular support base. It would seem to me that if we do have to use

airpower, we should fully maximize the shock and the surprise

it brings with it. So even at low levels of conflict, we should be

thinking in terms of keeping the war as short as possible. And

in particular, if we do have a major national interest at risk,

we should apply our airpower with full force from the outset

and never again try to build up pressure gradually, as was

attempted in Vietnam. That approach makes it very difficult to

sustain popular support and to keep political and military

objectives aligned.

Dr. Hallion: I would second everything you said. Military power

in general and airpower in particular works better when it’s

applied decisively and to maximum effect. There’s that old

joke, “If you want to send a message call Western Union.” You

don’t use air to send messages; you use air to achieve decisive

military results. Your comment on short wars is a very important one. There has been a cultural shift in the way nations

look at war. I don’t think we have the patience to put ourselves

through a four-year, a five-year war, the will just is not there.

Had the Gulf War gone on beyond the six-month point, I think

there would have been a sharp increase in the number of people calling for some sort of settlement, anything to get out.

One consequence of the Gulf War that I think has not been

fully thought through in some circles is the question of casualties. The casualty rates of the Second World War and

Vietnam would no longer be accepted. But equally, the Gulf

War may have created unrealistically low expectations. We lost

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148 people to enemy action, and there is now a belief among

some that we can always contain our losses like that. It’s dangerous to think in those terms.

Notes

1. This paper should not be construed as representing or constituting an

official position of the United States Air Force, the Department of Defense,

or the United States government.

There are many definitions of airpower. For the purposes of this article I

offer up one of my own: “Airpower is the various uses of airborne vehicles

and forces to achieve national needs by the projection of military power or

presence at a distance.”

I wish to acknowledge the assistance of a number of individuals who provided insights, particularly Gen Charles Horner, USAF; Lt Gens “Jay” Kelly,

Buster C. Glosson, and Thomas Moorman, USAF; Air Vice-Marshals R. A.

“Tony” Mason and Ron Dick, RAF (Ret.); Cols John Piazza, John A. Warden

III, Phillip S. Meilinger, and David A. Deptula, USAF; Group Capt Andy

Vallance and Neil Taylor, RAF; Group Capt Gary Waters, RAAF; Lt Col Allan

Howey, USAF; Maj William Bruner, USAF; Ellen Piazza, SAF/OSX; Dr.

Christopher J. Bowie, Dr. Benjamin Lambeth, and Dr. Rebecca Grant of the

RAND Corporation; and Dr. Alan Stephens, RAAF Air Power Studies Centre.

The conclusions drawn and statements made are, unless otherwise cited,

mine alone.

2. C. H. Gibbs-Smith, The Aeroplane: An Historical Survey of its Origins

and Development (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1960), 35.

3. Charles M. Westenhoff, ed., Military Airpower: The CADRE Digest of

Airpower Opinions and Thoughts (Maxwell Air Force Base [AFB], Ala.: Air

University Press, October 1990), 51.

4. Loren Baritz, Backfire: A History of How American Culture Led Us into

Vietnam and Made Us Fight the Way We Did (New York: Ballantine Books,

1986), 153.

5. In fact, as President Bush himself recalled with some amusement during a commencement speech at the Air Force Academy on 29 May 1991,

when briefed on what airpower could do in the gulf, Bush—a former naval

aviator himself—turned to his national security adviser and questioned

whether the briefer—the Air Force chief of staff, no less—knew what he was

talking about. See Richard H. Kohn, “Out of Control: The Crisis in CivilMilitary Relations,” The National Interest, Spring 1994, 10–11. I have also

drawn on personal recollections from this time period.

6. Quoted in Jean Heller, “Air Power: Brutal, But Not Enough?” St.

Petersburg Times, 12 January 1991. For example, United States Strategic

Bombing Survey (USSBS) concluded, “Allied air power was decisive in the

war in Western Europe,” and the Pacific air campaign “supports the findings

in Germany that no nation can long survive the free exploitation of air

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weapons over its homeland. For the future it is important fully to grasp the

fact that enemy planes enjoying control of the sky over one’s head can be as

disastrous to one’s country as its occupation by physical invasion.” See

USSBS, Summary Reports European and Pacific Theaters (reprint, Maxwell

AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, 1987), 37, 110–11.

7. George S. Bush, commencement speech, US Air Force Academy, 29

May 1991.

8. More disturbing than the “revolution” debate has been the incipient

return of the “land power (i.e., tank and infantry) triumphant” wishfulthinking school of thought. For an example, see Brig Gen Robert J. Scales

Jr. et al., Certain Victory: United States Army in the Gulf War (Washington,

D.C.: Office of the Chief of Staff, US Army, 1993).

9. Eliot A. Cohen, “The Mystique of US Air Power,” Foreign Affairs, 73,

January–February 1994, 109–24.

10. Phillip S. Meilinger, Ten Propositions Regarding Airpower

(Washington, D.C.: Air Force History and Museum Program, 1997).

11. Office of the Secretary of the Air Force, The Air Force and US National

Security: Global Reach—Global Power (Washington, D.C.: Headquarters

USAF, June 1991), passim. See also Air Force Manual (AFM) 1-1, Basic

Aerospace Doctrine of the United States Air Force, 2 vols., March 1992.

12. J. F. C. Fuller, Armament and History: A Study of the Influence of

Armament on History from the Dawn of Classical Warfare to the Second World

War (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1945), 7.

13. United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), “AAF Bombing Accuracy

Report no. 2,” Operational Research Section, Eighth Air Force, 1945, Chart

2, “Distribution of Effort and Results.”

14. “Army Weapons System Performance in Southwest Asia” (Washington,

D.C.: Department of the Army, 13 March 1991), 3–4.

15. Gen Ronald Yates, USAF, speech at the annual meeting of the East

Coast Section, Society of Experimental Test Pilots, Alexandria, Va., 26 April

1991.

16. R. A. Mason, ed., War in the Third Dimension: Essays in Contemporary

Air Power (London: Brassey’s Defence Publishers, 1986).

17. Naval unit transit times are from the Office of the Chief of Naval

Operations, The United States Navy in “Desert Shield” “Desert Storm”

(Washington, D.C.: Department of the Navy, 1991), A-2–14.

18. For rates of advance of land combat forces, see Robert Helmbold,

“Rates of Advance in Historical Land Combat Operations,” CAA-RP-90-1

(Bethesda, Md.: Army Concepts Analysis Agency, 1990); and R. P.

Mulholland and R. D. Specht, The Rate of Advance of the Front Line in Some

World War II Campaigns, RAND Report RM-1072 (Santa Monica, Calif.:

RAND, 1953).

19. For example, see Thomas A. Keaney and Eliot A. Cohen, Gulf War Air

Power Survey, Summary Report (Washington, D.C.: Gulf War Air Power

Survey Team, for sale by Government Printing Office [GPO], 1993), 117.

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20. The Observation-Orientation-Decision-Action (OODA) Loop is a concept enunciated by John Boyd, the father of agility metrics and energy

maneuverability.

21. Frido von Senger und Etterlin, Neither Fear Nor Hope: The Wartime

Career of General Frido von Senger und Etterlin. Defender of Cassino (New

York: E. P. Dutton, 1964), 224.

22. Precisely how effectively Iraqi communications were shattered is

hotly debated. Interrogation reports of captured Iraqi commanders suggest

that Iraqi C3 was essentially destroyed, as does journalistic evidence from

Iraqi citizens. The cautiously optimistic Gulf War Air Power Survey (GWAPS)

will only state that communications were “greatly reduced” and that “common sense would argue that strikes against [Iraqi communications and

leadership targets] must have imposed some, if not considerable, disruption

and dislocation.” (Emphasis in original.) Keaney and Cohen, 70.

23. Some of this also relates to the Warden notion of “five strategic rings,”

enunciated in his essay, “Employing Air Power in the Twenty-First Century,”

in Richard H. Shultz Jr. and Robert L. Pfaltzgraff Jr., The Future of Air Power

in the Aftermath of the Gulf War (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press,

July 1992), 57–82.

24. I am indebted to Col John A. Warden, now commander of the Air

Command and Staff College, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, for this analogy.

Damage to “leadership targets,” communications, and “transportation targets” by the recent Los Angeles earthquake was remarkably similar to damage inflicted by air attack in Iraq though without, of course, the randomness

of damage (collateral damage) associated with an earthquake. For example,

the earthquake destroyed key junctions on the Highways 2, 5, 10, 118, and

405 interchanges, essentially severing all major freeways into LA from the

north and east, as well as the major east-west interchanges.

25. As indeed Maj Gary Crowder, USAF, of the Headquarters USAF

Strategic Planning Staff does in his briefing, “Revolution in Military Affairs:

A Geo-Strategic Assessment of Trends Affecting the US Military Through

2015,” 22 March 1994.

26. This statistic was assembled by Mr. Joseph D. Caver of the Air Force

Historical Research Agency, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, based upon its record

holdings of World War II and Gulf War material.

27. Col George K. Muellner and Col George J. Cusimano, “Development

Flight Test in Combat: Joint Stars at War,” in 1991 Report to the Aerospace

Profession (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Society of Experimental Test Pilots [SETP],

September 1991), 60–82.

28. For example, see the previously cited AFM 1-1, vol. 1, 2-1, 5.

29. Currently, there is a major space forecasting activity underway under

the direction of Lt Gen Jay Kelley, commander of the Air University at

Maxwell AFB, Alabama. This study, called Spacecast, is currently identifying technologies and missions to be pursued within the context of the anticipated global environment of the next century.

30. For example, reflecting on his experiences during Operation Just

Cause, Gen Clark Steiner, commander of the US Army’s XVIII Airborne

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Corps, stated, “Space just doesn’t help . . . I cannot go to war without space

systems.” See Headquarters USAF, Report to the 102d Congress of the United

States of America, FY 1992/93 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1991), 25. I wish to

acknowledge information and insights received from Lt Gen Thomas S.

Moorman Jr., commander of Air Force Space Command (AFSPC), Peterson

AFB, Colorado.

31. Though Robert H. Goddard flew his first liquid-fuel rocket in 1926,

the space age is commonly held to have begun on 4 October 1957, with the

launch of Sputnik I.

32. I have benefited from discussions with Col John Piazza, USAF; Col

John Warden, USAF; and Lt Col Barbara McColgan, USAF, as well as having drawn upon personal recollections from meetings in the Air Force

Secretariat.

33. This scenario was first presented to the Air Force secretary as one

possible option in mid-November 1991. See SAF/OSX (R. P. Hallion), memo

to SAF/OS, 13 November 1991, AF/HO files. Statistic on 1993 AMC operations from Ellen Piazza, SAF/OSX, 21 March 1994.

34. Christopher Bowie et al., The New Calculus: Analyzing Airpower’s

Changing Role in Joint Theater Campaigns, RAND Report MR-149-AF (Santa

Monica, Calif.: RAND, 1993), 83–84.

35. Gen Michael J. Dugan, “Air Power: Concentration, Responsiveness

and the Operational Art,” Military Review 69, 7 July 1989, 21. On the necessity of jointness in war, see Joint Chiefs of Staff Publication 1 (Joint Pub 1),

Joint Warfare of the US Armed Forces (Washington, D.C.: National Defense

University Press, for sale by GPO, 11 November 1991; and Col Thomas A.

Cardwell III, USAF, Airland Combat: An Organization for Joint Warfare

(Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, December 1992). An excellent survey of the jointness issue as applied to air warfare is James A. Winnefeld and

Dana J. Johnson, Joint Operations: Pursuit of Unity in Command and Control,

1942–1991 (Annapolis: US Naval Institute Press in association with RAND,

1993), passim.

36. An example of this “post-Clausewitzian” thinking would be Col John

A. Warden III’s influential book, The Air Campaign: Planning for Combat

(Washington, D.C.: National Defense University Press, 1988). I use this term

post-Clausewitzian to distinguish such thinking from the “neoClausewitzian” approach of thinkers such as Col Harry Summers, USA,

retired, in works such as Summers’ On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the

Vietnam War (Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1982).

37. I have benefited from discussions with Dr. Diane Putney of the

Center for Air Force History on this issue.

38. For an example of this—from a pro-corps commander and antiSchwarzkopf perspective—see the previously cited Scales, passim; and Capt

Steven U. Ramsdell, USN, report to Dr. Dean Allard, Naval Historical Center,

14 May 1991.

39. See endnote 17.

40. Based on looking at Iraqi targets and “translating” them into

American ones, the following would have been destroyed or rendered

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unusable: The White House and Blair House; the Capitol; the Pentagon; the

Executive Office Building; FBI, CIA, DIA, and NSA Headquarters; command

and key facilities at Bolling and Andrews AFBs; the Naval Air Test Center;

the Navy Yard and Navy Annex; Quantico Marine Base; Forts Belvoir,

McNair, Myer, and Meade; Camp David; the Suitland Federal Center; the

Sprint, MCI, and AT&T regional communications centers; and all significant

power plant and fuel storage facilities. (The source of this is a postwar analysis by Air Force Checkmate Operation.)

41. Keaney and Cohen, 61.

42. Bowie, 43–44.

43. For a discussion of reliability and maintainability issues, see the

author’s own Storm Over Iraq: Air Power and the Gulf War (Washington, D.C.:

Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), 3, 196–97.

44. F-15Es, F-111Fs, and F-117s.

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Aerospace technology, 384

Air campaign plan, 247

Desert Storm, 340–41

Air control, 32

Air Corps Tactical School, 38,

48, 70, 81

Aircraft carriers, 53

Aircraft development

World War I, 1

Aircraft production

World War I, 11

Air defense

Japan, 75

Ploesti, 77

United Kingdom, 71, 76

Airpower

and space, 389

attributes, 381

education, 399–400, 406

velocity advantage, 384–85

Air pressure, 153, 163

Air/sea gap, 247

Air support, 85

Air tasking order, 368

AMRAAM, 216, 395

Anderson, Frederick, 78

Argentina

military junta, 225

Argentine naval air arm, 243

Arnold, Henry H., 39, 52

Ascension island, 246

Atlantic Conveyor, 236, 250

Austria-Hungary

World War I, 4

Baker, James, 361

Baldwin, Stanley, 40

Baring, Maurice, 31

BBC, 254

Bekáa Valley, 208

Belyakov, Rostislav, 329

Ben-Gurion, David, 194

Bluff Cove disaster, 239

Bomb damage assessment, 348

Vietnam, 185

Bomber Command

loss rates, 79

Bombing

precision, 43–44, 47, 80, 81

Bombsights

course setting, 46

Norden, 46

Briggs Plan, 261

Butt report, 47

Casablanca Conference, 109

Chennault, Claire, 39

Chin Peng, 260, 293

Close support, 88, 98, 146

Coalition airpower, 344–45

Coalition warfare, 367–68

Combined Bomber Offensive,

107

effects on German industry,

112

effects on German strategy,

119

effects on morale, 117

intentions, 111

Conflict termination, 365

Coningham, Arthur, 88, 95,

101

Control of the air

Desert Storm, 352–53

Europe and North Africa, 88

Korea, 149, 164

loss rates, 74

tactics, 73

Decentralized control, 369

Deinekin, Petr, 302, 310, 315,

320, 326, 329

Deptula, David, 340

Desert Campaign, 92

Desert Shield, 339

Desert Storm, 361

air lessons, 349

campaign objectives, 340

415

Index
minimizing casualties,

365–66

Doctrine

German, 22

Vietnam, 180

World War I, 15

Domino theory, 172

Douhet, Giulio, 18

and Slessor, 58, 62

and USAAC, 38

influence in RAF, 37

The Command of the Air, 33

Dowding, Hugh, 25, 72

Egyptian air force, 192

El Alamein, 98

Entebbe, 209

Exocet AM-39, 226, 234, 236

Falkland Islands, 223

Foulois, Benjamin, 39

France

World War I, 6

French air force, 53, 56

Fuller, J. F. C., 7

Futrell, Robert, 148

Gazit, Yeshayaho, 196

General Belgrano, 233

Germany

war economy, 134

World War I, 5

Ghani, Lieutenant General

and Malayan Emergency,

294

Global Reach–Global Power,

381

Glosson, Buster, 340

Golan Heights, 209, 216

Golovine, Nikolai, 37

Great Britain

World War I, 5

Groves, P. R. C., 32

Guernica, 42

Hancock, Valston, 37

Hardened aircraft shelters, 347

Harriers, 229

Harris, Arthur, 36, 57, 78, 80,

130

and Portal, 82

panacea targets, 82, 137

HMS Conqueror, 233

HMS Sheffield, 234

Horner, Charles, 389

Independent Air Force, 21, 55

Indian air force, 309

Information warfare, 388

Intelligence

resources, 253

Interdiction, 163, 188

Korea, 151

Iraqi air force, 344

Israeli Air Force, 191, 274

force structure, 214

policy, 211

priorities, 210

Italy

World War I, 5

Japanese army air force, 52

Japanese naval air force, 52

JFACC, 392

Johnson, Lyndon Baines, 170,

180, 187

Kammhuber, General, 72

Kenney, George, 39

Kesselring, Albert, 47, 51

Kindelan, Alfredo, 49

Korea

Operation Strangle, 152

Lanchester, F. W., 18

Las Islas Malvinas, 223

Libya

1986 attack, 258, 278, 280

Liddell Hart, B. H., 32, 36, 58,

196

Linebacker, 182

MacArthur, Douglas, 47

Mahan, Alfred Thayer, 2, 19

416
Malayan Emergency, 257

air attack, 263, 264, 292

air transport, 266

crop spraying, 269

psychological warfare,

267–68

Malta, 96

Marines

close support, 147, 187,

357–58

McPeak, Merrill A.

and Russian Air Force, 310

Media

Desert Storm, 355–56, 363,

372–73

Falklands War, 254

Meilinger, Phillip, 381

Meteor, 158, 160, 162

MiG-15, 149, 157

Mitchell, William, 35

and Douhet, 38

Moked, 198

Momyer, William, 150

Morale, 136

German, 117

Munich crisis, 41

Mustang

close support in Korea, 162

Nasser, Abdel Gamel, 195, 198

New era warfare, 361

Normandy, 99

Nott, John, 225

Operation Granby, 339

Operation Strangle, 163

Osirak, 209, 258, 271, 275

Ostfriesland, 36

Panacea targets, 82, 137

Partnership for Peace, 327, 332

Passive defense, 353

Pathfinders, 80, 136

Picasso, Pablo, 42

Precision bombing, 43, 44, 47,

80

Provide Hope, 390–91

RAAF

No. 77 Squadron, 155

Vietnam, 184

Radar, 72

development of, 45

RAF

navigation standards, 46

policy, 43

war planning, 25

Red Air Force, 53, 60

Rolling Thunder, 181

Rougeron, C., 50

Russia

aircraft industry, 329–30

aviation history, 303

World War I, 3

Russian Air Force, 305

and Desert Storm, 324–25

funding, 312–13

maintenance, 316–17

pilot surplus, 313–14

priorities, 312

R&D, 324

tactics, 322–23

training, 316

Sadat, Anwar, 203

San Carlos Water, 235

Schwarzkopf, Norman, 342,

393

Schweinfurt, 74

Scud missile, 373

Shaposhnikov, Yevgeny, 302

Sidewinder AIM-9L, 230, 244

Sikorsky, Igor, 3, 303

Six Day War, 198

Sky shouting, 268

Slessor, John, 36, 57, 161

Smuts, Jan, 32, 339

Soviet air force, 301

training, 307

Spanish Civil War, 48

Speer, Albert, 109, 115, 124,

126

Stanley airfield, 223, 247

Steege, Gordon, 158, 162

Strategic bombing, 31

417
World War I, 9, 17

Strategic Bombing Survey, 108,

379

limitations, 110

Substitution, 33

Suez, 195

Super Étendards, 236

Sykes, Frederick, 32

Tedder, Arthur, 85, 95

Templer, Gerald, 262

Terror bombing, 40

Tolkowsky, Dan, 194

Treaty of Versailles, 50

Trenchard, Hugh, 18, 23, 31,

55, 61, 341

and RAF policy, 43

doctrine of the offensive, 31

USAF

Korean War doctrine, 144,

148

V-1, V-2 rockets, 125

Vietnam

air effort, 174

assessment of airpower, 175

BDA, 177

constraints on force, 179

PGMs, 176

Vulcan bomber

attack on Stanley, 231

War of Attrition, 200

Warden, John, 386

Washington Conference, 41, 47

Weinberger, Caspar, 230, 404

Weizman, Ezer, 194

Wever, Walther, 37, 51, 70

Woodward, John “Sandy,” 227

World War I

bombing, 69

Yom Kippur War, 204, 206

418
The War in the Air

1914–1994

Air University Press Team

Chief Editor

John E. Jordan

Copy Editors

Lula Barnes and Peggy Smith

Cover Art and Book Design

Steven C. Garst

Composition and

Prepress Production

Linda C. Colson