Combat Studies Institute Press

US Army Combined Arms Center

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 66027

John J. McGrath

Fire for Effect:

Field Artillery and Close Air 

Support in the US Army
Cover photos include the A-10 Thunderbolt, AH-64 Apache, and the 

M102 105-mm howitzer. Photo sources are courtesy of:

http://www.af.mil/shared/media/photodb/photos/000217-F-0656B-004.

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5&w=640&sz=37&hl=en&start=3&sig2=MTLOeG8YK1wSyjxU7A9

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&ei=MVlCSsW4DZjMMvON5MUH
Fire for Effect:

Field Artillery and Close Air Support in 

the US Army

Combat Studies Institute Press

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 66027

John J. McGrath
CSI Press Publications cover a variety of military topics. The 

views expressed in this CSI Press Publication are those of the 

author(s) and not necessarily those of the Department of the 

Army or the Department of Defense. 

The seal of the combat studies institute authenticates this document as an 

official publication of the CSI. It is prohibited to use CSI’s official seal on 

any republication of this material without the written permission of the 

director of CSI. 

 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McGrath, John J., 1956-

 Fire for effect : field artillery and close air support in the US 

Army / John J. McGrath.

 p. cm.

 Includes bibliographical references.

 1. United States. Army. Field Artillery--History. 2. Close air 

support--History. 3. Artillery, Field and mountain--United States--

History. I. Title. 

 UA32.M34 2010

 358’.1240973--dc22

 2010028238
Foreword

The Combat Studies Institute is pleased to announce its latest Special 

Study, Fire for Effect: Field Artillery and Close Air Support in the US 

Army, by historian John J. McGrath. The genesis of this work was the 

controversial decision in 2001 to deploy Army combat units to Afghanistan 

without their supporting field artillery units. Fire for Effect provides a 

historical survey of the relationship between field artillery and close air 

support (CAS) in the US Army since World War I.

A recurring theme in this survey is the desire of air operators for 

independence in operations. This first occurs at the organizational level 

in the development of strategic bombing theories and forces. The desire 

for independence emerges also in Air Force doctrine which stressed 

the importance of interdiction over CAS missions. Eventually, the 

Army aviation community Also sought independence in the idea of the 

independent strike of attack helicopters, known as the deep attack. This 

last concept became at least partially discredited in the sands of Iraq in 

2003.

Independent air operations contrast with the Army’s traditional 

combined arms concept where the arms and services work together to 

complement each other’s strengths and cover weaknesses. The field 

artillery has long been a key member of the combined arms team. The 

Army ground commander has controlled all the elements of this team 

except the fixed-wing close air support. 

Despite the differences in theory and practice, since the 1960s the two 

services have developed cooperative and coordinated systems that have 

solved most difficulties. Over these last 40 years, much progress has also 

been made with the development of precision guided munitions, giving 

both services the ability to use point fire weapons in their delivery of CAS. 

As this study shows, the introduction of sophisticated precision weapons 

has separated CAS from artillery, creating distinct and complementary 

systems of fire support. Both, however, remain necessary to give the 

ground commander responsive and powerful fires in the broad variety of 

combat situations that characterize the modern battlefield. 

CSI – The Past Is Prologue!

William G. Robertson

Director, Combat Studies Institute

iii

v

Contents

Foreword...................................................................................................iii

Figures......................................................................................................vi

Tables.......................................................................................................vii

Key to Symbols Used in This Work.......................................................viii

Introduction................................................................................................1

Chapter 1. The Rise of Field Artillery and the Beginnings of Close Air 

Support.......................................................................................................5

Field Artillery Before 1914....................................................................5

Field Artillery in World War I..............................................................15

Close Air Support in World War I........................................................37

Conclusions..........................................................................................48

Chapter 2. World War II: Field Artillery and Close Air Support in HighIntensity Combat......................................................................................57

Field Artillery in the Interwar Period....................................................57

Close Air Support in the Interwar Period..............................................61

US Army Field Artillery in World War II.............................................66

US Army Air Force Close Air Support in World War II.......................69

Close Air Support in the Pacific and the Battle of Buna.......................77

Summary...............................................................................................82

Chapter 3. Field Artillery, Attack Aviation and Close Air Support From 

1945 to 1975............................................................................................87

Postwar Field Artillery and the Korean War.........................................88

Close Air Support in the Cold War Air Force.......................................90

The Army and the Attack Helicopter...................................................102

Vietnam...............................................................................................113

Army Aviation in Vietnam and After..................................................120

Summary.............................................................................................125

Chapter 4. The Rise of Technology: US Army and Air Force Fire Support 

Since 1975..............................................................................................133

Field Artillery in the Late Cold War Period........................................133

Deep Attack and the Development of Divisional Aviation Brigade...135

Air Force Developments in the 1970s and 1980s...............................141
vi

Operation DESERT STORM..............................................................142

Afghanistan........................................................................................146

Operation IRAQI FREEDOM.............................................................151

Summary.............................................................................................155

Chapter 5. Conclusions...........................................................................161

Glossary.................................................................................................169

Bibliography..........................................................................................175

About the Author.....................................................................................185

Figures

Figure 1. Pickett’s charge, illustrating artillery employment.....................7

Figure 2. Length of artillery bombardments 1915–1918: German..........36

Figure 3. Length of artillery bombardments 1915–1917: Allied.............36

Figure 4. Length of artillery bombardments 1917–1918: Allied.............37

Figure 5. Halberstadt CL II......................................................................40

Figure 6. SCR-194 radio...........................................................................60

Figure 7. Attack aircraft: A-12, A-8, A-18, A-20.....................................63

Figure 8. Towed 105-mm howitzer and 105-mm self-propelled Priest...67

Figure 9. World War II Field Artillery Fire Support System....................68

Figure 10. World War II Air-Ground Operations System........................71

Figure 11. P-47 Thunderbolt.....................................................................72

Figure 12. First phase of the Battle of Buna............................................76

Figure 13. The Douglas A-24 Dauntless and Bell Airacobra...................77

Figure 14. The Air-Ground System, 1950...............................................90

Figure 15. P-80 Shooting Star jet fighter..................................................93

Figure 16. F-82 Twin Mustang.................................................................94

Figure 17. The course of the Korean War in air missions........................95

Figure 18. Apportionment of combat air missions in the Korean War....96

Figure 19. F-86 Sabre and F-84 Thunderjet.............................................99

Figure 20. The evolution of Army aviation............................................102

Figure 21. Armair brigade (notional), 1957...........................................107
vii

Figure 22. Howze Board Air Cavalry Combat Brigade, 1962...............110

Figure 23. Division air cavalry troop, 1962...........................................113

Figure 24. F-104 Starfighter and F-105 Thunderchief...........................114

Figure 25. The M102 105-mm howitzer.................................................115

Figure 26. The Army Fire Support System, 1965..................................116

Figure 27. FSBs in the A Shau Valley, 1969..........................................117

Figure 28. The Joint Air-Ground Operations System in Vietnam..........119

Figure 29. OV-10 Bronco.......................................................................119

Figure 30. A-1 Skyraiders and F-4 Phantom..........................................120

Figure 31. Air cavalry combat brigade, 1974........................................124

Figure 32. The AH-64 Apache Longbow attack helicopter....................138

Figure 33. Divisional aviation brigade, 1986........................................139

Figure 34. A-10 Thunderbolt II Formation.............................................141

Figure 35. Estimated theater campaign phase lengths...........................144

Figure 36. The F-111 fighter-bomber.....................................................145

Figure 37. Operation ANACONDA.......................................................148

Tables

Table 1. Typical Characteristics of Civil War Field Artillery...................14

Table 2. Phases of Tactical Air Operations per FM 100-20, 1943...........68

Table 3. CAS Issues in the Korean War...................................................99

Table 4. Warden’s Five Rings.................................................................142

Table 5. CAS Aircraft Characteristics....................................................164
viii

Key to Symbols Used in this Work
1

Introduction

This special study provides a historical survey and comparison between 

two key elements of the joint combined arms team, indirect fire support, as 

provided by field artillery and mortars, and direct aerial fire support (close 

air support (CAS) and interdiction) provided by aerial platforms (fixedand rotary-wing aircraft). Since the beginning of modern combined arms 

operations in World War I, there has been a continual improvement and 

refinement of ground and air fire support means. But, at times, there has 

been controversy over the use of the respective delivery means.

This study discusses the interplay and use of air and ground fire support 

elements in the modern period. The work begins with a brief background 

on the evolution of modern field artillery but is primarily concerned 

with the period from 1914 to the present. While it discusses all major 

technological and tactical innovations, the focus is clearly on the United 

States Army and United States Air Force. Since at least 1941, the United 

States has led the way in technological and organizational developments 

in both aviation and field artillery. 

The emphasis of the survey is on technological and organizational 

developments, structures, innovations, and techniques. The stress is not, 

however, on details of technology but, rather, on the capabilities that 

technological developments have given to the weapons or fire support 

systems.

The utility of cannon field artillery and close air support both separately 

and in conjunction to each other have specific but complementary 

characteristics. When used together in ways that maximize their strengths 

and minimize or cover for each component’s weaknesses, the joint 

combined arms effect presents the enemy with a difficult, sometimes 

irresistible force. While this presents the optimum usage scenario, it will 

be seen that institutional and organizational factors sometimes prevent this 

from happening, while at times arguments in favor of or against certain 

arms have not been based on the capabilities or characteristics of the 

specific arms, but on other considerations external to the joint combined 

arms team. At least twice in modern American military operations, ground 

forces have had to deliberately fight without field artillery support. The 

decision to do this was based on factors not related to the effectiveness of 

field artillery and the results were uneven at best. 

Since World War I, field artillery has had certain characteristics. 

Except when armed with expensive precision munitions that are aimed 

at the target after firing or fired in direct-fire mode, cannon field artillery 
2

is an area fire weapon system. Rounds land within a certain, predictable 

elliptical pattern, scattered slightly along the line of fire. The effectiveness 

of artillery firepower has been based, therefore, not on precision but on 

mass. While the fire would destroy some enemy troops and positions in the 

target area, some will survive but all will have to take cover for protection. 

Artillery, therefore, does not naturally destroy the enemy target, but, rather, 

it neutralizes it, limiting its tactical effectiveness while it is under fire.1

Firing from positions away from the direct-fire effects of enemy 

weapons has allowed field artillery protection from these weapons and at 

least temporary protection from the enemy artillery. Accordingly, a cannon 

unit could fire many rounds with relative immunity. Continually improved 

firing techniques and technological advances throughout the century have 

enhanced the ability of the field artillery to fire quickly and accurately with 

the parameters of area fire. 

This increase in responsiveness also produced an increase in field 

artillery flexibility. While in World War I most artillery fire had to be 

preplanned or targeted via maps and a relatively rigid timetable provided 

coordination, improved techniques and weapons systems made indirect 

fire support a key factor in the success of military operations, particularly 

American, in that war.

Aside from responsiveness, field artillery contains other strengths. In 

terms of munitions, comparatively speaking, artillery rounds have been 

cheap and come in an array of varieties suitable for different situations and 

targets. Organizationally, armies have developed a complicated support 

relationship with the units they support where firing batteries have long 

been tied into the units they support through a complicated relationship 

where the overall ground commander directs the goal of the fire while the 

senior artillery commander or his representative directs it. 

Field artillery weaknesses have traditionally included limited range, 

lack of mobility, setup time, the counterbattery threat, and coordination 

difficulties. The first three factors are intertwined. Unlike aviation, artillery 

fires from fixed positions, which provides the guns with a finite range. 

Therefore, a static operation or one within a small area is ideal. In an 

operation in which the supported force moves forward or retreats to provide 

continuous support, the artillery would have to move in echelons, meaning 

the amount of available artillery would be limited until the whole force 

had moved and deployed. In the past, batteries would also have to register 

in their new position to ensure accuracy of fires. While in a position and 

firing, field artillery batteries had become increasingly more vulnerable 

to counterbattery fires of the enemy artillery as targeting became more 
3

sophisticated. In the latter stages of the Cold War, NATO batteries were 

expected to move to new positions virtually after every firing mission. 

Coordination between the supported and the supporting unit had 

been an artillery vulnerability principally through the weakness of 

communications means, particularly in mobile operations. Indirect fire 

depended on the presence of an observer. Vulnerable field telephone 

lines or unreliable radio sets linked the observer to the firing battery. This 

system required the observer to adjust the fire on the target, which could 

be time consuming.2

Improved organizational structures, such as the fire direction 

center created in the 1930s, the fire support team fielded in the 1970s, 

technological enhancements, including improved radios in World War 

II, digital communications in the 1980s, and the development of global 

positioning systems in the 1990s, have minimized artillery vulnerabilities 

in terms of communications.

Close air support, which for purposes of this study, includes what the 

US Air Force defines as close air support (aerial fires delivered close to 

ground forces) and air interdiction (aerial fires delivered in the support of 

ground forces but beyond artillery range) limitations inherent in indirect 

fire observer and communications link.

Close air support is armed aircraft direct weapons fire onto specific 

targets. In World War I, such fire was principally machineguns. Since 

then, however, bombs and missiles have been the usual weapons used 

in most fixed-wing CAS missions. Attack helicopters, developed in the 

1960s and after, have mounted rapid-firing cannons and missiles. As a 

direct-fire weapon, CAS shooters fire at specific targets on the ground, 

which provides them a much better opportunity to hit an exact point on 

the ground and to judge the effect of that fire than field artillery batteries. 

This relative precision provides CAS fire with a potential for immediate 

devastating effects, particularly against point targets. CAS also has an 

effectively unlimited range in terms of supporting ground operations. 

Accordingly, it cannot only support mobile operations, but it can attack 

important targets and installations beyond the limits of artillery and directfire weapons, providing a less immediate, but potentially decisive, effect 

(interdiction). 

CAS is also inherently flexible. Even when fires have been preplanned, 

if the ground situation has changed, aircraft can be diverted to new targets. 

CAS can also be used closer to friendly forces than artillery as long as 

the aircrews clearly recognize where the friendly forces are. CAS is 
4

also flexible in that, once in the air, terrain does not restrict it, either for 

targeting or for maneuvering. 

Close air support has its own set of vulnerabilities. The aircraft are 

vulnerable to air defense fires. Ideally, to maximize CAS effectiveness, 

specialized aircraft are equipped with armored plating and other 

technologies designed to enhance survivability and firepower effects 

against ground targets. At various times, armed forces have developed 

such craft. The A-10 Thunderbolt II is a recent example. Attack helicopters 

also are principally designed for close air support. 

While range is relatively unlimited for the purposes of ground support, 

fuel supply and aircraft inventory could limit availability. Air support also 

requires the establishment of relatively elaborate air bases staffed with 

ground crews, maintenance shops, and security forces. This logistics tail 

is indirect compared to that of the artillery, but it is no less an important 

factor in the adequate fielding and utilization of air support elements. 

Coordination and communications between the supported and 

supporting unit has also been a traditional vulnerability of CAS. While the 

weapons are line of sight, the shooter may not understand what he sees or 

may misinterpret the ground situation. While both field artillery and CAS 

fires are subject to potential fratricidal situations, their terms are different. 

Artillery fratricide is usually an error in gunnery. Air fratricide is usually a 

misinterpretation of the target. Aircrews have less chance to evaluate their 

targets, and since they are within direct-fire range of enemy weapons, they 

have to decide quickly to engage. This effect is common to all direct-fire 

weapons, but the effects of air fire can be more drastic. CAS is also, along 

with all air assets, subject to bad weather conditions, which can restrict 

flight operations. 

Together, CAS and field artillery assets, along with the units they 

support provide the joint combined arms team. While each component of the 

joint combined arms team has specific and complementary characteristics, 

the basic historical contrast between close air support and field artillery 

fires has been threefold: responsiveness, precision, and organizational. 

The interpretation of these three factors and the application of these 

interpretations is the basic continuity that ties together the opposition 

between field artillery support and CAS. This special study looks at all 

these issues in a chronological structure, followed by a detailed discussion 

of each of them in greater detail. 

Notes

1. Bradley J. Meyer, “Operational Art and the German Command System 

in World War I,” (PhD diss., Ohio State University, 1988), 278-279.

2. Bradley J. Meyer, 273, 275.
5

Chapter 1

The Rise of Field Artillery and the Beginnings of Close Air 

Support

Field Artillery Before 1914

Since the development of gunpowder as a tool of war, armies had 

organized their forces into three basic combatant arms: infantry, cavalry, 

and artillery. The artillery formed three functional subelements: coastal, 

siege, and field. Coastal artillery was emplaced into fixed fortifications 

near key coastal installations. It was designed to sink enemy naval vessels. 

Siege artillery was composed of heavy guns of large calibers with limited 

mobility. Such guns were designed to defeat enemy fortifications, usually 

surrounding cities. Operationally, armies moved siege artillery forward 

slowly and required a large ammunition train.

Field artillery developed from siege artillery. The cannons were 

smaller, able to be mounted on wheeled horse-drawn carriages. Horsedrawn caissons carrying the ammunition supply supported the cannons. 

Because of its increased mobility, field artillery was able to accompany 

infantry on the battlefield. An even lighter variant, horse artillery, was 

able to accompany cavalry. In the 17th and 18th centuries when armies 

were small and military operations relatively methodical, the role of field 

artillery developed slowly. Armies fought battles by arraying their infantry 

shoulder to shoulder in two or three ranks. Infantrymen employed the 

mass fire of their individual muskets, which had the relatively short range 

of from 50 to 100 yards. Artillery cannons had a range of 400 yards and 

were aimed crudely using line of sight. Artillery employment was limited 

to covering the assembly of the infantry before battle and operating on 

the flanks of the line when possible, to firing on the enemy infantry and 

artillery without firing over the friendly infantry.1

Both the Continental Army and its British opponent rarely massed 

field cannons. The pieces available were usually distributed in pairs among 

infantry units. By late 1776, General George Washington had distributed 

batteries of from 8 to 10 guns among the infantry brigades of the Army. 

At Trenton in December 1776, Continental artillery played a decisive role 

in the surrender of the Hessians. The artillery assigned to each brigade 

blunted counterattacks with massed, close-range fire.2

Recent archaeological research on the 1778 Battle of Monmouth, 

Washington’s last pitched battle, showed that Continental Army artillery, 

already considered to have played a key role in the battle, was even more 
6

important in halting the British counterattack than previously thought. 

Deployed in a covered position, several American batteries completely 

broke up the advance of the British infantry through devastating closerange antipersonnel fire.3

Several decades later, Napoleon, a field artillery officer by training, 

revolutionized the use of the arm, using massed fires in an offensive role. 

Improved carriage and gun designs gave the arm an increased mobility 

that paralleled the development of the French organizational system of 

mobile army corps. The corps, equipped with artillery and infantry, 

provided a decentralized combined arms team that maneuvered within a 

day’s march of other corps and could fight on its own until reinforced. 

For pitched battle, Napoleon brought his corps together and consolidated 

his cannons to form a grand battery that directly bombarded the enemy 

infantry and artillery before the attack of his massed infantry. Era infantry 

was equipped with the smoothbore musket whose effective range was 150 

yards. The roughly 300-yard range of field artillery firing antipersonnel 

(canister) munitions far surpassed this. Accordingly, Napoleon’s grand 

battery could get in fairly close to the enemy infantry and bombard it with 

great effect, while not at risk itself from fire from enemy infantry. After 

the bombardment, the French infantry would then attack in mass, firing a 

single volley once in range, then using the bayonet.4

With a smaller army primarily based along the frontier, American 

artillery developments were slower. Artillery actions in the War of 1812 

more closely resembled those of the Revolutionary War. Finally, in the 

Mexican War, Napoleonic-style field artillery tactics appeared. At Palo 

Alto in May 1846, Major General Zachary Taylor grudgingly employed 

his small amount of artillery to bombard the Mexican artillery. The 

artillery proved to be the decisive factor as the Mexican forces withdrew, 

based entirely on the effect of the American artillery fire. At Buena Vista 

in February 1847, Taylor defeated a Mexican force three times larger 

primarily through the superiority of his artillery, which played a key role 

in repulsing Mexican infantry attacks. In Major General Winfield Scott’s 

campaign against Mexico City, field artillery also played an important 

role, particularly in support of assaults at Cerro Gordo and Chapultepec.

The American forces in the Mexican War were small compared to 

those of the Napoleon campaigns. But the Civil War in the 1860s saw 

the competing sides field much larger forces, including artillery. For the 

first time, American field artillery was employed in a manner the French 

emperor would have recognized. However, by the time of the Civil 

War period, infantry was now almost completely reequipped with rifled 
7

muskets, weapons that increased the range of the infantry out to 300 yards. 

This negated the Napoleonic range differential that favored the artillery 

and exposed massed artillery to enemy small-arms fire. 

Artillery technological developments included the fielding of rifled 

cannons with longer ranges and various munitions. However, such pieces 

were not as durable as the more numerous smoothbore cannons. Era 

fire control techniques mitigated against the longer ranged rifled pieces. 

On the battlefield, direct line of sight usually did not extend as far as 

the extended range of the weapons. Accordingly, both sides generally 

relegated their rifled pieces primarily to firing on the enemy artillery.5

39

44

43

9

reinf

18

67

60

0 1/2 1 m ile

Figure 1. Pickett’s charge, illustrating artillery employment.
8

The third day of the Battle of Gettysburg, 3 July 1863, provides a good 

example of field artillery employment during the Civil War. After 2 days 

of battle, the Confederate forces, led by General Robert E. Lee, had failed 

to sweep from the field the Federal forces, under Major General George 

Meade, after almost succeeding on both previous days. Lee determined 

to mass most of his fresh units in a large infantry assault against Meade’s 

center. The approximately 12,000 Confederate attackers had to cross 

three-fourths of a mile of open farmland to reach the Union position. To 

support the attack, Lee massed most of his army’s artillery, 135 cannons. 

These cannons primarily had to fire an intensive preliminary bombardment 

designed to cripple the Union artillery, hopefully preventing the enemy 

cannons from hindering the Confederate attack. The secondary mission 

was to damage the enemy infantry defending the point of attack.6

Throughout the war, the opposing sides debated the proper organization 

for artillery. In both armies, batteries, usually of four guns, were the basic 

artillery unit. Organization to control the batteries evolved over time, 

with debate primarily concerned with the amount of centralization needed 

to effectively provide artillery support and whether artillery or infantry 

officers should control artillery fire. Ultimately, both sides organized their 

artillery into larger units, called battalions in the Confederate service and 

brigades in the Union service. 

Confederate eastern commander General Robert E. Lee had formerly 

allocated artillery batteries to specific infantry brigades. In February 

1863, Lee consolidated batteries, typically four in number, into artillery 

battalions. Four battalions were assigned to each infantry corps along 

with a small cannon reserve. The senior artillery officer in the corps 

controlled these battalions, with a battalion attached to each of the corps 

three infantry divisions and the last battalion retained as corps reserve. 

Lee did not retain an artillery reserve at his level. While he had an army 

artillery chief, Brigadier General William Pendleton, Lee used him only 

in an administrative capacity. Pendleton, a Protestant minister in civilian 

life, proved to be a weak artillery chief in previous campaigns, particularly 

in the Antietam campaign in September 1863. Therefore, Lee usually 

bypassed him for operational missions, depending on the competency of 

the corps artillery chiefs. While artillery was centralized at the corps level 

in Lee’s army, there was no real overall chief at the army level.7

Union Army of the Potomac organization was similar and different 

at the same time. The main difference was the presence of a strong 

army-level chief of artillery, Brigadier General Henry J. Hunt. Hunt was 

a career artillery officer who had helped write the prewar artillery drill 
9

manual. By July 1863, Hunt had served as chief artillery officer under 

four different army commanders and had orchestrated highly successful 

artillery defenses at Malvern Hill and Fredericksburg in 1862. Hunt’s 

role as artillery chief was hazy. Originally, he only directly controlled the 

artillery reserve. Defeat changed this.

After the disastrous Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863, at Hunt’s 

insistence, army commander Major General Joseph Hooker reorganized 

the artillery into brigades of between four and eight batteries each. Every 

infantry corps received 1 of the new brigades, and the artillery reserve 

contained an additional 4 brigades (totaling 21 batteries). Hooker gave 

Hunt the authority to control all the army’s artillery, overriding the corps 

commanders as necessary. Unfortunately, Major General George Meade 

replaced Hooker just days before the Battle of Gettysburg and had issued 

no orders granting or denying Hunt such authority. During the battle of 3 

July, Hunt had to use his forceful personality and the loyalty of the artillery 

officers commanding the corps artillery brigades to get the corps artillery 

to do his bidding. In this, he was mostly successful at positioning batteries 

and directing fire. However, in one case, a new corps commander overrode 

his instructions.8

For the barrage, the Confederates massed 135 cannons in 42 batteries. 

On the northern side of the assault zone, Third Corps artillery chief 

Colonel R. Lindsey Walker and Second Corps artillery chief Colonel J. 

Thompson Brown controlled 60 guns in 24 batteries. Lieutenant General 

James Longstreet’s First Corps was in charge of the attack and Longstreet’s 

artillery chief Colonel Edward Porter Alexander controlled 18 batteries and 

67 guns. This total was the most cannons any Confederate army assembled 

for a single attack or defense during the war.9

Longstreet depended on Alexander to support the attack, although 

he had no actual command authority over Walker and Brown. As the 

commander of the bulk of the artillery supporting the attack, Alexander 

stressed the bombardment mission. Although Lee wanted the artillery 

to move forward behind the infantry, Alexander thought he did not 

have enough ammunition to do both missions effectively. Therefore, 

he intended to use up all his available long-range ammunition in the 

barrage. The cannons would remain in position with their basic load of 

short-range munitions, prepared to repulse any enemy counterattack. The 

barrage would continue until the enemy was silenced or his guns ran out 

of ammunition.10

Lee hoped that the bombardment would neutralize the Union 

artillery either through ammunition depletion or destruction by fire. The 
10

bombardment would also focus on the 5,750 Union troops defending the 

538-yard (0.3-mile) frontage that was the assault’s objective, hoping to 

demoralize and at least partially weaken the strength of the defending 

Union infantry. Longstreet’s infantry force of approximately 11,500 

would then be able to advance on the Union center without fearing enemy 

artillery bombardment against a force it outnumbered 2 to 1.11

Under Lee’s operational concept, the artillery’s secondary mission 

was to provide direct support to the advancing infantry. While some of 

the batteries he did not directly control intended to move up after the 

infantry advance, the corps artillery chief believed that he could not afford 

to take any guns from his barraging force. Instead, he scraped together a 

special force of eight smoothbore cannons capable only of short-range 

fire to advance in front of the infantry and position itself just beyond the 

Union infantry’s range. This force would then fire antipersonnel munitions 

at the enemy, softening up the defenders right before the infantry attack. 

Alexander considered this an experimental use of artillery. However, 

because of interference by Pendleton and a fear of fratricidal fires from 

the Confederate artillery to the north, the battery commander moved the 

smoothbores during the bombardment and Alexander could not find them 

when it came time to use them.12

During the bombardment, Alexander managed to withdraw two 

cannons from each battery he controlled to create a new, 18-gun force 

to accompany the infantry. He moved this detachment behind the right 

division (Pickett’s) of the assault force, but aside from knocking holes into 

a wooden fence along the Emmetsburg Road, it had little impact on the 

ensuing Confederate debacle.13

By plan, the Confederate infantry advance was to begin once the 

bombardment had silenced the Union artillery and seriously damaged the 

Union infantry in the center of Meade’s Cemetery Ridge position. Alexander 

feared that the black powder released by his batteries would make such an 

assessment difficult through a lack of visibility and recommended a start 

of the infantry movement halfway through the bombardment. Longstreet 

eventually vetoed this proposal, intending to order the advance himself, 

based on a subjective analysis of the effect of the bombardment.14

Without specific knowledge of Lee’s plans, Union commander Meade 

did not mass his cannons. The army’s artillery chief, Brigadier General 

Henry J. Hunt, was a seasoned artilleryman who was good at his job. Hunt 

was obliged to protect the entire Union infantry line, while retaining a few 

batteries in an artillery reserve force. Accordingly, the Union forces did 
11

not use their superiority in numbers to mass their more numerous artillery 

pieces.15

However, the Army of the Potomac still had 127 cannons within 

range of the Confederate artillery and attacking forces. These were in 

three groups. Of these, with reinforcements from the artillery reserve, 

there were 87 pieces along the defensive line that the Southerners were 

about to attack and 39 positioned to the north on Cemetery Hill. The 

former contained two groups: 44 guns under the control of Major General 

Winfield Scott Hancock’s Second Corps artillery brigade in the center of 

the line at the point of the Confederate attack and a force of 43 cannons, 

primarily from the artillery reserve, in covered positions to the south of 

Hancock’s position near Little Round Top (figure 1). In addition, Hunt 

positioned the uncommitted units of the artillery reserve behind the center 

of the Union position.16

The subsequent artillery duel the Confederates did produce was the 

largest bombardment/counterbombardment of the war. It lasted between 

1 and 2 hours.17 At its conclusion, three divisions of infantry began 

their advance, with most of the supporting artillery out of long-range 

ammunition. The barrage did not provide Lee and Alexander with the 

results they expected. Although the Confederates slightly outgunned the 

Union gunners, Hunt and the Union forces easily won this contest. Not 

only were the Union guns still mostly intact, after the bombardment, they 

played a key role in the repulse of the subsequent Confederate infantry 

attack. The Union defending Union infantry also was largely unhurt by 

the bombardment as most Southern rounds fired over the heads of the 

defenders.18

Centralized management made the difference. The key factor on the 

Union side was Hunt’s focus. He realized his mission was to defeat the 

enemy infantry, not his artillery. Hunt, therefore, tapered the counterbattery 

fire of the Union artillery, saving ammunition to fire at the advancing foot 

soldiers. These troops would have to move across three-fourths of a mile 

of open terrain to reach the Union line, making them good targets. But 

Hunt’s plan was counterintuitive, particularly for the infantry commanders. 

Hancock, the corps commander at the fulcrum of the attack, who was new 

to corps command, demanded that the Second Corps artillery continue 

to fire at the enemy artillery to boost the morale of the troops. Hancock 

was so zealous that he attempted to compel guns that were not part of his 

command to fire. Hunt put a stop to this, creating a new chapter in the 

historic debate over who should control artillery fire, senior infantry or 

artillery officers.19
12

While Hunt’s guns did put big holes in the attacker’s formation as 

they advanced across the open area, Hancock’s guns, at the fulcrum of the 

attack, were silent. The corps commander had kept the guns he controlled 

firing continuously at the Confederate artillery until the cannons ran 

out of long-range ammunition. Accordingly, as Hunt had feared, the 

guns closest to the Confederate attack were silent as the enemy infantry 

advanced in close formation until the Southerners got within canister shot 

range. Hunt felt that Hancock’s interference made the battle a lot closer 

than it had to be—the enemy actually briefly breached the Union main 

defensive line before being repulsed. Later, Hancock still felt he was right 

and complained to Meade. While Meade, an infantryman, agreed with 

Hancock, he did nothing to change Hunt’s role due to the artilleryman’s 

obvious effectiveness.20

During the battle, Hunt showed flexibility, shifting guns around and 

bringing up reinforcement. Hunt may have even been responsible for 

initiating the Confederate infantry attack. As the artillery duel continued, 

Hunt conferred with Major Thomas Osborne, officially the Eleventh Corps 

artillery chief, the commander of the artillery on Cemetery Hill north of 

Hancock’s Second Corps. The officers discussed how long the enemy 

would continue its barrage. One of the officers suggested that, if the Union 

artillery completely stopped returning fire and withdrew slightly to the rear, 

perhaps the Confederates could be enticed to begin their infantry attack. 

With Hancock’s artillery already silenced by ammunition shortages, such 

a cessation of Union artillery fire could appear to the Confederates only as 

the successful silencing of the enemy artillery.21

And so it was. Although later Confederate accounts downplayed the 

retreat of the Union artillery, this stratagem obviously had a decisive effect 

on Longstreet’s decision to begin the attack. As mentioned previously, the 

Confederate decision to start the assault was ultimately decided based on 

subjective analysis of the effectiveness of the bombardment. Longstreet 

and Alexander agreed that the Confederate guns had silenced their Union 

counterparts. The smoke from the firing obscured the Southerners’ view 

of their fire effectiveness. Through the smoke, Longstreet was confident 

of the positive effect of the fire on the Union guns and infantry. In this, 

he was correct to a point. Hancock’s guns were either destroyed or out 

of ammunition; Hunt quickly provided replacements from the nearby 

artillery reserve to this key sector as Pickett’s infantry advanced on it.22

Another important factor was the depletion of ammunition. The 

Confederate leadership was more willing to accept the fact that the Union 

guns were finished because their own guns were almost out of ammunition. 
13

After Alexander told Longstreet that he could not continue the artillery 

barrage much longer, the corps commander ordered the infantry to move 

forward. The troops dressed their lines and began to advance through the 

powder smoke toward the Union lines almost a mile away.23

As the infantry advanced, the Union guns initially remained silent. But 

as the Confederates came clear of the smoke from their guns, the Union 

cannons in the south and then in the north opened fire. Fire from Cemetery 

Hill totally unhinged the northern wing of the Southern attack to the point 

that several units retreated to their start lines.24

It took the Confederate formation about 20 minutes to close within 

short-range artillery and infantry small-arms range of the Union position. 

In that timespan, one historian has estimated that the Federal artillery so 

disrupted the Southern advance that, out of an original force of 11,500, 

only 5,120 soldiers remained in line when the formation reached smallarms range. The Union defenders in the attack zone, originally 5,750, 

had lost approximately 350 soldiers. Therefore, in the final assault, the 

Confederates were trying to take a Union position defended by slightly 

more Federals than they themselves had attacking. With the range reduced, 

several of Hancock’s batteries could now rejoin the fight with canister 

ammunition.25

The Union field artillery had reduced the odds of the Confederate 

attack from more than 2 to 1 to less than 1 to 1 even before the attackers 

were within range of the firepower of the Union infantry. That the Southern 

infantry was able to even briefly breach the Union defenses shows clearly 

how decisive the Union artillery advantage had been. If the Confederate 

infantry had managed to remain largely intact when it reached small-arms 

range, its advance may have proved irresistible. Lee’s long maligned 

belief in the effectiveness of the frontal assault failed primarily because 

the Confederates lost the artillery battle, not because it was inherently 

impossible for infantry to assault slightly fortified defensive positions in 

1863. However, in this era, no one had developed the effective use of the 

cannon in the offensive. Defensive field artillery fire had, however, virtually 

defeated Pickett’s Charge on its own through its effective firepower.26

The Confederate artillery failure had several causes. As previously 

mentioned, there was no centralized management of the guns. While on 

paper Pendleton was the artillery chief of the Army of Northern Virginia, 

he actually only functioned in an administrative capacity. The Confederate 

artillery in reality operated in a decentralized manner, with direction at the 

corps level. In the case of 3 July, this meant that each artillery battalion 

commander directed fire where he thought best. Accordingly, the guns did 
14

not concentrate their fire on the point of attack but instead spread it out 

along the Union line. 

Table 1. Typical Characteristics of Civil War Field Artillery.32

Union gunner Hunt recognized this mistake immediately. His afteraction report and postwar writings criticized the lack of concentration 

in the Confederate fire. Without an overall fire plan, each Confederate 

artillery commander fired at the Union positions he believed were the 

most dangerous, usually those closest to his guns. Decentralized control 

in offensive operations provided that Confederates did not group their 

cannons in order to present an irresistible mass of fire on the defenders at 

the point of attack. Union artillery losses in Hancock’s sector were heavy, 

but infantry losses were less so because the fire was dispersed along the 

line.27

In addition, technology, gunnery, and geography favored the 

Federals. Hunt noted that most Confederate artillery rounds fired high. 

Contemporary gunnery techniques saw the gunners aim each shot by 

eyesight. The Confederate artillery fired from positions generally parallel 

to their targets. This meant that cannon elevation was on a line with the 

gun tube. Any minor error would cause the rounds to overshoot the target. 

Given the terrain and the powder smoke, this error would be less apparent 

to the gunners. With the Union infantry laying down during the barrage, 

many Confederate rounds landed to the rear of the troops, mildly hindering 

logistical and headquarters operations.28

Overshooting had less effect on Union guns that were in positions 

chosen for their defensive strength and their ability to support the infantry 

defensive lines. This meant that Union batteries, especially those firing on 

the advancing infantry, could fire across their targets instead of straight 

into them. Almost all the Union battery positions were perpendicular to 

the Confederate attack. Federal gunners could accordingly see the strike of 

Method of fi re Direct

Targeting Line of sight from the guns

Rate of fi re 2 per minute

Basic load of ammunition Long range 112

Short range (canister) 16

Maximum Effective Range

High explosive 1,800 yards

Antipersonnel 200 yards
15

their rounds better in relation to their targets. Even the enemy deployment 

favored the Union guns that were parallel to the Confederate artillery. 

Northern overshots ended up in the assembly areas for the infantry units 

waiting to attack.29

Ammunition expenditure also played a big role in the ineffectiveness 

of the Confederate artillery. Although supply lines and overall available 

caches of ammunition were factors, the key issue was the basic load of 

each gun—the amount of ammunition that each gun caisson could carry. 

Even with more plentiful ammunition, the size of their caissons also 

placed limitations on the ammunition supply of the Union artillery. One 

caisson serviced each cannon and for the most common artillery piece, 

the 12-pounder Napoleon, contained 112 long-range rounds and 16 shortrange canister rounds. The pace of the Confederate bombardment used 

up the available ammunition within less than 2 hours. Hunt’s handling of 

his guns retained Union ammunition supply at the guns until the attack 

was repulsed. At the end of the bombardment, the Confederates could 

not afford to stop to resupply to have artillery available to support the 

infantry advance. Alexander believed that the surviving Union guns were 

equally out of ammunition and a pause would also give them a chance to 

resupply. Luckily for the Federals, Hunt was in charge of the artillery and 

not Hancock. Hunt foresaw the need to retain rounds for the second phase 

of the action.30

In many ways, Pickett’s Charge was a harbinger of the dominance 

of artillery in the hands of defenders in the next century. The brilliant 

employment of cannons and guns had proven to be decisive in defeating 

a massed infantry attack. The Union artillery had reduced the attacking 

force to a number too small to hope for success in close battle with the 

enemy infantry. While many observers consider the success of the defense 

in the Civil War to be based on the increased firepower and range of the 

rifled musket, Hunt’s employment of artillery at Gettysburg proved that the 

decisive blow could be struck before the attackers were even within range 

of the infantry’s rifled muskets.31 Table 1 shows the typical characteristics 

of Civil War field artillery.

Field Artillery in World War I

Just 5 years after the conclusion of the Civil War, artillery played 

an important part in the Franco-Prussian War. Prussia fought a series of 

short wars in the 1860s during which its artillery was modernized. By the 

time of the 1870 confrontation with Napoleon III’s France, the Prussian 

artillery consisted of steel breech-loading Krupp rifled guns. These 
16

weapons were superior to the French artillery in every measure—range, 

accuracy, and reliability. Ironically, however, the Prussians were hindered 

in taking advantage of this advantage because French infantry weapons 

were superior to those of the Prussians.33

Accordingly, the Prussians devised a two-staged artillery employment 

tactic. In the first phase, artillery was massed as the Confederates did 

at Gettysburg. At Sedan, the Prussians/Germans massed 540 guns into 

one large firing unit. This grand battery then bombarded its French 

counterparts at extended ranges from which the French could not fire back. 

Once the enemy artillery was destroyed or driven off, the Germans shifted 

the artillery into the second phase. Whereas phase one was centralized, 

phase two was decentralized. The large battery was broken up and pushed 

forward in small units to support the attacking infantry. While the artillery 

suffered casualties, it successfully supported the German infantry, negating 

the French rifle advantage. At Sedan, the Germans decisively defeated 

the French and forced Napoleon III to surrender. While technological 

innovations negated many of the lessons of the Franco-Prussian battles, 

the mass tactics soon resulted in the creation of permanent artillery 

units above the battery level in European armies. Army corps soon had 

permanent artillery brigades with subordinate regiments and battalions.34

In the years before the United States entered World War I and even 

after the war had begun in Europe, US Army field artillery improved itself 

technically with improved weaponry and gunnery techniques. However, 

tactically, training still focused on its traditional role of providing small, 

light cannons to support groups of infantry at close range. Instead of true 

combined arms, with the artillery supporting the maneuver of the infantry 

with continuous fire support, such fire was still direct. The infantry and 

artillery in essence fought separate battles. Even after European field 

artillery adopted new techniques during the war, including massed indirect 

fire, US field artillery remained fixed tactically in the previous century. 

European developments during the war, however, created modern field 

artillery. By the end of the war, battery organization and fire control 

techniques were much as they would be for most of the modern period.35

At the start of World War I, European field artillery resembled the 

American’s in employment. Cannons designated to support the infantry 

were of small caliber, 77-mm for the Germans and 75-mm for the French. 

The designers of the French 75-mm field gun, which had been introduced 

in 1897, made it so that gun recoil did not disrupt the weapon’s placement, 

allowing it to fire rapidly without having to be re-aimed between shots. The 
17

Germans upgraded their lighter 77-mm field gun to the French standard 

before 1914.36

Organizationally, both sides fielded large field artillery forces to 

support their armies of massed infantry. The French alone deployed 1,000 

four-gun 75-mm batteries, an average of four-gun tubes per thousand 

infantrymen. A 1914 German infantry division fielded a six-gun 77-mm 

battery for each infantry battalion. French divisional artillery consisted of 

24 75-mm pieces or 0.75 batteries per infantry battalion. National doctrine 

for the use of these guns differed.37

In general terms, the Germans stressed firepower, while the French 

favored mobility. German divisional and corps artillery included a number 

of heavier guns of 105-mm and 150-mm calibers. French offensive doctrine 

so favored light, mobile pieces that there were no heavier pieces below the 

field army level in the French order of battle in 1914. The French 75s could 

fire faster than the German equivalents, but the Germans fielded a mix of 

lighter and heavier pieces that could fire for a longer range and with more 

lethality. Additionally, German light artillery was organized into six-gun 

batteries. In 1914, a German division contained 72 field artillery pieces, 

while the equivalent French organization only had 24.38

The Germans had also developed the coordination of field artillery 

with infantry at a higher level than the French. Senior artillery 

commanders, usually at the division level, controlled massed batteries 

whose employment was planned to support the infantry’s most important 

efforts. While their doctrine stressed offensive operations and the use 

of artillery in an auxiliary role to infantry, the French concept of the 

offensive meant that field artillery was expected to be used primarily to 

support attacking infantry. The French expected to employ their 75s in 

close combat using direct fire, under the control of infantry commanders. 

Anticipated battlefield fluidity prevented any detailed or extended artillery 

fire employment planning.39

These differences in doctrine and weaponry were sharply seen in the 

opening campaign of 1914. When suddenly on the defensive, some French 

divisions found themselves ill-equipped to use their artillery. For example, 

in the key Battle of Charleroi on 21 August 1914, where the Germans 

stormed across the Sambre River and preempted an attack of the French 

Fifth Army, the French division that received the brunt of the German 

attack, the 5th Infantry Division, with no infantry attacks to support, left 

its artillery unused and uncalled for, out of range behind its infantry. A 

week into battle, some batteries had not even fired once, even though the 

division had been in almost continuous action.40
18

This was not unusual. The general pattern for the opening campaign 

was that the French guns, despite being faster to fire and more accurate, 

were usually not in a position to fire on the enemy, while the German 

artillery was both able to outrange the French artillery and mass and place 

fires where they best supported the overall plan of the supported unit. One 

German frontline artillery battalion commander reflected that, while he 

was free to fire at visible enemy targets within range, as a general rule 

the enemy artillery was never seen. The Germans, as did the French, fired 

directly at enemy targets, often in front of the infantry, but rarely over their 

heads.41

The German advance exhausted the infantry and overextended 

communications lines and artillery supply. The Allies, having fallen back 

on their own lines of communications, took advantage of the German lack 

of coordination and counterattacked. At the First Battle of the Marne, 

the French artillery found itself in the position of supporting attacking 

infantry. For the first time in the war, the French artillery proved itself 

and the 75-mm gun gained its reputation. For the French 5th Infantry 

Division, its 75s effectively pounded the German defenders supporting a 

two day action around the town of Courgivaux (6–7 September 1914). The 

Germans then retreated for 5 days to prepared defensive positions along 

high ground north of the Aisne River. Along this new line, static trench 

warfare developed and with it an enhanced role for field artillery where 

firepower was far more important than mobility.42

When used properly, artillery had proven to be devastating in the 

opening campaigns of 1914. However, the reason the front lines soon 

became static was the intensity of infantry firepower, primarily in the form 

of machineguns. For the rest of World War I, field artillery became the 

most important weapon at the disposal of commanders to try to overcome 

infantry firepower. On the defense, it could break up attacks. On the 

offensive, at least until proven otherwise by field experience, commanders 

expected massed artillery barrages to destroy enemy defenses. These 

barrages gradually expanded in duration before attacks.43

Modern artillery procedures developed during the war. The most 

important of these was indirect fire. The early campaigns of 1914 had 

shown the vulnerability of field artillery deployed too far forward. The 

British lost all the artillery of a division at Le Cateau, and the French and 

Germans suffered heavy cannon casualties at Bertrix in the Ardennes.44
19

The adoption of indirect-fire gunnery techniques provided a solution 

to the need to deploy field artillery in depth where it could survive out of 

the range or observation of enemy direct fire. Indirect-fire gunnery was 

the application of geometry and ballistics factors to targeting information 

provided by observers located near the front line rather than at the battery 

position. The technique was known before 1914, and both sides used it 

extensively in the Russo-Japanese War. American observers of that war 

had foreseen the future dominance of indirect fire. The Germans also 

considered the use of indirect fire with its heavier field artillery pieces. 

This capability was, however, not used in the field until the front became 

static.45

The limitations presented by the various communications means 

available to link the observer with the guns were the major disadvantage 

of indirect fire. In direct fire, the battery commander could direct the fire 

via voice commands or hand signals. Indirect fire depended on an observer 

connected to the battery by radio or field telephones. Radios in 1914 were 

unreliable and not portable. In the Marne campaign, the German High 

Command had great communications difficulties while depending on 

radios to communicate to subordinate armies. Field telephones worked well 

in stationary operations. But in activities where the units were constantly 

advancing or retreating, the telephone, depending on the stringing of lines 

of wire, was more problematic.46

Since all sides in 1914 expected to fight in mobile operations, the 

artillerymen and their infantry commanders considered indirect fire to be 

impractical. However, after the battle lines became static, the observer 

could link with the battery using semipermanent field telephone lines. 

Indirect fire allowed the deployment of batteries in covered terrain and 

in depth. All combatants soon adopted the technique, and all combatants 

almost universally used indirect fire, with gunnery techniques becoming 

increasingly more sophisticated as the war progressed. By mid-1915, 

the combatants were placing their supporting artillery between 2 and 3 

kilometers behind the frontline trenches, between infantry regimental 

command posts and the divisional command post.47

Infantry firepower in the form of the machinegun, coupled with 

the lack of battlespace for operational maneuver, had stopped effective 

offensive action on the Western Front by the end of 1914. As the front 

became stationary, field artillery for the first time became a full partner 

in the combined arms. Static defensive operations practically depended 
20

on centralized artillery firepower for its success. Field artillery became a 

fully integrated component of the combined arms team, not only on the 

defensive but also on the offensive.48

Even before the primacy of positional war, artillery had been 

considered essential to all attacks. After their brief repulse at Mons at the 

hands of the British during the opening campaign in Belgium, where the 

German infantry attacked with minimal artillery support, the Germans 

always preceded their assaults with a deliberate artillery bombardment. 

The French, too, came to this realization from trial and error. After 

numerous assaults with less than maximum artillery support, French 

division commanders soon too refused to attack without a preliminary 

artillery bombardment. Such a preparation became official French policy 

as early as November 1914. By 1915, French infantry would not assault 

single buildings unless artillery had already flattened them.49

Between late 1914 and late 1917, most attacks failed or, at best, 

achieved only limited successes. For the most part, the Allies attacked and 

the Germans, except at Verdun in 1916, defended. These overall tactical 

and operational postures, coupled with available stockpiles of cannons 

and supplies of ammunition, resulted in two basic theories on the use of 

artillery firepower—destruction and neutralization.

The destruction theory of firepower developed in the Allied camp 

from battlefield experience primarily in 1915. In this period, Allied attacks 

generally failed in the face of German artillery and machinegun fire or, at 

best, resulted in extremely limited success. From such battles as NeuveChapelle in March 1915, the Allies drew the conclusion that artillery 

firepower had to destroy all enemy resistance in front of the advancing 

infantry. The establishment of extensive preliminary bombardments and 

a heavy rolling barrage in front of the attacking infantry was the natural 

result of such theory.50

The French and British could not match the intensity of German 

firepower. Throughout 1915, the German artillery remained superior to 

those of the French and British. The Germans, having expected in the prewar 

period to assault fixed fortifications in Belgium and France, had more guns 

of higher calibers. They also employed higher caliber howitzers that were 

more effective in the indirect-fire mode because of their characteristic high 

trajectory. The French and British solutions to this disparity were longer 

bombardments.5

 However, longer bombardments sacrificed operational 

surprise. The Germans were routinely alerted to the area of attacks and 

able to mass troops either to repulse or as counterattacking reserves. 
21

The Allies responded with even larger bombardments considered to be 

irresistible. Artillery firepower was expected to systematically destroy the 

German position. Throughout 1915, French bombardments expanded up 

to 6 days. At the Somme in 1916, the bombardment extended to 7 days. At 

Messines Ridge beginning the 1917 Passchendaele offensive, the British 

fired a 21-day bombardment. The brute strength of this bombardment 

effectively destroyed the German counterbattery artillery and brought 

about such destruction on the ground that the infantry merely had to 

occupy the destroyed German forward positions. As the Germans, well 

aware of where the assault was coming and somewhat shattered by the 

explosion of a series of mines under their position, merely withdrew to 

positions in depth.52

While such bombardments destroyed all pretense of operational 

surprise, a further enhancement of Allied technique destroyed tactical 

surprise as well. With bombardments extending for days and weeks, the 

German defenders could not be sure when the artillery fire would end 

and the attack would begin. However, at the Somme, Allied artillery fired 

an intense final bombardment right before the infantry assault aimed at 

destroying machinegun positions. This tipped the Germans off to the 

imminence of the attack at the tactical level.53

The failure of destruction was as much a property of the inherent 

dispersion of indirect artillery fire as it was the ability of the Germans to 

adapt to such techniques. Indirect field artillery was and is, by its nature, 

an area fire weapon. Its fire could disrupt or temporarily neutralize the 

enemy. Long-term bombardments could increase the neutralization effect 

almost up to destruction levels. But, at the same time, they warned the 

enemy and destroyed the ground over which the infantry would have to 

advance.54

As Allied bombardments got longer, the Germans did not initially 

change their defensive posture to lessen the effects. It took several 

years and the massive artillery barrage at the Somme to eradicate the 

long tradition of steadfastly holding onto defensive positions. Although 

the British offensive at the Somme stalled, the Germans suffered great 

casualties by having troops massed in the front line. When the team of Field 

Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and General of Infantry Erich Ludendorff 

took control of German operations in mid-1916, Ludendorff immediately 

initiated an effort to develop new, more effective defensive tactics.55

The result was the publication of a new doctrinal manual on 1 December 

1916, which transformed German defensive tactics. The defense shifted 
22

from a linear one with most of the defenders in the forward-most trenches 

to one arrayed in depth. No longer would ground be held at all costs. The 

Germans would retain the initiative while on the defensive using rigorous, 

multiecheloned immediate counterattacks.56

The new doctrine also emphasized the best use of terrain. Wherever 

possible, the defense would occupy positions on reverse slopes that 

obscured the positions from enemy observation. In places where the Allies 

held superior observation, the Germans simply withdrew to positions that 

favored them. Thus, defensive positions maximize the use of artillery by 

providing excellent surveillance for the defenders and inferior observation 

for the attackers. The best example of this was the withdrawal in the 

spring of 1917 from a large salient in the center of the Western Front to 

prepared positions referred to by the Allies as the Hindenburg Line. The 

Hindenburg Line was specifically sited based on artillery considerations 

first and foremost.57

By 1918, the Allies, too, had generally adopted the defense-in-depth 

concept as a response to German infiltration tactics and its accompanying 

artillery neutralization tactics. At Reims in July 1918, the French Fourth 

Army repulsed the German attack, while the front of its neighbor to the 

west, the French Fifth Army, collapsed while using the more traditional 

defensive tactics. This was the last German offensive success of the war.58

The importance of artillery in Allied attacks became such that, as 

the war progressed, the theory of destruction reversed the traditional 

relationship between the field artillery and infantry. In many ways, the 

infantry was now advancing in support of the effects of artillery firepower. 

Since a predetermined timetable determined the artillery’s rolling barrage 

and was conducted against a line of targets parallel to the line of advance, 

infantry at the Somme had to advance in a line and at the pace of the 

artillery’s advance. If successful, the artillery would lead the infantry onto 

its objectives.59

The range of the artillery now determined the depth of the battlefield 

as well. Objectives were tailored to be within artillery range throughout 

the attack, limiting operations to geography compatible with the technical 

characteristics of the guns and how long it would take them to use up 

stockpiles of ammunition.60

Destruction, however, proved to be an ineffective solution. In the 

Battles of the Somme in 1916 and Passchendaele in 1917, the destruction 

proved to be incomplete even though the Germans suffered heavy 

casualties in their frontline positions. At Messines Ridge at the start of 
23

the Passchendaele offensive, massed British artillery destroyed almost 50 

percent of the heavy German artillery while forcing the rest to withdraw 

after an extensive artillery duel. The artillery positioning had tipped the 

Germans off as to the location of the attack, and using their new defensein-depth tactics, they withdrew allowing the British to take their limited 

objectives while the Germans suffered minimal infantry casualties. 

Accordingly, the massed British artillery successfully destroyed the 

defending artillery but could not destroy the enemy infantry.61

Despite their early advantage in having heavier artillery, the Germans 

took a different approach to artillery firepower. After the Western Front 

solidified as a continuous line from Switzerland to the sea by the end of 

1914, the German High Command, faced with fighting a two-front war with 

a weak ally in the east, meant that the Germans could not mass sufficient 

forces for offensive operations in 1915. With the British maritime blockade 

causing materiel shortages, the German High Command extended this 

defensive posture to early 1918, with a brief hiatus for limited offensive 

operations at Verdun in 1916. 

Unwilling to give up tactical or operational surprise and viewing 

offensive artillery operations from the more open spaces of the Eastern 

Front or in a counterattacking role, the German Army developed the 

concept of neutralization instead of destruction. Under the theory of 

neutralization, artillery support did not become a power of its own. The fire 

of the guns was tailored to the planned maneuver of the infantry. Instead 

of having to destroy the enemy artillery and machineguns, the German 

artillery would fire to disrupt the defenders from hindering the German 

advance. The initially heavier German guns assisted in this process by 

being able to apply greater firepower over shorter bombardments than the 

Allies could. Such a use of artillery, as with the Allies, required a detailed 

timetable. But the Germans were more flexible in changing the timetable 

based on battlefield realities.62

For the Germans, the 29–30 October 1914 Battle of Vailly was a 

watershed for their artillery employment. There along the banks of the 

Aisne River, the German III Corps conducted the first successful attack 

since the defeat at the First Battle of the Marne 6 weeks earlier. It was the 

first successful German attack against entrenched enemy infantry. Artillery 

usage at the battle showed the differences between German and Allied 

artillery employment and philosophy. The corps commander realigned all 

his available artillery under a single artillery commander. The key factor 

in the success was the ability of the German infantry to advance before the 

French had recovered from the effects of the German barrage.63
24

To achieve this, the Germans first retained surprise by pausing their 

preliminary bombardment four times before the actual assault. When the 

bombardment actually ended, the French responded slowly in resuming 

their positions in the forward trenches. Any enemy casualties in the initial 

bombardment were a bonus. The purpose of the bombardment was, 

however, not to destroy the enemy position but, rather, to neutralize it by 

forcing the defenders to take cover. If the German infantry conducted a 

rigorous advance timed to begin immediately after the last artillery pause, 

it stood a good chance of seizing major portions of the French frontline 

trenches with minimal casualties. At Vailly, in most places, the Germans 

were successful. Neutralizing the enemy defenders with artillery fire timed 

closely with infantry maneuver became the standard German technique 

throughout the war.64

However, the Germans, too, could not escape the importance of 

artillery to the infantry. The German commander at Vailly limited the 

advance to the range of the supporting artillery because he feared a French 

counterattack while the German infantry was vulnerable if its supporting 

artillery had to move forward to support a longer advance. The inability of 

being able to move reserves forward to continue the impetus of a successful 

attack was a continual problem for World War I armies at both the tactical 

and operational levels.65

After the lines solidified, the Germans maintained their advantage 

in heavy guns for most of the war. However, this was offset by supply 

difficulties and a need to remain on the defensive in the west for most 

of the war. On the defensive, neutralization principles applied similarly 

as on the offensive. The Germans relied on strong immediate infantry 

counterattacks supported with artillery fire aimed at neutralization of the 

former attackers.66

After some successes in the east, the Chief of the German General 

Staff, General of Infantry Erich von Falkenhayn, adopted an indirect 

operational version of the Allied destruction theory at Verdun in 1916. 

Falkenhayn believed that German artillery superiority, as demonstrated 

at the May 1915 Battle of Gorlice-Tarnow against the Russians, could be 

applied to the more narrow confines of the Western Front. If the Germans 

could threaten the French fortress at Verdun, Falkenhayn reasoned, the 

French would fight to the death to defend the city as a matter of national 

honor. The German artillery could then use its firepower to destroy the 

French attacking forces. 
25

Gorlice-Tarnow was a much larger version of Vailly. The Germans 

centralized artillery fire during the preparatory phase, but decentralized 

it during the ground assault. Artillery and infantry command posts 

collocated. The preliminary bombardment was short—between 4 and 6 

hours, excluding two false pauses. After the artillery fire shifted to the 

rear away from the Russian front line, the German infantry raced across 

no-man’s land with minimal casualties and assaulted the Russian trenches 

with bayonets. In some cases, the Germans were in the Russian trenches 

less than 5 minutes after the artillery preparation shifted.67

The result was a collapse of the Russian position, with mass surrenders 

or flight. The Germans and their Austro-Hungarian allies achieved a major 

operational breakthrough. Before the front solidified again, the Central 

Power forces had cleared most of Poland of Russian troops and had 

captured 140,000 enemy prisoners.68

Falkenhayn realized that the Western Front was too dense and narrow 

to repeat the breakthrough aspects of Gorlice-Tarnów. However, he felt 

the stunning power of the German artillery could be applied selectively to 

bleed the French dry at Verdun. Attrition, rather than the seizure of ground, 

was the objective. Verdun was a perfect choice for the operation. Not only 

would the French fight tooth and nail to defend the fortress, but it was also 

located in a salient pointing into the German lines. Artillery could fire on 

the French from three directions.69

The key to getting the French to take the Verdun bait was initial 

German success. Falkenhayn massed 1,612 artillery pieces around the 

salient. To maintain surprise, the artillery preparation, unlike contemporary 

Allied ones, was only 10 hours long rather than a week. The initial assault 

infantry and specialized engineers moved up close behind the barrage 

and immediately rushed the forward French trench line when the barrage 

shifted. The assault was initially successful although the fortress of 

Verdun, an anticipated objective, did not fall. However, the threat of its fall 

resulted in the French response that Falkenhayn had wanted. The French 

soon committed large forces both to save Verdun and to push the Germans 

back.70

However, there was a major disconnect in the German command. 

While Falkenhayn sought to suck the French into a trap, this necessitated 

the Germans not falling into the attrition trap themselves. However, his 

subordinates in the field were soon falling back into tactics stressing the 

taking and holding of ground. Such tactics exposed the German infantry to 
26

the firepower of the French artillery. Accordingly, by the time the Germans 

called off offensive operations at Verdun in July 1916, they had suffered 

losses of a proportion only two-thirds less than those of the French 

(roughly 400,000 to 266,000). Falkenhayn lost his position to the team 

of Hindenburg and Ludendorff. Hindenburg and Ludendorff developed 

or supported the further development of artillery tactics of neutralization 

in conjunction with defense in depth and the use of infantry infiltration 

tactics on the offensive.71

Falkenhayn had applied the destruction theory at the operational level. 

As at the tactical level, infantry operations focused on placing the artillery 

in a position where it could batter the enemy artillery. But by 1917, the 

pendulum began shifting back toward the artillery supporting infantry 

maneuver rather than the infantry following up on the effects of artillery 

firepower. Except at Verdun, the Germans had never really abandoned this 

concept. But, starting in 1917, they continued to refine infantry-artillery 

cooperation. The Allies soon followed suit. 

As early as 1915, the Germans had collocated infantry and supporting 

artillery headquarters. This was not enough, however, to provide battlefield 

flexibility at the lower levels. Both the French and Germans soon developed 

the concept of the artillery liaison officer (ALNO), who was an artillery 

officer with no command responsibilities to any particular artillery unit. 

The ALNO’s primary responsibility was to coordinate between the infantry 

and its supporting artillery. The Germans maintained an ALNO at each 

infantry battalion command post. Although communications difficulties 

often made infantry-artillery coordination difficult, the use of ALNOs 

was an effort to address paradoxes that had occurred in the command 

relationships between artillery and infantry—the artillery was supposed 

to support the infantry; the infantry was not supposed to blindly act in 

accordance with the artillery fire plan.72

As part of the December 1916 shift in their tactical doctrine, the 

Germans further advanced this concept through the creation of the frontline 

commander, or Kampftruppenkommandeur (KTK). The KTK, usually the 

frontline infantry battalion commander, had complete authority over all 

the combat power in his sector of the front. This included all artillery 

support. The KTK retained command of his sector during an action even 

if he were reinforced with other battalions and general support assets and 

counterattacking forces. Infantry regimental commanders, accordingly, 

retained purely an administrative and logistical role in such situations. 

Under the new German system, one commander was in charge and made 

the determinations over the use of artillery. This commander had an 
27

ALNO at his disposal to facilitate these determinations. Problems such as 

the Hunt-Hancock controversy, therefore, did not take place.73

Despite these refinements, the firing timetable remained the most 

important tool for facilitating infantry-artillery coordination. The 

inflexibility of using the timetable reflected the communications means of 

the day. While the combatants, especially the Germans, tried to make their 

artillery more flexible and responsive to combat conditions, it was difficult 

short of bringing the artillery forward with the infantry. 

This concept was, in fact, universally tried in World War I. The socalled “infantry guns” were usually a battery-size artillery unit attached 

directly to an infantry battalion or regiment on the attack. The infantry 

guns of this era were generally used to fire directly at point targets such 

as bunkers and machinegun positions. For portability, generally smaller 

weapons were used, more reflective of the latter class of antitank guns. 

The Germans began replacing cannons in this role with small mortars 

(Minenewerfer). The Allies later adopted mortars as a weapon found in 

French infantry regiments and US infantry divisions.

In terms of the successful use of field artillery in the offensive, no man 

was more important than German Colonel Georg Bruchmüller in 1917–18. 

After early notable successes in the east, Bruchmüller became an artillery 

fireman, being shifted around to command the artillery in all the major 

German offensives in 1918. He refined earlier German artillery techniques 

that emphasized surprise and quick infantry assaults by organizing the 

artillery to fit its missions. Bruchmüller organized his guns into three 

functional groups, each devoted to specific missions. All had the goal of 

neutralization rather than destruction and supported the ground attack.74

In this tailoring, Bruchmüller used the standard field artillery 

divisional, regimental, and battalion headquarters staffs to command the 

functional groups. Starting in 1916, the Germans had streamlined their 

organizational structure, including the field artillery. This reorganization 

facilitated the tailoring of the guns for specific missions. In the division, 

a divisional artillery command, or Artilleriekommando (ARKO), replaced 

the former brigade. The ARKO contained a field artillery regiment with 

nine batteries of light guns (six of 77-mm field guns and three of 105-mm 

howitzers) and a heavy artillery battalion with two batteries of heavy 150-

mm howitzers and one of 100-mm field guns.75

At corps level, there was no permanent artillery command. But the 

corps usually contained an artillery regiment with two heavy battalions 

earmarked for counterbattery fire and additional heavy artillery units 
28

attached as necessary. By the end of the war, German field armies and army 

groups had a chief of artillery, the position typically held by Bruchmüller.

However, these commands were only assigned artillery assets as needed 

from the High Command’s General Artillery Reserve, which managed this 

asset in a centralized manner.76

The first of Bruchmüller’s functional groups was the infantry 

assault group, or Infanteriebekämpfungsgruppe (IKA). The IKA, usually 

commanded by ARKOs and reporting to their division commanders, 

consisted of approximately three-fourths of the available artillery. 

Although available for other missions if necessary, the IKA supported the 

infantry, firing the barrage into the frontline positions and in front of the 

assaulting forces. The IKA pooled light field guns and howitzers.77

The remaining artillery was divided into two elements. The first 

of these, about one-fifth of the total, was the counterbattery group, or 

Artilleriekämpfungsgruppe (AKA). The AKA was typically commanded by 

the artillery commander of a division in reserve and fell under the corps 

commander. The AKA’s main mission was to place fire on the enemy 

artillery positions. It primarily assembled heavy field howitzers from the 

divisional battalions and regiments attached to the corps.78

The remaining relatively small group was the long-range group, 

or Fernkampfgruppe (FEKA). Leading the FEKA was usually one of 

the artillery regimental commanders who also reported directly to the 

corps. The FEKA pooled the longest ranged heavy and field guns in the 

command’s artillery. Its targets, usually fired by map spotting, were distant 

command posts, telephone centers, and other installations within range of 

the guns.79

As part of the infantry gun concept, apart from these groups, 

Bruchmüller assigned a four-gun artillery battery (Infanteriebegleitbatterie

(IBB)) to accompany each assaulting infantry regiment. These batteries 

came from the division artillery.The IBBs followed the first assault wave 

roughly 1 kilometer to the rear with the second wave and provided artillery 

fire to targets of opportunity and immediate artillery support as the assault 

echelon moved beyond the range of the supporting artillery. In addition, 

a specialized assault artillery battery (Infanteriegeschützbatterie (IGB)) 

was attached to each assaulting division. The IGBs were divided up and 

parceled out as individual guns, one per each infantry battalion in the 

assault echelon, where they were part of the first assault wave.80

The IKA and AKA were further subdivided into two major subgroups 

(Untergruppen) under artillery regimental headquarters. Each Untergruppe
29

and the Untergruppe-size FEKA were further divided into several minor 

subgroups (Unterverbänden) under artillery battalion commanders. While 

the Untergruppen consisted of a mix of weapons, the Unterverbänden

usually contained batteries equipped with the same weapon. Each subgroup 

had a specific sector of fire.81

Bruchmüller employed these tailored groups in a detailed three-tofive phased preparatory fire that alternated between attacking the front line 

and counterbattery fire in which gas rounds and high-explosive rounds 

were used. The shifts away from the front line were designed to bait the 

enemy infantry forces into returning to their positions in time for the next 

phase of attack against the front. The whole preparatory bombardment was 

typically less than 5 hours, but it was intense.82

This was immediately followed by the rolling barrage and the infantry 

advance. The advance was expected to go to a depth of 6 or 7 kilometers, 

deep enough to push through the enemy’s primary defensive line and its 

field artillery positions. If the advance was successful, Bruchmüller then 

began moving batteries forward as they ran out of range. With the front 

broken through, the artillery reverted to its conventional organizational 

structure.83

The Bruchmüller method, while primarily designed to neutralize 

the enemy artillery and infantry, also contained elements of destruction 

and deception. For added flexibility, independent teams of artillery 

noncommissioned officers and junior officers equipped with field 

telephones advanced with the leading infantry and provided artillery fire 

to targets of opportunity that had survived the effects of previous fire.84

Starting in late 1917, the Germans combined Bruchmüller’s methods 

with nonlinear infantry “infiltration” tactics and initially gained great 

success in a series of offensives, including battles at Riga, Cambrai, and 

all of the major German offensives of 1918, starting with the attack at 

Saint-Quentin in April 1918. These attacks were initially operational-level 

successes, although all eventually petered out because the Allies could rush 

reserves to the threatened front faster than the Germans could advance. 

Additionally, the Allies adapted to the German tactics, primarily by 

adopting a defense-in-depth posture. In the fifth and last German offensive 

in their 1918 series at Reims in July, the Germans attacked the French 

Fourth and Fifth Armies. The Fifth Army defended in the usual style, with 

the defense forward, including the bulk of the artillery. In that sector, the 

Germans and Bruchmüller had their usual initial success until the Allies 

massed against the newly created German salient and pushed the weak 

German forces left in the salient back to their original positions.85
30

But in the Fourth Army sector, the French commander adopted a 

defensive posture similar to the German defense in depth. The main line of 

resistance (MLR) was placed not in the front line but up to 4 kilometers to 

the rear of the forward positions, almost out of German artillery range. The 

bulk of the French artillery was behind the MLR as well. The Germans, 

including Bruchmüller, did not realize this change and attacked as usual. 

The first sign of trouble was when the Germans lost tactical surprise 

through intelligence gained from prisoners and the French immediately 

fired an intense 40-minute counterpreparatory bombardment, which was 

effective against the German infantry massing for the assault because 

the French gunners did not have to fear fratricide as the nearby French 

trenches were unoccupied.86

The German attack, including Bruchmüller’s five-phased preparatory 

fires, went off as scheduled. However, this fire was ineffective because it 

landed on unoccupied positions. The Germans advanced into the forward 

French positions with ease, but the Fourth Army had placed its outpost line 

behind these forward trenches. The outpost positions survived the rolling 

barrage and successfully separated the advancing German infantry from 

the rolling barrage. The German advance slowed as the barrage was not 

available to neutralize French strongpoints and the infantry had to use its 

own weapons to silence them. Additionally, the Germans were advancing 

within range of the undamaged French artillery. When the French MLR 

was reached, the Germans did not have the firepower and maneuver 

advantage necessary to obtain a breakthrough. The attack had faltered and 

was called off after less than 24 hours when the French counterattacked. 

The Germans had failed to break through the French MLR. 

This was Bruchmüller’s first defeat as an army-level artillery 

commander. A combination of defensive techniques, including good 

intelligence and counterintelligence, and depth of position had beaten 

Bruchmüller’s formula. The Germans never resumed the initiative for the 

rest of the war. When the tide turned against the Germans in mid-1918, 

Bruchmüller’s usefulness as a breakthrough specialist waned, and he spent 

the last months of the war as the artillery chief of the German field army 

opposing the American attack in the Argonne Forest.87

Reims was the first Allied success against the Bruchmüller method, 

but the Allies had begun developing their own techniques as early as the 

spring of 1917 at Messines Ridge. In October 1917, the British conducted 

an experimental attack at Cambrai, designed to test the battlefield 

effectiveness of using massed tanks. Since the British wanted to stress 

surprise and not tear up the terrain (which had not previously been 
31

contested as it was in a sector into which the Germans had retreated earlier 

in the year), they employed nonconventional artillery tactics. 

These included no British preliminary bombardment. The shock 

and surprise of the tanks would carry the German positions instead. 

The subsequent barrage depended on intensive (hurricane) map-spotted 

(called by the British predicted) fire. The British attack was initially 

highly successful. However, the Germans ultimately recovered and 

counterattacked, successfully using their new infiltration tactics to great 

effect. As part of the counterattack, Bruchmüller arrived from the east as 

an artillery observer. One of the corps in the German counterattack was 

the first unit to employ a Bruchmüller-style preparatory fire on the Western 

Front.88

When the Allies returned to the offensive in July 1918 after surviving 

the German strokes of the first half of the year, their preparatory fires 

were universally far shorter than in the pre-Cambrai era and increasingly 

stressed tank support and counterbattery fires. American artillery played a 

large role in the successful offensive operations of the second half of 1918. 

While artillery had long been a formidable arm (it is not a coincidence 

that the Army’s official song came from the field artillery), for the United 

States Army, World War I was the turning point to fielding a modern field 

artillery force, which was both much larger and organized to a higher level 

than ever before.89

The United States entered the war on the Allied side in April 1917. It 

would not be until mid-1918 that US forces appeared on the Western Front 

in large numbers. Accordingly, American organization and doctrine was 

able to adopt all the lessons the Allies and, to a lesser extent, the Germans 

had learned in the first 3 years of the war. After extensive deliberation 

throughout 1917, the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) fielded an 

organization based on these lessons in 1918.90

The artillery of the new American infantry divisions consisted of a 

brigade headquarters with two regiments (48 cannons) of 3-inch (76.2-

mm) guns (or French equivalents), a regiment (24 cannons) of 6-inch 

(152.4-mm) guns (or French equivalents), and a battery of 58-mm trench 

mortars. The 3-inch guns provided direct support to the infantry with a 

field artillery battalion of 12 guns supporting each infantry regiment, with 

the 6-inch guns and trench mortars being in general support. At corps level, 

the AEF deployed a brigade of field artillery equipped with a 4.7-inch 

(120-mm) gun regiment and a 6-inch (152.4-mm) howitzer regiment, and 

a 240-mm trench mortar battalion. At field army level were four brigades, 
32

each with three 6-inch howitzer regiments. Tactical commanders at each 

echelon determined how the general support and higher echelon tubes 

would be used based on the ground tactical plan.91

The American military adage that the “artillery is never in reserve” 

originated in World War I. Accordingly, divisional artillery brigades and 

subordinate units frequently were detached to support other units. When 

the AEF proved to have a faulty replacement system, some divisions were 

broken up for this role. But the artillery brigades of such divisions were 

retained with a combat mission and, when fully trained, detached to corps 

headquarters or to other divisions. Despite fielding eight corps in the 

AEF, the Army only created three corps artillery brigades. The AEF used 

brigades from the skeletonized divisions and, at times, divisional brigades 

in this role. The net result of this organizational discord was that units 

often went into combat with direct support artillery units they had not 

previously trained or fought with. 

An example of this is the experience of the 32d Division, a former 

National Guard unit composed of troops from Florida, Georgia, and 

Alabama. When the division arrived in France in February 1918, it became 

a depot division. Its organic field artillery brigade, the 57th, was detached 

from the division. Except for a 2-week period in June 1918, the brigade 

never returned to division control. In April 1918, the division, without its 

artillery, was converted back to a combat unit and entered combat in a 

quiet sector in June. From July to the end of the war in November 1918, 

the division participated in all the major AEF campaigns. During this 

period, the division received artillery support from a variety of French and 

American divisional artillery. In its first 17 days in the Meuse-Argonne 

offensive, a succession of divisional artillery brigades from four other 

divisions supported the division. One of these divisions was in reserve, 

another was skeletonized, but the other two were, in turn, also supported 

by nonorganic artillery.92

In addition to organizational difficulties, in terms of artillery, US forces 

had a basic doctrinal problem. While the Army created units based on 

trench warfare conditions, the AEF commander, General John Pershing, 

firmly believed that trench warfare was only a temporary condition. US 

units had to be ready to fight under open, mobile warfare conditions as 

well. Accordingly, Pershing forced his subordinates to train for both kinds 

of warfare. Lessons of artillery employment and technique, in particular, 

were considered incompatible between the two modes, and American 

field artillery became adept at indirect fire, particularly map-spotted 

targeting. The American experience in the war was relatively short and 
33

primarily offensive in nature, although all under trench warfare, not open, 

conditions.93

American planners nevertheless stressed infantry-artillery 

coordination in trench warfare conditions. This was primarily done by 

placing large artillery liaison teams with each infantry regiment and using 

detailed planning and predetermined maneuver and firepower schemes. 

The timetable, given communications capabilities in 1918, was the only 

effective means to coordinate infantry and artillery actions. The artillery 

liaison teams were, therefore, tasked with fire planning rather than 

adjusting fires after an action had started.94

At the first American action in the war, Cantigny, the artillery fire 

plan resembled, to a great extent, Bruchmüller’s functional, multiphased 

schemes. Reinforced with French heavy artillery, the artillery brigade of 

the US 1st Division fired an intense 1-hour preparatory bombardment. Five 

minutes before H-hour, the rolling barrage began along with a concurrent 

counterbattery bombardment of a mix of high-explosive and gas shells 

designed to neutralize the German artillery. The German guns were 

quickly suppressed, and the lead US infantry regiment quickly captured 

Cantigny against resistance weakened from the artillery fire and without is 

own artillery support.95

After being repulsed at Belleau Wood without artillery, the US 2d 

Division fired a 24-hour barrage before the final assault, which took the 

woods. However, most American preliminary bombardments were far 

shorter. At the beginning of the largest American operation of the war, the 

Meuse-Argonne attack, which began on 26 September 1918, American 

gunners fired a 6-hour preparation. Subsequent barrages were 2 hours or 

less long.96

Immediately after the war, a Kansas politician claimed that lack of 

both artillery and aerial support had cost the 35th Division, the KansasMissouri National Guard division, more than 7,000 casualties in 6 days 

(26 September to 1 October 1918) of battle in the Argonne Forest. The 

division was withdrawn from the Argonne and spent the rest of the war 

either in reserve or along a static sector. This public outcry showed that 

combat experience, especially in a technical arm such as the artillery, was 

significant.97

Ironically, the division’s 60th Field Artillery Brigade was in support 

throughout the 6 days. The 35th Division participated in the opening of the 

Meuse-Argonne offensive where the artillery was initially handled poorly. 

The preplanned rolling barrage, paced to an advance of 400 feet per 
34

minute, ended up getting far ahead of the infantry. Only high-explosive, 

not gas, rounds were fired out of fear of German reprisals. The Germans 

fired gas rounds anyway. Armywide, the artillery was ineffective in the 

opening stage of the offensive.98

For the 35th Division, the situation was even worse. The division’s 

French 75-mm guns fired slowly—1 or 2 rounds a minute, whereas the 

guns could fire, at least for short periods, 30 rounds a minute. The guns 

were also placed too far to the rear, necessitating a move forward on the 

afternoon of the first day. This move was not smooth—the guns became 

caught in a traffic jam that left the forward infantry unsupported for hours.99

The artillery woes continued throughout the 35th’s 6 days of combat. 

On the second day, only one artillery battalion was in position to support 

the continuance of the attack, with rugged terrain and obstacles hindering 

forward movement. Without artillery support, the division attack failed. 

A second attack in the late afternoon, with the artillery now in position, 

was more successful. However, the Germans recovered, and on the third 

and fourth days, 35th infantry attacks gained little ground. On the fourth 

day, the artillery fired totally uncoordinated from the maneuvers of the 

infantry. This meant the main divisional attack moved forward without 

artillery fire. German defensive fires decimated the regiment, already 

down to less than 500 soldiers. In addition, the Germans committed three 

squadrons of close air support aircraft into the battle against the attacking 

American infantry. The remnants of the division fell back to a line to the 

rear built by the division’s engineer regiment. The division in its weakened 

state was saved from a possibly fatal German counterattack when, finally, 

there was artillery support. A total of 31 batteries were massed to cover 

the withdrawal to the new line. Two days later, the division was relieved 

from the front line.100

While the 6 days in the Argonne created a postwar political crisis in 

Kansas, the cause of the 35th Division’s debacle was not a scandal over a 

shortage of horses or artillery. The division had its organic artillery with 

it, with its equipment. What the division lacked was battle experience. 

After spending several months in quiet sectors, this was its first offensive 

combat. While many American divisions were in the same condition, 

and the first army barrage overall was ineffective across the board at the 

beginning of the Argonne battle, weak divisional and division artillery 

brigade commanders further hindered the 35th Division.101

Within a month, American artillery skill had improved exponentially. 

The most effective US preliminary bombardment of the war was its last, 
35

that conducted by the First Army on 1 November 1918, beginning the final 

phase of the Meuse-Argonne attack. The barrage was the culmination of 

American wartime artillery experience. On a 15-mile front, the First Army 

massed 1,538 guns and howitzers. The preliminary bombardment was 

only 2 hours. Each attacking division had a double allotment of artillery, 

and the guns were positioned forward to maximize the ability to support 

the infantry advance. Pieces fired between 10 and 12 rounds a minute. Gas 

shells were mixed with high explosive. The result was the closest thing 

the US Army came to Pershing’s concept of open warfare. The artillery 

proved to be decisive with one division advancing 5 miles the first day. By 

the end of the second day, the attack had created a breach in the German 

defenses 10 miles wide when a German division disintegrated. Soon, the 

American advance reached pristine terrain yet untouched by wartime 

ravages. The use of gas forced the Germans to withdraw from key terrain, 

turning the last few days of the war into a virtual pursuit operation, with 

daily advances of 4 to 5 miles. The advance reached the Meuse River just 

south of Sedan by the time the Armistice ended the fighting.102

A unique feature of American artillery operations in World War I 

that would become controversial in the interwar period was the idea of 

infantry guns. Similar in concept to Bruchmüller’s IBB and IGB, two 

divisional field artillery battalions were usually earmarked to be under 

direct infantry control in the attack. A battalion of three batteries each 

was detached to each divisional infantry brigade. The brigade, in turn, 

placed a battery each with its two infantry regiments as “infantry guns.” 

The third battery was divided up as individual gun sections and assigned 

separately as “accompanying guns,” with the leading infantry battalions. 

The employment of accompanying guns was to fire directly at point targets 

in front of the infantry advance.103

World War I was the advent of modern artillery and its place as a key 

component of the combined arms team. Position warfare on a mass scale 

transformed artillery gunnery and enhanced its firepower. The adoption of 

indirect fire transformed gunnery from a problem of observation to a matter of 

mathematics. Throughout the war, the effect of firepower transitioned from 

short bombardments to massive week-long barrages back down to short, but 

intense, fires (see figures 2, 3, and 4). By the war’s end, extensive planning, 

task organization, and realistic firing timetables made up for artillery 

weaknesses, most prominently, battlefield mobility and communications. 
36

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

H o urs o f Bo m bardm ent

1915 1916 1917 1918

Figure 2. Length of artillery bombardments, 1915–1918: German.

In modern warfare, artillery became an area fire weapon. Its primary 

battlefield characteristic had become its ability to neutralize enemy units, 

enabling the other arms to maneuver against the enemy with minimal 

interference. The destructive effects of artillery firepower were distant 

secondary characteristics. By the end of the war, all combatants had 

realized this concept, although destruction by artillery fire would raise its 

head periodically in later wars.

1

4

7

10

13

16

D ay s o f Bo m bard m ent

1915 1916 1917 1918

See

F ig ure 4

Figure 3. Length of artillery bombardments, 1915–1917: Allied.
37

H o urs o f Bo m bardm ent

1917 1918

Figure 4. Length of artillery bombardments, 1917–1918: Allied.

Close Air Support in World War I

The Wright brothers invented the airplane only a decade before World 

War I. In the interim period, aircraft improved to the point that both sides 

in the war fielded forces of planes designed for aerial observation. 

Despite it being a technology only a decade old, most combatants had 

nevertheless created small aviation components before the start of World 

War I. The armies intended to use these aerial elements for reconnaissance. 

For example, at the start of the war, the Germans deployed four flying 

battalions. Organizationally, each aviation battalion was divided into 

three companies. But, for operational employment once war came, the 

companies were broken up into six-plane detachments, with each field 

army headquarters and infantry corps being given a detachment in direct 

support. During the war, aviation gradually expanded from providing 

air reconnaissance and limited artillery spotting to air-to-air combat (air 

superiority), and bombing of noncombat targets.104

By 1917, aviation technique and technology had advanced to where 

airplanes began contributing to the ground battle in a combat capacity. At 

first, both sides considered the role of close air support, similar to Hancock’s 

view of artillery on 3 July 1863, to be more in terms of morale than actual 
38

effectiveness, cheering on friendly troops by their presence and similarly 

disheartening the enemy beyond the limits of actual effectiveness. This 

thought changed when, by late 1917, massed air strikes began to inflict 

actual damage to enemy troops and equipment.105

The British had experimented with low-level troop strafing at the 

Battle of the Somme the previous year. When the Germans voluntarily 

retreated to the Hindenburg Line in February and March 1917, the British 

committed aircraft to strafing and bombing missions against the retreating 

Germans. Before this, the British Royal Flying Corps (RFC) usually stayed 

away from the front lines, attacking deeper into the German rear area or 

conducting air superiority missions against the German Air Service.106

From this time forward, the RFC and its successor service the Royal 

Air Force (RAF) gradually increased its role in close air support. Before 

the April 1917 Arras offensive, the RFC conducted a 10-day air attack on 

the German front lines, committing fighter planes to this mission for the 

first time. In July 1917, the RFC put bomb racks on fighters for the first 

time, allowing the smallest, most maneuverable aircraft to bomb enemy 

infantry positions.

The RFC’s methods became increasingly sophisticated. In the attack, 

the British began sending their close support aircraft to immediately drop 

bombs and machinegun bullets on the German frontline trenches as soon 

as the preliminary artillery bombardment ceased, then shifting in front 

of the subsequent rolling artillery barrage to attack the German infantry 

before the artillery reached its positions.107

Despite these operational advances, the British still approached 

close air support in a relatively amateurish, haphazard manner. Rather 

than specific targets or sectors, RFC headquarters elements issued only 

vague “roving” orders to pilots and squadron leaders supporting the 

Passchendaele offensive in July and August 1917. Tactics centered on 

pairs of airplanes attacking small targets of opportunity.108

However, in November 1917 at Cambrai, the British command took 

great care in planning an experimental offensive using, for the first time, 

a large number of tanks. Aircraft were employed along with tanks and 

artillery in an integrated plan of attack. The RFC massed enough aircraft to 

initially outnumber the Germans 3 to 1 in the air. The Royal Flying Corps 

had committed 14 squadrons at Cambrai. Operating in flight strength 

rather than in pairs, these squadrons were given detailed sector and target 

assignments, with attention given to the German artillery. Weather and 

German antiaircraft defenses hindered the initial aerial contribution. The 
39

RFC lost a third of its planes on the first 3 days of the Cambrai attack. The 

Germans countered by committing Baron Manfred von Richthofen’s large 

fighter group. The RFC then mostly reverted to air-to-air operations.109

When the Germans counterattacked at Cambrai, the battle became the 

first where both sides massed large air fleets. High in the sky, fighters 

dueled with each other while closer to earth both the British and Germans 

employed ground attack aircraft.110

The German approach was a little different. After a disastrous 

spring and summer of 1916 in which a defensive air posture lost them 

air superiority, the German High Command reorganized its Air Service, 

or Luftstreitkräfte (LSK), from the prewar structure of multifunctional 

aerial battalions into units with special functions. The principle of mass, 

originally applied to fighter operations in August 1916, was later applied to 

other types of operations. CAS units evolved from a series of six-airplane 

protection squadrons, or Schutzstaffeln or Schusta, that were established in 

January 1917 to protected air reconnaissance squadrons.111

Using the Schustas, the Germans, too, began experimenting with close 

air support in 1917. During a counterattack in the Battle of Gravelle in 

April 1917, a Schusta plane for the first time strafed British positions in 

conjunction with an infantry counterattack. At Pilckem Ridge on 31 July 

1917, during the Battle of Passchendaele, the Germans used bombers 

against attacking British infantry in the German’s first deliberate CAS 

mission. 

The role of Schustas gradually changed from reconnaissance protection 

to close air support throughout 1917. By the end of 1917, the Germans 

began infrequent employment of massed CAS sorties.112

From the start, the fielding of an aircraft well suited for infantry 

support operations enhanced Schusta operations. As with the Schustas 

themselves, the Halberstadt CL II, fielded starting in August 1917, was 

originally designed to provide fighter escort for air reconnaissance planes. 

This craft had the same performance characteristics as one-seater fighters 

but was less fragile and had a pilot and a machinegunner. By April 1918, 

more than 340 CL IIs were on the Western Front. The LSK was fielding 

an improved version, the Halberstadt CL IV, when the war ended. British 

observers commented on the difficulty of shooting down a Halberstadt 

with ground fire.113

The first LSK mass use of its Halberstadt CL II aircraft in a CAS role 

was during the German counterattack at Cambrai in November 1917. 

German air support was significant from the beginning of the battle. When 
40

bad flying weather restricted high flying and air-to-air combat, the LSK

added fighters to the ground battle. These were mostly used to fight off 

British close air support.114

Eight Schustas with up to 48 planes participated in the German 

counterattack.115 Flying at heights less than 100 feet, these planes supported 

the German infantry, which was using the new storm trooper infiltration 

tactics. The Germans quickly took back most of the terrain the British 

had taken in their tank attack. For both sides, Cambrai proved to be the 

first full-spectrum combined arms battle with both sides using novel field 

artillery and air support tactics and techniques. German success at close 

air support stunned the British to the point that the British command held 

an extensive court of inquiry in January 1918 to analyze the causes of 

German aerial success at Cambrai.116

Figure 5. Halberstadt CL II.

Before the RFC could digest the lessons of Cambrai, the Germans 

executed the first and largest of their spring offensives in March 1918, 

which featured the biggest assemblage of aircraft yet seen in the war. 

The Germans massed 730 airplanes for their first major offensive on the 

Western Front since Verdun in 1916. These aircraft were placed at the 

disposal of the ground commander to use at key places and times. 

At the beginning of the offensive, the German LSK consisted of four 

types of aerial units: reconnaissance, fighter, bomber, and escort. The escort 

units (Schusta) were actually performing CAS operations at this point and, US Air Force photo
41

accordingly, were redesignated as Schlachtstaffeln or attack squadrons 

(Schlasta) on 27 March 1918. For combat operations, the Schlastas were, 

in turn, temporarily grouped into larger units, Schlachtgruppen (Schagru) 

or attack groups, of from 12 to 36 attack aircraft. In the March 1918 

offensive, the LSK deployed 210 attack fighters in 35 Schlastas under 11 

Schlagrus.117

Before the offensive, the LSK drew up a detailed doctrinal manual for 

CAS operations based on the use of massed airplanes. These instructions 

included specific formations (line or column) for strafing trenches 

designed to comprehensively cover the attacked sector while, at the same 

time, spreading out the planes sufficiently to make them more difficult 

targets. This publication contained the first seeds of a longstanding dispute 

concerning the command and control and massing of CAS assets.118

In addition to new air doctrine, the Germans drew up a detailed plan to 

provide air support for their March offensive. While attack units normally 

provided LSK close air support, units made up of bombers were generally 

used for deeper missions and a bombing campaign against the English 

civilian population. However, for the March 1918 offensive, bombers were 

also designated to attack enemy ground troops. Previously, bombers had 

primarily operated at night. But technological advances in bomber design 

allowed the Germans to expand the bombers into limited daytime roles, 

attacking moving enemy targets such as reserves and tanks. Meanwhile, 

the fighter units, again including Richthofen’s elite group, were designated 

to provide cover for the Schlastas, the bombers, and reconnaissance 

aircraft.119

Canadian air historian Brereton Greenhous has presented the 

subsequent battle as one of paradoxes. While the Germans had refined the 

role of close air support, this specialization worked against them at SaintQuentin as some of the CAS pilots were less adept when involved in airto-air combat. While ground fog kept the Schlastas grounded on the first 

day of the offensive, initially, the German fighter cover, long conditioned 

by Allied aggressiveness to wait for the enemy to come to them, remained 

high in the sky. Even so, the German infantry attack, using infiltration 

tactics and supported by a Bruchmüller barrage, was highly successful. 

The British reacted to this emergency by using all their fighters for infantry 

support to slow or stop the German advance. In this situation, Greenhous 

contends, the less-organized British were at an advantage by being able 

to improvise while the German fighters left them alone. The battlefield 

situation also favored the British CAS effort—the new German tactics 

and their success placed many German troops and supply and artillery 
42

columns out in the open, increasing the effectiveness of aerial strafing and 

bombing. The RFC fired more than 21,000 rounds against ground targets 

on the first day of the offensive and double that intensity of fire on the 

second day. By the fifth day, this total had quadrupled to 92,000 rounds.120

By this time, the German fighters had shifted to attacks primarily 

against the British CAS airplanes. Nevertheless, despite great success 

by Richthofen’s group, the British air command still managed to mass 

100 aircraft against a sector threatened with breakthrough. On 26 March, 

the RFC fired a record 228,000 rounds at ground targets. The German 

attack soon gave out and Ludendorff himself commented directly on the 

effectiveness of British air-to-ground fire. The chief of staff of the attacking 

German army group estimated that air activity had caused roughly 50 

percent of all German casualties. The British close air support evolved 

out of the need to respond to the crisis caused by the surprising German 

breakthrough.121

For the German part, the Schlastas played a key role in the initial 

success of the offensive. With British aviation focused on close air support, 

the German attack aviation squadrons were equally free to attack ground 

targets without fear of air attack. The Germans began with a detailed attack 

plan, but the conditions of the battlefield soon caused them to violate the 

principle of mass, recently espoused in the new German air doctrine. In 

the German Air Service, there was a certain willingness to disperse CAS 

assets to provide support for all infantry units requesting it. Sometimes, 

groups as small as one or two airplanes supported a single infantry unit. 

Although the Germans professed the need for mass in close air support, 

they did not practice it in this their biggest air battle of the war.122

Schlasta losses in the Saint-Quentin battle were the equivalent of 4 

complete squadrons (out of 35 committed to the operation) or 11 percent of 

the total force. The Germans continued to mass Schlastas for the remaining 

five German offensives in April, May, June, and July 1918, but never at the 

same level as the first attack. By July, the Germans were on the defensive, 

a posture that continued until the end of the war in November. The British 

and Americans pressed the Germans with a series of offensives throughout 

this period.123

When the British attacked at Amiens in early August, the LSK was 

caught by surprise. Only a single CAS squadron was in the sector of the 

main effort. The LSK moved forces to the threatened region and fought 

well. However, the German Army was shattered in the battle. Meanwhile, 

a combination of the arrival of the Americans and the continued strain 
43

on German logistical and personnel assets gradually saw the Allies gain 

complete numerical superiority in the air. Schlastas began encountering 

shortages of aircraft and fuel as well as personnel.124

By the time the German Air Service faced large numbers of American 

troops in September 1918, the LSK was totally on the defensive and 

stretched thin. While German air doctrine almost exclusively was devoted 

to offensive use of close air support, once on the defensive, the air command 

did not give any further instructions. This forced local commanders to 

determine how best to use the Schlastas in a defensive battle. At SaintMihiel in September 1918, there were initially no Schlastas to support 

the defending German forces. Once a Schlagru with four subordinate 

Schlastas was deployed to that front, its effect on the battle was minimal.125

The Germans fared better in the Meuse-Argonne battle. On this 

battlefront the LSK deployed 15 Schlastas under 4 Schlagru headquarters. 

The attack of the US 35th Division, previously discussed in this chapter, was 

partially repulsed on 29 September 1918 (the fourth day of the offensive) 

because the Germans threw in a whole Schlagru at the Americans. It is 

interesting to note that, while the 35th’s advance was considered a failure, 

on this day the Germans considered the division’s advance to be the 

biggest threat to its defensive position. From the repulse of the 35th, the 

Germans drew the generalized conclusion that US troops could not hold 

ground against CAS strikes.126

As the battle progressed, the Germans reinforced their CAS assets with 

six additional squadrons. Losses were not as heavy as at Saint-Quentin, but 

were sizeable, with approximately 12 Schlasta airplanes shot down, most 

by air-to-air combat involving US Army Air Service fighters specifically 

tasked with shooting down CAS machines. The LSK demobilized its 

Schlastas on 18 November 1918, within a week of the signing of the 

Armistice. Further development of CAS operations during the interwar 

period would have to be left to the air forces of other nations.127

For most of the war, the British and their Commonwealth allies used 

fighter planes in close air support, establishing the tradition of the flexible 

multifunctional fighter-bomber that has continued into the modern era. 

Nevertheless, the British eventually developed its own CAS craft, the 

Sopwith TF-2 Salamander, which was, in concept, the air equivalent to the 

tank. Styled a “trench-fighter,” the craft first saw service in the new Royal 

Air Force in the spring of 1918, but only two squadrons were equipped 

with the craft when the war ended. The design emphasized trench strafing, 

with the fuselage made of armor plating and the armament consisting of 
44

two .30 caliber machineguns and four small bombs. The British planned 

a massed production and fielding of the Salamander for 1919, but the 

Armistice ended these plans.128

Through feverish production, by the end of the war, the French 

deployed the largest air service of any of the combatants. While the 

Germans and British began fielding forces of airships and large, longrange bombers, the French concentrated specifically on tactical aircraft, 

fighters, and bombers that could be used at the front. While the fighters 

and bombers were sometimes used for CAS missions, it was not until May 

1918 that the French organized a specific, autonomous ground support 

aviation unit, the Division Aerienne (DA) in May 1918.129

This force consisted of two brigades each organized with a fighter 

group (escadre chasse) and a day bomber group (escadre bombardment

jour). Each group contained two or three subordinate squadrons (group 

de combat (GC) or fighter squadron and group de bombardment (GB) or 

bomber squadron). The remaining fighters in the French Air Service were 

assigned directly to army commands. The DA was a tactical bombing force 

designed to both lead the air activities of French offensives and provide an 

aviation reserve force. The complaints of ground commanders throughout 

1918 threatened the force’s independence.130

The concept of employment of the French DA was that the bombers 

provided close air support while the fighters provided cover. The fighters 

could also strafe ground troops if necessary. The division participated in 

the Franco-American counterstrokes in June and July 1918 and as a unit 

formed a large part of the aerial support for the Saint-Mihiel offensive.131

As with the artillery, the American Expeditionary Force developed its 

aviation branch virtually from scratch, depending on French and British 

equipment and experience. The American Air Service expanded from a 

size of 1,200 at the declaration of war in 1917 to a force of 82,000 at 

the time of the Armistice. American organization and doctrine generally 

followed that of France. While the Germans provided specialized “attack” 

aviation forces and specialized forces in general, the British and French 

used fighters and sometimes bombers for the close support mission. 

Accordingly, the US Army Air Service, too, did not form specific CAS 

units. Generally, fighter (pursuit) aircraft performed this mission as an 

adjunct to their main mission of air superiority, along with bomber units.132

The American aviation organization was directly tied to the ground 

organization. Air units were directly subordinated to ground commands. 
45

The Chief of the Air Service position was actually an administrative post 

in the AEF headquarters. The two field armies eventually contained a 

group each of observation, day bomber and pursuit (fighter) planes. These 

groups typically contained one to four subordinate squadrons of the same 

type. The First Army, as the highest American field command for most of 

the St. Mihiel and Argonne operations, also fielded a pursuit wing under 

which were two additional pursuit groups. In addition, each corps in the 

field contained a group of observation planes.133

The American Air Service fought in two major campaigns, SaintMihiel and the Argonne. In both operations, Brigadier General Billy 

Mitchell was the senior air officer, first under First Army, then as the 

Argonne theater air chief. In the first of these campaigns, the air portion 

of the operation was highly successful. The attack surprised the Germans, 

who were initially outnumbered in the air 10 to 1. Mitchell maintained 

complete air superiority throughout the campaign as the Germans began 

a deliberate withdrawal from the Saint-Mihiel salient. US operations 

included CAS operations. The most important of these was the strafing of 

retreating German columns on 12 September 1918 near Vignuelles, which 

resulted in the capture of 15,000 prisoners of war the next day.134

The opinion of aerial success in the Argonne campaign was a matter 

of perspective. While Mitchell and other air observers saw the campaign 

as well executed, ground observers felt the Germans dominated the air and 

that US air assets were not employed in an aggressive manner. The major 

disconnect was one not of perspective but of priority. Mitchell, a noted 

advocate of airpower theory, prioritized the use of air assets differently 

from those of the ground commanders he supported.135

Billy Mitchell was a disciple of RAF Major General Hugh Trenchard, 

who commanded the British Independent Air Force in 1918, which 

was bombing German cities at night using large multiengine bombers. 

Trenchard believed in the strategic use of aircraft—bombing separately 

from ground operations to demoralize the enemy population or destroy 

essential war infrastructure. Trenchard had formerly commanded the RFC 

in a tactical role. As such, he also believed in the offensive role of fighter 

aircraft. To gain air superiority, fighters would fly forward into German 

territory and fling themselves at German fighter aircraft. It has already 

been seen where this policy had the effect on the Germans that their own 

fighters basically took a defensive posture, even when the ground forces 

were on the offensive as at Saint-Quentin. Trenchard also favored the mass 

use of aircraft even if it left certain parts of the front undercovered.136
46

Mitchell adopted Trenchard’s concepts as his own. After Pershing 

vetoed his idea for the creation of a strategic air force, he became the 

senior air officer for the AEF’s campaigns. Rather than stressing the direct 

support of the ground advance, Mitchell wanted to attack the enemy air 

force directly, as he considered the air force to be an offensive arm. At 

various times, he massed whole pursuit groups of up to 100 fighters for 

strikes against enemy aviation. During this early period of the Argonne 

battle, Mitchell’s fighters shot down 11 German fighters in one day. These 

tactics created local superiority at certain places, but it left other areas 

unprotected. Mitchell was less attentive to portions of his command tied to 

supporting the ground troops, such as air observation units.137

While Mitchell massed and threw his fighters forward, as at SaintQuentin, the Germans provided a more uniform coverage for their 

defending troops in the Argonne. To the American ground commanders, 

this seemed as if the Germans were dominating the air. Without Mitchell’s 

attention, observation squadrons attached to divisions to provide general 

air reconnaissance and artillery spotting seemed less aggressive to their 

supported infantry and artillery units. Part of this was because Mitchell 

had removed their fighter cover and the observers had to pay attention to 

their own self-defense.138

Even though there were still complaints from ground commanders up to 

the end of the war, it is not debatable, as with artillery operations, that CAS 

operations improved greatly during the course of the Argonne battle. On 9 

October 1918 in an attack that Mitchell was particularly proud of, a force 

of 200 bombers and 100 fighters attacked German troop concentrations. 

On 18 October, Air Service bombers and observation planes destroyed 

a German troop position at Bayonville that resulted in more than 1,000 

enemy casualties. Fighters began strafing troops as a secondary mission 

that soon became typical. After massed German CAS formations of up to 

3 squadrons (18 aircraft) caused significant battlefield setbacks, Mitchell 

shifted 4 squadrons of fighters (or pursuit aviation) to oppose the Schlastas. 

They did so by flying split patrols with half the squadron at an altitude of 

1,200 to 1,800 feet, above the low-flying Schlastas, with the other half at 

more than 10,000 feet where it could protect the anti-CAS patrols from 

German fighters.139

What would eventually be considered the traditional characteristics 

of close air support were there from the start. Strengths included no 

restriction as to range in the tactical sense. Close air support was able to 

appear suddenly on the battlefield and provide immediate effects on point 
47

targets and was virtually invulnerable to artillery fire. Terrain did not affect 

the performance of aircraft. There was a certain flexibility in the directfire nature of attack aircraft. If there was no target, the pilot could shift 

immediately to a different target.

Weaknesses included a vulnerability to increasingly more sophisticated 

ground antiaircraft fire, limited time in a target area, and bad weather 

affecting operations. Some weaknesses were shared with the artillery. 

Coordination and communications were difficult in the best of times, 

particularly with supported ground commanders. Preplanned missions 

were easier to execute than immediate ones, but sometimes less effective 

and possibly deadly in the form of potential fratricide. 

Several long-lasting themes in aerial support originated in World War 

I. Most prominent among these was the notion of specialization versus 

multifunctionality. While the British, French, and Americans used fighter 

(or pursuit) planes and sometimes bombers and even observation planes 

in the CAS role, the Germans developed a specific CAS airplane and 

specialized CAS units as an offshoot of a previous specialized force that 

protected observer aircraft. Although not an exponent of CAS units per se, 

the RAF, too, felt the need to develop a specialized CAS aircraft, although 

it was not fielded in large numbers at the end of the war. This was perhaps 

a recognition that the characteristics of aircraft mostly conducting close 

support missions may not be the same as the optimum characteristics for 

air superiority fighters.140

Another theme is the definition of close air support. In World War I, 

the distinction that the US Air Force would later make between close air 

support and interdiction missions was not established. Later, air doctrine 

would define close air support only as attacks on troops in contact with 

friendly forces and interdiction strikes against ground targets not within 

friendly artillery range. The later distinction would increase the complexity 

over the theme of who should control and direct air support, airmen or 

ground personnel.141

Such control was an issue only in the abstract in World War I. Pershing 

organized the AEF’s Air Service to place it firmly under the control of 

ground commanders at the theater, army, corps, and division levels. 

However, through the force of his personality and his direct control of 

field army-level assets, airman Mitchell was able to control and direct the 

course of air operations in the two major American campaigns. 

Another theme that was only an abstract concept in 1918 was the 

contrast prominent in later American airpower theory and operations 
48

between independent or strategic air operations and tactical air operations. 

While the British had established an Independent Air Force element to 

bomb deep into Germany and the Germans had fielded large bombers 

(Gothas and Giants) designed to bomb long distant targets, the US Air 

Service followed the French example and only operated at the tactical 

level. As a portent of the future, Mitchell, even while leading the AEF’s 

tactical air forces, firmly believed in the moral and destructive effects of a 

force of long-range bombers operating independently. In fact, he tailored 

tactical operations to act on the same principles if on a smaller scale.142

Associated with this theme was the lack of glamour in the CAS mission. 

Almost a century after the war, the fighter pilots, depicted in the popular 

memory as fighting a separate war for air superiority, are still considered 

the ideal of the World War I pilot. The Red Baron is acclaimed for the 80 

planes he shot down, not for the times he strafed trenches. Reflecting the 

contemporary glamour of the fighter pilot, many Schlasta pilots requested 

and received transfer to fighter units. While a new collective admiration 

for bomber crews replaced the glamour of the fighter pilot, which faded 

in the interwar period, the CAS pilot, except in the German World War II 

Luftwaffe, has retained a relative lack of respect into the modern period.143

Conclusions

The dichotomy between close air support and field artillery as separate 

elements of the combined arms team first appeared in World War I. The 

war transformed field artillery into its early modern form and created aerial 

support for ground operations. Field artillery was formerly a direct-fire 

weapon where line of sight allowed the guns to hit point targets with great 

accuracy. Battlefield conditions forced artillery to convert to indirect fire, 

dependent on separate observers and maps for accuracy. This increased 

coordination and communications difficulties.

While various replacements for direct fire of artillery were adopted, 

the most effective and most prominent of these was close air support. 

However, unlike direct-fire artillery, aerial support operated in a different 

plane where ground commanders could not directly communicate with the 

supporting arm. 

Artillery had traditionally been divided into various functional 

categories, mostly based on the mobility of the guns. A few expert gunners 

such as Bruchmüller who, based on battlefield experience, mastered the 

mix of these missions, turned them into an art form. Although a new arm, 

aviation soon developed a roster of different missions as well. While artillery 

cannons were typically assigned missions based on gun characteristics, the 
49

air forces of the combatants generally developed aircraft that could do 

several different missions, depending on the situation. Only the Germans, 

on the losing side, developed specialized equipment and units to perform 

specific missions. For the Germans, close air support was not an adjunct 

mission for fighters or bombers, but the main mission for its attack units. 

Despite this, in most cases, aviation remained an arm of the Army 

similar to the field artillery in the World War I era. In response to German 

airship and long-range bomber attacks on England, the British created the 

Royal Air Force as a separate service to better protect the homeland or to 

conduct reprisal attacks against Germany. Ironically, the Germans still felt 

their air service was primarily an adjunct to the army, as did the French 

and Americans. However, in the interwar period, the anomalous British 

example gradually assumed primacy among airpower theorists. 
50

Notes

1. Janice E. McKenney, The Organizational History of Field Artillery, 

1775–2003 (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 2007), 11–12.

2. John J. McGrath, The Brigade: A History (Fort Leavenworth, KS: 

Combat Studies Institute Press, 2004), 4–5.

3. “The American Revolution: The Battle of Monmouth,” Battlefield 

Detectives, 26 November 2004.

4. Mark R. Gilmore, “Artillery Employment at the Battle of Gettysburg” 

(MMAS thesis, US Army Command and General Staff College, 1989), 2.

5. Mark R. Gilmore, “Artillery Employment at the Battle of Gettysburg” 

(MMAS thesis, US Army Command and General Staff College, 1989), 6.

6. Earl J. Hess, Pickett’s Charge—The Last Attack at Gettysburg (Chapel 

Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 22–24.

7. Hess, 75; Gilmore, 17; Bradley M. Gottfried, The Artillery of Gettysburg

(Nashville, TN: Cumberland House, 2008), 12.

8. Vardell Edwards Nesmith Jr., “The Quiet Paradigm Change: The 

Evolution of the Field Artillery Doctrine of the United States Army, 1861–1905” 

(PhD diss., Duke University, 1977), 11–12, 36; Gilmore, 16–17, 50–51; Hess, 75.

9. Hess, 23, 26, 75–76; John M. Priest, Into the Fight: Pickett’s Charge at 

Gettysburg (Shippensburg, PA: White Mane, 1998), 182, 186–187.

10. Ibid., 22, 25. The Third Corps artillery had more optimistic orders. 

Batteries were to advance to Cemetery Ridge, the Union position, on seizure of 

that position and support from there. See Hess, 31.

11. Ibid., 113; John M. Priest, “Lee’s Gallant 6000? Pickett’s Charge 

Reconsidered,” North and South 1 (Issue 6, 1998): 52.

12. Hess, 25–26, 28–30.

13. Hess, 180.

14. Hess, 22–23, 25, 27–28. 

15. Hess, 33–34, 113; Gilmore, 47.

16. Hess, 113–116; Gilmore, 47. 

17. Observers from both sides gave time estimates of between 45 minutes 

and 5 hours. The most common estimate was 1 hour. See Priest, Into the Fight, 

194–195.

18. Hess, 163–164. Hess estimated that Union infantry losses from the 

bombardment were about 6 percent in the zone of the attack. Ironically, the Union 

counterbombardment had a greater effect on the Confederate infantry that was 

massed in woods beyond the artillery. Union long rounds usually landed in the 

infantry assembly areas. See Hess, 164–165.

19. Gilmore, 49–50; Hess, 146–147, 149; Nesmith, 38.

20. Gilmore, 50; Hess, 147.

21. Both Osborne and Hunt and even Meade later took credit for this 

decision. Hess, 150; Gilmore 54, 57.

22. Hess, 151, 155, 161; Gilmore, 54.

23. Hess, 160–163.
51

24. Hess, 171, 185, 188, 190.

25. Priest, “Lee’s Gallant 6000?,” 48–49, 52; Hess, 164–165, 232–233.

26. Hess, 306. 

27. Gottfried, 232.

28. Hess, 149; Gilmore, 59–60.

29. Hess, 181–182.

30. Hess, 161–162; Gottfried, 15.

31. Hess, 391.

32. Gottfried, 13–15, 259; Kurt A. Schroeder, “Development of Tactical 

Geography in the Nineteenth Century,” in Studies in Military Geography and 

Geology, ed. Douglas R. Caldwell, Judy Ehlen, and Russell S. Harmon (New 

York: Springer, 2005), 47.

33. Major General J.B.A. Bailey, Field Artillery and Firepower (Annapolis, 

MD: Naval Institute Press, 2004), 206–207; Bruce I. Gudmundsson, On Artillery

(Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993), 1–2.

34. Gudmundsson, 1–2, 4.

35. Steven Allen Stebbins, “Indirect Fire: The Challenge and Response in 

the US Army, 1907–1917” (MA thesis, University of North Carolina, 1993), 84.

36. Gudmundsson, 7.

37. John J. McGrath, Scouts Out! The Development of Reconnaissance 

Units in Modern Armies (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 

2008), 28. The British and Germans averaged more than six tubes per thousand 

infantrymen. See Bailey, 241. The contemporary American ratio was 2.82 per 

thousand. See McKenney, 107.

38. Gudmundsson, 25, 37; Vincent Meyer, “Evolution of Field Artillery 

Tactics During and as a Result of the World War” (Individual Research Paper, 

US Army Command and Staff School, 1930), 3–4; Robert M. Ripperger, “The 

Development of the French Artillery for the Offensive, 1890–1914,” The Journal 

of Military History 59 (October 1995): 617; Bailey, 236–237.

39. Bailey, 236–238; Meyer, 3; Ripperger, 608; Leonard V. Smith, Between 

Mutiny and Obedience: The Case of the French Fifth Infantry Division during 

World War I (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 43n16; Ripperger, 

604.

40. Smith, 43, 49.

41. Gudmundsson, 29; A. Seeger, “Our Baptism of Fire,” Field Artillery 

Journal 5 (October–December 1915): 662.

42. Smith, 59. The French 75-mm gained such acclaim from its performance 

at the Marne that, after the war, a German general felt it was necessary to defend 

the quality of the German artillery. See Major General (Retired) Isbert, “The 

German and French Field Artillery at the Beginning of the War,” Field Artillery 

Journal 8 (September–October 1920): 527–538.

43. Bailey, 243n9; Ripperger, 604.

44. At Le Cateau, the British field artillery lost 38 out of 43 guns. See David 

Lomas, Mons 1914: The BEF’s Tactical Triumph (London: Osprey, 1997), 80–81. 

At Bertrix in the Ardennes, the artillery of the opposing sides actually engaged 
52

each other with direct fire at close range. Infantry overran artillery positions on 

both sides, although ultimately, with the Germans holding the field, only the 

French lost their guns. See Terence Zuber, Ardennes 1914: The Battle of the 

Frontiers (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2007), 147–150; Bailey, 243n9; 

Ripperger, 604.

45. Nesmith, 317, 322; Bailey, 237.

46. John J. McGrath, Crossing the Line of Departure: Battle Command 

on the Move: A Historical Perspective (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies 

Institute Press, 2006), 78, 80; Ripperger, 604.

47. Bailey, 243; Smith, 81.

48. Bradley J. Meyer, “Operational Art and the German Command System 

in World War I,” (PhD diss., Ohio State University, 1988), 266.

49. Bailey, 245; Lomas, 58, 73; Gudmundsson, 43; Smith, 111. At Guise 

on 29 August 1914, the French 5th Infantry Division learned this lesson directly. 

The division’s first attacks without artillery support failed, but when the division 

artillery provided a proper preassault bombardment for the first time in the war, the 

infantry successfully ejected the German defenders from the fortified farmstead. 

See Smith, 53–54.

50. Bailey, 245–246.

51. Meyer, “Operational Art and the German Command System,” 273; 

Gudmundsson, 50–51.

52. Gudmundsson, 51–53; Bailey, 245, 255.

53. Bailey, 249–250.

54. Meyer, “Operational Art and the German Command System,” 278–279.

55. Bailey, 254, 256; Timothy Lupfer, The Dynamics of Doctrine: The 

Changes in German Tactical Doctrine During the First World War, Leavenworth 

Paper No. 4 (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute, US Army 

Command and General Staff College, 1981), 7–8.

56. Lupfer, 12; Bailey, 262.

57. Lupfer, 12–13; Bailey, 253.

58. Gudmundsson, 95–102.

59. Bailey, 250, 253–255.

60. Bailey, 253–254, 256.

61. Bailey, 255n44.

62. Gudmundsson, 44, 47–48.

63. Gudmundsson, 47.

64. Gudmundsson, 46, 50.

65. Gudmundsson, 47.

66. Bailey, 262.

67. Gudmundsson, 54–55.

68. Gudmundsson, 57.

69. Gudmundsson, 58–59.

70. Gudmundsson, 60–61; Bailey, 252; William Martin, Verdun 1916: ‘They 

Shall Not Pass’ (London: Osprey, 2000), 32–33.

71. Gudmundsson, 62.
53

72. Gudmundsson, 70; Bailey, 260.

73. Gudmundsson, 70; Lupfer, 19.

74. Gudmundsson, 89; Bailey, 258.

75. Lupfer, 17; Gudmundsson, 90; David T. Zabecki, Steel Wind: Colonel 

Georg Bruchmüller and the Birth of Modern Artillery (Westport, CT: Praeger, 

1994), 37–38, 166–169.

76. Zabecki, 166–169.

77. Bailey, 259; Gudmundsson, 89–91.

78. Gudmundsson, 91.

79. Gudmundsson, 90–91.

80. Gudmundsson, 91; Zabecki, 43.

81. Gudmundsson, 90–91.

82. Gudmundsson, 91–93; Zabecki, 52.

83. Gudmundsson, 93.

84. Gudmundsson.

85. Gudmundsson, 95.

86. Gudmundsson, 98–100.

87. Gudmundsson, 100–101; Zabecki, 149, 153–154.

88. Zabecki, 64, 115–116.

89. Zabecki, 116; McKenney, 121.

90. Zabecki, 117.

91. John B. Wilson, Maneuver and Firepower: The Evolution of Divisions 

and Separate Brigades (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 

1998), 48, 50; McKenney, 112, 115, 117.

92. American Expeditionary Forces: Divisions, vol. 2 of Order of Battle of 

the United States Land Forces in the World War (1931; repr., Washington, DC: US 

Army Center of Military History, 1988), 177, 179, 181.

93. Allan R. Millett, “Cantigny, 28–31 May 1918,” in America’s First Battles 

1776–1965, ed. Charles E. Heller and William A. Stofft (Lawrence: University 

Press of Kansas), 161–162; McKenney, 121.

94. Millett, 161.

95. Millett, 169–170.

96. Zabecki, 117–118; McKenney, 120.

97. “7,000 Men Sacrificed, Gov. Allen Asserts,” New York Times, 14 January 

1919, 6; “No Artillery; Yank Division Cut to Pieces: Allen Says Shortage of Horses 

Crippled the Kansas Men,” Chicago Daily Tribune, 14 January 1919, 3; Robert H. 

Ferrell, “Angered to the Core: Henry J. Allen and the US Army,” Kansas History

29 (Autumn 2006): 186; American Expeditionary Forces: Divisions, 211, 219.

98. Robert H. Ferrell, America’s Deadliest Battle: Meuse-Argonne, 1918 

(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007), 131; Robert H. Ferrell, Collapse 

at the Meuse-Argonne: The Failure of the Missouri-Kansas Division (Columbia: 

University of Missouri Press, 2004), 28–29, 3899. Ferrell, America’s 

Deadliest Battle, 67, 131; Ferrell, Collapse at the Meuse-Argonne, 28–29, 43.

100. Ferrell, Collapse at the Meuse-Argonne, 59–63.

101. Ferrell, Collapse at the Meuse-Argonne, 65.
54

102. Ferrell, Collapse at the Meuse-Argonne, 85; Ferrell, America’s 

Deadliest Battle, 130–134, 138.

103. Zabecki, 118.

104. Dennis E. Showalter, Tannenberg: Clash of Empires, 1914

(Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 2004), 152.

105. Brereton Greenhous, “Evolution of a Close Ground-Support Role for 

Aircraft in World War I,” Military Affairs 39 (February 1975), 23. 

106. Brereton Greenhous, 22.

107. Brereton Greenhous, 23.

108. Brereton Greenhous, 24.

109. The Red Baron, Rittmeister Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen shot 

down his 62d aircraft on 23 November 1917 during the German defensive phase 

of Cambrai. Richthofen shot down an RFC Airco De Havilland 5 (DH-5) biplane. 

The pilot, though badly wounded, survived. The DH-5 had originally been 

designed as an air-to-air fighter but, by November 1917, due to design flaws, was 

mostly used to strafe German infantry. The DH-5, piloted by Lieutenant James 

Boddy, was part of a flight strafing of the German trenches when Richthofen shot 

him down at an altitude of less than 100 meters. See Norman Franks, Hal Giblin, 

and Nigel McCrery, Under the Guns of the Red Baron: The Complete Record of 

Von Richthofen’s Victories and Victims Fully Illustrated (London: Grub Street, 

1998), 160–162.

110. Norman Franks, Hal Giblin, and Nigel McCrery, Under the Guns of 

the Red Baron: The Complete Record of Von Richthofen’s Victories and Victims 

Fully Illustrated (London: Grub Street, 1998), 23–26; Bailey, 255n46, 257, 264.

111. Rick Duiven and Dan-San Abbott, Schlachtflieger! Germany and the 

Origins of Air Ground Support, 1916–1918 (Atglen, PA: Schiffer, 2006), 14–15.

112. Rick Duiven and Dan-San Abbott, Schlachtflieger! Germany and the 

Origins of Air Ground Support, 1916–1918 (Atglen, PA: Schiffer, 2006), 23–24, 

26–27, 369; Bailey, 255n46, 257, 264; Greenhous, 23–24.

113. Greenhous, 26; Duiven and Abbott, 38, 139–141, 153.

114. Greenhous, 26.

115. Richtofen’s fighter group remained in the Cambrai area for the 

counterattack, providing air cover to the Schustas. On the first day of the 

counterattack, 30 November 1917, Richthofen shot down his 63d enemy aircraft. 

The RFC squadron attacked by Richtofen’s fighters was patrolling over the front 

line on an air superiority mission. See Franks, Giblin, and McCrery, 163–164. 

116. Greenhous, 26; Duiven and Abbott, 38. 

117. Bailey, 255n46, 257, 260, 264; Greenhous, 23–24; Duiven and Abbott, 

26–27, 52, 369. Schacht in German literally means “battle,” but the equivalent 

American usage would be the word “attack.”

118. Duiven and Abbott, 26–27, 43–45; John R. Cuneo, “Preparation of 

German Attack Aviation for the Offensive of March 1918,” Military Affairs 7 

(Summer 1943): 74–75. 

119. Cuneo, 73–74. 

120. Greenhous, 26–27. 
55

121. Greenhous, 26–27. Richthofen’s fighter group shifted from highaltitude air-to-air patrols to attacking British CAS aircraft by the fourth day of 

the offensive. From 21 March to 5 April, the baron himself shot down 9 enemy 

planes (numbers 67 to 75 in his tally) and killed 12 British airmen in support of 

the German offensive. Of these nine victims, seven were conducting strafing or 

bombing CAS missions. The latter two were in air superiority roles. See Franks, 

Giblin, and McCrery, 173–192. Richthofen was shot down and killed by ground 

fire in the same general area on 21 April.

122. Greenhous, 27; Cuneo, 78–79.

123. Duiven and Abbott, 52–53. The second largest assembly of attack 

aircraft was for the operation near Compiègne that started on 9 June 1918, where 

the German air command massed 26 Schlastas. See Duiven and Abbott, 72.

124. Duiven and Abbott, 91–92, 96; Greenhous, 26.

125. Duiven and Abbott, 98–99.

126. Duiven and Abbott, 101–102.

127. Duiven and Abbott, 103.

128. The Army’s Royal Flying Corps (RFC) merged with the Royal Navy’s 

Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) to form the independent Royal Air Force (RAF) 

on 1 April 1918. For the Sopwith Salamander, see Jane’s Fighting Aircraft of 

World War I (New York: Military Press, 1990), 87; Greenhous, 26.

129. John H. Morrow Jr., “Defeat of the German and Austro-Hungarian Air 

Forces in the Great War, 1909–1918,” in Why Air Forces Fail: The Anatomy of 

Defeat, ed. Robin Higham and Stephen J. Harris (Lexington: The University Press 

of Kentucky, 2006), 125; John H. Morrow Jr., The Great War in the Air: Military 

Aviation From 1909 to 1921 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 

1993), 282–283; Bailey, 260n65; René Martel, French Strategic and Tactical 

Bombardment Forces of World War I, tr. Allen Suddaby (Lanham, MD: Rowman 

& Littlefield, 2007), 252. 

130. Morrow, The Great War in the Air, 283–284; Eric Lawson and Jane 

Lawson, The First Air Campaign: August 1914–November 1918 (Conshocken, 

PA: Combined Books, 1996), 237.

131. Ibid.; American Expeditionary Forces: General Headquarters, Armies, 

Army Corps, Services of Supply, Separate Forces, vol. 1 of Order of Battle of the 

United States Land Forces in the World War (1937; repr., (Washington, DC: US 

Army Center of Military History, 1988), 97.

132. Ferrell, America’s Deadliest Battle, 123; Daniel R. Mortenson, “The 

Air Service in the Great War” in Winged Shield, Winged Sword: A History of the 

United States Air Force, vol., 1, 1907–1950, ed. Bernard Nulty (Washington, DC: 

US Air Force History and Museums Program, 1997), 51, 69.

133. Lawson and Lawson, 236–237.

134. Mortenson, 66; John Schlight, Help From Above: Air Force Close Air 

Support of the Army, 1946–1973 (Washington, DC: US Air Force History and 

Museums Program, 2003), 15.

135. Mortensen, 69.
56

136. Mortensen, 39; A Short History of Close Air Support Issues (Fort 

Belvoir, VA: Institute of Special Studies, US Army Combat Developments 

Command, July 1968), 2–3.

137. Mortensen, 59–60, 67–68; Ferrell, America’s Deadliest Battle, 124–

125.

138. Mortensen, 65; Ferrell, America’s Deadliest Battle, 122–124.

139. Duiven and Abbott, 103; Ferrell, America’s Deadliest Battle, 125; 

Mortensen, 68.

140. Schlight, 7.

141. Schlight, 18.

142. Ironically, the Germans believed that their Schlasta units provided 

a great moral boost to the infantry with their low-level attacks on the enemy 

trenches. See Duiven and Abbott, 6.

143. Duiven and Abbott, 42, 378–381.
57

Chapter 2

World War II: Field Artillery and Close Air Support in HighIntensity Combat

The interwar period was crucial to the development of modern field 

artillery and airpower theory, technique, and tactics. Theory shifted into 

practice in World War II where airpower came to age and modern field 

artillery became refined to provide effective support in both static and 

mobile operations. In both of these fields, the United States Army led the 

way in both theoretical and technical developments in the interwar period 

and in execution during World War II. 

The United States Army became the leader in developing field artillery 

tactics and techniques during the interwar period. The US Army Field 

Artillery School created and refined the concept of the fire direction center 

(FDC), which removed many of the problems associated with the use of 

observers in World War I and broke artillery fire away from the restraints 

of rigid timetables and the supremacy of preplanned fires.

Close air support, while prominent in the early part of the interwar 

period, soon lost ground as Britain and the United States developed 

independent air forces based on the theory of strategic airpower. 

Therefore, when World War II produced the need to provide close air 

support for large armies, the British and Americans had to develop CAS 

procedures based primarily from wartime experience rather than from 

peacetime planning. Although developed on the fly, Allied close air 

support, using multifunctional aircraft, proved to be highly effective, both 

on the battlefield and (as interdiction) in hindering German tactical- and 

operational-level movements.

When the Germans created the Luftwaffe in the mid-1930s, its 

doctrinal emphasis was descended primarily from that of the wartime 

Schlachtstaffeln. This emphasis served the Germans well in the early 

offensive campaigns of World War II where specially designed divebombers proved to be effective in a “flying artillery” role. However, a large 

part of this force later became diverted to strategic bombing and homeland 

defense. As in World War I, the Germans were eventually overwhelmed by 

enemies with much larger air forces.

Field Artillery in the Interwar Period

In the interwar period, the US Army Field Artillery School developed 

techniques to improve field artillery gunnery and battlefield responsiveness. 
58

Due to old school parochialism, many of these changes were not formally 

adopted until wartime forced the issue in 1941–1942. These changes 

caused a marked improvement in artillery fire during the war, particularly 

in terms of massing fires and coordinating infantry and artillery. The 

effect was so marked that many nonartillery military observers, including 

General George Patton, considered field artillery a decisive factor in the 

Army’s successful operations in the war.1

Interwar field artillery developments included revised doctrine, 

gunnery, and observation procedures. Despite the AEF’s success in fielding 

and using massed artillery, artillerymen saw a need for change. In the early 

postwar era, few of them thought the guns had maximized their available 

firepower in World War I. Few infantrymen believed that the artillery had 

adequately supported the offensive. Artillery innovation in the interwar 

period was, accordingly, based on the need to maximize firepower and 

responsiveness. 

In terms of doctrine, the main debate throughout the period was the 

conflict between notions of trench warfare tactics versus open war tactics. 

Pershing had been the main proponent for open warfare tactics. In the Field 

Artillery branch, many senior officers who had not deployed overseas sided 

with Pershing. In terms of the guns, open warfare adherents considered 

the principal characteristics of trench warfare methods to be the use of 

map spotting for targeting and the implementation of barrages in front of 

advancing infantry. The debate continued throughout the interwar period 

and written doctrine represented a compromise between both positions. As 

late as September 1939, one American artillery observer commented that 

German operations in Poland showed a reversion to open warfare methods. 

Offensive artillery fire would depend on a variation of the Bruchmüller 

method of a succession of massed artillery fires preceding the infantry 

advance. The contrast between open and trench warfare methods became 

irrelevant with the advent of the new gunnery and observation methods.2

During the interwar period, the gunnery department at the Field 

Artillery School developed improved techniques that greatly increased 

the responsiveness of fires. During his 4-year tenure (1929–1932) as the 

head of the Gunnery Department, Major Carlos Brewer revolutionized fire 

direction through several innovations. Brewer developed the observed fire 

chart and the fire direction center. The FDC centralized artillery fire at the 

battalion and higher levels, allowing improved massing of fires. Brewer 

also implemented a new, highly effective technique for adjusting artillery 

fire from an aircraft (air-ground observation method). At the same time, 

the Army fielded a new portable radio, the SCR-161, which provided 
59

effective communications between the observer and the FDC. This radio 

allowed the observer to be more mobile since there was no wire. Brewer’s 

successors refined the gunnery techniques, developing precalculated firing 

tables and improved firing charts.3

The development of the FDC remained an academic exercise 

through the 1930s. The FDC concept was not totally adopted on an 

organizational basis until April 1942 when the artillery battalion table of 

organization included an FDC under the battalion operations section (S3). 

FDC refinements also affected the concepts of forward observation and 

accompanying guns.4

The interwar Infantry branch did not believe the field artillery had 

been responsive enough in World War I. The foot soldiers felt there was 

no adequate solution to the requirement for immediate fires. The infantry 

solution was the twin concepts of infantry guns (a battery firing from 

right behind the front line) and the accompanying gun (a single gun in 

the front line firing at point targets). Artillery after-action reports viewed 

these concepts as being ineffective during the war, primarily because the 

artillery piece was not suitable for this role. By 1924, the Army recognized 

the use of the infantry gun to only be a last option. Nevertheless, each 

infantry regiment received a howitzer company in the interwar period 

with one cannon platoon attached to each infantry battalion. After an 

organizational overhaul in 1941, a cannon company became part of the 

infantry regimental organization throughout the war.5

In the early interwar period, the Field Artillery branch still favored 

the prearranged fire plan. But the development of the SCR-161 radio in 

the early 1930s allowed the artillery liaison officer teams assigned to 

infantry regimental and battalion headquarters since the war to deliver 

fire against targets of opportunity within 10 minutes. The creation of 

the FDC enhanced this role as the ALNO could now send fire requests 

directly to battalion FDCs, cutting response time down to several minutes. 

The fielding of a new radio, the SCR-194, with a range of 4 miles further 

enhanced this responsiveness.6

There is a natural resistance to change, and despite these enhancements, 

the ALNOs, who had become de facto forward observers (FOs), remained 

only as far down as infantry battalion headquarters up until late 1942. 

However, after initial operations in North Africa, the Field Artillery began 

placing FOs in every infantry company. This system, placing a trained 

artilleryman in the front lines with the infantry, proved to be highly 

successful during World War II. The Army retained this system until the 

late 1970s.7
60

Figure 6. SCR-194 radio.

Artillery mobility was also an interwar concern. During the war, the 

AEF had used horses to haul artillery pieces and ammunition. Even then, 

the Army preferred to use mechanized tractors or trucks to pull the pieces. 

In the 1920s, the artillery developed three types of mobility techniques for 

the artillery: trucks and tracked vehicles to tow pieces and guns mounted on 

tracked vehicles (self-propelled). Budgetary concerns slowed this process. 

However, motorization increased in the 1930s. By 1939, 68 percent of the 

batteries in the Regular Army were motorized, using a mix of cargo trucks 

and mechanized tractors. As with other interwar innovations, complete 

innovation had to wait until mobilization in 1941.8

The interwar period was one of innovation and modernization for the 

American field artillery. But full implementation of these developments http://www.gordon.army.mil/OCOS/Museum/AMC/images/SCR194.JPG
61

awaited full mobilization in 1940–1943. When US artillery performed well 

in its first battles in Tunisia in 1942, it was the fruitful result of concepts 

and ideas conceived in the interwar period. 

Close Air Support in the Interwar Period

The US Air Service ended World War I on a high note. From the aerial 

and AEF headquarters perspective, operations in the Argonne and SaintMihiel were considered a grand success. The opinion of offensive CAS 

operations was at their highest point among the American air community. 

One of the senior AEF air officers, Brigadier General Benjamin Foulois, 

even proposed creating American specialized attack units in the postwar Air 

Service. In December 1918, Billy Mitchell wrote a doctrinal manual that 

rivaled that of the Germans in detail as to the conduct of CAS operations. 

By 1920, however, Mitchell had moved beyond tactical aviation and was 

soon pressing for creating a strategic force equipped with long-range 

bombers.9

Mitchell was the exception in the early interwar era. In this period, 

the Air Service (and after 1926 the Air Corps) focused on ground support 

operations. The service created specialized CAS organizations, referred to 

as attack units, and flirted with creating functional ground support aircraft. 

In 1921, the Army created the first four attack squadrons and first attack 

group. Each squadron contained 18 aircraft. The fielding of such a unique 

organization waxed and waned following the vicissitudes of the interwar 

peacetime budget. Attack units reached a height of seven squadrons, two 

groups, and a wing in 1939. However, since 1935, such units received low 

relative priority not based on the budget but on organizational priority, 

which had shifted in favor of strategic bombing. On the eve of World War 

II, attack squadrons represented only 12 percent of the Air Corps force 

structure. In contrast, fighters and bombers each represented over a quarter 

of the organization.10

The primary mission of the attack units was close air support, with a 

secondary mission of deep strikes against point targets. In the late 1930s, 

Air Corps thought was rapidly shifting in a manner that marginalized close 

air support. For attack units, this meant a gradual shift away from ground 

support to providing the equivalent of close air support to the bomber fleet. 

The attack units would destroy enemy airfields and antiaircraft defenses. 

Support for ground operations became the last priority. In 1940, the attack 

units were redesignated as light and medium bombardment squadrons and 

groups.11
62

In the war, the Air Service had been subjugated to the ground chain 

of command. This continued in the peacetime service. However, the 

Air Service soon began pushing for the control of all air assets except 

observation squadrons, including attack squadrons, in an air chain of 

command. Such air support would remain centralized and be parceled out 

on a mission basis. The Air Corps Act of 2 July 1926 settled this issue 

for the most part in favor of the Air Service. The new Air Corps received 

centralized control of all air assets except observation squadrons. The Air 

Corps retained the policy of keeping attack aviation assets in a centralized 

pool rather than assigning them to ground control up to the eve of World 

War II.12

In 1935, the Air Corps received even more autonomy with the creation 

of the General Headquarters (GHQ), Air Force. From this time forward, 

Air Corps priority was strategic bombing. The new attitude was clearly 

evident in an Air Corps tactical school (ACTS) memo of December 1936 

that expressed the idea that the Air Corps should not “dissipate” its effort on 

close air support until it had first created an “adequate” strategic bombing 

force. Supporters of strategic airpower believed that it would relegate the 

CAS mission to one only required “in peacetime maneuvers.”13

The Air Corps developed its first planes specially designed for close 

air support during the interwar period. As with most interwar aviation 

developments, specialized attack aircraft were soon swept away in the 

fervor for strategic bombardment. Throughout the 1920s, technological 

limitations and the Air Corps desire to economize its inventory by using 

multifunctional aircraft stymied attempts to develop specialized CAS 

aircraft. Accordingly, in the 1920s, the Air Service employed surplus war 

vintage DH-4 day bombers and several observation planes (the Douglas 

O-2 and the Curtiss O-1) for CAS purposes. The Curtiss O-1 was upgunned 

and redesignated as the A-3, the first specifically designated attack airplane 

in the American inventory.14

In the 1930s, the Air Corps developed a series of attack craft from 

scratch, including the Curtiss A-8, followed by the Curtiss A-12 Shrike 

and the Northrup A-17. The characteristics of each plane included a 

single engine, fast airspeed, and an armament of between four and six 

machineguns and four bomb racks. The A-17 had a range of 1,160 miles. 

The shift in priority to support for the strategic bombing program affected 

the attack aircraft program. In 1938, the Curtiss A-18 began replacing the 

A-17. The twin-engine A-18 saw a move away from bullets to bombs in 

CAS aircraft. This was considered to be an important lesson of the Spanish 

Civil War. But more important, because of the A-18’s bombing capability, 
63

it could suppress enemy defenses in support of strategic bombers. In 

1939, the Air Corps began deploying the Douglas A-20, a light bomber 

that could do other missions aside from close air support. The Air Corps 

rejected the development of dive-bombers because of their unifunctional 

nature as CAS aircraft.15

Figure 7. Attack aircraft: A-12 (top left), A-8 (top right), A-18 (bottom left), A-20 

(bottom right).

Communications and coordination with ground forces were major 

problems with close air support in World War I. The former was a 

technological problem, the latter an organizational and training one. Well 

into the 1930s, communications technology remained at the 1918 level. 

Finally, the fielding of reliable two-way radios began in the mid-1930s.16

Air-ground coordination received limited attention in the interwar 

period. There were few joint air-ground exercises. Both elements used 

only notional forces to portray the other element. In 1936, Major General 

Frank Andrews, the first commander of the GHQ, Air Force, and a leading 

bomber proponent, even rejected the very concept of air-ground teamwork. 

Andrews considered that Air Corps independence required no input from 

the ground for planning and executing missions, including ground support 

ones.17

On the eve of World War II, US close air support, despite technological 

developments, was in a worse state than it was in 1918. Using the glamour 

and prestige of the airplane, the Air Corps successfully pushed forward (A-12) ASC History Office; (A-8) US Air Force photo; (A-18) US Air Force photo; (A-20) Air Force Historical Research Agency
64

its program for an air force stressing the strategic bomber at the expense 

of support to the ground forces. While strategic bombing was to continue 

to be the main effort of the Air Corps during World War II, wartime 

requirements were to revive close air support.

Outside the United States, there were similar and differing trends. In 

Britain, strategic bombardment was also the priority. During the interwar 

years, the first independent air service, the British Royal Air Force gradually 

came to stress strategic bombers over all other facets of airpower. One 

interpretation of this development is that the British nation, traditionally a 

seapower that applied strategically a maritime blockade to defeat its foes, 

naturally applied airpower in a similar fashion as an offensive version 

of the blockade. As seapower was applied to place a gradual, passive 

economic stranglehold onto an enemy state, airpower could place an active 

economic stranglehold by destroying enemy infrastructure, economy, and 

morale. While this mind-set may have been in the background of RAF 

development, there were two concepts that more directly influenced the 

RAF in the interwar years.18

The first of these was the use of the RAF to police Iraq in the 1920s 

when the British held a League of Nations mandate over the newly created 

country. As an economy-of-force measure, the British policed Iraq, a vast 

territory with a relatively small population, with the RAF rather than 

ground troops. The concept was that aircraft would be centrally based and 

dispatched to trouble areas on a situational basis. Supporting this tactic, the 

RAF established a series of small posts with British liaison officers around 

the country. Supporting the RAF were several Arab auxiliary forces, some 

as air base guards, others in the desert usually equipped with small fleets 

of armored cars mounting machineguns. A proper Iraqi Army, which was 

established in 1921, augmented the RAF. The RAF conducted operations 

in Iraq from 1921 to 1930. In 1924, a series of air patrols operated against 

raiding Ikhwan, zealous religious warriors from Saudi Arabia, which 

culminated in small-scale bombing attacks in December 1924. They

remained a threat until 1930 when the Saudi king crushed them.19

The campaign in Iraq, under RAF auspices, was basically an air force 

operating with minimal ground forces. The attacks on the Ikhwan were 

similar to the close air support in World War I, except no infantry was there 

for support. The forces on the ground were small groups of RAF armored 

cars or bedouins on camels. Such a campaign gave the impression that the 

RAF had controlled Iraq using airplanes and that aviation could operate 

independent of land or sea forces. In fact, this was an oversimplification, 
65

and when Iraq threatened to transfer its allegiance to the Axis powers in 

World War II, the British had to send a ground force to conquer Iraq. 

The second concept that groomed RAF development was the fear of 

terror bombing. In World War I, the Germans launched the first strategic 

bombing campaign that terrorized the English public. The RAF was 

formed in April 1918 as a result of the German bombing campaign. Only 

centralization of air assets was felt to be an effective defense against 

the terror bombing. Retaliation was considered a suitable recourse. 

Accordingly, the RAF also produced a force of long-range, multiengine 

bombers that attacked Cologne in August 1918. The RAF was born as an 

organization imbued with the theory of strategic bombing.20

When the Germans began rearmament in 1935, the creation of the 

Luftwaffe sparked British concern for future terror bombing. In 1936, the 

RAF reorganized into three functional components. The Fighter Command 

was designed to defend Britain against German bombers. The Coastal 

Command had the mission of defending the coasts of Britain by air. The 

Bomber Command was a strategic offensive force. As in the United States, 

close air support received minimal attention.

Ironically, while the RAF developed along lines to defend against 

terror bombing or apply its assets to conduct its own such campaign out 

of a fear of German capabilities, the Germans were not developing such 

capabilities. After having been banned from maintaining an air force by 

the Treaty of Versailles, the ascension of Hitler to power in 1933 resulted 

in a gradual rejection of the terms of the treaty. The new air service, the 

Luftwaffe, was revealed publicly in 1935 as an independent air force. 

The World War I German Air Service had developed specialized 

units for close air support, fighters, and strategic bombers. But, while the 

Germans had conducted the first strategic bombing campaign in 1916 and 

1917, the new Luftwaffe ultimately relegated strategic bombing to a distant 

secondary role to close air support. Early on, the Germans supported the 

creation of a strategic bomber force. However, the death in an air crash of 

the Luftwaffe’s first chief of staff, Lieutenant General Walther Wever, in 

1936 curtailed this track. Wever was a military theorist of the first order 

who developed a detailed doctrinal manual for the Luftwaffe. While 

stressing air support for Army operations at the tactical and operational 

levels, he also viewed a strategic bomber force as possibly decisive in 

future warfare. Wever envisioned a strategic campaign concurrent with 

operational and tactical air operations.21
66

 After his death, the Luftwaffe leadership, finding itself in the middle 

of a massive and swift rearmament, inverted the priorities of the US Army 

Air Corps. As a landpower surrounded by several potentially hostile states 

with large armies, German airmen felt that creating an air force capable of 

fully supporting the land forces was the number one priority. Once such 

a force was established, the Luftwaffe could then look at establishing a 

strategic force. However, the war started before this could be done, and 

then during the war, the High Command gave the Luftwaffe strategic 

missions anyway.22

In the immediate prewar period, the Luftwaffe developed an excellent 

CAS dive-bomber, the Ju-87 Stuka, and an efficient system of airground coordination. Organizationally, the Luftwaffe set up a command 

headquarters that matched those of the army that commanded all the 

air units supporting that army echelon. These units included CAS divebombers as well as fighters, reconnaissance aircraft, and air transports. The 

air headquarters were collocated with the respective army headquarters. 

Air units were assigned to these headquarters based on the support required 

for the ground forces. At lower levels, there were Luftwaffe air signal 

liaison parties that provided liaison and ground attack teams assigned to 

regimental headquarters that directed airstrikes. Most air missions were 

preplanned jointly the previous day, but the German system provided 

enough flexibility to redirect or change missions on the fly. The air and 

ground elements trained together extensively.23

US Army Field Artillery in World War II24

US field artillery in World War II was an unmitigated success in all 

theaters from the beginning to the end of the war. The role of field artillery 

was so dominant that one infantry battalion commander in France in 1944 

who later rose to general rank, William DePuy, remarked that he believed 

his most important duty as a battalion commander was to get his field 

artillery forward observers to the next hilltop from which they could direct 

fires onto the Germans. From the start, US artillery displayed a great 

ability to mass and shift fires on the battlefield.25

In 1940 and 1941, the Army reorganized its divisions from the 

World War I pattern to a new, streamlined one. To streamline the artillery 

organization into a less fixed and rigid structure, in 1942–1943, the Army 

Ground Forces broke up field artillery regiments and brigades. Group 

headquarters replaced most artillery brigade and regimental headquarters. 

Battalions became separate, self-contained (administratively) units. Corps 

and division artillery (DIVARTY) headquarters replaced brigades.26
67

Figure 8. Towed 105-mm howitzer (left) and the 105-mm self-propelled Priest 

(right).

The basic direct support (DS) weapon was the 105-mm howitzer. 

In the infantry division were 3 DS field artillery battalions with 12 105-

mm howitzers towed by trucks organized into 3 four-gun batteries. Each 

battalion was equipped with towed 105-mm howitzers and provided FO 

teams to the nine rifle companies within the regiment it supported as well 

as an ALNO team at the regimental headquarters. The armored division 

contained three DS armored field artillery battalions equipped with 105-mm 

howitzers mounted in an armored tracked vehicle. Each battalion typically 

supported one divisional combat command, roughly the equivalent to an 

infantry regiment. In the armored division, the DIVARTY battalions had 

enough FO parties to provide one party for each tank company, mounted 

in its own M4 Sherman tank. Operationally, the armored division usually 

task organized into battalion-size task forces. In these cases, each task 

force contained a single FO party. Each of the headquarters batteries 

in the four infantry division field artillery battalions and the DIVARTY 

headquarters contained two L-4 light planes. These aircraft provided an 

aerial observation capability for the units.27

Only in armored field artillery battalions were forward observers 

part of the formal organizational structure. Throughout the war, artillery 

commanders in infantry divisions organized FO parties on an ad hoc basis. 

Each firing battery and the battalion headquarters were tasked to provide 

a lieutenant and several enlisted men and a jeep to support one of the rifle 

companies.28 Figure 9 shows the World War II field artillery fire support 

system.

Supporting the DS artillery were numerous battalions of medium 

(155-mm howitzers or 4.5-inch guns) or heavy artillery (240-mm 

howitzers, 8-inch guns and howitzers and 155-mm guns). Field artillery 

groups controlled these battalions. Corps artillery headquarters, in turn, 

controlled the groups. The infantry division also contained a general (105-mm) DOD photo; (Priest)

US Army photo
68

support battalion of 12 155-mm towed howitzers. The nondivisional 

artillery had two missions. The medium pieces were designed to augment 

divisional artillery forces. The heavy artillery, usually pulled by armored 

tractors, was earmarked for long-range missions such as interdiction and 

counterbattery fire.30

Figure 9. World War II Field Artillery Fire Support System. 

At the battalion and regimental levels, the ALNO coordinated the field 

artillery support as a whole. Between them, the ALNOs and the FOs, with 

their express links to the DS field artillery battalion FDCs, controlled a 

large amount of responsive firepower. General DePuy’s comment about 

the importance of his FOs was well taken.

Table 2. Phases of Tactical Air Operations per FM 100-20, 1943

Priority Mission

1 Air superiority (destruction of the enemy air 

force)

2 Interdiction (the isolation of the battlefi eld)

3 Close air support

Warfare in the European and Mediterranean theaters was high-intensity 

combat that was mostly linear and sometimes fast moving. US artillery 

proved to be vital on both offense and defense. In the Pacific theater, 

artillery operations had to also routinely conduct amphibious operations 

and fight in jungles. Jungle warfare necessitated different gunnery and 

Infantry

Field 

Artillery

C hain of com m and

C oordination/liaison

Preplanned req uests

Im m ediate req uests

FIRING

BTRIES

DIV

x x

REGT

I I I

BN FDC

DIVARTY

x x

BN

I I

CO

I

ALNO ALNO

REINFORCING

BTRIES

DS BN

I I

FO
69

observation techniques. Gunners often had to employ high-angle fire to 

penetrate the canopy of vegetation. Observation was generally limited, 

requiring specialized techniques both for target and observer location.31

US Army Air Force Close Air Support in World War II

As with the field artillery, tactical air operations in World War II were 

considered a success story and a strong arm of the American military effort. 

In the late interwar period, close air support had become an extremely low 

priority for the Air Corps (after June 1941, the Army Air Force (AAF)). 

However, German successes in 1939 and 1940, which highlighted the 

close relationship between ground forces and air support, revived interest 

in close air support. Additionally, in 1941, with mobilization in full swing, 

the War Department decided not to raise a proposed force of very heavy 

artillery and limit the number of heavy artillery pieces. The AAF was to 

use the resultant cost savings to develop CAS systems.32

Large exercises in 1940 and 1941 revealed the weakness in the current 

CAS system. Accordingly, the chiefs of the Army and AAF, General 

George Marshall and Lieutenant General Henry “Hap” Arnold, pushed 

for the production of a joint doctrine for close air support. The Army 

accordingly published FM 31-35, Aviation in Support of Ground Forces, 

in April 1942. The new doctrine revised definitions. Close air support 

now defined only direct action in support of ground forces. Interdiction 

applied to such actions beyond artillery range, and air superiority was now 

considered a separate, but primary, mission.33

The new doctrine was a compromise solution. While establishing 

centralized control over tactical air operations under an AAF officer, this 

officer, in turn, was also a staff officer to a field army or theater commander. 

The ground commander provided the mission and had final authority on 

prioritization. The air commander decided how best to accomplish the 

ground commander’s authority. 

After the Tunisian campaign, with the approval of Army Chief of 

Staff Marshall, the AAF issued a new manual, FM 100-20, Command 

and Employment of Air Power (July 1943). This manual provided for 

centralized control of air assets under the senior air commander and 

accorded close air support as the last priority of tactical air missions. FM 

100-20 established three phases of priority (table 2). A combination of 

centralized control and the prioritized phases caused most air missions to 

be preplanned in the early part of the Italian campaign, and only 20 percent 

of all air missions were close air support. Higher air headquarters planned 

and executed the remaining 80 percent.34
70

Few ground commanders would dispute the necessity for air superiority 

as a prerequisite for close air support. Ground and air commanders often 

differed on subsequent priorities. Once Allied air gained air superiority, 

disputes over prioritization did not often arise as the personal relationships 

between the field army and air support commanders quickly became one 

of cooperation. Additionally, air superiority left large numbers of fighters 

available for CAS missions.35

FM 100-20 was not specific enough that commanders in the field could 

create an improvised air-ground system in Sicily and Italy. This included 

creating mobile air control parties (ACPs) equipped with jeep-mounted 

VHF radios capable of talking directly to fighter-bombers and collocating 

air and ground headquarters at the field army level.36

These innovations were transferred to the European Theater of 

Operations (ETO) for the 1944 invasion of France. In preparation for 

operations, the Ninth Air Force, the command responsible for theater 

tactical air operations, redesignated its fighter commands into tactical 

air commands (TACs). The TACs were the descendents of the early war 

Air Support Commands. Each TAC was informally assigned to support a 

specific field army in the campaign. The TAC headquarters located with the 

field army headquarters. This informal arrangement centralized air support 

at the field army level rather than at the theater level as prescribed in FM 

100-20. The purpose of theater-level centralization was to control the air 

superiority effort. But, in the ETO, air superiority was assured from the 

start of the campaign as the Luftwaffe was weak in strength. Additionally, 

the Eighth Army and RAF Bomber Command were operating within the 

theater conducting the strategic air campaign against Germany.37

The TAC directly commanded the fighter, bomber, and reconnaissance 

wings, groups, and squadrons that executed the air missions. The 

coordination of air missions began at the TAC/field army level. Starting 

in the Italian campaign, AAF tactical air commands began forming small 

parties headed by pilots to act in a forward observer (air control parties) 

or aerial observer (forward air controllers (FACs)) role for CAS missions. 

ACPs rode in jeeps equipped with VHF radios and acted similar to FOs 

in companies. ACPs, however, generally coordinated their activities with 

division or infantry regimental headquarters. FACs operated either in 

cooperation with DIVARTY aerial observers or on their own. Both ACPs 

and FACs were equipped and authorized to direct immediate CAS strikes 

from loitering aircraft, which had been either diverted from other missions 

or had been kept in reserve specifically for such missions. Initially, such 

missions took up to 10 minutes to execute. But with experience and 
71

refinements, immediate CAS missions could be executed much more 

quickly.38

ARMY

x x x x ARMY 

GROUP

x x x x x

TACAF

x x x x

Army

AAF

AIR UNITS

CORPS

x x x

DIVs

x x

REGTs

I I I

FACs ACPs

TAC

x x x

C hain of com m and

C oordination/liaison

Preplanned req uests

Im m ediate req uests

Figure 10. World War II Air-Ground Operations System.

The most prominent figure in American tactical air operations in World 

War II was Major General Elwood “Pete” Quesada, commander of the IX 

Tactical Air Command, which supported the US First Army. Quesada was 

an unusual AAF officer. He had not served in World War I and, while a 

pilot, had had a series of unorthodox assignments as an intelligence officer, 

attaché, and aide. He did not command an air unit until 1941 but gained 

experience commanding fighter units in the early years of the war. 

Quesada proved to be a great innovator as commander of the air assets 

supporting the First Army. RAF and other AAF units later adopted many 

of his techniques. The methods of the IX TAC would form the basis for 

the postwar CAS manual. Quesada refinements included the placement 

of an ACP officer with a VHF radio in a tank at the front of a column 

while stationing a continuous rotation of a flight of fighter-bombers over 

the column to attack any enemy forces threatening the column under the 

direction of the ACP officer. Quesada commanded the air cover over the 

American invasion beaches on D-day and used all available air sorties to 

repulse the German counteroffensives at Mortain in August 1944 and in 

the Ardennes in December 1944.39

The redesignation of the Ninth Air Force’s TACs from fighter 

commands shows that the TACs were primarily composed of fighter units. 

While the Army Air Force had developed a series of attack aircraft in 

the interwar period, this program waned in the years before the war. In 
72

recognition of German air successes in 1939–1940, the AAF Air Force 

Combat Command (AFCC) (the retitled GHQ Air Force) approved the 

A-32 Brewster dive-bomber, a variant of the Navy’s SB2A Buccaneer in 

the CAS role. However, the AAF phased out the A-32 almost immediately. 

The only CAS plane deployed with the AAF during the war was the A-36 

Invader dive-bomber, a variant of the P-51 fighter, which served in the 

Mediterranean theater.40

By 1944, multifunctional fighter-bomber aircraft had supplanted light 

bombers and specialized attack aircraft in the CAS role. When Congress 

placed a moratorium on aircraft development in 1944, it assured that 

fighter-bombers would continue in this role for the rest of the war. The 

fighter-bombers were fighters originally designed for air superiority and 

bomber escort missions, which were reconfigured as dive-bombers. The 

primary aircraft conducting these missions in the ETO were the P-38 

Lightning, P-47 Thunderbolt, and P-51 Mustang. The fighter-bombers 

were armed with a combination of machineguns, bombs, cannons, and, 

later in the war, rockets. The P-47, a former bomber escort, was armed 

with 8 .50-caliber wing-mounted machineguns, 3 bomb racks capable of 

carrying 1,500 pounds of bombs, and 10 five-inch rockets. The Thunderbolt 

was considered the most successful CAS platform in the war.41

Figure 11. P-47 Thunderbolt.

While fighter-bombers carried massive aerial firepower, the bombs 

of the era were not precision weapons. After-action analysis cited aerial 

bombs as having only a 45-percent probability of landing within 150 yards 

of the target. Accuracy increased when the target was a clearly identifiable 

feature, such as a bridge or building, but decreased against field positions US Air Force photo
73

of ground troops. Air-to-ground rockets were more accurate, with a 

90-percent accuracy rate against troop targets. Studies stressed that rockets 

were, however, more valuable for their morale effect rather than materiel 

damage to the enemy. Aerial cannons and machineguns were far more 

accurate than bombs.42

Aerial bombardment of the World War II era was, therefore, similar 

to artillery fire in that it was an area fire weapon. The major difference 

between artillery fire and aerial bombing was the ability of the bombers 

to drop a massive amount of bombs at once. Analysis of such attacks 

demonstrated that, similar to artillery neutralization, the principal effect of 

such an attack was its ability to disorganize and demoralize the enemy.43

This result was particularly apparent against armored or vehicle 

columns. Massed volleys of aerial rockets or bombs could stall whole 

panzer attacks. The disorganization effect could be far out of proportion 

to the actual damage inflicted as the German defenders had to halt, take 

cover, and then assess the damage after the strike. A large strike from 

Quesada’s IX TAC at Mortain on 7 August 1944 stopped a German tank 

attack in its tracks. A later analysis of the battlefield showed that only a 

third of the German tanks were destroyed or disabled in the air attack.44

Recent scholarship has revealed more accurately the effects of 

airstrikes on German armored units in 1944. Conventional wisdom has 

long contended that the carpet bombing on 25 July 1944 at the start of 

Operation COBRA had effectively destroyed the Panzer Lehr Division.45

In the whole Normandy campaign, the division lost 7,411 soldiers, mostly 

from the division’s two infantry regiments. This represented 50 percent 

of the personnel assigned to the division at the start of the campaign. 

Counting replacements received during the campaign (3,437), the 

division’s personnel losses during the campaign represented 41 percent 

of the division’s strength. In terms of personnel, the division was at 

83-percent strength at the time of the COBRA bombardment. During the 

carpet bombing, the division and its attached parachute regiment lost as 

killed or wounded roughly 1,100 men. This represented 74 percent of the 

personnel losses inflicted on the division in the month of July 1944. The 

disruptive effects of the carpet bombing were reflected in an estimated 

1,400 Panzer Lehr troops being reported as missing in action after the 

bombing. Clearly, the carpet bombing was devastating to the personnel of 

the Panzer Lehr Division. But the losses, while representing three out of 

every four casualties suffered in a 30-day period, still only corresponded 

to 7 percent of the division’s personnel complement.46
74

In terms of the materiel effects of the COBRA attack, the Panzer Lehr

Division had 31 combat-ready tanks, only 17 percent of the 183 tanks 

that the division contained at the start of the campaign. Another 30 tanks 

were in maintenance shops. On 1 August, after the carpet bombing and 

the subsequent breakthrough operations, the division reported 27 tanks 

combat ready. Most of the tanks in the maintenance shops had been lost in 

the speed of the American advance.47

World War II CAS bombing was capable of inflicting devastating 

effects on personnel, particularly infantry. The actual effect on armored 

elements, such as tanks, was far less. However, the disruption effects on 

such forces were considerable. Prompt action by attacking ground troops 

could exploit this effect, creating the same result as if the armored vehicles 

had been destroyed. On 5 August 1944, after leaving behind a battalionsize battle group at the front, the bulk of Panzer Lehr withdrew to the rear 

to refit and reorganize. The bulk of the division was out of action until 

it had to retreat as part of the German withdrawal across France on 16 

August.48

In World War II, therefore, CAS bombings resembled “aerial artillery” 

in their ability to neutralize or disorganize the enemy. Unlike artillery, 

however, the aviation could range far from the battlefield and immediately 

attack, suddenly appearing to moving targets such as vehicular columns. 

Aircraft could also augment bombing with machineguns and cannons. In 

the ETO campaign, opportunistic strafing attacks wounded or killed many 

senior German officers.

Nowhere did close air support compare with artillery bombardment 

more than in the carpet bombing that was a prelude to Operation COBRA 

in July 1944. COBRA was the successful operation designed to break out 

from the close terrain of Normandy into the more open country of central 

France. In COBRA, theater AAF commander Major General Carl Spaatz 

massed 2,450 bombers, including all the strategic bombers from the Eighth 

Air Force (also commanded by Spaatz), which were diverted from the 

strategic bombing campaign and all the bombers and fighter-bombers from 

the Ninth Air Force. This force, supported by 21 field artillery battalions 

(with 140,000 rounds to fire), was to bombard a 4- by 2.3-mile section of 

the German front line south of Saint-Lô for 80 minutes. The field artillery 

would follow once the attack began.49

Miscommunication resulted in a fractured bombardment. When the 

theater air commander postponed the attack because of overcast weather, 
75

some of the bombers did not get the message and bombed anyway. 

Nevertheless, on the next day, 25 July 1944, the complete bombardment 

and attack took place. The breakthrough took place within 3 days and the 

breakout from Normandy quickly followed.50

COBRA showed one of the hazards of close air support in World 

War II—the danger to friendly troops from airstrikes. Despite extensive 

measures taken to protect friendly troops, on both 24 and 25 July 1944, 

heavy bombers dropped bombs on American troops. In the first case, a 

lead bomber accidentally dropped part of its bomb load prematurely and 

the rest of the formation did so too as the action of the leader was the 

signal to do so. In the second case, human error caused 77 bombers to drop 

their loads inside American lines. Altogether, 135 soldiers were killed and 

621 were wounded. The casualties included an infantry battalion staff, a 

field artillery battalion FDC, and parts of three infantry companies slated 

for the first assault wave. As a result, theater commander General Dwight 

Eisenhower decided to never again use heavy bombers in a CAS role.51

Fratricide was usually coordinated using control measures, primarily 

the bomb safety line, a line drawn on the map in front of friendly troops 

behind which boundary aircraft could not bomb. The bomb safety line 

had to be selected carefully so as not to provide the enemy with too large 

a zone free from air attack. An additional close cooperation line was 

added later. While coordination and communications means had greatly 

improved since the early days of military aviation, it was still difficult to 

coordinate air and group operations in World War II.52

Although, for the most part, the process was improvised, close air 

support in the European and Mediterranean theaters set the standard for 

such future operations in later wars. The techniques used in the ETO 

would later become doctrine. Although organizational names, priorities, 

and aircraft may have changed over time, the basic approach to close air 

support developed in the ETO in World War II has continued to the present 

day.

Many of the interservice issues that were not problematic because 

of Allied air superiority and an availability of aircraft were submerged 

during the ETO campaign. These issues, such as the prioritization 

and centralization of air missions, would surface in eras without mass 

mobilization and assured air superiority. 
76

JAPANESE

WITHDRAWL

NIGHT 9–10 NOV

C O R A L S E A

Yodda

Pinga

Popondetta Dobodura Cape Sudest

Cape Nelson

APPROX 5,500JAPANESE TROOPSIN THIS AREA15 NOV

Embogo Awala

Wairopi Bofu I I I I I I

x

x

xx

Kokoda

Deniki

Isurava

Kagi

Efogi

Menari

Nauro

Myola

Ioribaiwa

Uberi

Koitaki Rouna

Port Moresby

Kapa Kapa Cobaregori Kalikodobu

Nepeana

Arapara

Joure

Kovio

Borumbila

Gora

Notungo

Oro Bay

Mendaropu

Kinjaki

Dyke Ackland Bay

Totore

Gobe

Namudi Embessa

Fasari

Abel’s Field

Bootless

Inlet

Tufi

1/126(-)

128(-)

126(-)

16 Aust

7 Aust

25 Aust(+)

+

Laruni

15 Nov

12–15 Nov

12–15 Nov 13–15 Nov

20 Oct

20 Oct

12–15 Oct

Medendorp Det

Medendorp Det

26 Sep

6 Oct

9

27 Oct The Gap 16 Oct

10

2 Nov

16-30 Oct

Allied Advance

Across Owen Stanley Range

26 September–15 November 1942

0 25 50

Miles

Axis of Allied Advance

Japanese Position

Trails

Figure 12. First phase of the Battle of Buna.

Department of Defense
77

Close Air Support in the Pacific and the Battle of Buna

According to Major General George C. Kenny, “The artillery in this 

theater flies.”53

Although the combat was equally intense, the terrain in the Pacific war 

was far different from that of Europe. The weather was more extreme in 

the tropics, and thick jungle vegetation made targeting more difficult and 

fratricide easier. Figure 12 shows the Battle of Buna.

General Douglas MacArthur commanded the major Army theater in 

the Pacific, the Southwest Pacific Theater, in World War II. Supporting 

his command was the Fifth Air Force commanded by Major General 

George C. Kenny. Kenney was a longtime aviator who had possibly shot 

down Hermann Göring in World War I.54 After the war, he became the 

first commander of the Strategic Air Command (SAC). During the war, 

he worked closely with MacArthur for more than 3 years. MacArthur 

entrusted Kenney with centralized control of all the air assets in the theater. 

To keep his headquarters close to MacArthur, Kenney, in turn, delegated 

much of his daily operations to a subordinate equally trusted by the theater 

commander, Brigadier General Ennis Whitehead, who commanded 

the Fifth Air Force Advanced Echelon (ADVON). Although organized 

conventionally, Whitehead preferred issuing general guidance directly to 

group commanders, with daily updates, and using his fighter and bomber 

commands as subcommanders for specific operations. The Fifth Air Force 

never deployed a TAC headquarters during the war.55

Figure 13. The Douglas A-24 Dauntless (left) and the Bell P-39/P-400 Airacobra 

(right).

The Fifth Air Force used different aircraft for close air support 

than were used in the ETO. The Fifth Air Force used the Douglas A-24 

Dauntless, a ground version of the Navy’s SBD dive-bomber, in 1942 

but soon found it was too vulnerable in air-to-air combat. Its replacement 

was the Bell P-39/P-400 Airacobra. Although designed as a fighter, the (A-24) US Air Force photo (Airacobra) Air Force Historical 

Research Agency
78

Airacobra proved to be more suitable in a ground support role. First used 

on Guadalcanal, it carried a 20-mm or 37-mm cannon in its nose and a 

500-pound bomb under its fuselage.56

In mid-1942, the seemingly relentless Japanese advance across the 

Pacific was slowed with the strategic American victories at the Battle 

of the Coral Sea in May and at Midway in June. Allied offensive action 

then began with the landing of US Marines on Guadalcanal in early 

August. The second major offensive operations took place when US Army 

infantry forces assaulted the Japanese bridgehead at Buna in Papua on the 

northeastern coast of New Guinea in November. The first group of forces 

to assault Buna did so without field artillery support and was repulsed. 

The Japanese had attempted to complete the conquest of New Guinea 

in early 1942. The US Navy stymied them at sea at the Battle of the Coral 

Sea in May. On land, Australian troops did the same along the Kokoda 

Trail in Papua between April and September. At that time, their forces 

retreated into an enclave around the port of Buna. MacArthur decided to 

counterattack and destroy the Japanese strongpoint as the first step in an 

Allied counteroffensive in New Guinea. 

For ground units, MacArthur had available only the two infantry 

divisions of the I Corps, the 41st and the 32d. The 41st had been in the theater 

longer and was more acclimatized and had already been conducting jungle 

training. Major General Robert Eichelberger, the I Corps commander, 

however, selected the greener 32d for the operation because the division 

was already slated to be moved to a new training camp and he did not want 

to disrupt its training.57

The force for the operation consisted of the four brigades of the 

Australian 7th Division and two regiments (126th and 128th Infantry) 

from the US 32d Infantry Division. The two regiments were reinforced 

with signal, engineer, and medical assets. However, the two field artillery 

battalions that would normally support the regiments were left behind 

along with a third of the units’ organic 81-mm mortars.58

The decision not to deploy artillery with the 32d Division elements was 

primarily one of expediency. The American troops would be transported to 

New Guinea by the limited air and sea transports available in the theater. 

Not taking along the artillery was a risk, but MacArthur and his staff felt 

the Japanese were weak at Buna and the AAF forces in the theater could 

make up for the shortage. Also, the Australians already had guns deployed 

in New Guinea.59
79

The plan to attack Buna was to move forces along three different 

axes, which would converge and surround Buna. On the left (west), the 

Australians would move along the Kokoda Trail, the direct route to Buna 

from the Allied base at Port Moresby and attack two smaller Japanese 

bridgeheads north of Buna. In the center, the 126th Infantry would 

advance overland to Buna from the southwest. The 128th Infantry would 

be sealifted and airlifted to the northern Papuan coast south of Buna and 

advance on the port from the south along the coast. 

The troop deployment took over a month. Most of the American troops 

were shifted forward by air transportation. Only one battalion of the 126th 

Infantry ended up marching overland. The rest of the regiment was moved 

by air to a previously unknown forward airstrip that was improved for 

military use. The bulk of the two regiments closed on the coastal town of 

Pongani, 30 miles south of Buna by 12 November. The two regiments then 

advanced on the Japanese position with the 128th Regiment on the coast 

and the 126th Infantry on its left on a parallel track 10 miles inland. The 

Australians reached Wairapi on the Kokoda Trail 30 miles west of Buna 

on 15 November after fighting Japanese rearguards along the trail since 26 

September.60

The three axes soon converged along the Japanese entrenchments 

around Buna, with the Australians shifting to the north to attack the other 

two bridgeheads. The 32d Division commander, Major General Edwin 

Harding, ordered the first of five unsuccessful attacks over the next 10 days 

on 19 November. The Japanese had made excellent use of the terrain in 

plotting out their defenses, and Harding was only able to attack in separate 

battalion and company attacks.61

Close air support in the form of light bombers was supposed to assist 

the 32d in these attacks. But early air attacks proved to have minimal 

impact as the rugged jungle terrain made targeting difficult and there was 

no direct air-ground communications. At times, only fighters appeared 

over the battlefield. Bombers were not available. The fighters had 

difficulty finding targets to strafe. Eichelberger later commented that air 

support disappointed him at the beginning of the campaign and was unable 

to locate Japanese bunkers or damage them once they were found. In his 

after-action report for the operation, not unexpectedly, he commented that 

“ground-air support control should be under the command of the ground 

forces commander.”62

However, although Kenney had directly asserted that close air support 

would substitute for artillery support, postwar analysis indicated that, of the 
80

approximately 800 sorties flown during the Buna operation, only a small 

number were actually committed to CAS missions. And, for the most part, 

these were either poorly executed or poorly coordinated with the ground 

forces. The blame for this was with both air and ground commands. In one 

case, an attacking infantry unit did not even receive its orders until after 

the airstrike that was supposed to immediately precede the attack had been 

executed.63

Later in the war, similar-size CAS sorties were far more effective than 

those at Buna. Attack density was not the reason for the ineffectiveness 

of close air support in 1942. Postwar analysis indicated the main factor in 

the failure of CAS at Buna was ineffective target identification. The Fifth 

Air Force did not yet deploy air control parties with the ground troops to 

help direct munitions onto the targets. Liaison stopped at the New Guinea 

force headquarters, the Australian command responsible for all Allied 

operations in New Guinea. This headquarters coordinated with the Fifth 

Army ADVON headquarters.64

The need for ACPs and closer coordination between air and ground 

at division and regiment levels was one of the primary lessons learned 

of the Buna campaign. The Fifth Air Force and other AAF elements in 

the Pacific, as happened in the Mediterranean theater at the same time, 

created ACPs and air liaison officers that were used effectively in later 

campaigns.65

Artillery was not totally absent from the first phase of the Buna 

campaign. By 23 November, the Australians managed to deploy 4 light 

25-pounder guns (87.6-mm) to an airstrip 12 miles south of Buna, which 

were soon in action to support the Americans. The first US artillery 

arrived, a single 105-mm howitzer, by airlift on 26 November. This piece 

supported Eichelberger’s December attack, although its ammunition was 

greatly rationed. During his tenure in command, Harding did not request 

any additional artillery. He later cited the difficulty the command had 

to keep the meager number of guns in action supplied as it was and the 

difficulty in transporting cannons by air.66

In Harding’s last attack, the five available artillery pieces fired a standard 

artillery preparation. However, the effect on the defending Japanese was 

minor. As soon as the barrage stopped, Japanese machineguns resumed 

fire and stopped the attack in its tracks. The 32d had not yet developed 

effective artillery procedures for use in the jungle terrain.67

After his retreat from the Philippines, MacArthur was eager for 

a victory. He was also overly optimistic at the start of the operation. A 
81

communiqué from his headquarters on 24 November reported favorably 

of the attack by the fighters. When the campaign bogged down, he sent 

Eichelberger to the 32d Division headquarters on 1 December with the 

authority to make sweeping changes. Eichelberger promptly relieved 

Harding and several of the senior officers in the division. Ironically, he 

made the division’s artillery commander the new division commander. 

Eichelberger also took direct command of the US forces.68

On 5 December, Eichelberger renewed the attack and was repulsed as 

easily as Harding had been before him. At this point, while maintaining 

pressure on the Japanese with limited objective attacks, he began 

reorganizing and consolidating his forces. On 11 December, the third 

regiment of the 32d Division, the 127th Infantry, arrived by airlift. All 

the available artillery supported attacks on the 18th and 20th, but the 

attacks failed. On the 18th, most of the Australian 18th Infantry Brigade 

and some Australian tanks arrived to reinforce the Americans. With these 

reinforcements, a continuous, if slogging advance, began on 20 December. 

Buna was finally overrun on 2 January 1943. Mopping-up operations 

continued throughout January.69

In the only definitively effective use of artillery in the campaign, on 25 

December, the Australian infantry hauled forward one of the 25-pounders 

to use as an accompanying gun. With an observer high in a jungle tree, the 

gun destroyed a Japanese 75-mm gun by direct fire.70

Air support of a different type played a key role in the Buna campaign. 

All American operational movements were conducted by airlift. Supply 

was from the air as well. Given the conditions of late 1942, the operation 

could not have been executed without such air support. This was a first in 

the American military experience. 

The Buna campaign was a rare World War II campaign where close 

air support was deliberately substituted for field artillery fire support. This 

was counterintuitive to the usual AAF position of using airpower where 

artillery could be used was frowned upon. However, the Buna campaign 

was conducted on a shoestring, especially at the start. While close air 

support was generally ineffective given the inexperience of the participants 

and the unique terrain, the limited artillery used in the campaign was 

equally ineffective. If more artillery had been brought into the action, there 

would have been less infantry and there is not assurance a larger force of 

artillery would have been effective. The same conditions that made close 

air support unsuccessful equally applied to the field artillery.
82

Summary

Although the bulk of the Army only participated in two campaigns, 

World War I brought the US Army into the modern era of fire support. 

In the interwar period, the field artillery improved on World War I tactics 

and techniques. Improved gunnery, the FDC concept, and the codification 

of the forward observer as the maneuver company artillery representative 

produced an artillery force that not only could follow a preprogrammed 

fire plan but also could provide responsive immediate fires and swiftly 

mass fires onto one target. When war came with its mass mobilization, the 

application of these developments made the field artillery a decisive force 

from the beginning of the war to the end.

Things went in a different direction in the Army Air Force. In World 

War I, American airpower was centered on providing support to the Army. 

While this continued into the interwar period the Air Service/Air Corps/

AAF gradually shifted priority to a more independent role that emphasized 

strategic bombing, which, if as successful as its proponents claimed, would 

end the war without the need for close air support. However, as World War 

II approached, German success signaled a shift in focus to a recognition 

for the need for close air support. Accordingly, unlike in the infantry, close 

air support during the war was improvised. A combination of factors made 

this improvisation highly effective. Mass mobilization provided enough 

air force to go around. With air superiority attained, the AAF was able to 

conduct strategic bombing and support the ground troops at the same time. 

Wartime experience and close personal relationships between ground 

and air commanders at the higher levels perfected an excellent system. 

The availability of fighter-bomber aircraft, most originally earmarked 

for bomber escort or air superiority missions, was fortuitous and highly 

effective. 

At the very end of the war, the fielding of the atomic bomb, however, 

had great consequences for the wartime status quo between the air and 

ground fire support that had been so successful in winning the war. 

Therefore, in the ensuing Cold War era, the dichotomy between field 

artillery and close air support would shift in a new direction. 
83

Notes

1. David Adams Shugart, “On the Way: The US Field Artillery in the 

Interwar Period” (PhD diss., Texas A&M University, 1991), 3, 128, 133.

2. David Adams Shugart, 25–26, 47, 284–285.

3. David Adams Shugart, 50, 72–80, 285.

4. David Adams Shugart, 84, 86, 91, 94–96.

5. David Adams Shugart, 115–117, 121; James Sawicki, Infantry Regiments 

of the US Army (Dumfries, VA: Wyvern, 1981), 18. The cannon company concept 

waxed and waned during the war.

6. Shugart, 122, 124, 128–129.

7. Shugart, 133, 137.

8. Boyd L. Dastrup, King of Battle: A Branch History of the US Army’s 

Field Artillery, TRADOC Branch History Series (Fort Monroe, VA: Office of 

the Command Historian, US Army Training and Doctrine Command, 1992), 175; 

Janice E. McKenney, The Organizational History of Field Artillery, 1775–2003

(Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 2007), 129, 136–137.

9. John Schlight, Help From Above: Air Force Close Air Support of 

the Army, 1946–1973 (Washington, DC: US Air Force History and Museums 

Program, 2003), 20.

10. John Schlight, 22.

11. John Schlight, 20–23, 27.

12. John Schlight, Help From Above: Air Force Close Air Support of the 

Army, 1946–1973 (Washington, DC: US Air Force History and Museums Program, 

2003), 19, 22; Robert Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine: Basic Thinking in the 

United States Air Force, vol. 1, 1907–1960 (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air 

University Press, 1989), 50, 83. Observation units whose primary function was 

artillery spotting eventually fell under the Field Artillery branch and, after the 

creation of the Air Force in 1947, formed the nucleus of what later became the 

Army’s Aviation branch.

13. Schlight, 29.

14. Schlight, 24.

15. Schlight, 24–27.

16. Schlight, 2817.

18. Phillip S. Meilinger, “Trenchard, Slessor, and the Royal Air Force 

Doctrine Before World War II” in The Paths of Heaven: The Evolution of Airpower 

Theory, ed. Phillip S. Meilinger (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air University 

Press, 1989), 41. 

19. John Bagot Glubb, War in the Desert: An RAF Frontier Campaign (New 

York: W.W. Norton, 1961), 69–70, 124, 130–131, 225.

20. Meilinger, 42–43.

21. James S. Corum, The Luftwaffe: Creating the Operational Air War, 

1918–1940 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999), 138–139. 152–153.

22. Schlight, 29; Meilinger, 42.

23. Schlight, 29, 32.
84

24. For a detailed account of the German field artillery in World War II, the 

development of which in many ways resembles that of the US Army on a smaller 

scale, see Bruce I. Gudmundsson, On Artillery (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993), 

125–139.

25. William E. DePuy, Tape, Briefing to US Army Infantry School Student 

Officers, Fort Benning, GA, 1982.

26. Shelby Stanton, Order of Battle: US Army World War II (Novato, CA: 

Presidio, 1984), 28–29; McKenney, 176–177.

27. Stanton, 30; Shugart, 128, 133, 146; McKenney, 161.

28. Shugart, 141, 149.

29. Shugart, 143–145.

30. Stanton, 29–30; Gudmundsson, 138; McKenney, 170.

31. Shugart, 162, 164–165.

32. Schlight, 32.

33. Schlight, 32–33.

34. Schlight, 42, 44; Kenneth A. Steadman, A Comparative Look at AirGround Support Doctrine and Practice in World War II, Study No. 2 (Fort 

Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute, US Army Command and General 

Staff College, 1982), 9; Schlight, 43.

35. Michael Lewis, LtGen Ned Almond, USA: A Ground Commander’s 

Conflicting View With Airmen Over CAS Doctrine and Employment (Maxwell Air 

Force Base, AL: Air University Press, 1997), 23–24.

36. Schlight, 43–45.

37. Schlight, 43–45; Lewis, 19.

38. Lewis, 20; Schlight, 44.

39. Schlight, 47, 58; Lewis, 21; Ian Gooderson, Air Power at the Battlefront: 

Allied Close Air Support in Europe, 1943–1945 (Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1998), 

116.

40. Lewis, 14, 22–23; Gooderson, 60.

41. Lewis, 23; Thomas Alexander Hughes, Overlord: General Pete Quesada 

and the Triumph of Tactical Air Power in World War II (New York: Free Press, 

1995), 124, 128; Gooderson, 61, 63, 70, 73; Jane’s Fighting Aircraft of World War 

II (New York: Cresent Books, 1998), 255.

42. Gooderson, 74–76; Terry Copp, ed., Montgomery’s Scientists: 

Operational Research in Northwest Europe; The Work of No. 2 Operational 

Research Section With 21 Army Group June 1944 to July 1945 (Waterloo, ON: 

Laurier Centre for Military, Strategic and Disarmament Studies, Wilfrid Laurier 

University, 2000), 223.

43. Copp, 75; Gooderson, 104.

44. Gooderson, 116.

45. For example, see Martin Blumenson, Breakout and Pursuit, The United 

States Army in World War II: The European Theater of Operations (1961; repr., 

Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 2005) 248, “on 25 July...

[the Panzer Lehr] division was about to cease to exist as an organized unit.”
85

46. Niklas Zetterling, Normandy 1944: German Military Organization, 

Combat Power and Organizational Effectiveness (Winnipeg, MB: J.J. Fedorowicz, 

2000), 384, 387–389.

47. Niklas Zetterling, 390.

48. Niklas Zetterling, 388–389.

49. Blumenson, 219–220.

50. Blumenson, 241.

51. Blumenson, 229, 236–237.

52. Lewis, 21.

53. Samuel Milner, Victory in Papua, The United States Army in World 

War II: The War in the Pacific (1957; repr., Washington, DC: US Army Center of 

Military History, 1989), 135.

54. George C. Kenney, “A Flier’s Journal,” American Heritage 21 (December 

1969): XX. 

55. Lewis,18, 20; “Close Air Support in the War Against Japan,” US Air 

Force Historical Study No. 86, (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: USAF Historical 

Division, Research Studies Institute, Air University, 1955), 3.

56. Richard P. Hallion, Strike From the Sky: The History of Battlefield Air 

Attack, 1911–1945 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989), 165–

166; Lewis, 22. 

57. Jay Luvaas, “Buna, 19 November 1942–2 January 1943: A ‘Leavenworth 

Nightmare,’” in America’s First Battles, 1776–1965, eds. Charles E. Heller and 

William A. Stofft (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1986), 193. 

58. Jay Luvaas, 195.

59. Harding Interview, December 1947 (US Army Military History Institute), 

60. Milner, 115–116.

61. Luvaas, 204, 206–210, 215.

62. R.L. Watson, “Air Action in the Papuan Campaign 21 July 1942 to 23 

January 1943,” Army Air Force Historical Study No. 17 (Historical Division, 

Assistant Chief of Air Staff, August 1944), 87; Eichelberger (Robert L.), interview, 

US Army Military History Institute, October 1947; Luvaas, 209; Extract, “Report 

of the Commanding General, Buna Forces, on the Buna Campaign, 1 December 

1942–January 25, 1943,” 57, 74. 

63. “Close Air Support in the War With Japan,” 9–10.

64. “Close Air Support in the War With Japan,” 3, 10–11.

65. “Close Air Support in the War With Japan,” 3, 12, 342.

66. Luvaas, 209; Watson, 88; Harding Interview, 11–12.

67. Harding Interview, 20; “Close Air Support in the War With Japan,” 9–10.

68. Watson, 87.

69. Luvaas, 214, 216, 219–220.

70. Luvaas, 220.

87

Chapter 3

Field Artillery, Attack Aviation, and Close Air Support from 

1945 to 1975

In World War II, the US Armed Forces developed techniques and 

procedures that maximized the effective use of close air support and 

field artillery firepower in a high-intensity battlefield environment. The 

field artillery applied and tweaked the techniques and organizational 

structures it had developed in the interwar period. In the postwar era, most 

artillerymen believed that only minor changes, such as the formalization 

of the company FO concept, were needed, at least for the near future.

Things were different in relation to close air support. While the AAF 

had performed well in the tactical role during the war, air officers still 

focused on the strategic bombing mission, a campaign that had been 

conducted concurrent with the tactical one in both the European and Pacific 

theaters. The AAF interpretation of these air campaigns was supremely 

positive. That the war ended without the need for a ground invasion of 

Japan and through the employment of atomic weapons carried by AAF 

strategic bombers increased this feeling exponentially.1

After the war, therefore, and particularly after the Air Force became a 

separate service in 1947, the Air Force senior leadership depreciated close 

air support. When the Air Force split off from the Army, almost all Army 

functions concerning aviation went with the new service. This included 

tactical aviation. With the advent of nuclear weapons and the AAF’s 

analysis of strategic bombing in the war as justifying all theory, close 

air support became a low priority to the Air Force. Ironically, therefore, 

while the new service controlled all military aviation, including close air 

support, it did not want to do close air support. However, concerned with 

its roles and missions, and true to the principle of centralization of all air 

assets, it did not want the Army to perform it in its place either. 

Over time, this difficult situation resulted in many compromises. One 

was the creation of Army attack aviation helicopters. The Army gradually 

transformed the small fleet of aircraft it retained, artillery observation 

craft, into a fleet of helicopters. And, eventually, the helicopters received 

a combat mission. In Vietnam, the Army first used helicopters as “aerial 

artillery,” a sleight of hand to conceal that such aircraft were actually 

performing CAS missions. The Army then developed the attack helicopter, 

a specialized aircraft designed to conduct ground support missions. While 

the Air Force continued to have the CAS mission with fixed-wing aviation, 
88

the Army’s rotary-wing attack elements eventually developed the concept 

of an independent mission as well, the deep attack. Air Force close air 

support gradually moved toward more precise munitions away from the 

1940s gravity-aimed bombs to expensive rockets, missiles, and guided 

bomb systems.

Meanwhile, the field artillery remained tied to the units it supported 

while technological advances, primarily computerization and digital 

communications, as well as the fielding of better cannon and vehicle 

systems, modernized the arm. 

Postwar Field Artillery and the Korean War

After World War II, the US Army, including the field artillery, rapidly 

demobilized. The only major organizational changes in the postwar period 

were the standardization of the fire direction center and the FO system 

and an increase in guns in DS batteries from four to six. During the war, 

the company FO concept was adopted on an ad hoc basis. In an infantry 

division, DS field artillery battalions had to create three FO parties and 

one battalion and one regimental ALNO party out of its pool of liaison 

and company officers. Officers were often rotated through these roles. 

Revised postwar tables of organization made the positions permanent and 

authorized enough additional officers and enlisted men to permanently 

staff them. To coordinate and mass fires, the Army authorized FDCs for all 

artillery units from battery to corps artillery headquarters battery levels. 

The reorganization began in 1948 and was still being implemented across 

the Army when war came again.2

The Korean War started suddenly on 25 June 1950. The postwar Army 

was understrength and ill prepared. The DS field artillery battalions in 

Japan that were the first sent into action had only two batteries each. This 

initiated one of the major recurring themes of the war: not enough guns. 

Given the enemy’s massed infantry attack tactics and the long fronts held 

by United Nations and American forces, particularly in the initial mobile 

phase, and the static front held later, field artillery played an important role 

in combat operations. Nevertheless, there were never enough guns.

There was a shortage of guns in the Korean War for two reasons: not 

enough units and not enough ammunition. A shortage of firing units was 

apparent from the start. As early as 13 July 1950, theater commander 

General of the Army Douglas MacArthur was asking for additional 

artillery. He expected to have to hold an extended front and wanted to 

provide each infantry regiment, operating as a regimental combat team, 

with a 155-mm battalion in addition to its 105-mm DS battalion. The 
89

artillery buildup was slow, but by July 1951, the number of battalions 

equaled early war expectations.3

However, MacArthur’s successor General Matthew Ridgway wanted 

even more firing units. In the attack, the Chinese and North Korean 

enemy often presented large infantry targets against which massed 

artillery fires were effective. The Army depleted its general reserve and 

cut reinforcements to Europe to give Ridgway the forces he wanted. 

Nevertheless, the number of artillery units deployed to Korea never 

reached the levels of such units in the ETO in World War II. During the 

static phase of operations (1951–1953) in Korea, up to 20 nondivisional 

artillery battalions supported UN forces holding a 150-mile front. Along 

a similar front in World War II, the Army would have typically employed 

between 50 and 60 such battalions. Additionally, in the latter 2 years of the 

war, the enemy increased its artillery forces almost 200 percent, achieving 

virtual parity in number of guns where the UN had originally had a more 

than 2-to-1 advantage.4

While there seemed to be never enough guns, ammunition shortages 

exacerbated this effect. Underestimation and slow production were the 

main culprits. World War II usage rates were the basis for ammunition 

loads. But the shortage of guns meant that each gun fired more rounds. 

In 10 days at the Battle of Soyang in May 1951, 20 artillery battalions 

fired 381,136 rounds. In contrast, during a similar period at Bastogne in 

December 1944, 35 artillery battalions fired only 94,230 rounds.5

The remaining World War II stockpiles, particularly of 105-mm 

ammunition, were depleted, but production, now keyed into peacetime 

prosperity, could not quickly replace them. By the spring of 1952, there 

was an ammunition crisis that took almost a year to resolve. In the interim, 

heavy artillery (not affected by the crisis) and close air support had to step 

in and play a larger role in fire support.6

In Korea, the field artillery reaffirmed its versatility and importance 

as a component of the combined arms team. In the rugged terrain of the 

Korean Peninsula, most operations used predominantly infantry forces. 

The Communist enemy, particularly with a shortage of its own artillery 

in the first part of the war, preferred large infantry attacks. As related in 

chapter 2, field artillery fire effects were particularly devastating against 

personnel targets. Massed artillery routinely broke up Communist “human 

wave” style attacks. New munitions, such as the proximity fuse, fielded 

late in World War II, which rained shell fragments onto the enemy from 

low airbursts, increased the antipersonnel effectiveness of artillery.7
90

A deficiency of guns was one of the conditions under which even air 

officers felt that using airpower was an acceptable replacement for using 

field artillery. Before artillery could land and deploy, Quesada’s planes 

provided much of the fire support to the D-day invasion. In 1950, the new 

United States Air Force (USAF) was far less prepared for the CAS mission 

than it had been in 1945. Nevertheless, by 1952, as in World War II, things 

had recovered to the point that air support successfully covered for the 

shortage of guns and ammunition.8

Close Air Support in the Cold War Air Force

The immediate postwar period was one of transition and transformation 

for the Army Air Force, which became the United States Air Force in 

September 1947. The new independent service justified its existence 

based on strategic bombing. While strategic bombing was, accordingly, 

the priority in the USAF, the service controlled all land-based military air 

functions. As such, tactical air support remained an important mission. 

Despite the advent of atomic warfare and the emphasis on strategic 

bombing, the AAF/Air Force took two steps in the immediate postwar 

years that seemed to recognize the importance of close air support. First, 

in 1946, the AAF published its postwar manual on close air support that 

codified the techniques Quesada had developed in the IX Tactical Air 

Command in the ETO. In August 1946, the AAF produced FM 31-35, AirGround Operations. The field manual set up the procedures for close air 

support used later in the Korean War (figure 14).10

C om m and channels

C oordination channels

TAC AIR

FORCE HQ

ARMY HQ

JOINT OPERATIONS CENTER

COMBAT 

OPERATIONS 

SECTION

AIR-GROUND 

OPERATIONS 

SECTION

A-2 A-3 G-2 AIR G-3 AIR

TACC

TADC

TACP

CORPS HQ

DIV HQ

REGT HQ

Figure 14. The Air-Ground System, 1950.9

Source: FM 31-35, August 1946
91

Numbered tactical air forces (TAFs) replaced the numbered tactical air 

commands of the ETO. Accordingly, the TAF coordinated air operations in 

support of a field army.

This was the lowest level of coordination for most air requests. At 

the TAF and army command post, the staffs formed a joint operations 

center (JOC) consisting of the TAF operations (A3) and intelligence (A2) 

sections and the field army’s air operations (G3 air) and air intelligence 

(G2 air) staff sections. Requests for air missions moved up the Army 

through the S3 air/G3 air at each echelon up to the JOC.11

The TAF also formed two other coordination elements, the tactical 

air control center (TACC) and the tactical air direction center (TADC). 

While the JOC approved, prioritized, and planned air missions, the TACC 

controlled the execution of preplanned air missions. There were no air 

coordination elements below the army level. But there were pilots serving 

as air liaison officers on division and regimental staffs.12

The TACC, however, sent out tactical air control parties (TACPs) as 

necessary to direct aircraft to ground targets near the front lines. TACPs 

were formalized ACPs of World War II. Their allocation was situationally 

based. A forward air controller (FAC) headed each TACP. As necessary, 

the TACC also employed an airborne tactical air controller. TACPs 

coordinated with ground division, regimental, and battalion headquarters 

to control both preplanned and immediate (now called air alert) missions. 

TACPs typically operated from forward observation posts.13

The TACC also, as necessary, created an element called the tactical 

air direction center (TADC). The TADC usually collocated with a corps 

artillery fire direction center and controlled any air missions in restricted 

space, such as a bomb safety line (BSL). Air attacks beyond the BSL did 

not require any ground coordination. The TADC coordinated those inside 

it.14

For responsiveness, the JOC allocated a number of air alert sorties. 

These were preplanned sorties of strike aircraft that loitered near the front 

lines. When there were no available air alert sorties, immediate calls for air 

support went through Army channels to the JOC, which decided whether 

to reallocate air assets or deny the mission. To streamline the process, the 

TACC usually allocated certain air alert sorties directly to the TADC or to 

a FAC for use against targets of opportunity. The most responsive air alert 

mission was the column cover where tactical aircraft, under the direction 

of a FAC, flew over a moving column to provide immediate support in 

case of enemy contact.15
92

The second major initiative was the creation of the Tactical Air 

Command (TAC) in March 1946 as one of several major functional 

commands that the AAF created in preparation for becoming a separate 

service. Based in the continental United States, TAC had responsibility for 

training and fielding air units whose main function was tactical support. 

Quesada, now a lieutenant general, became the first head of the new 

command.

TAC’s original order of battle included three numbered air forces 

and a large fleet of fighters and fighter-bombers. One air force controlled 

the service’s fleet of troop carrier aircraft. The other two were TAFs, as 

mentioned previously, now an echelon roughly equivalent to the wartime 

numbered TACs designed to work with field army headquarters. One TAF 

was a mix of light bombers, fighters, and reconnaissance planes. The other 

TAF contained four squadrons of the newly fielded P-80 Shooting Star, the 

first American jet fighter.16

Quesada put his mark on TAC from the start. In addition to getting FM 

31-35 published, he moved his headquarters to Langley Field in Virginia 

to be close to the Army Ground Forces (AGF) at Fort Monroe. Under 

Quesada’s leadership, the Strategic Air Command conducted three joint 

exercises in 1947. Quesada, however, saw that the establishment of TAC 

was illusionary. In the reduced budgets and promotion opportunities of the 

early days of the Cold War, the Air Force’s major bomber command, SAC, 

received the priority, including 65 percent of the first Air Force budget. In 

terms of operational forces, the organizational structure greatly favored 

the big bombers. Quesada disputed the ratio of forces in the new service 

as not reflecting wartime realities. After the final round of demobilization, 

SAC contained 75 percent of the force compared to TAC’s 25 percent.17

TAC was seemingly set up partially to obtain Army agreement to the 

creation of the AAF as a separate service. Army Chief of Staff Dwight 

Eisenhower and AAF head and first Air Force Chief of Staff Carl Spaatz 

had pledged to keep close air support a priority. But Spaatz retired in early 

1948 and Eisenhower had become the President of Columbia University. 

It took only 13 months after the formal separation of the services in 

September 1947 for Spaatz’ successor, General Hoyt Vandenberg, to 

downgrade TAC to a planning headquarters under a new major command, 

the Continental Air Command (CONAC) in December 1948.

The sudden outbreak of the Korean War reemphasized the importance 

of close air support. In the new environment of limited warfare, strategic 

bombing facilitated that limitation from the enemy side, but it directly 
93

contributed to the ground fighting. The Air Force leadership had not 

anticipated limited warfare. What close air support assets that remained, 

Air Force Chief of Staff General Hoyt Vandenberg felt would only be 

needed if the strategic atomic offensive he envisioned had failed.19

Figure 15. P-80 Shooting Star jet fighter.

Vandenberg had miscalculated. With American policymakers 

unwilling to execute an atomic offensive against the Soviets over the issue 

of Korea, close air support became important again. Within 6 months of 

the start of hostilities and only 2 years after its reduction in status, TAC was 

removed from CONAC and returned to major command status to manage 

CAS assets being deployed to Korea. CONAC became responsible for 

reserve air units. TAC thereafter remained a major USAF command until 

the postwar reorganization of the Air Force in 1992. 

With the senior leadership of the Air Force clearly in the hands of 

strategic bombing supporters, Quesada had intended to retire when TAC 

was reduced in status. However, the Air Force leadership feared that his 

departure would send a negative message to Congress and the Army and 

refused his request until 1951. After retirement, Quesada became the first 

head of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the original owner 

of the expansion Washington Senators baseball team. Lieutenant General 

Otto Weyland, who had led the XIX Tactical Air Command in support of 

Patton’s Third Army in World War II commanded the revived TAC.20

US Air Force photo(http://www.langley.af.mil/staff/ho/images/p80.jpg)
94

Figure 16. F-82 Twin Mustang.

As it had in 1940, the outbreak of war halted the downward trajectory 

of close air support, when North Korea attacked South Korea in late June 

1950. In Japan and the western Pacific, the Far East Air Force (FEAF) had 

a force of five wings of F-80C jet fighters and F-82 Twin Mustang fighters, 

and a wing each of B-26 Marauder bombers and B-29 Superfortress 

bombers. The Air Force later used its transition to war in 1950 as a model 

for the adaptability and flexibility of the service. Two days after the 

invasion, a fighter group began operations in Korea. Within a month, all 

available aircraft had moved within range of the battlefront. Aircraft from 

the states, mostly B-29s and F-51 Mustangs arrived as reinforcements as 

well.21

For the first month of the war, FEAF assets substituted for the heavy 

artillery the Army’s Eighth Army was lacking. Reflecting this situation, 62 

percent of sorties in this period were CAS missions. Since North Korea 

had a small Air Force, less than a quarter of the missions involved air 

superiority, with the remainder being interdiction tasks. The F-80s and 

B-26s flew most of these sorties, but even the B-29s were used for close 

air support in the early going. The B-29s, however, had the same problems 

US Air Force photo
95

of target identification and fratricide seen in Operation COBRA.22

Per USAF doctrine, the FEAF commander, Lieutenant General 

George Stratemeyer, with the approval of MacArthur and the Air Force 

headquarters, became the commander of all theater air assets. Stratemeyer 

put the Fifth Air Force in charge of tactical air operations. Despite several 

attempts to decentralize the control of air assets supporting the ground 

troops, Stratemeyer successfully convinced MacArthur that all land-based 

air assets, including Marine aviation, be placed under his control. Initially, 

naval air support remained outside this system, but by 1952, it too was 

placed under FEAF control for operations against land targets.23

Army commanders, most prominently X Corps commander Lieutenant 

General Ned Almond, resisted the centralization of air assets. Almond 

desired the assignment in a direct support relationship of one fighter-bomber 

group to each combat division. Air operations in Korea were markedly 

different from the World War II experience. The war was not conducted 

under full mobilization. This meant that only a finite number of air assets 

were available. While in the previous war, the AAF was willing to be 

flexible in the employment of airpower, as Almond had experienced, in the 

new war they were unwilling to divvy out limited aircraft. General Joseph 

Collins, the Army Chief of Staff, agreed with Almond on decentralization. 

After failing to obtain Air Force agreement on this issue, Collins began 

pursuing efforts to either transfer the CAS mission to the Army or create a 

helicopter-based force to perform the mission.24

0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

7000

8000

9000

10000

C AS In terd iction C o un terair

N um ber o f So rties

1950 1951 1952 1953

Figure 17. The course of the Korean War in air missions.25

The Air Force had acquiesced to prioritize CAS missions in the 

emergency situation at the end of June. By mid-July, the situation had 

stabilized and enough reinforcements, both air and ground, had arrived 
96

that a shift in priorities seemed appropriate. This shift was mission based. 

In the three-phased air mission model and with air superiority assured 

virtually from the start of the war, the highest priority was now interdiction. 

By September 1950, interdiction became the most common mission for 

USAF aircraft (see figure 17), a position it held throughout the war until 

almost the end. Overall, for the whole course of the war, 55 percent of air 

sorties were interdiction missions. The rest were evenly divided between 

air superiority and CAS missions (see figure 18).26

With air superiority generally reassured, these statistics clearly reflect 

the Air Force’s predilection for independent interdiction missions. While 

interdiction almost always took up the majority of missions in the war, the 

variations at different times reflected the operational situation at different 

times. 

Counterair

Interdiction

CAS

22%

55%

23%

Figure 18. Apportionment of combat air missions in the Korean War.27

The preponderance of close air support in the first months of the war 

reflect the situation—the UN forces were on the defensive, first retreating, 

then defending the tight confines of the Pusan perimeter. In September, 

however, UN forces counterattacked and began pursuing the retreating 

North Koreans into that country. In this situation, FEAF priorities shifted 

to interdiction. In November 1950, the Chinese Communists entered the 

war on the side of the North Koreans. While this completely changed the 

ground situation, the air priorities remained the same. However, CAS 

missions also increased as well, as attention focused on stopping the 

Chinese advance.28
97

At times, air support proved to be decisive. At Kunuri, north of the 

North Korean capital of Pyongyang, the US 2d Infantry Division found 

itself forced to retreat down a narrow corridor surrounded by enemyoccupied ridgelines. Tightly controlled airstrikes, consisting of napalm 

and strafing, destroyed a Chinese roadblock and neutralized the troops 

holding the high ground enough for the bulk of the division to escape.29

In the spring of 1951, UN forces counterattacked, reaching a line 

close to the prewar boundary on the 38th parallel by July 1951. From 

this point until the signing of an armistice, effective 27 July 1953, the 

war was fought on a positional nature similar to World War I, with the 

difference being that UN forces were only trying to retain the status quo 

until peace could be secured. During this period, the need for continuous 

close air support decreased, except during the artillery ammunition crisis 

in the spring of 1952, and FEAF concentrated on interdicting Chinese 

supply lines. However, in 1953 with an armistice looming, the Communist 

forces began conducting vigorous operations to secure better positions. 

Accordingly, Fifth Air Force CAS operations spiked to sortie levels even 

higher than those of the summer of 1950 in the final 2 months of the war 

to help ground troops repulse these enemy efforts. While FEAF provided 

support to the Army throughout the conflict, Army commanders such as 

Almond remained skeptical as to the quality of this support.30

One of the main reasons that Almond complained was his belief that 

the new CAS system was not responsive to immediate missions. The war 

was the first test of the new air-ground system. Doctrinally, the Fifth Air 

Force needed to set up a joint operations center with the Eighth Army, 

which was done in July 1950. The JOC was collocated with the Fifth Air 

Force’s headquarters and its operational element, the TACC. Eventually, 

the Fifth Air Force established several TADCs at corps headquarters to 

more closely control air missions.31

The main element in the system was the TACP, the Air Force 

equivalent of forward observers. Starting with two TACPs, by the end of 

the war, the Fifth Air Force was fielding between 48 and 50 such teams 

with the ground forces. A typical Army division had between four and 

six TACPs, meaning that roughly one or two teams were supporting each 

infantry regiment. Distribution was often uneven. In late 1950, Almond’s 

X Corps had an average of 12 TACPs per division, enough to give a team to 

each infantry battalion, with several left over, while the rest of the Eighth 

Army averaged 4 teams per division. Almond’s squeaky wheel received 

proportionally more air support assets although his mission was no more 

or less important than that of the bulk of the Eighth Army.32
98

The TACPs started slowly, with weak World War II surplus 

communications equipment and transportation. The gradual fielding of 

new radios and jeeps improved this situation. During the static phase of 

operations, the radios could now be remoted from vehicles into bunkers. 

Because of the early war TACP difficulties and the rugged Korean terrain, 

FEAC began placing FACs in aircraft.33

As early as the first week of July 1950, FEAC began using airborne 

FACs, nicknamed “Mosquitoes,” to supplement or replace ground TACPs. 

The Mosquitoes used small light liaison and trainer planes. The airborne 

FAC concept quickly expanded, with 27 planes operational by September 

1950 and 50 in April 1951. In the later period of the war, enemy air 

defenses reduced the role of the Mosquitoes. Because of their use of small, 

vulnerable aircraft, most Air Force observers felt that the airborne FAC did 

not have a future.34

The initial major weakness of the air-ground system in Korea was 

a combination of a lack of coordination and communications. Under 

the system, the Army was supposed to provide staff, communications 

equipment, and coordination support at various levels. A combination of 

the chaos of the early days of the war and the lack of readiness of the 

Eighth Army, including its ability to support CAS functions. As the war 

progressed, the system matured. This shifted the argument from one of 

organization to one of responsiveness.35

While the air-ground system adopted in 1946 in theory contained a 

provision for immediate air requests called air alert missions, in Korea 

this procedure was almost never used. Even immediate missions had to be 

sent from the forward element through the chain of command to the JOC 

at field army level. Almond believed that the complicated request system 

was not responsive and that the JOC too frequently changed or rejected 

requests.36

The war began with the USAF employing a mix of old World War 

II fighter-bombers and bombers and first-generation jet fighters. As 

operations continued, jets replaced the older, propeller-driven aircraft. By 

the end of the war, second-generation jet fighter-bombers began appearing 

on the battlefield. These airplanes executed both CAS and interdiction 

missions against ground targets. 

The first-generation jet, the F-80, worked well in the air-to-air combat 

role, but because of missing bomb racks and its short range, it proved to 

be less successful in the CAS role. By August 1950, the USAF began 

replacing a portion of the Shooting Stars with F-51 (née P-51 in World 
99

War II) Mustangs for CAS operations. Later, the F-80s were upgraded 

and it became multifunctional. However, its range remained restrictive as 

it required longer and better runways that were only available in Japan.37

Table 3. CAS Issues in the Korean War42

Although an older design, the Mustang proved an effective CAS 

vehicle. The P-51 was able to operate from Korean airfields, making it 

more responsive, and was able to carry a more varied and lethal munitions 

load, including napalm, which had proven effective against both personnel 

and armored targets. The tactical situation mitigated against the Mustang’s 

weaknesses in relation to enemy air and ground fire. Enemy fire and 

counterair capabilities were not significant enough during the tenure of 

the Mustang in the theater. The Twin Mustang, usually used in an air 

superiority role, also sometimes conducted CAS or interdiction missions 

early in the war.38

Figure 19. F-86 Sabre (left) and F-84 Thunderjet (right).

As the war progressed, the Air Force phased out the Mustangs and 

Twin Mustangs. The F-84 Thunderjet replaced the propeller planes as 

the primary ground attack aircraft in the middle of the war. The secondgeneration jet, the F-86 Sabre, began operations in the theater in early 

1951 in response to the Chinese deployment of the MiG-15 jet fighter 

in the air superiority role. The F-86 replaced the F-80 in this role with 

the latter concentrating on CAS and interdiction missions. In the spring 

of 1953, the F-86 began replacing the F-84 in the ground support role 

as well. As in World War II, bombs remained the primary munition of 

1. Prioritization of air missions.

2. Control and tasking of air missions.

3. CAS command and control.

4. Types of aircraft.

US Air Force photos
100

CAS/interdiction aircraft. The development of napalm, however, added a 

devastating weapon against personnel and vehicular targets.39

As in World War II, both field artillery and close air support played 

important roles in the success of ground operations. Field artillery never 

reached the typical numbers of firing units that were seen in World War 

II. This meant that batteries were more spread out than in the previous 

war, sometimes precluding the ability to mass artillery fires. In these cases 

and during the ammunition shortage crisis of 1952, CAS supplemented or 

replaced artillery fires.40

The Korean War, with its limited nature and American air superiority, 

brought a new twist on the debate between strategic bombing and tactical 

air support. In this case, with no real strategic bombing effort in a limited 

war, the contention between the Army and Air Force reduced itself into 

conflict within the sphere of tactical air support alone. The new contrast 

was between close air support, fires in direct support of the ground troops, 

and air interdiction operations, those conducted independent of the ground 

forces designed to indirectly affect the ability of the enemy ground forces 

to fight. The war also was an example of “reinventing the wheel.” As in 

World War II, air-ground operations had to be relearned at the start of the 

war. From 1945 to 1950, there had been inadequate joint training.41

In his writings, Almond emphasized four points of difference between 

ground and air approaches to close air support exhibited in operations in 

Korea. These factors form a theme for using close air support to the present 

day. The first point, prioritization of air missions, was only an issue when 

there were a limited number of air assets. In World War II, it was not 

an issue; in Korea it was. With air superiority, air officers preferred to 

conduct air interdiction operations, while ground officers wanted close 

support. Air Force commanders felt they were showing a larger vision 

for operations than their Army counterparts. But interdiction also allowed 

air commanders to operate independent of the specific requirements of a 

ground commander.43

The second issue involved centralized or decentralized control of air 

assets. The Army favored the decentralized approach where air support 

was apportioned between subordinate units much like field artillery 

was operationally employed. However, the ground commander always 

controlled the field artillery. While there were sometimes disputes between 

the artillery commander and the unit he was supporting, as at Gettysburg, 

both individuals worked for the same ground commander. The Air Force 

since the days of Billy Mitchell had considered it axiomatic that airpower 
101

had to be centralized and under the control of the air commander. Under the 

1946 doctrine, this commander was that of the tactical air force. This level 

was four higher than that required for artillery support. In other words, 

while an infantry company commander could request artillery support 

from his forward observer, who could then directly call an FDC to get the 

fires, the same company commander had to request the air support through 

his battalion S3 air, who sent the request through the regiment, division, 

and corps to the JOC at field army, where the request could be rejected 

or approved. If approved, the local TACP would direct and observe the 

mission. The TACP would typically be working at the regimental level. 

Centralization made immediate responsiveness virtually impossible. 

While the USAF had a system to supply loitering planes for immediate 

missions, a combination of a shortage of planes and a lack of loitering 

capability usually precluded this in Korea.44

The third point, the control system for close air support, required 

constant and continuous joint training and interservice cooperation. This 

was lacking before Korea and in its early stages. Given the constant dispute 

of the relative importance of close air support, it would continue to be an 

issue in future decades.45

The final point was on the types of aircraft employed for close air 

support. Often, aircraft designed to fight other planes or to bomb strategic 

targets ended up being used in the CAS role. After 1947, the Army only had 

limited input into the development of aircraft eventually slated to conduct 

close air support. The Air Force valued airplanes that could do multiple 

missions, with primary focus on air-to-air combat. In Korea, jets replaced 

prop planes primarily because they were the best at shooting down other 

jets. This issue continued until the Air Force developed a CAS-specific jet, 

the A-10, in the 1970s. 

The Eisenhower administration’s adoption of the new look policy, 

which renewed the importance of nuclear warfare, soon overshadowed 

the events in Korea The lessons of limited wars such as Korea, which now 

seemed like anomalies, appeared less pertinent. In this new era, the Air 

Force again viewed its strategic mission, now based on a fleet of longrange bombers equipped with nuclear bombs, as able to deter both general 

war and limited wars. Again, within the service, interest in tactical air 

support waned.46

With the renewed emphasis on strategic airpower after the Korean 

War, the Army again felt unease at perceived Air Force neglect of close air 

support. A series of small steps over the next decade resulted in the creation 
102

of a force of helicopters in the Army capable of conducting CAS missions. 

After many disputes over the proponency for rotary-wing aircraft, the Air 

Force agreed to the Army gaining this mission. As part of this process, the 

Air Force also developed the first modern aircraft designed specifically for 

CAS operations, the A-10, in the early 1970s. 

1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s

WWII KOREA VIETNAM

DESERT 

STORM

Reconnaissance 

&Security

Attack

Air Assault

Air Combat

Air Movement

Command & Control

EW Aircraft

MEDEVAC

Number of Missions 1942 – Birth of 

Army Aviation

1950 – Use of Helicopter

for Cargo/MEDEVAC

1962 – Howze Board: 

Airmobility and ACCB 

Concept

1965 – Airmobile Div 

Deploys to Vietnam

1972 – Concept of 

Attack Helicopter 

Demonstrated 

in Combat 

Mid-1980s –

Aviation Brigade in 

Each Division

1978 – Deep 

Attack/AirLand

Battle Concept

1975 – ACCB 

Created

1991 – Aviation 

Brigades Used in 

Combat

2003 – Aviation 

Brigade Deep 

Attack Failed

OIF

Combat

Combat

Support

Combat Service 

Support

Figure 20. The evolution of Army aviation.47

The Army and the Attack Helicopter

In 1949, Pete Quesada predicted that, if the Air Force did not meet 

the Army’s needs for close air support within 5 years, the Army would be 

able to justify the creation of its own air force. By 1954, the Army had, 

in fact, taken steps that would lead to creating such a force. Concurrent 

with the decrease in status of close air support in the new USAF, the Army 

began the early development of what would later become Army aviation.48

Figure 20 shows the evolution of Army aviation.

The initial impetus in the development of Army aviation was based on 

the specific limitations placed on what aircraft the Army could develop and 

field. The National Defense Act of 1947 split the Air Force from the Army. 

Under the previous organization, while the Army-Air Force possessed 

great autonomy within the Army and the War Department, there were 

many grey areas in aviation-related roles and missions. These became 

much more distinct when the Air Force became a separate service. The act 

itself did not specify roles and missions between the services concerning 

aviation, although the committee report with the final version of the law 

contained the comment that the Army “is not deprived of certain types of 

aviation necessarily organic to the Army for the accomplishment of its 

functions.”49
103

Because of the nebulous nature of the act, the first Secretary of Defense, 

James Forrestal, convened a meeting of the senior officers from each 

service at Key West, Florida, in March 1948 to spell out the specific roles 

and missions of each service. This was the first of a series of such meetings 

that redefined or refined the roles and missions of the Army and Air Force 

concerning Army aviation. These meetings eventually culminated in the 

Johnson-McConnell Agreement in April 1966, which in essence put the 

Air Force in charge of all fixed-wing aircraft and the Army the proponent 

for rotary-wing aircraft.50

The basic conflict between the Army and the Air Force in the 

intervening years was based on the inexact wording of both the National 

Defense Act of 1947 and the Key West Agreement. While recognizing the 

Army’s need for organic air assets to conduct its missions, the definition of 

such assets was ill defined. The conflict between the services started almost 

immediately and continued through the Korean War and into the 1960s. 

The Army leadership, led by the Chief of Staff General J. Lawton Collins 

perceived that the Air Force leadership had relegated close air support 

to a role secondary to strategic bombing. Regard for the CAS mission 

was so low that, at one point, the Chief of the Strategic Air Command, 

Air Force General Curtis LeMay, fleetingly suggested that the Air Force 

give its tactical aircraft to the Army. Even the Tactical Air Command, the 

CAS branch of the Air Force, began emphasizing a theater-level nuclear 

capability.51

While the Army perception was based on USAF organizational 

restructurings and doctrinal writings, Air Force materiel procurement 

reinforced it. Newly developed fighter-bombers seemed to be less capable 

of providing close air support due to their multifunctional nature and an 

emphasis placed on their ability to carry nuclear bombs. When Collins 

suggested an Army role in aircraft design, he was rebuffed. A prominent 

contemporary Air Force tactical commander, Gabriel Disosway, although 

a later opponent of the Army armed helicopter, agreed that the Air Force 

emphasized the nuclear mission at the expense of providing support to the 

Army in the 1950s.52

The result of the Army’s perception of neglect and the Air Force’s 

emphasis on nuclear armed aircraft was a gradual organizational effort on 

the part of the Army leadership to develop its own organic CAS assets. 

This process was incremental because close air support was clearly an Air 

Force mission. But the technological development of the helicopter, an 

aircraft ill suited for strategic or operational missions, greatly assisted this 

shift. The helicopter muddied the waters around the boundaries between 

Army and Air Force tactical aviation.53
104

A series of interservice accords, starting with the 1949 BradleyVandenberg Agreement, sought to more exactly define those boundaries. 

The initial agreements focused on missions and weight ceilings on specific 

aircraft. Gradually, as the Army sought increased weights for helicopters, 

the delineation shifted to types of craft. The 1966 Johnson-McConnell 

Agreement finally defined the roles between the services based on the 

division between rotary and fixed wing.54

Although the Army’s Aviation branch was not created until 1983, the 

branch considers its birthday to be 6 June 1942. On that day, the War 

Department created the Air-Observation-Post Program, which gave 

the field artillery its own organic light aircraft. These aircraft were the 

only aviation assets in the Army not under the control of the AAF and 

were intended, as the name indicated, to provide airplanes, pilots, and 

observers to support the fires of field artillery batteries. When fielded in 

1943, the program placed an air observation section, consisting of two 

pilots, two planes, and supporting ground crews, in each divisional field 

artillery battalion and in the headquarters battery of the division artillery 

headquarters.55

Late in World War II, the War Department expanded the light aircraft 

program beyond the artillery to provide liaison and reconnaissance craft 

for combat divisions. The designation Army Ground Forces Light Aviation 

replaced the Air-Observation-Post Program. However, demobilization 

and the creation of the Air Force restricted the Army’s organic aircraft 

to a small force of light fixed-wing aircraft with observation and liaison 

missions until a combination of the Korean War and the development of the 

helicopter resulted in a gradual expansion of Army aviation beyond light 

aircraft with supporting roles. This expansion, generally at the expense of 

the Air Force’s perceived roles and missions, continued from 1950 until 

the Army received complete helicopter proponency under the terms of the 

1966 Johnson-McConnell Agreement.56

The early development of rotary-wing aircraft was one of the many 

technological advances in the war years. The Army, however, did not 

possess any helicopters until 1946. The new technology looked promising, 

especially to short-range transportation for combat troops, and development 

advanced to the point that the Army planned to create a small experimental 

force even before war broke out in Korea in the summer of 1950. With 

the start of hostilities, this program received renewed emphasis, with the 

Army planning to create five companies of light transport helicopters 

within its Transportation Corps.57
105

In 1950, the document defining the delineation between Army and Air 

Force aircraft was the 1949 Joint Army and Air Force Adjustment Regulation 

(JAAFAR) 5-10-1, Combat Joint Operations Etc.: Employment of Aircraft 

for Performance of Certain Missions. The provisions of JAAFAR 5-10-

1 allowed the Army to possess two types of aircraft: light fixed-wing 

planes of less than 2,500 pounds and rotary-wing aircraft with a maximum 

weight of 4,000 pounds. The regulation also clearly defined the missions 

of Army aircraft, which included aerial observation for field artillery fires, 

limited courier and reconnaissance missions, and emergency medical 

evacuation. The transportation mission of the projected new companies 

did not fall within the parameters of JAAFAR 5-10-1. Additionally, the 

newly developed helicopters planned for issue to these units, the H-19 

Chickasaw and the H-21 Shawnee, exceeded the weight limit, the H-21 

more than doubled it.58

Interservice disagreements delayed the deployment of the new units. 

Initially, the Air Force refused to waive the weight restrictions and even 

planned to create its own helicopter units to support the Army. However, 

the air service softened its stand because it did not want to procure 

helicopters at the expense of fixed-wing aircraft. A series of memorandums 

of agreement during the Korean War, particularly the 1952 Pace-Finletter 

Agreement, gradually expanded the permissible role of the Army in terms 

of helicopters. This role remained primarily that of tactical transportation, 

logistical resupply, and medical evacuation. Helicopters medically 

evacuated more than 21,000 soldiers during the war.59

Following the Korean War, Army leadership, research and development 

specialists, and aviators continued the technological and conceptual 

development of Army aviation. Post-Korean War Army helicopter 

theorists envisioned the mass tactical movement of troops by rotary-wing 

aircraft. The usefulness of the helicopter’s ability to operate vertically on 

the battlefield was too good to pass up. Similar to the experience of early 

Air Corps enthusiasts, however, contemporary technology did not initially 

live up to these concepts. Helicopters were too underpowered to be useful 

for tactical troop movements until the Bell Helicopter Corporation applied 

a gas turbine engine to a helicopter prototype in 1955. The resulting craft, 

the UH-1 Iroquois, more commonly known as the Huey, began fielding 

in 1958 and, although initially envisioned as a utility craft, became the 

primary tactical assault helicopter in the Army through the Vietnam 

period.60

Two natural and intertwined extensions to the fielding of tactical 

transportation helicopters were the creation of armed helicopters to escort 
106

and guard the troop-carrying aircraft and the application of the helicopter 

to a more extensive reconnaissance role to support heliborne troops. As 

early as 1942, the Army had tested the arming of helicopters, but it wasn’t 

until after the Korean War that rotary-wing technology had advanced 

enough to put weapons on helicopters.61

Major General James M. Gavin, one of the premier World War II 

American paratroop commanders, opened the debate with an article in 

Armor magazine in 1954 that advocated creating large numbers of light 

helicopter and fixed-wing units to conduct the traditional cavalry missions 

of reconnaissance, screening, and counterattack. Gavin’s influential treatise 

originated the concept of the helicopter as air cavalry, an expansion of the 

armed helicopter idea that ultimately resulted in the attack helicopter and 

the maneuver aviation brigade. To put teeth to his ideas, Gavin, as the 

Army’s chief of operations, directed the field forces to shift their focus from 

developing the role of helicopter resupply to more tactical applications of 

rotary-wing aircraft.62

Not long after Gavin’s article appeared, the Army began experimenting 

with armed helicopters and light fixed-wing airplanes. In 1955, the Army 

Aviation School, recently transferred to Fort Rucker, Alabama, from its 

original home with the Field Artillery School at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, 

conducted a series of tests. At the conclusion of the testing, the Continental 

Army Command (CONARC) concluded that light armed aircraft, both 

rotary- and fixed-wing, were not feasible with the then-available aircraft. 

However, the Aviation School continued experimentation in the late 

1950s, with the mounting of rockets and SS-10 antitank guided missiles 

(ATGMs) onto helicopters. At the same time, the Army formally directed 

the Ordnance branch to develop means to mount machineguns onto 

transport helicopters. This period of experimentation culminated in the 

official adoption in November 1960 of special kits to provide the H-13 

Sioux and UH-1 helicopters with machineguns and SS-11s.63

Concurrent with ordnance-based testing, Gavin-inspired concepts of 

air cavalry and airmobility began appearing in Army aviation, intelligence, 

and armor circles under the umbrella term “sky cavalry.” A leader in this 

trend was Major General Hamilton Howze. In 1955, Howze, a World 

War II tank unit commander, became the senior aviation officer on the 

Department of the Army staff in the Pentagon. As such, in October 1957, 

he prepared a briefing and supporting memorandum that, for the first 

time, produced the concept of an air cavalry brigade. A concept called the 

Armair Brigade, created at the Aviation School, inspired Howze.64
107

The Armair Brigade was a conceptual design for the conversion of 

preexisting units to a combined arms brigade built around an infantry 

battle group (four rifle companies), a field artillery rocket battery, and 

various helicopter units (figure 21). The aviation elements included an 

assault component called the reconnaissance attack company, which 

contained H-34 Choctaw and H-21 Shawnee light transport helicopters 

and a battalion of H-37 Mojave medium cargo helicopters. The H-34s 

and H-21s could each carry an infantry squad and were armed with aerial 

rockets and machineguns.65

X

H eadq uarters 

C om pany

I

R ocket Battery

III

Infantry 

Battle Group

R econnaissance 

Attack C om pany

(H -34/H -21 H elicopters)

I I I

T ransportation 

Battalion

(H -37 H elicopter)

X

Figure 21. Armair brigade (notional), 1957.

For such a brigade, Howze proposed a theoretical scenario where the 

unit defended a section of Germany against much larger Soviet forces. 

Howze saw the brigade as primarily a reconnaissance organization. In this 

defensive scenario, he envisioned the brigade as being reinforced with 

artillery and engineers and supported by Air Force fighter-bombers. Howze 

also visualized the employment of not yet fielded helicopters with antitank 

weaponry to play a direct-fire role in fighting the Soviets. He stressed the 

use of the helicopter’s mobility and three-dimensional aspect to conduct 

rapid tactical movements combining reconnaissance, the directed fire of 

armed helicopters, and the placement and extraction of ground troops at 

important locations (called airmobility) in a force capable of maneuvering 

against larger enemy ground forces.66

Howze was quick to point out later that most of his 1957 concepts 

were still purely conjectural. However, a combination of experimentation 

at Fort Rucker, Alabama, Fort Benning, Georgia, and Fort Bragg, North 

Carolina, and the fielding of new and better equipment, such as the UH-1 

Huey and the CH-47 Chinook medium cargo helicopter, brought these 

ideas closer to reality by the end of the decade.67

When the Kennedy administration took office in 1961, its adoption 

of a flexible response policy to Cold War strategy reinvigorated the Army 
108

in general and Army aviation in particular. With concepts such as those 

espoused by Howze, the development of the proper equipment became 

increasingly important, especially after designs for new light observation 

and attack helicopters failed to meet requirements. Even before the new 

administration took office, the Army had convened in 1960 two boards 

headed by Lieutenant General Gordon B. Rogers to look at aircraft 

requirements for the next decade and to develop training plans for the new 

equipment.68

When new Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara received copies of 

the findings of the two Rogers Boards with recommendations attached, he 

directed the Army to conduct a more comprehensive and more imaginative 

reexamination of Army aviation organization, doctrine, and equipment. In 

response, Secretary of the Army Elvis Stahr directed the establishment of 

the Army Tactical Mobility Requirements Board, commonly referred to 

as the Howze Board. Howze, by then a lieutenant general commanding 

the XVIII Airborne Corps, was appointed president of the board.69 The 

Howze Board, consisting of 14 generals, 5 colonels, and 6 civilian experts, 

met from April through August 1962 and extensively examined Army 

aviation organizations, doctrine, and equipment using the assets of the 

82d Airborne Division. The examination consisted of a combination of 

field tests and computer-based war gaming. The board made a series of 

recommendations for creating new aviation units as large as a division and 

as small as a company. The most significant recommendations were the 

proposed creation of five air assault divisions and three air cavalry combat 

brigades. Howze recognized that many of his board’s recommendations 

were in violation of then-current agreements on roles and missions vis-àvis the Air Force. But the general believed that the emerging technological 

and doctrinal advances necessitated a revision of these agreements.70

The air assault division was an infantry division that contained a 

large, organic aviation element (459 aircraft compared to about 100 in 

the infantry division) and a reduced ground transportation component 

(1,000 ground vehicles as opposed to 3,452 in the infantry division). All 

major elements of the division were light enough for helicopters to carry. 

To replace the heavier artillery found in the infantry division were 24 

OV-1 Mohawk airplanes and 36 UH-1 Huey helicopters, both armed with 

2.75-inch rockets. The use of the Mohawk as organic close air support 

for the division was one of the most controversial recommendations, as 

it reignited interservice conflict over roles and missions. The Army had 

been allowed to develop the Mohawk as a reconnaissance aircraft as an 

exception to the weight restrictions on Army aircraft. The inclusion of 80 
109

AC-1 Caribous, a small transport airplane also approved for Army use by 

waiver, in a proposed transportation brigade designed to support the air 

assault division also caused conflict with the Air Force.71

Air Force leadership reacted negatively to the Howze Board and 

established its own panel, the Tactical Air Support Evaluation Board, 

under General Gabriel Disosway. The Disosway Board disputed many 

of the Howze Board findings and directly expressed the belief that the 

Army was using the helicopter as a means of gaining control of longestablished Air Force missions. However, Disosway and his colleagues 

recognized that the Army had reasons for being dissatisfied with current 

CAS arrangements and recommended the creation of more USAF tactical 

fighter wings and an acceleration in the development program for the F-4C 

Phantom jet. Disosway recommended that future airmobility studies be a 

joint Army-Air Force effort and that Army procurement of the fixed-wing 

Caribous and Mohawks be halted immediately.72

Slightly less controversial, but more pertinent for the subject of this 

study, was the Howze Board’s recommendation that the Army create air 

cavalry combat brigades (ACCBs). The ACCB was an all-helicopter unit 

built around a new type of aircraft not yet fielded, the attack helicopter 

(figure 22). The Howze Board projected the fielding of attack helicopters 

that could be equipped with either antitank or antipersonnel armament in 

the form of ATGMs and rockets. The brigade’s main orientation was to 

place aerial fires on enemy forces, but its utility and observation helicopters 

gave it the ability to conduct reconnaissance, security, and limited infantry 

operations as well.73

Although the ACCB was not fielded because of a lack of funds and the 

emphasis on Vietnam, Secretary McNamara overrode Air Force objections 

and allowed the Army to test the Howze Board’s air assault division 

structure. For this mission, the Army created the 11th Air Assault Division 

(Test) at Fort Benning in February 1963. From that point until mid-1965, 

the partially formed division tested the Howze Board’s airmobile concept. 

Airmobility primarily focused on the tactical movement of infantry 

elements around the battlefield using helicopters. The test division 

contained an aviation group that included two light troop-carrying or 

assault Huey battalions and a medium CH-47 Chinook cargo battalion. 

The test division originally also contained an aerial surveillance and escort 

battalion equipped with armed Mohawk planes. This was an extension of 

the Howze Board’s concept for employing the Mohawk.74
110

4 A ir C av alry

C om bat Troops

X

H eadquarters 

Troop

A erorifle P latoon

4 U H -1s

A eros c out P latoon 

6 O H s 

3 A ir C av alry

C om bat S quadrons

I I

A ttac k P latoon 

6 A H s 

A ttac k P latoon 

6 A H s 

I 

X

 

Figure 22. Howze Board Air Cavalry Combat Brigade, 1962.

The Air Force conducted its own airmobility tests concurrent with the 

11th Air Assault Division tests. The Joint Chiefs canceled the Air Force 

tests in early 1965, effectively adopting the Army’s concept. However, 

due to Air Force complaints, the battalion was scrapped from the final 

division design and replaced with rocket-firing helicopters. The DIVARTY 

contained such a battalion, referred to as “aerial artillery,” while the two 

light assault battalions contained an aerial weapons company each. The 

Air Force was willing to grudgingly accept Army employment of large 

numbers of helicopters, even armed ones. But the service drew the line at 

fixed-wing aircraft. In June 1965, Secretary McNamara brokered a deal 

with the Secretary of the Air Force that removed the armed Mohawk from 
111

the air assault division. This decision helped blunt Air Force animosity 

toward the fielding of the new organization.75

However, the dispute now shifted to the Army’s desire to use its own 

Caribou aircraft for airlift within a theater. Army Chief of Staff General 

Harold K. Johnson was willing to sacrifice the Caribou rather than risk 

continued Air Force animosity concerning the Army use of helicopters. 

Possibly fearing Congressional and Department of Defense (DOD) 

investigations into the issue during the height of the US deployment to 

Vietnam, Air Force Chief of Staff John McConnell worked out a revised 

roles and missions agreement with Johnson in April 1966. Under the 

provisions of the Johnson-McConnell Agreement, the Army, for the most 

part, lost its larger fixed-wing aircraft and could not turn those remaining 

into gunships but received complete freedom to develop and deploy its 

fleet of rotary-wing craft.76

By the end of 1964, the Army considered the testing of the 11th Air 

Assault Division a success. In March 1965, the Army staff decided to 

add the division as a permanent organization. Shortly thereafter, with US 

involvement in Vietnam escalating, the decision was made to send the new 

division to Vietnam. To fill out the division, it was merged with the assets 

of an infantry division at Fort Benning, and the combined organization 

was redesignated as the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile). As such, the 

division deployed to Vietnam and served there for more than 5 years. In 

1968, a second division, the 101st, was converted to airmobile (the new 

term, as of 1965, for air assault) status in Vietnam.77

Starting in 1962 and concurrent with the Howze Board, the Army began 

adopting a new divisional organization, known as ROAD (Reorganization 

Objective Army Division). The former structure, the Pentomic Division, 

contained a single aviation company. The new design contained two 

aviation organizations, a divisional aviation battalion and an air cavalry 

troop in the division’s armored cavalry squadron.

An aviation company had been part of the Pentomic Division since 

1959. The company provided aviation support to the division, primarily 

observation planes and helicopters. The company contained 19 fixed-wing 

aircraft and 27 helicopters. The ROAD battalion expanded the company 

and greatly increased the role of the helicopter. The new organization 

contained only four OV-1 Mohawk fixed-wing light observation aircraft 

but 22 light observation and 26 Huey utility helicopters. In addition to 

providing helicopters for command and control and aerial observation, 

the battalion also had enough Hueys to transport an infantry company at 
112

one time. While the Hueys mounted machineguns, the battalion’s main 

purpose was transportation not offensive combat.78

The air cavalry troop in the divisional armored cavalry squadron was 

a new organization with a different purpose from the aviation battalion. 

The troop had been under development for several years. In 1959, based 

on reports of the successful French use of armed helicopters in Algeria, 

the Army began its own tests. A year later, the Aerial Reconnaissance and 

Security Troop (ARST) Program formalized this experimentation. As 

part of this program, the Army conducted tests with French-made SS-11 

ATGMs mounted on UH-1s. Other unit exercises simulated the use of SS11 Hueys in an antitank role. With support from the Howze Board, when 

ROAD was adopted, the ARST became the fourth troop in the divisional 

reconnaissance squadron.79

The air cavalry troop combined observation helicopters, infantry, and 

rocket-firing helicopters in one organization. The troop consisted of two 

combat elements: an aeroscout platoon and an aerorifle platoon (figure 

23). The aeroscout platoon had two light sections, each equipped with four 

OH-6A Cayuse light observation helicopters and a heavy section flying 

four UH-1B Huey utility helicopters. The OH-6A was later replaced with 

the OH-58 Kiowa. The aerorifle platoon contained four UH-1D troop 

carrier helicopters in its headquarters to carry its four infantry squads. 

The platoon also had a weapons section that deployed four UH-1B Hueys 

armed with 2.75-inch rocket launchers. This was the first nonexperimental 

use of armed helicopters in the Army. However, the service originally 

envisioned the armed Hueys only in a defensive role—escorting troopcarrying craft and providing fire support over landing zones (LZs). During 

the Vietnam period, the weapons section was later reequipped with the 

AH-1G Cobra attack helicopter and expanded to platoon size. The three 

elements of the troop were known colloquially as the white (aeroscout), 

blue (aerorifle), and red (aeroweapons) teams.80

The airmobile division contained an air cavalry squadron that 

consisted of three air cavalry troops and one ground troop. The air cavalry 

troops each contained an aeroscout platoon, an aerorifle platoon, and an 

aeroweapons platoon that were similarly equipped to the equivalent units 

in the air cavalry troop in the armored cavalry squadron. The ground troop 

consisted of two jeep scout platoons equipped with machineguns and 106-

mm rifles. While in Vietnam, one of the platoons replaced its jeeps with 

amphibious armored cars.81
113

A eros c out 

P latoon 

W eapons S ec tion

4 U H -1B s

w ith 2.75-in roc k ets

A erorifle 

P latoon

4 U H -1H s

2 Light S ec tions

4 O H -6A s

H eav y S ec tion

4 U H -1B s

4 A erorifle 

S quads 

I

Figure 23. Division air cavalry troop, 1962.

Vietnam

While the Army developed helicopters, with grudging acceptance from 

the Air Force, close air support became secondary to the nuclear mission. In 

fact, even the revived TAC downplayed ground support in the mid-1950s, 

essentially becoming an accessory to SAC’s massive retaliation forces. All 

new TAC aircraft had a nuclear capability. Because of this emphasis, TAC 

depended on the Navy for the development of conventional munitions.82
114

Despite these developments, by the late 1950s, TAC was beginning 

a revival of CAS awareness that would pay dividends in the next decade. 

In 1957, TAC and CONARC drew up an agreement on a modified airground system that, with a few minor modifications, was used throughout 

the Vietnam War.83

Figure 24. F-104 Starfighter (left) and F-105 Thunderchief (right).

In addition, the Air Force began fielding a new generation of aircraft 

that could be used in CAS operations. These included the F-100 Super 

Sabre, a supersonic fighter-bomber fielded in 1955. Better fighter-bombers 

followed the Super Sabre, which included the F-104 Starfighter and the 

F-105 Thunderchief, both deployed starting in 1958. The F-104 was the 

first USAF jet capable of mach 2 speed and had a combination of a 20-mm 

cannon, two missiles, and a bomb load of 2,000 pounds. The F-105 also 

had a 20-mm cannon and could carry 4,000 pounds of bombs for CAS 

missions.84

In the late 1950s, new and improved aerial munitions also were being 

developed, which began to be fielded in the early 1960s. These included 

cluster bombs, pod-mounted 20-mm guns that could be attached to fighterbombers, and point-target rocket launchers. 

With these jets and projected improved munitions in the inventory, 

TAC began reemphasizing nonnuclear missions in 1959.85

TAC’s reinvigoration continued when the Kennedy administration 

instituted its policy of flexible response, which stressed conventional 

capabilities as much as the nuclear one. TAC began conducting formal 

joint peacetime training with the Army in 1962 and, in 1963, began 

permanently posting FACs and air liaison officers with Army units. On 

the eve of Vietnam, the USAF deployed 15,218 tactical fighter-bombers 

in 21 wings.86

US Air Force photos
115

Figure 25. The M102 105-mm howitzer.

The vicissitudes of the new look-flexible response had little impact on 

conventional field artillery, aside from organizational shifts in 1957 and 

1963. In the latter ROAD reorganization, brigades replaced the former 

battle groups and earlier regiments as the element supported by the DS 

field artillery battalion. Infantry divisions still fielded three 105-mm DS 

battalions and a 155-mm general support (GS) battalion. The field artillery 

received a new 105-mm howitzer in 1966, the M102, which replaced the 

World War II-era M101. Under ROAD, armored and mechanized divisions 

contained three 155-mm self-propelled DS battalions equipped with the 

new M109 and an 8-inch (203-mm) self-propelled GS battalion. The 

Army organized nondivisional artillery under artillery groups and corps 

artillery headquarters.87

The fire support system was similar to that used in Korea, with 

several key changes. In terminology, the term “fire support officer” (FSO) 

replaced ALNO. The change was not purely cosmetic. The FSO was 

now considered to be the fire support coordinator (FSCOORD) for the 

command. The FSCOORD managed all the fire support available to the 

organization, including field artillery, attack helicopters, close air support, 

naval gunfire, and at the battalion level, usually, the heavy mortar platoon. 

At levels higher than battalion, the artillery unit commander was actually Globalsecurity.org photo
116

the FSCOORD, but this responsibility was normally delegated to the FSO 

at the supported unit.88

Infantry

Field 

Artillery

FIRING

BTRIES

DIV

x x

BDE

x

BN FDC

DIVARTY

x x

BN

I I

CO

I

FSO FSO

REINFORCING

BTRIES

DS BN

I I

FO

BTRY 

FDC C hain of com m and

C oordination/liaison

Preplanned req uests

Im m ediate req uests

Figure 26. The Army Fire Support System, 1965.

Counterinsurgency in Vietnam would prove a challenge for both field 

artillery and close air support. The supported units were often dispersed far 

wider than they would have been in conventional operations. There was 

no rear area. These two factors caused the artillery to adopt the firebase 

concept. To protect scattered artillery units, usually of battery size, units 

established semipermanent firebases (or fire support bases (FSBs)), usually 

at the beginning of an operation. 

FSBs typically contained one or two batteries (usually a DS and a 

GS battery) and a defensive force consisting of an infantry company 

on rotation from the supported battalion. With dispersion in Vietnam, 

artillery battalions, usually otherwise in support of a whole brigade, often 

broke down their batteries and dedicated their support to specific infantry 

battalions. Likewise, battery FDCs, usually answerable to the battalion 

FDC, often acted independently. Figure 27 provides an example of how 

artillery deployed into firebases for an operation.89

Despite their defenses, firebases often became prime targets for the 

enemy. The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong frequently tried to infiltrate 

firebases in swift night raids called sapper attacks. The optimistic objective 

of a sapper attack was to overrun the FSB. Few sapper attacks were 

successful, but the ones that were usually resulted in the destruction of 

several cannons and the killing or wounding of gun crews.90
117

Figure 27. FSBs in the A Shau Valley, 1969.

Unlike in Korea, in Vietnam, the Army deployed extensive artillery 

assets. In 1969, the Army deployed 61 artillery battalions to support 

59 infantry battalions, a ratio of roughly one field artillery battalion for 

every infantry battalion. Additionally, most DS battalions created a fourth 

battery in response to the large areas of operations in which most brigades 

operated. Facilitating the use of the fires of these units, the FOs and FSOs 

received specialized training at the Field Artillery School. What had been 

a rotating duty in World War II had now evolved into one of the most 

important branch duties. In the decade after the war, the FO/FSO team 

would undergo more changes.91

Air Force close air support was much better prepared for operations 

in Vietnam than it had been for Korea. However, Vietnam presented 

challenges in style of warfare and terrain. The enemy was initially fighting 

an insurgency and, because of the limited nature of the war, often had 

readily available sanctuaries into which to flee. The jungle environment 

resembled that of the Pacific theater in World War II, but there the enemy 

would not stand and fight to the last life. 

Although one scholar contends there was extensive interservice 

rivalry in Vietnam, the strain between Army and Air Force commanders 

seen in Korea was less so in Vietnam. There was no Vietnam version of 

Almond. The unique circumstances of the war in Southeast Asia resolved 

most of these issues. These are discussed in terms of the CAS themes from 

Korea.92
118

The prioritization of air missions and air mission tasking was not a 

major issue of contention in Vietnam as both the Air Force and Army had 

set up systems to streamline the process. Additionally, the dispersion of 

deployment and operations blurred the distinction between interdiction 

and close air support. The system for the tasking of air missions in Vietnam 

developed from the 1957 agreement between TAC and CONARC. Both 

services set up the air-ground system in the early years before US ground 

troops were committed to the war and expanded and adjusted the system 

thereafter. In May 1966, the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam 

(MACV), combined the Air Force and Army systems under the Joint 

Air-Ground Operations System (JAGOS) (figure 28). At each echelon 

from battalion to theater command, the Army and Air Force had parallel 

elements designed to control and coordinate air support.93

Control of air assets was one of the Korean War issues. The Air 

Force considered the centralization of airpower to be essential. But under 

JAGOS, the Air Force retained centralized control while allowing for 

decentralized execution. The mission of JAGOS was the tasking of air 

support. Preplanned requests could be submitted from any Army echelon 

at least 24 hours before their planned execution. Such requests passed 

through the Army fire support elements (fire support coordination center 

at battalion and brigade levels—essentially the S3 air and FSO), the 

division tactical operations center (DTOC), and corps tactical operations 

center (CTOC) to the Tactical Air Support Element (TASE) at MACV, 

which worked in tandem with the Air Force’s Tactical Air Control Center. 

TACC allocated available sorties to ground units and passed on approved 

preplanned CAS mission requests to the TACC for execution.94

After the problems with immediate CAS requests in Korea, the 

services developed a highly effective system for use in Vietnam. Immediate 

requests went directly from units in the field to the Air Force agency at the 

Direct Air Support Center (DASC), an element found in each Vietnamese 

corps district. DASC provided decentralized execution of immediate 

air missions. The DASC coordinated with the CTOC, the parallel Army 

agency, and if the Army agreed with the mission, ordered its execution.95

The Air Force provided TACPs down to battalion level in Vietnam and 

extensively used airborne FACs flying in a series of observation planes, 

which culminated in the fielding of the OV-10 Bronco in 1968. The OV10 could loiter for up to 3 hours while directing airstrikes. The Bronco 

remained in service until the early 1990s.96
119

FFV/

CORPS

x x x

MACV

x x x x

Army

Air 

Force

AIR UNITS

DIV

x x

BDE

x

BN

I I

TASE

TACC

CTOC DTOC FSCC FSCC

DASC

AFAC

TACP

C hain of com m and

Preplanned req uests

Im m ediate req uests

TACP TACP

Figure 28. The Joint Air-Ground Operations System in Vietnam.

Figure 29. O-V-10 Bronco.

As it was in Korea, the types of aircraft for use in CAS missions in 

Vietnam were a major interservice issue. Originally, the USAF deployed 

the A-1 Skyraider, a Navy CAS plane of late World War II vintage. As 

Vietnam received a higher priority, jets replaced propeller planes. By 

1967, another Navy design, the F-4 Phantom, became the standard Air 

Force CAS fighter-bomber in Southeast Asia. At the end of the war, the 

A-7D Corsair was fielded, yet another Navy plane adopted for USAF use. 

Aircraft originally designed for carrier landings and takeoffs proved useful http://www.dodmedia.osd.mil/Assets/1985/ Air_Force/DF-ST-85-05744.JPEG
120

in the CAS role because they could land at a variety of airfields and were 

not too sophisticated in design that many of the chrome features would not 

be needed for close air support.97

Figure 30. A-1 Skyraiders (left) and F-4 Phantom (right).

The USAF also began a tradition of converting transport aircraft into 

CAS roles. The first of these was the AC-47. This craft, nicknamed “Spooky” 

or “Puff the Magic Dragon,” was a C-47 World War II-era transport plane 

converted with the placement of three 7.62-mm miniguns in the cargo 

compartment of the plane. Using an electronic targeting system, the pilot 

fired the miniguns from the cockpit. Spooky was phased out by 1969 and 

replaced with the AC-119, a similar design mounting four miniguns and 

two 20-mm Vulcan cannons. Concurrent with the introduction of the AC119, the AC-130 Spectre gunship began deployment. The AC-130 was 

originally armed similar to the AC-119, but later variants included the 

mounting of a M102 howitzer in front of the rear cargo ramp. The AC-130 

has remained in service to this day.98

SAC executed operations in Vietnam using B-52 Stratofortress 

strategic bombers under the banner of Arc Light. A single Arc Light 

aircraft could drop 84 500- and 750-pound bombs. More than half of 

the 67,000 Arc Light sorties took place in South Vietnam and required 

ground coordination. The overwhelming majority of Army generals polled 

considered the effects of B-52 strikes to be the best support received from 

the Air Force.99

Army Aviation in Vietnam and After

Both American and South Vietnamese troops used helicopters 

extensively for transportation and fire support. The first US helicopters 

deployed to Vietnam in 1962 to support the forces of the Army of the 

Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). Most helicopter units remained theater 

assets, assigned to the 1st Aviation Brigade, which was established in 1966. US Air Force photos
121

The brigade administratively controlled all aviation assets not assigned to 

divisions and, at one time or another, had 7 aviation group headquarters, 

20 aviation battalions, and 4 air cavalry squadrons under its command. For 

operations, the aviation groups, with varying subordinate battalions, were 

attached to divisions or higher headquarters units.100

During the Vietnam War, Army commanders used armed helicopters 

primarily to escort helicopter assaults and provide fire support during such 

aerial movements. The Army activated its first armed helicopter unit in 

July 1962. Many additional units followed. Based on the findings of the 

Howze Board, the Army began developing an attack helicopter in 1963. 

The result of this research and development effort was to field the AH-56 

Cheyenne. However, on an interim basis, the Army used UH-1Ds and then 

a Huey derivative, the AH-1 Cobra, which began fielding in Vietnam in 

1967. The prototype for the Cheyenne also came out in 1967. The AH56 was virtually a flying tank, equipped with various combinations of a 

30-mm automatic gun turret, 40-mm grenade launcher, a turreted 7.62-

mm Gatling gun, the TOW (tube-fired, optically-tracked, wire-guided) 

ATGM, and 2.75-inch rocket launchers. However, after production delays 

and cost overruns, the Army postponed the Cheyenne project in 1969, and 

Congress canceled it all together in 1972 primarily because the Air Force 

began developing the A-10 CAS aircraft. The Cobra remained the standard 

Army attack helicopter for more than another decade.101

The Air Force’s acceptance of the Army’s lead in helicopter 

development was at least partially in response to criticism of the air 

service’s CAS effort in Vietnam. Operations in Southeast Asia highlighted 

the differences between the Army and Air Force in relation to close 

air support, particularly in terms of aircraft design. In this dispute, the 

Army received support from Kennedy administration Defense Secretary 

Robert McNamara and the Navy leadership, both of whom favored the 

development of a specialized CAS aircraft rather than the multirole design 

favored by the Air Force.102

Interservice maneuvering continued during the 1960s. The ultimate 

result was the adoption of the A-7D Corsair and F-4 Phantom, both 

originally Navy designs, for specialized use in the CAS role in Vietnam. 

The Air Force, however, considered the A-7D and F-4 to be only an 

interim solution. The Army’s Cheyenne program threatened the Air Force 

leadership. Chief of Staff McConnell felt the pressure, believing that, if 

the Army fielded the Cheyenne, the Air Force would lose not only aircraft 

funding but, possibly, the CAS mission altogether.103
122

Therefore, breaking its postwar tradition of developing multifunctional 

combat aircraft capable of conducting strategic as well as tactical missions 

as an organizational imperative, the Air Force began developing an aircraft 

specially designed for the CAS mission in 1967. This airplane, fielding 

beginning in 1976, became the A-10 Thunderbolt II. McConnell’s tactics 

were effective: the fielding of the A-10 effectively delayed the Army’s 

development of an advanced attack helicopter for a decade.104

Before deployment to Vietnam, there were fears of the helicopter’s 

vulnerability to ground fire. Operations in Southeast Asia seemed to 

disprove such fears. To quantify such impressions, in 1969, the Army 

command in Vietnam measured the loss rates and relative combat 

effectiveness of the armed helicopter. The results of the study indicated 

that one armed helicopter was lost for every 5,700 sorties. Nevertheless, 

that 199 such aircraft were lost in the 14-month period between 1 February 

1968 and 30 April 1969 that was studied showed the intensity of operations 

at the height of American deployment.105

The two US airmobile divisions in Vietnam contained an aerial 

rocket artillery (ARA) battalion each. Although equipped similar to the 

early model armed helicopter escorts with 2.75-inch rockets, the Army 

treated ARA helicopters as if they were artillery with a company-size ARA 

battery usually supporting each of the division’s three combat brigades. 

ARA units communicated on the artillery radio network rather than on 

that of the supported unit. This sometimes resulted in fratricidal incidents, 

the most famous being during the Battle of Hamburger Hill in May 1969. 

After Vietnam, the attack helicopter organization supplanted both the 

armed helicopter and ARA models.106

In Vietnam, armed helicopters, sometimes also called helicopter 

gunships, and aerial rocket artillery, almost exclusively supported ground 

operations. After-action reports and later commentaries by former ground 

commanders always remarked on the remarkable responsiveness of Army 

aviation fire support. Helicopter fires averaged an arrival time of 12 

minutes from request. Many senior Army officers thought that aviators 

accomplished this feat because helicopter unit commanders had all been 

ground soldiers first and, therefore, acquired a sense of urgency when it 

came to supporting the infantry.107

In April 1972, after almost all US units had redeployed from South 

Vietnam, the North Vietnamese conducted a large attack, which included 

sizable tank forces, against the city of An Loc. ARVN forces and US 

airpower repulsed the Communist offensive. In the operation, a task force 
123

of Army AH-1G Cobra helicopters supported the defense with effective 

attacks on North Vietnamese armor. Army aviation observers later 

considered this the first effective use of Cobras in the attack helicopter 

mode.108

The ACCB concept reemerged in 1970 in Vietnam in an ad hoc fashion. 

On 26 October 1970, the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) received the 

attachment of an additional air cavalry squadron and aviation company. 

The division commander combined these assets with the division’s 

own air cavalry squadron, the divisional aerial rocket battalion, and the 

division’s long-range patrol infantry company to form the provisional 

9th Air Cavalry Brigade (Combat). The brigade, with more than 120 AH1s, represented the largest concentration of armed helicopters under one 

command during the Vietnam War. For most of its 7-month existence, the 

brigade did not operate as a unit. However, it did support several ARVN 

units in operations in Cambodia in February 1971. The brigade was 

disbanded as the 1st Cavalry Division and redeployed to the United States 

in April 1971.109

ACCB performance in Vietnam received mixed reviews. In retirement, 

Howze lamented its absence as a permanent unit. But the organization soon 

reappeared in the postwar experimental TRICAP Division organization. 

The TRICAP (for triple capability) Division was a tweaking of the ROAD 

structure where one division contained three different types of brigades: 

armored, airmobile, and air cavalry combat. When the 1st Cavalry Division 

returned from Vietnam to Fort Hood, Texas, in 1971, it assumed this 

mission. While the airmobile brigade contained three infantry battalions, 

a towed field artillery battalion, and the former division aviation battalion, 

the ACCB was composed of the former divisional air cavalry squadron 

and one newly created active and one projected attack helicopter battalion 

equipped with AH-1 Cobras. The TRICAP experiment lasted until 1974 

when Army planners, concerned with a new emphasis on armored combat 

in Europe, converted the division into a standard armored division and 

transformed the ACCB into the separate 6th Cavalry Brigade (Air Combat). 

Figure 31 shows this brigade’s organizational structure.110
124

Figure 31. Air cavalry combat brigade, 1974.

The TRICAP Division was the Army’s attempt to expand the air 

assault division concept to offensive operations—creating an attack 

aviation element within the divisional structure. Although the concept was 

scrapped, it was a precursor to the later inclusion of an aviation brigade 

into every division a decade later.

The ACCB contained 81 attack helicopters with 27 in the air cavalry 

squadron and 54 in the attack helicopter squadron. This made it a formidable 

aerial strike force, particularly when its Cobras mounted the TOW ATGM 

system. As organized, the ACCB differed from the Howze Board brigade 

(figure 22) in that the latter was almost exclusively an attack helicopter 

unit, containing 144 attack helicopters organized under attack helicopter 

platoon, troop, and squadron headquarters. The 6th ACCB contained only 

a single attack helicopter squadron with one-third of its attack craft in the 

air cavalry squadron.111

Despite organizational differences, the distinction between air cavalry 

and attack helicopter units became blurred in the ACCB, as both types of 

units were given cavalry designations when the brigade was still part of 

the 1st Cavalry Division. In 1975, the first commander of the 6th ACCB 
125

still discerned a distinction between air cavalry and attack helicopters. 

Colonel Charles Canedy saw it as a matter of organization: “Any aviation 

organization with attack helicopters can attack. The air cavalry troop 

can attack with its nine AH-1s. It cannot, however, sustain a sizeable 

attack. The attack troop, on the other hand, with its three platoons of five 

operational AH-1s each, can sustain a platoon-sized attack indefinitely.”112

However, in later years, particularly after Aviation became a separate 

Army branch in 1983, battalion-size units equipped primarily with attack 

helicopters could be designated either as attack helicopter battalions or as 

air cavalry squadrons. Although not shown in unit designations, the Army 

drew a distinction between air cavalry troops and squadrons that were 

reconnaissance organizations and those that were really attack helicopter 

units. The latter fell under a table of organization and equipment (TOE) 

for an “air cavalry attack” unit. The only difference between the mission 

statement of an air cavalry attack unit and an attack helicopter organization 

was the addition of two traditional cavalry missions: economy-of-force 

and security operations.113

The Key West Agreement had broadly defined airpower, including 

a bundle of missions to support ground forces. The Johnson-McConnell 

Agreement of 1966 gave the Army control over such support missions 

conducted at the tactical level by rotary-wing aircraft. While airpower had 

always been a joint function, with the Navy and Marine Corps fielding 

their own aviation components in addition to the Air Force’s strategic, 

tactical, and support forces, the 1966 agreement formalized a role for the 

Army in aviation at the tactical level as well.114

Summary

The period from 1946 to 1975 established and reestablished the roles 

and missions between the Air Force and Army in terms of close air support. 

At several times during this period, close air support became a decidedly 

secondary mission in favor of strategic bombing and nuclear forces. In 

the first case, war resolved this issue; in the second, the accession of a 

new president with a different vision revitalized close air support. Despite 

some issues, Vietnam was a success in interservice cooperation. Part of 

this was the Army’s ability to develop the attack helicopter. The foray into 

counterinsurgency also eliminated some of the major issues between the 

services.

Field artillery retained and refined its successful World War II system, 

which provided responsive and massed fires. The FDC and FO system 

continued to be tweaked. The role of the artillery liaison officer gradually 
126

developed into that of the fire support officer who was responsible for 

coordinating not only artillery support but also other fires available to the 

supported unit. 

After Vietnam, the United States turned its attention back to the Cold 

War where the threat of massed Soviet armor and artillery in Central 

Europe reinvigorated the need for joint combined arms in any projected 

future war. The introduction of the attack helicopter complicated the CAS 

debate. The development of precision munitions would revitalize airpower 

theory, both as an independent force on the battlefield and in conjunction 

with ground forces.
127

Notes

1. Thomas Alexander Hughes, Overlord: General Pete Quesada and the 

Triumph of Tactical Air Power in World War II (New York: Free Press, 1995), 

308–309.

2. US Department of the Army, Field Manual 6-20, Field Artillery Tactics 

and Techniques (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 1948), 68, 109, 114. 

New tables of organization and equipment (TOE) gave each firing battery in a 

direct support field artillery battalion three FO teams. The battalion headquarters 

battery (HHB) contained four ALNO positions. The HHB in each general support 

field artillery battalion contained two FO teams and one ALNO. Each tank 

company was issued an extra tank for the FO to fire in. The division artillery of 

the armored division was also standardized to match that of the infantry division 

(i.e., the division gained a 155-mm GS battalion), except the guns were all selfpropelled. See Janice E. McKenney, The Organizational History of Field Artillery, 

1775–2003 (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 2007) 190–

191.

3. McKenney, 196–197.

4. McKenney, 197, 200, 203.

5. McKenney, 201–203.

6. McKenney, 204–205.

7. McKenney, 198.

8. Ian Gooderson, Air Power at the Battlefront: Allied Close Air Support in 

Europe 1943–45 (Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1998), 167.

9. US War Department, Field Manual 31-35, Air-Ground Operations

(Washington, DC: War Department, 1946), 30.

10. US War Department, Field Manual 31-35, Air-Ground Operations, John 

Schlight, Help From Above: Air Force Close Air Support of the Army, 1946–1973

(Washington, DC: US Air Force History and Museums Program, 2003), 58–59.

11. Field Manual 31-35, Air-Ground Operations, 5, 12–13, 38.

12. Field Manual 31-35, Air-Ground Operations, 2, 63–65.

13. Field Manual 31-35, Air-Ground Operations, 7, 63–65; Schlight, 60.

14. Field Manual 31-35, Air-Ground Operations, 3, 7–8, 63.

15. Field Manual 31-35, Air-Ground Operations, 2–3, 66.

16. Schlight, 62–63.

17. Schlight, 62; Hughes, 311–312.

18. Hughes, 305, 311.

19. Hughes, 312.

20. Hughes, 304–306.

21. Schlight, 117–118.

22. Schlight, 120; Michael Lewis, LtGen Ned Almond, USA: A Ground 

Commander’s Conflicting View With Airmen Over CAS Doctrine and Employment

(Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air University Press, 1997), 35, 38.

23. Schlight, 133, 135; Lewis, 35–36.

24. Lewis, 57–58: Schlight, 164–165.

25. Schlight, 134.
128

26. Lewis, 34–35; Schlight, 123, 133.

27. Schlight, 134.

28. Schlight, 138.

29. Schlight, 139.

30. Schlight, 140.

31. Lewis, 58; Schlight, 145–147.

32. Schlight, 150–151. Technically, X Corps was a separate command from 

Eighth Army until 1951, allowing Almond to get direct access to the Fifth Air 

Force staff.

33. Schlight.

34. Schlight, 152–153.

35. Schlight, 143, 167; Lewis, 62.

36. Lewis, 64.

37. Schlight, 122; Lewis, 43–44.

38. Lewis, 44.

39. Schlight, 139.

40. Schlight, 160.

41. Lewis, 45.

42. Lewis, 66.

43. Lewis, 69–70.

44. Lewis, 71.

45. Lewis, 72.

46. Schlight, 179.

47. This graphic was adapted from a figure in the US Army Aviation 

Warfighting Center, Aviation Warfighting Treatise (Fort Rucker, AL: US Army 

Aviation Warfighting Center, 1993), 10.

48. Schlight, 93.

49. House Committee on Government Operations, National Security Act of 

1947 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1947), 14.

50. Robert F. Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine: Basic Thinking in the United 

States Air Force, 1907–1960, vol. I (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air University 

Press, 1989), 198–199; Edgar F. Raines Jr. “Army-Air Force Cooperation: When 

There Was Common Ground in the Air,” Army 45 (March 1995), 27–28.

51. Ian Horwood, Interservice Rivalry and the Vietnam War (Fort 

Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2006), 16–20; Douglas N. 

Campbell, The Warthog and the Close Air Support Debate (Annapolis, MD: 

Naval Institute Press, 2003), 37.

52. Ibid.; Alain C. Enthoven and K. Wayne Smith, How Much Is Enough? 

Shaping the Defense Program, 1961–1969 (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 9.

53. The Air Force rightfully feared the Army was trying to take over the CAS 

mission. In his memoirs, recently retired Army Chief of Staff Matthew Ridgway 

devoted a whole chapter to his belief that the Air Force neglected support to 

the Army and that something had to be done to correct the situation. Ridgway 

culminated his comments with the statement that, if the Air Force continued 

to ignore the needs of the Army in close air support, the Army would have to 
129

eventually develop its own CAS forces. See Matthew B. Ridgway, Soldier: The 

Memoirs of Matthew B. Ridgway (New York: Harper, 1956), 311–316.

54. Horwood, 16.

55. James W. Bradin, From Hot Air to Hellfire: The History of Army Attack 

Aviation in World War II (Novato, CA: Presidio, 1994), 61–62; Edgar F. Raines 

Jr., Eyes of the Artillery: The Origins of Modern US Army Aviation (Washington, 

DC: US Army Center of Military History, 2000), 78–80, 85, 129, 138, 141.

56. Raines, Eyes of the Artillery, 303–305. In 1949, Army Ground Forces 

Light Aviation was redesignated Army Aviation.

57. Raines, “Army-Air Force Cooperation,” 27; Richard P. Weinert, History 

of Army Aviation, 1950–62, ed. Susan Canedy (Fort Monroe, VA: Office of the 

Command Historian, US Army Training and Doctrine Command, 1991), 15.

58. Weinert, 10–11, 15–16, 279.

59. Weinert, 17, 19, 38–39, 66–67; Frederic A. Bergerson, The Army 

Gets an Air Force: Tactics of Insurgent Bureaucratic Politics (Baltimore, MD: 

Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 71; Francis J. Huber, “Force Design, 

the Airmobile Concept and Operational Art” (Monograph, School of Advanced 

Military Studies, US Army Command and General Staff College, 2000), 6; 

Horwood, 23–24.

60. Raines, “Army-Air Force Cooperation,” 27; Weinert, 203.

61. Frank W. Tate, “Army Aviation as a Branch, Eighteen Years After 

the Decision” (Monograph, School of Advanced Military Studies, US Army 

Command and General Staff College, 2001), 9.

62. James M. Gavin, “Cavalry and I Don’t Mean Horses,” Armor 63 (May–

June 1954), 18–22; John A. Bonin, “Toward the Third Dimension in Combined 

Arms: The Evolution of Armed Helicopters Into Air Maneuver Units in Vietnam, 

1965–1973” (US Army Command and General Staff College, 1986), 4; Weinert, 

183. 

63. Weinert, 159–160, 162–167, 169; John A. Bonin, “Toward the Third 

Dimension in Combined Arms: The Evolution of Armed Helicopters into Air 

Maneuver Units in Vietnam, 1965–1973,” (Monograph, US Army Command and 

General Staff College, 1986), 5.

64. Hamilton H. Howze, “The Howze Board,” Part 1, Army 24 (February 

1974): 13; Eugene H. Grayson, “Hamilton H. Howze: Visionary Giant From the 

Past,” US Army Aviation Digest 37 (November–December 1991): 4.

65. Weinert, 190–193.

66. Howze, “The Howze Board,” Part 1, 13; Grayson, 4; Weinert, 181–182.

67. Howze, “The Howze Board,” Part 1, 13; Huber, 27.

68. Raines, “Army-Air Force Cooperation,” 26; “An Abridged History of 

the Army Attack Helicopter Program,” (Washington, DC: Office of the Assistant 

Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, 1973), 1–2; Weinert, 115–117, 119–120, 125, 

206–207; Howze, “The Howze Board,” Part 1, 14; Jacob A. Stockfisch, The 

1962 Howze Board and Army Combat Developments (Santa Monica, CA: Rand 

Corporation Arroyo Center, 1994), 1.
130

69. Stockfisch, 39; Hamilton Howze, “The Howze Board,” Part 2, Army 24 

(March 1974), 21; Huber, 10.

70. Howze, “The Howze Board,” Part 2, 21; Stockfisch, 20; Huber, 12; 

Horwood, 57.

71. Stockfisch, 20, 22–23, 25; Howze, “The Howze Board,” Part 2, 21; 

Horwood, 47; Lieutenant General John J. Tolson, Airmobility 1961–1971, 

Vietnam Studies (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 1973) 11–12; Huber, 

8.

72. Horwood, 47–50.

73. US Army Tactical Mobility Requirements Board, “Final Report” (Fort 

Bragg, NC: US Army Tactical Mobility Requirements Board, 20 August 1962), 

40–41; Stockfisch, 20–23; Bonin, 5.

74. Ibid.; Horwood, 56–57.

75. Raines, “Army-Air Force Cooperation,” 29; Stockfisch, x; Bonin, 5-6; 

J.D. Coleman, Pleiku: The Dawn of Helicopter Warfare in Vietnam (New York: 

St. Martin’s Press, 1988), 31.

76. Raines, “Army-Air Force Cooperation,” 27; Horwood, 114; Campbell, 

62–63.

77. Tolson, 58, 61; Huber, 18.

78. Weinert, 141–143, 147–148, 287; George E. Handley, “The Division 

Aviation Company,” Military Review 41 (March 1961): 55–57. 

79. Weinert, 111, 125; Bergerson, 76–77; “Helicopters in Algeria: Neither 

Rocks nor Rain Impede the Usefulness of Copters as Transport and Attack 

Vehicles,” Army 11 (November 1960): 58; Raines, “Army-Air Force Cooperation,” 

27; Bonin, 5; Stockfisch, 20.

80. John C. Bahnsen Jr., “Troop D, Armored Cavalry Squadron, ROAD 

Armored Division,” Armor 72 (March–April 1963): 33–37; Shelby L. Stanton, 

Vietnam Order of Battle (Washington, DC: US News Books, 1981), 48, 129; 

Bonin, 12.

81. Stanton, Vietnam Order of Battle, 129; Matthew Brennan, Hunter-Killer 

Squadron: Aero-Weapons, Aero-Scouts, Aero-Rifles, Vietnam 1965–1972 (Novato, 

CA: Presidio, 1990), 273–274; Matthew Brennan, Headhunters: Stories From the 

1st Squadron, 9th Cavalry in Vietnam, 1965–1971 (Novato, CA: Presidio, 1987), 

265–266, 268.

82. Schlight, 182–183, 185.

83. Schlight, 213.

84. Schlight, 187–188.

85. Schlight, 236–237.

86. Schlight, 239, 241.

87. David Ewing Ott, Field Artillery 1954–1973, Vietnam Studies (1975; 

repr., Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 1995), 49–50.

88. David Ewing Ott, 47–48.

89. David Ewing Ott, 42, 60.

90. David Ewing Ott, 161–167.

91. David Ewing Ott, 169.
131

92. Horwood, 1; Schlight, 300.

93. Schlight, 302, 306.

94. Schlight, Ibid., 306.

95. Schlight.

96. Schlight, 318–319.

97. Schlight, 310–311.

98. Schlight, 316.

99. Schlight, 324–325.

100. Raines, “Army-Air Force Cooperation,” 27; Stanton, Vietnam Order 

of Battle, 109.

101. Raines, “Army-Air Force Cooperation,” 27; “An Abridged History 

of the Army Attack Helicopter Program,” 2–3; Bonin, 5; “AH-56A Cheyenne,” 

GlobalSecurity.org, http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/ah56.htm (accessed on 28 November 2007); Bonin, 10, 17, 22, 32–33, 45; Tate, 13.

102. Campbell, 45–46.

103. Campbell, 45, 58–61, 199.

104. Campbell, 65, 73, 110–112.

105. Bonin, 20. The Air Force loss rate during the same timeframe was 1 

loss per every 3,000 sorties.

106. Bonin, 21, 41; Wilson, 356.

107. Tate, 15, 37.

108. James H. Willbanks, Thiet Giap! The Battle of An Loc, April 1972 (Fort 

Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute, US Army Command and General 

Staff College, 1993), 28–29, 64. The three major helicopter units at An Loc, 

although all equipped with the AH-1G Cobra, had three different designations: 

aerial artillery, air cavalry, and assault helicopter.

109. Colonel Charles E, Canedy. “From ACCB to the 6th Cavalry Brigade 

(Air Combat),” US Army Aviation Digest 21 (May 1975): 1; Shelby Stanton, 

Anatomy of a Division: The 1st Cav in Vietnam (Novato, CA: Presidio, 1987), 

236–239; Bonin 23–26.

110. John Norton, “Tricap,” Army 21 (June 1971): 14–19; Canedy, 1–4; 

Bonin, 25, 30–31, 38; John B. Wilson, Maneuver and Firepower: The Evolution of 

Divisions and Separate Brigades (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military 

History, 1998), 358–359; Huber, 14.

111. Canedy, 1.

112. Canedy, 4.

113. Gordon E. Sayre, “Air Cavalry Attack Troop,” Armor 87 (November–

December 1978): 10–15.

114. Horwood, 15; Futrell, 198.

133

Chapter 4

The Rise of Technology: US Army and Air Force Fire Support 

Since 1975

The period since 1975 has been a time of organizational and 

technological innovation for field artillery, Army aviation, and Air Force 

close air support. The late 1970s also ushered in technological advances 

in weaponry and communications that affected both artillery systems 

and close air support. Improved weapons platforms such as the Apache 

attack helicopter and laser designation targeting systems increased the 

effectiveness of fire support. In conjunction with materiel improvements, 

the US Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) revised doctrine 

to include Air Force close air support as an integral part of the AirLand 

Battle concept, while simultaneously fielding improved organizations, 

such as larger field artillery batteries and the fire support team (FIST), and 

creating divisional aviation brigades.

After Vietnam, the Armed Forces of the United States refocused on 

Central Europe where the Soviet Union had executed a large buildup of 

armored forces during the Vietnam era. In response to this expansion, the 

United States Army began an unprecedented peacetime expansion of field 

artillery units in West Germany that resulted in fielding more field artillery 

battalions than mechanized infantry battalions. 

Field Artillery in the Late Cold War Period

While the FO concept had been used effectively since World War II, 

the fear of the renewed Soviet threat resulted in TRADOC tasking the Field 

Artillery School to analyze the current fire support system and present a 

series of recommendations. The Field Artillery School created the Close 

Support Study Group (CSSG) in July 1975. In November 1975, the CSSG 

made its recommendations, and the Army began implementing them in the 

following years with the transition being completed by 1978.1

The recommendations included creating FISTs in each maneuver 

battalion (tank and infantry) in the Army. The FIST would technically 

belong to the direct support field artillery battalion habitually associated 

with the maneuver battalion’s brigade. In a later tweak, the divisional 

general support field artillery battalion provided additional FISTs for the 

divisional cavalry squadron and any extra maneuver battalions assigned 

to the division. Both the FIST and the FSOs at the battalion and brigade 

levels, while assigned to field artillery units, remained permanently with 

the supported units during peacetime and wartime.2
134

Before the development of the FIST, all fire support assets available to 

the maneuver company commander supplied separate FOs or coordinators. 

This included FOs from the field artillery direct support battalion, the 

company 81-mm mortar platoon, and the battalion 107-mm heavy mortar 

platoon, each equipped with jeeps even in mechanized units. Under the 

FIST concept, these FOs were consolidated into one team. 

A field artillery lieutenant, who replaced the company FO, led the 

team. The team chief was equipped with his own vehicle. In mechanized 

units, this was an M113 armored personnel carrier. Later, this vehicle was 

upgraded into the fire support vehicle (FSV), originally an M113 equipped 

with a laser designator. The FSV was periodically upgraded with M2 

Bradley infantry fighting vehicle and Stryker wheeled armored vehicle. 

The FSV was fully equipped with the latest communications equipment.3

The FIST chief was the fire support coordinator for the company. He 

was expected to do the fire planning for the unit and recommend the best 

way to attack a target. FIST chiefs were trained to call in close air support, 

but the Air Force usually reserved this mission for its FAC in its TACP. By 

the 1980s, each maneuver battalion received a TACP.4

A fire support noncommissioned officer (NCO) assisted the FIST 

chief. The rest of the team consisted of enlisted forward observers for each 

company platoon. Whereas in the past, enlisted FOs typically held the 

mortar military specialty (11C), under FIST, they were specifically trained 

under a new artillery specialty (13F).

The Field Artillery branch had begun automating fire direction when 

it introduced the field artillery digital automatic computer (FADAC) in 

1959. A completely digitized system, the Tactical Fire Direction System 

(TACFIRE), took more than 20 years to develop. TACFIRE began fielding 

in 1982. It used VHF radio communications and linked digitally the FO, the 

FDC, and the guns. Instead of producing a verbal call for fire via radio, the 

observer could input the fire information directly into a manpack terminal 

device. However, with the digital revolution of the 1980s, the system was 

virtually obsolete as soon as it was fielded. It was phased out by 1995, 

and a completely digitized system, the Advanced Field Artillery Digital 

Data System (AFATDS), superseded it. The development of the Global 

Positioning System (GPS) in the 1980s greatly assisted field artillery fire 

support. The GPS allowed observers and gunners to accurately locate 

guns, observer locations, and targets without the need for time-consuming 

surveys.5
135

Technology also affected field artillery munitions in the form of 

precision munitions. Fielded in 1984 for the 155-mm howitzer was 

the cannon-launched guided projectile (CLGP) or Copperhead round. 

Copperhead had a laser targeting device in its nose that allowed an 

observer with a laser designator to guide the round to a point target. In 

tests, Copperhead had a 70-percent accuracy rate. Most misses were based 

on human error rather than technical failings.6

FASCAM was a family of scatterable mines. A FASCAM round was 

fired into a target army and its bomblets popped out and produced an instant 

minefield that could be set to explode and dissolve after a certain number of 

hours. Dual-purpose improved conventional munitions (DPICMs) were an 

improvement on the previously fielded improved conventional munition 

(ICM) rounds. The DPICM was an antipersonnel round containing packed 

bomblets that on release exploded over the target area. Both FASCAM and 

DPICM proved to be a double-edged sword when bomblets frequently did 

not explode and became a ground hazard to friendly troops, particularly in 

Operation DESERT STORM.7

Precision munitions allowed artillery, an area fire weapon since 1914, 

to hit point and moving targets with a high degree of accuracy. However, 

field artillery use of such munitions had a lot of overhead. The rounds 

were expensive; an observer had to have line of sight with the target. 

Targets were limited to the line of sight of observers on the ground, which 

terrain or enemy fire often restricted. Eventually, air-delivered precision 

munitions, therefore, became the preferred method of employment for 

precision munitions.

During the 1980s, the Army fielded improved guns, including a new 

155-mm towed howitzer. For counterfire, each division received a multiple 

launched rocket system (MLRS) battery. The MLRS provided the ultimate 

in artillery area fire. Its 12 rockets could saturate a 1-kilometer grid square 

with bomblets in less than a minute.8

Deep Attack and the Development of the Divisional Aviation 

Brigade

Despite the cancellation of the Cheyenne program, the transformation 

of one of the two Army air assault divisions into an armored unit and 

the reduction of the aviation battalion in many Army divisions to a single 

company, review of the Vietnam experience reflected on the importance 

of attack helicopters in close support of ground troops. Army leadership 

saw the development of this capability as the most significant outcome of 

the war. A Defense Department study in 1971 further validated the Army’s 
136

view that armed helicopters were a component of landpower that did not 

usurp the Air Force CAS mission.9

Many Army aviators and senior Army officers stressed the special 

characteristics of the attack helicopter. Many of these characteristics, 

such as agility, speed, and employment flexibility, were similar to those 

of Air Force aircraft. However, the attack helicopter also had a battlefield 

maneuverability that made it particularly capable in supporting ground 

maneuver operations. Army Chief of Staff General Creighton Abrams 

commented to Congress in April 1973 that “the attack helicopter’s unique 

ability to provide precise close in fires to the engaged infantryman is 

essential.”10

Although some members of Congress still expressed concern over 

the attack helicopter’s vulnerability to ground fire, by 1973, weapons 

technology had advanced greatly to improve the capabilities of the attack 

helicopter, particularly in the antiarmor role where the fielding of a Cobramounted version of the TOW ATGM made that system much more lethal. 

Tests conducted in Germany in 1973 and 1975 reaffirmed this advance. 

In 1973, Congress funded a new Advanced Attack Helicopter Program 

(AAHP) to replace the Cheyenne program. The AAHP produced the AH64 Apache a decade later.11

Doctrine writers who also projected the operational use of attack 

helicopters remained committed to the support of ground operations 

in the 1976 edition of the Army field service regulation, Field Manual 

(FM) 100-5, Operations. However, in 1977, TRADOC received a 

new commander, General Donn Starry, who had new ideas. Starry had 

previously commanded the V Corps in Germany and, in that capacity, had 

extensively studied Soviet doctrine. Starry feared that the then-current US 

Army active defense doctrine did not adequately account for the depth 

in which the Soviets planned to array their forces as part of the offensive 

operational maneuver concept.12

Starry’s response to this threat was the deep attack. He projected the 

use of available long-range Army artillery and Air Force strike assets to 

conduct independent attacks against Soviet second-echelon forces deep to 

the rear of the front line. By 1982, doctrinal literature considered the deep 

attack an essential part of Army operations and an important component of 

Starry’s new doctrine called AirLand Battle.13

By its nature, the deep attack required Air Force participation. In 

1982, the Army did not field an attack helicopter capable of conducting the 

operations that Starry envisioned. Starry’s staff worked closely with the 
137

Air Force’s Tactical Air Command, headed by General William Creech, to 

develop AirLand Battle on a joint basis. The two generals signed a joint 

operational concept document in April 1981. This agreement and several 

others concerning various areas of Air Force support to ground operations 

promulgated in 1980 and 1981 defined the Air Force role in deep attack. 

Deep attack was essentially the traditional USAF concept of interdiction. 

However, under AirLand Battle, communications and coordination 

channels were streamlined at various command echelons.14

Initially, the attack helicopter was excluded from the deep attack 

equation because of the limited capabilities of the AH-1 Cobra. However, 

when the AH-64 Apache began fielding in January 1984, deep strikes 

became a primary mission of units equipped with the new system. The 

Apache mounted a 30-mm cannon and an advanced ATGM, the Hellfire, 

which could be fired precisely onto a target at great distances using a laser 

designator targeting system. The new aircraft also had a range of 90 miles, 

giving it the ability to move deep into the enemy rear area. Army doctrine 

writers listed aviation for the first time as a separate maneuver arm in the 

1986 version of FM 100-5. More directly, the manual, while mentioning 

the role of Army aviation in supporting ground maneuver, also cited that it 

“increasingly offers opportunities for actual maneuver by air.”15

The Army had established a separate Aviation branch on 6 June 1983. 

By this time, a combat aviation brigade, comprised of a mix of attack 

helicopter, air cavalry, and support aviation units, existed in every Army 

division. The doctrinal shift to the deep attack, along with the establishment 

of the branch and the creation of the brigade, marked the culmination of 

the transformation of Army aviation from an auxiliary support element to 

a maneuver arm in its own right.16

The inclusion of an aviation brigade in the division starting in 1983 

completed a process that began in the early 1970s. A 1973 study had 

recommended including an attack helicopter company in each division to 

provide antiarmor firepower. The mission emphasis for the attack helicopter 

shifted to the antiarmor role with the fielding of the helicopter version of 

the TOW ATGM and the Army’s renewed interest in the European theater, 

resulting from a large buildup of Soviet forces there in the late 1960s.17

The amount and types of aviation in the Army divisional structure had 

fluctuated since the adoption of ROAD in 1962. The ROAD organization 

initially included an aviation battalion in each division. This battalion 

was more a transportation unit than a fighting one, providing command 

and control helicopters and limited troop and supply transportation. In 
138

the ROAD armored and mechanized divisions, which did not deploy to 

Vietnam, the Army reduced the aviation element first to a company, then 

removed it altogether as more helicopters were needed in Southeast Asia. 

In 1970, an aviation company was restored to these units. In Vietnam, each 

deployed division retained its organic aviation battalion, with some units 

receiving additional companies or battalions for extended periods.18

Figure 32. The AH-64 Apache Longbow attack helicopter.

Throughout the immediate post-Vietnam period, the Army 

experimented with various reconfigurations of its combat forces. The one 

that was eventually adopted was called Division 86 and later the Army 

of Excellence (AOE). Starry and TRADOC initiated this program in 

1978 as an attempt to provide updated Army organizations for the new 

family of equipment, including the Apache, which the Army fielded in 

the 1980s. For the attack helicopter, the original concept was to add an 

air cavalry combat brigade built around two attack helicopter battalions 

similar to the already fielded 6th ACCB. However, unlike the ACCB, the 

divisional brigade needed to contain elements other than air cavalry and 

attack helicopter combat units that were necessary to transport troops and 

supplies and to allow commanders to move around the battlefield swiftly.19US Army photo
139

The final structure of the brigade is shown in figure 33. The former 

divisional aviation battalion became the new brigade’s assault helicopter 

battalion. Once fielded, the UH-60 Blackhawk tactical troop transport 

helicopter became the main piece of equipment of the battalion. The 

brigade also included one or two attack helicopter battalions. These 

units contained the new AH-64 Apache in the armored and mechanized 

divisions and modified OH-58D Kiowa observation helicopters to a light 

attack configuration in the light and airborne divisions.20

X

H eadq uarters 

C om pany 1 or 2 Attack 

H elicopter 

Battalions

18 (36) AH -64 

Apaches

Assault

H elicopter

Battalion

24 U H -60 Blackhaw ks

I I I I

Aviation 

M aintenance 

Battalion

[in D ivision 

Support C om m and]

I I I I

I 

2 Air C av T roops

4 AH -64 Apaches each

4 OH -58 Kiow as each

X

I I

3 Arm ored

C av T roops

• Lig ht division cavalry sq uadrons 

had tw o g round troops eq uipped w ith 

H M M W Vs and tw o or three air cav 

troops.

• Som e heavy 

divisions only 

had an assault 

helicopter 

com pany.

C avalry 

Sq uadron

• Lig ht divisions 

used OH -58D 

Kiow as instead 

of Apaches.

Figure 33. Divisional aviation brigade, 1986.

The new brigade also contained the divisional reconnaissance unit 

known as the cavalry squadron. This organization had traditionally been 

placed directly under the division headquarters. The former armored 

cavalry squadron had contained a single air cavalry troop. The new 

structure retained three ground troops equipped with armored vehicles or 

high-mobility, multipurpose wheeled vehicles (HMMWVs) and two air 

troops with an equal number of Apaches and Kiowas each. Army planners 

placed the squadron under the aviation brigade because the consolidation 

of all aircraft in the division under one command was considered most 

important even if it resulted in the brigade receiving two or three troops 

of ground elements as well. In actual practice, the cavalry squadron 

was usually split into ground and air sections with the aviation brigade 

controlling the air troops and the division commander retaining the ground 

troops under his direct command.21
140

Doctrinally, the Army considered the new divisional aviation brigade 

to be a maneuver unit. In fact, although the brigade had the official 

designation simply as “aviation brigade,” official documents and other 

literature often referred to the unit as the “4th Brigade” (the three ground 

maneuver brigades were numbered sequentially) or as the “combat aviation 

brigade (CAB).” The traditional maneuver arms were infantry armor and 

cavalry. These elements maneuvered against the enemy and took and held 

ground. The attack units of the aviation brigade provided the basis for its 

consideration as a maneuver brigade. 

Starting in 1985, Army divisions began creating their aviation 

brigades. The concept of the aviation brigade as a maneuver element 

remained somewhat controversial in the Army. Originally, the emphasis 

was on target servicing. But, by the time of the actual fielding of the 

brigades in 1985, the emphasis had shifted to the role of attack aviation 

as a maneuver element. But, clearly, the aviation brigade could not take 

and hold ground unless reinforced with nonaviation combat units. General 

William Richardson, a successor to Starry as TRADOC commander, 

referred to the brigade as “a maneuver element capable of multifunctional 

use.”22

Clouding the issue of the brigade as a maneuver command was that 

it contained and controlled aviation assets whose roles were intrinsically 

combat support. In particular, the assault helicopter battalion provided airlift 

to combat units and helicopters for commanders, and the cavalry squadron 

was, although placed in the aviation brigade, really a divisional asset. Upon 

the formation of the aviation brigade, some division commanders even 

issued orders placing the squadron under direct divisional control. It was 

clear that, despite doctrinal proclamations, the aviation brigade was not 

the same as a ground maneuver brigade based on its permanent structure.23

There were many good reasons for creating an Army Aviation branch 

in 1983. A 1982 Army study group believed that aviation doctrine and 

training was in such disarray that only creating a single branch could fix 

it. At the time, aviation officers belonged to a different ground branch, 

usually Armor, Artillery, or Infantry. Five different branches or schools 

held proponency for various aspects of the aviation effort.The new branch 

consolidated the management of Army aircraft and aviation doctrine under 

one group.24

However, the branch decision was not without detractors, particularly 

from a group of retired generals that included Howze. These senior officers 

feared that Army aviation leaders would lose their understanding of ground 
141

operations and aviation’s role in relation to it. This understanding had been 

gained from experience while serving as ground soldiers under the old 

system before becoming aviators. Some of the generals believed that the 

various missions and roles of Army aviation were too different to combine 

under one branch. There was also a fear that the new Aviation branch, 

similar to the Air Corps before it, would seek out an independent role apart 

from the combined arms tradition of the ground branches. The deep attack 

concept provided just such a role.25

Figure 34. A-10 Thunderbolt II formation.

Air Force Developments in the 1970s and 1980s

As part of the Cheyenne tradeoff, the USAF developed the A-10 

Thunderbolt II specifically as a CAS aircraft. The A-10 was fielded between 

1977 and 1984. Its original primary mission was to destroy massed Soviet 

armor and integrated air defense systems. The craft contained a nosemounted 30-mm cannon similar to that mounted on the German World 

War II Stuka antitank fighter-bomber. Under its wings, the A-10 could 

carry a variety of munitions, including 500-pound bombs, Sidewinder 

air-to-air missiles, and Maverick air-to-ground missiles. The A-10 design, 

based on a large wingspan and big ailerons, made it highly maneuverable 

at slower speeds and lower altitudes. It did not require long runways and 

could loiter for hours. Its cruising speed of 300 knots was far slower than 

other jet fighter-bombers.26

US Air Force photo
142

Although the mainstay of USAF close air support in the modern era, 

once deployed, the A-10 proved to be as versatile as any multifunctional 

airplane that the Air Force ever fielded. When the Air Force began phasing 

out the Vietnam-era OV-10A air forward air controller (AFAC) aircraft, a 

modified A-10 designated the OA-10A, became the new AFAC platform. 

A-10s also conducted air interdiction and combat search-and-rescue 

missions.27

Much as the Army did with the FIST in the 1970s and 1980s, the Air 

Force began to increasingly professionalize the TACP after Vietnam. While 

the leader of the TACP, formerly called the FAC, but now referred to as the 

air liaison officer (ALO). ALOs formerly had to be pilots, but now other 

flying officers, such as navigators and weapons system officers could be 

ALOs as well. The teams contained specially trained senior NCO airmen 

called ROMADs, which originally stood for radio operators, maintainers, 

and drivers, but since ROMADs have assumed a greater role in calling in 

airstrikes, they have been recast as recon, observe, mark, and destroy.28

In 1994, with the Cold War over and special operations forces (SOF) 

having played an important role in both DESERT STORM Scud hunting 

and in operations in Somalia, the Air Force created its first SOF TACPs. 

ROMADs attended Army Special Forces (SF) training and then were 

assigned operationally to Army SF units. Initially, the SOF TACPs were 

designed merely to teach SOF how to conduct emergency CAS missions. 

But they soon became a permanent feature.29

Table 4. Warden’s Five Rings

Operation DESERT STORM

The deep attack doctrine was put to the test at the beginning of the 

DESERT STORM campaign as part of a special operation. In January 

1991, an Army aviation task force (TF) (TF Normandy) spearheaded the 

air campaign by attacking and destroying two Iraqi air defense missile 

and communications sites 150 miles deep inside Iraq. The task force was 

organized under the commander of one of the attack helicopter battalions 

in the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), the Army’s only air assault 

1. Leadership and command and control nodes.

2. Essential services such as electricity.

3. Infrastructure—roads, bridges, airfi elds.

4. Population.

5. Enemy army in the fi eld.
143

division, and consisted of roughly half of the battalion’s 18 AH-64 

Apaches, supported by several Air Force special operations helicopters.30

Apart from TF Normandy, commanders did not use their divisional 

aviation brigades in an independent role in DESERT STORM. In general, 

the brigade elements were used in various ways to support the parent 

unit’s ground maneuver with the brigade headquarters functioning as the 

clearinghouse for aviation missions. The Army estimated that Apaches 

destroyed more than 500 Iraqi armored vehicles.31

The 1st Armored Division provides an example of the typical operations 

of a divisional aviation brigade in DESERT STORM. At the start of the 

ground campaign, the brigade attached one of its two Apache battalions 

to the corps armored cavalry regiment. The brigade used the remaining 

attack battalion to support the division by advancing in front of the ground 

elements and attacking key Iraqi unit positions. During the night before 

the division’s main attack on the Republican Guard, Apaches and Kiowas 

conducted four separate attacks, reducing significantly the effectiveness 

of the Iraqi defenses and then pursuing and attacking Republican Guard 

armored vehicles as they attempted to escape to the west and north.32

The US deployment to Saudi Arabia emphasized the role of field 

artillery. As part of the DESERT SHIELD buildup, the Army dispatched 

43 field artillery battalions with 296 howitzers and 7 rocket artillery 

(MLRS) battalions. With 53 maneuver battalions (19 tank, 16 mechanized 

infantry, and 18 infantry) deployed, this left a ratio of more than four-fifths 

of a cannon artillery battalion for each maneuver battalion. Including the 

rockets, the ratio was almost 1 to 1.33

In the years before DESERT STORM, airpower theorists, particularly 

Colonel John Warden, revived the concept of the decisive role of airpower. 

In a revival of a pre-Hiroshima concept of nonnuclear strategic air warfare, 

Warden postulated that airpower alone could win wars if properly planned 

and executed. In essence, his theory, as illustrated in his 1988 work, The Air 

Campaign: Planning for Combat, can be viewed as interdiction on steroids. 

Warden thought a comprehensive and systematic campaign should follow 

a series of phases to destroy the enemy system. He presented a construct of 

five rings to be attacked in succession (table 4). The DESERT STORM air 

campaign followed Warden’s pattern (and was partially planned by him).34

Before operations began against Iraq, the commander of the US 

Central Command (CENTCOM), General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, 

the theater commander for Operation DESERT STORM, appointed the 
144

commander of the Central Command Air Forces (CENTAF). General 

Charles Horner, as the Joint Forces Air Component Commander (JFACC), 

controlled the employment of all air assets. His staff drew up a detailed, 

four-phased plan for air operations. Planners originally envisioned a 32-

day campaign (figure 35), with the first 16 days devoted to a separate air 

campaign followed by a 16-day joint ground-air campaign. The original 

plan contained four phases. The first phase was a week-long strategic air 

campaign, follow by the attainment of air supremacy in the Kuwait theater 

and, in the 10 days before the ground offensive, attacks against the Iraqi 

Republican Guard and the other defending Iraqi forces. Since the length 

of the air campaign was predicated on the attriting of the Iraqi defenders 

to 50 percent of effectiveness and destroying the Iraqi infrastructure and 

isolating the Kuwait Theater of Operations (KTO), the duration of the air 

campaign was only tentative.35

P H A S E I: S trategic A ir C am paign

P H A S E II: K TO A ir S uprem ac y

P H A S E IIIa: B attlefield P reparation: R epublic an G uard

P H A S E IIIb: B attlefield P reparation: K uw ait

P H A S E IV : O ffens iv e G round C am paign

D ay s

Figure 35. Estimated theater campaign phase lengths.36

When executed, the air campaign lasted for 43 days (18 January–24 

February 1991), including 38 days before the ground offensive. The 

campaign followed Warden’s five rings, but many of the different levels 

were executed concurrently. The Iraqi population was not attacked. 

Instead, Iraqi air defenses were substituted. 

Horner managed the air campaign by creating a master air plan (MAP) 

and the air tasking order (ATO). The MAP planned out the campaign 

and the goals for each day. It was constantly updated. The ATO was the 
145

execution document. Published daily, it provided specific guidance for the 

aircrews. The process worked best in the early days of the campaign when 

the impact of previous operations or Iraqi response was not a factor.37

The air campaign was the first major operational usage of precision 

guided munitions (PGMs). As such, they had devastating effects on the 

enemy. In terms of close air support, the air campaign shifted to degrading 

the Republican Guard, which Schwarzkopf had declared to be the enemy’s 

center of gravity. In the week before the ground offensive, air assets 

pounded the Iraqi troops defending the front line, with stress on artillery, 

which was the most dangerous threat to the soon-to-be advancing ground 

troops.38

The air offensive was so successful that, when the ground attack 

began on 24 February 1991, it only lasted 100 hours, and the Iraqi 

forces were routed. Under these circumstances, CAS missions were 

virtually unnecessary. Therefore, during the advance, most CAS aircraft 

concentrated on interdiction missions. 

The A-10 and F-111 were the primary CAS aircraft, although F-16s 

and F-15Es were also used. As these aircraft moved deeper into the Iraqi 

rear area, the A-10s proved to be vulnerable to the extensive air defense 

network. Two were shot down on 15 February 1991.39

Figure 36. The F-111 fighter-bomber.

The F-111 Aardvark was a fighter-bomber designed to penetrate US Air Force photo
146

enemy air defense at a low level and at long range. The USAF used it 

from 1967 to 1998. It was used in the later stages of the Vietnam War, 

particularly at the defense of An Loc in 1972, and against Libya in 1986. 

The F-15E Strike Eagle entered service right before DESERT STORM 

and was the USAF’s premier air superiority fighter. It is still in service. 

The F-16 Fighting Falcon entered operational service in 1980 and is the 

USAF’s most numerous multifunction fighter. 

The air campaign was a great success. Iraq was strategically crippled 

in less than 4 weeks. The rapidity of the ground campaign encouraged 

theorists like Warden. It seemed the air campaign had almost singlehandedly 

defeated Iraq. The next step would be taken several years later in Kosovo. 

There were no air-ground controversies during DESRT STORM. The 

usual cause of such events is a shortage of air or other fire support assets. 

Such a shortage did not exist in Southwest Asia in 1990–1991. Perceived 

lack of support was not an issue. In terms of leadership, Schwarzkopf at the 

top firmly controlled things, including the activities of his air chief, Horner. 

For the first time in a major operation, the USAF employed a dedicated 

CAS aircraft, the A-10. During the ground campaign, the allotment of 

CAS missions was not an issue because the preliminary air campaign had 

eliminated the need for CAS missions. There were few viable targets left.

The largest single air loss of the war was the shooting down of an 

AC-130 Spectre on 31 January 1991 at Khafji, the first direct encounter 

between Coalition forces and elements of the Iraqi Army. While Marine 

and Air Force aviation played a big role in repulsing the small Iraqi 

offensive, an Iraqi surface-to-air missile (SAM) shot down the Spectre, 

which crashed into the Persian Gulf with the loss of the 14-man crew. 

The long-range significance of this incident was that AC-130s now would 

never fly in the daytime in combat situations.40

Afghanistan

In the wake of DESERT STORM, NATO conducted a series of 

operations in the Balkans (Bosnia, Kosovo) to pacify competing ethnic 

groups in the remnants of Yugoslavia. In Kosovo, a district of Serbia with a 

majority Albanian population, the Serbian Government began conducting 

an ethnic cleansing campaign. To stop the Serbs, NATO executed a 78-day 

air campaign against Serbia from March to June 1999 similar to the 1991 

DESERT STORM air campaign. At the end of this period, the Serbian 

President, Slobodan Milosevic, agreed to withdraw his forces from 

Kosovo. NATO forces entered Kosovo 20 days later.41
147

The A-10 played a prominent role in Kosovo, forming three provisional 

expeditionary fighter squadrons. The A-10s served as airborne FACs and as 

ground attack aircraft. In contrast, the Army had trouble deploying Apache 

attack helicopters for the operation out of Albania due to maintenance and 

training concerns.42

The Kosovo campaign set up the model for airpower alone defeating a 

nation-state. The Serbian situation was, however, unique. All the European 

powers, plus the United States, and even in the end Russia, were against 

Milosevic. The bombing campaign devastated the Serbian infrastructure. 

Milosevic realized he could not resist a NATO ground offensive in Kosovo. 

He cut his losses and withdrew. Nevertheless, the operation showed the 

flexibility and capabilities of airpower. 

The opening action of the War on Terrorism introduced another new 

paradigm to the air campaign without the US ground forces dynamic. In 

the campaign that began on 7 October 2001, a combination of Afghan 

Northern Alliance tribal forces and Army SF and SOF teams supported 

by Air Force SOF TACPs toppled the Taliban regime and forced the large 

al-Qaeda contingent to flee to the rugged mountainous area on the eastern 

border of Afghanistan next to Pakistan.43

The employment of a combination of SOF, proxy forces, and airpower 

became known as the Afghan model. While successful, circumstances and 

geography forced the Afghan model on the American military. Afghanistan 

is an isolated, mountainous, landlocked country. The logistics of bringing 

adequate US ground forces into the region without a firm base in the 

country was tremendous. Meanwhile, the need for some kind of relatively 

immediate response to the 9/11 attacks was necessary. The Afghan model 

was, therefore, the only solution.44

Since DESERT STORM, the USAF had integrated PGMs into CAS 

operations. In Afghanistan, PGMs proved to be decisive in toppling the 

Taliban. Without the deployment of a conventional chain of command 

to Afghanistan, the SOF TACPs did not use the conventional Air Force 

tactical air control system or the Army’s parallel air-ground system. 

Instead, TF Dagger, the Army-led SOF higher headquarters, did all the 

CAS control functions, first with a team of Army SF soldiers, then later 

with an Air Force cell. The Air Force and Army personnel integrated their 

activities together, and the streamlined CAS process was tweaked and 

improved as the operation continued. After the sudden fall of Mazar-eSharif on 9 November 2001, the rest of the country quickly fell to the 

Northern Alliance with Heart on 12 November, Kabul on 13 November, 

and Kandahar on 7 December.45
148

DShK position

x

THE GUPPY

Mako 31

India

Checkpoint

Juliet 2

Juliet 3

Juliet 1

Cave Complex

Mako 31 MSS

TF Harriman convoy attacked by AC-130

Farthest advance of TF Hammer

AC-130 destroys position

1 2

13

5

4

13A

15

AC-130 destroys position

LZ

Apache destroys mortar position

abandoned 

compound

2/C,2-187

3/C,2-187

SCT,2-187

3

5

A, 1-87

HQ, C, 1-87 HQ, C, 1-87

2/ C, 1-87

2/C,2-187

v

Aid Station

A, 2-187

B, 1-187 (+)

Chinook 

crashed

6

RAK TAC 

NIGHT PSN

1/ C, 1-87

X

3/101

Figure 37. Operation ANACONDA.

Following several months after the defeat of the Taliban, Operation 

ANACONDA was the first major US ground combat action of the War 

on Terrorism (figure 37). It was a multinational operation consisting of a 

mix of conventional and SOF forces in the Shahi-kowt Valley in Paktia 

Province, Afghanistan, in March 2002. ANACONDA was also a landmark 

in the relationship between close air support and field artillery. For the 

first time since Buna, airpower provided a deliberate substitute for field 

artillery. The Army brigade from the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) 

committed to the operation did not deploy to the theater with its organic 

105-mm field artillery howitzer battalion. Even the three battalions 

of conventional infantry only brought portions of their company and 

battalion mortars to the operation. The ground soldiers entered battle with 

far fewer fire support assets than that with which they had been trained. 

The background for this decision has its origins in the 1991 Gulf War and 

subsequent Army policy decisions.46

As related previously, Operation DESERT STORM in 1991 was 

the culmination of two consecutive 3-month deployments of corps-size 

combat forces. Based on intelligence estimates that gave the Iraqi Army 

a much higher level of combat effectiveness than it had ever displayed, 

Army commanders Generals Powell and Schwarzkopf had wanted to 
149

ensure enough ground forces were on hand to decisively defeat the Iraqis. 

After a month and a half air campaign, the ground battle only lasted 4 days 

and resulted in a great victory. Outside the Armed Forces, observers could 

view the 6-month deployment as overblown in size and excessive in time 

due to an inaccurate assessment of Iraqi capabilities.

Within the Army, DESERT STORM validated a new doctrinal concept 

called decisive force, whose primary proponent was the Chairman of 

the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell himself. Decisive force 

postulated that the Army would never initiate a fight without enough 

forces available to win the fight decisively. Potentially protracted wars 

should be avoided. Conflicts should be fought with sufficient forces to end 

them quickly.47

In theory, decisive force sounded right. The wrinkle was in the estimate 

of what equaled decisive force. During DESERT STORM, the Army still 

was large from the Cold War. However, in the 1990s, the military forces 

of the United States downsized drastically. The use of a large force for a 

small operation could cripple US military operations elsewhere. Ironically, 

the new Bush administration that took office in early 2001 preferred to 

maximize technology and minimize personnel.

New Secretary of Defense (SECDEF) Donald Rumsfeld in particular 

saw operations like DESERT STORM as massive overkill. The Army was 

too heavy, took too long, and wanted to bring too much stuff with it to 

attain decisive force. 

To the new SECDEF, the field artillery, symbolized by its new 

Crusader 155-mm weapons system, was the personification of what he 

felt was wrong with the Army. While the Crusader marked the first new 

version of the standard Army self-propelled howitzer since the 1960s and 

was technologically the state of the art capable of firing accurately on 

the move. Rumsfeld rejected its weight, which made it difficult to ship 

overseas in large numbers. The SECDEF canceled the Crusader in May 

2002.48

With austerity now a prime consideration, the desire to leave behind 

field artillery and replace it with air assets already operating in the theater 

seemed like a reasonable, if unusual, decision. The decision to depend on 

air support from other services further complicated an already excessively 

detailed task organization. The mix of special operations forces, 

conventional forces, Afghan troops, Army and Air Force aviation, and a 

laboriously complicated operational chain of command extending back to 

Central Command headquarters in Tampa merely exacerbated the usual 

tricky relationship involved in employing joint fire support. 
150

The operation had the objective of destroying the al-Qaeda/Taliban 

presence in the valley. This was to be accomplished by placing US forces 

in blocking positions at the base of the mountain range to the north of the 

valley. Then, a force of friendly Afghan fighters would enter the valley 

from the south and clear the valley, forcing the enemy to retreat to the 

north into the arms of the waiting US forces. Air support would soften 

up the valley before the US forces landed by helicopter and the Afghans 

attacked up the valley. 

Virtually nothing went according to plan in the subsequent operation. 

The al-Qaeda enemy occupied not just the valley but the high ground both 

to the north and the south of the valley. Coordination difficulties affected 

air support from the start. The expected 55-minute preliminary aerial 

bombardment to precede the Afghan assault, due to a coordination mishap, 

lasted only a minute. To add insult to injury, an AC-130 gunship had just 

fired on an Afghan column, totally disrupting it and killing an American 

SOF NCO. The Afghan forces never got into the valley. Meanwhile, the 

US infantry forces landed and occupied their blocking positions only to 

find that the enemy dominated the positions with fire from high on the 

mountains to the north. The battle turned into a defensive one where the 

US infantry repulsed massed enemy attacks and endured al-Qaeda mortar 

and artillery fire. Eventually, the US forces consolidated in the western 

end of the valley. After being reinforced, the valley was cleared, while a 

poorly planned secondary action at the top of the highest mountain in the 

area, Takur Ghar, ended in a crashed Chinook CH-47 cargo helicopter and 

a pitched battle between SOF and al-Qaeda fighters, which ended in the 

destruction of the al-Qaeda force and the deaths of seven SOF servicemen. 

Apart from Takur Ghar, ANACONDA was a success, although little of the 

battle had taken place according to plan. Most of the al-Qaeda forces in the 

area were destroyed and the valley base area was cleared.49

The terrain, coordination difficulties, and operational factors affected 

the responsiveness of air support. The available SOF AC-130s, because 

of Khafji, could only fly at night. The terrain limited attack runs and rules 

of engagement initially complicated targeting. Coordination issues were, 

understandably, numerous. The order of battle for the operation consisted 

of a mix of SOF and conventional air and ground units from two services 

and the Afghan Army. Without conventional forces in the theater, the 

SOF had developed unconventional air-ground procedures. Now, with the 

introduction of US ground troops, the air-ground system was not refined 

enough to work without snags. 
151

In an article in the September–October 2002 issue of the Field Artillery 

Journal, Major General Franklin Hagenbeck created a mild controversy 

when he commented on the time lag of up to hours for the execution of 

airstrikes equipped with precision munitions. Hagenbeck also stated he 

would have not brought his organic 105-mm howitzers into Shahi-kowt 

on the first day because of transportation and protection requirements and 

he may not have used them at all, even if they were available, because of 

the ruggedness of the terrain and lack of roads. Hagenbeck also cited the 

Apache attack helicopter as the most responsive air support platform he 

used in the operation.50

As in the case of Buna, the relative characteristics or effectiveness 

of field artillery and close air support was not the determining factor in 

the choice of close air support over field artillery. In both cases, logistical 

and transportation requirements were prime considerations. Also, in 

both cases, close air support had difficulties early on. Additionally, the 

presence of the missing artillery, as at Buna, would have probably only 

had a minimal effect on operations. 

While, overall, the Afghanistan model of using proxy forces, SOF, and 

airstrikes did not work well in the Shahi-kowt Valley against a determined 

force of diehards. The best use of airpower came at the hands of the small 

SOF observation posts established in overwatch positions around the 

valley before the start of the operation. Observers from these locations 

routinely called effective airstrikes on point targets in the valley and on the 

mountains throughout the early part of the operation.

Operation IRAQI FREEDOM

There was no large-scale air campaign before the 2003 Baghdad 

campaign. The air campaign was conducted concurrent with the ground 

campaign. The austerity seen in Operation ANACONDA was also apparent 

in this campaign. The Iraqis were no longer considered the formidable 

foes of 1991, although they did turn out to be still less formidable in the 

opening campaign than expected and more formidable in the ensuing 

insurgency. 

The Baghdad campaign proved to be an excellent example of an 

integrated joint combined arms campaign. As in DESERT STORM, there 

were no controversies between air and ground operations. The attack 

helicopter played an important role in the ground portion of the Baghdad 

campaign, both in support of their parent unit and as an independent 

strike force. In the latter case, the results were not as expected in the first 

battlefield use of the deep attack concept.
152

Aviation brigades were used in many of the contingency operations 

in the 1990s, primarily in a support role. In Somalia, the 10th Mountain 

Division’s aviation brigade acted as a maneuver headquarters in 1993 

when it controlled three battalions, only one being an aviation unit. During 

operations preceding the Kosovo peacekeeping operations in 1999, the 

American NATO commander sent a two-battalion Apache task force (TF 

Hawk) from a brigade in Germany to Albania. TF Hawk was to conduct 

a deep attack against Serbian armored forces in Kosovo. But the mission 

never happened. Logistical baggage delayed the deployment. For various 

reasons, the Apaches never conducted operations against the Serbs.51

Although the Cold War was over and there were few opportunities 

to employ the maneuver, deep attack remained an important operational 

concept when US Army forces entered Iraq to initiate Operation IRAQI 

FREEDOM (OIF) in March 2003. In the initial OIF campaign, the Army 

deployed two divisional aviation brigades, the attack brigade of the 101st 

Airborne Division (Air Assault) and the aviation brigade of the 3d Infantry 

Division (Mechanized). The higher Army command, V Corps, had an 

additional brigade-size force at its disposal: TF 11th Aviation Group (TF 

11), consisting of three Apache battalions.

The 3d Infantry Division (Mechanized) did not conduct any deep 

operations with its attack helicopter battalions. In fact, one finding of 

the division’s after-action report was that divisional attack helicopter 

battalions were best used in close operations to support the division’s 

ground maneuvers. This finding shows that the employment of the 

aviation brigade and the deep attack, the placement of the aviation brigade 

under the division, a ground tactical unit, tempers its employment to the 

priorities of the division and its operations rather than to independent 

aviation missions.52

On the other hand, both the 101st and TF 11 elements attempted 

to conduct deep strikes with massed Apache units. TF 11 conducted an 

unsuccessful two-battalion (30 Apache) deep strike on the evening of 23–

24 March 2003, 3 days after the start of the campaign. Plans called for TF 

11 to strike at the start of the campaign, but a combination of bad flying 

weather and the rapidity of the advance redefined the force’s mission. 

The campaign plan called for an operational pause at Najaf before a 

final advance on Baghdad and included a projected deep attack on the 

armored units of the Iraqi Republican Guard defending Baghdad from 

the south before the second advance. TF 11 received this mission, which 

was designed to destroy a brigade of the Iraqi Republican Guard Medina 

Division, expected to be defending near the Karbala Gap and in the area 

between the gap and the Euphrates River, 60 miles south of Baghdad.53
153

Various events turned the operation into a fiasco where Iraqi defenders 

using small arms and messages communicated using cellular telephones 

and the prearranged blinking of lights put up such a level of fire that 

the Apaches had to return to base without having accomplished their 

mission, losing one helicopter to enemy fire and severely damaging most 

of the remaining aircraft in the strike force. Logistical and intelligence 

coordination failures, route selection, and Iraqi adaptability and quick 

reaction were important considerations. TF 11 was out of action for the 

rest of the brief Baghdad campaign. 

Although its Apache units spent most of their time supporting the 

infantry units of the division, the 101st Division command and the aviation 

brigade still planned several independent long-range attacks. The 101st’s 

attack aviation brigade executed two deep strikes, a two-battalion attack 

near Karbala on 28 March 2003, and a one-battalion mission near Ramadi 

on 5 April 2003. The first attack destroyed more than 200 enemy vehicles 

and weapons systems and the second more than 70 without the loss of 

any Apaches. The 101st had learned the lessons of TF 11’s failure. Later 

success was due to thorough planning and effective route selection. The 

101st’s planners sent their Apaches over uninhabited terrain almost up to 

the attack objective. The helicopters returned by a different but similarly 

uninhabited route.54

The dichotomy between the close (3d Division) and deep (TF 11 and 

101st Division) uses of the attack helicopter in the 2003 campaign reflects 

the two threads of usage of divisional aviation assets. Although the aviation 

brigade controlled all the aerial assets in the division, overall command 

remained with the ground-oriented division commander. Therefore, while 

the aviation deep attack remained a major part of Army doctrine, ground 

commanders circumscribed its use and were not willing to conduct such 

operations at the expense of supporting the ground troops of the division. 

The commander of the 3d Infantry Division was chiefly interested in 

advancing his ground forces to Baghdad as swiftly as possible. TF 11 and 

the 101st were initially in reserve or not fully assembled. The V Corps 

then committed the 101st to mopping up bypassed Iraqi positions in 

the rear of the 3d Division’s advance. These differing combat situations 

gave the various commanders different perspectives on using their attack 

helicopters in close or deep operations. 

Army doctrine in the post-Cold War era still included attacking enemy 

forces in depth. Aviation branch documents also stressed deep operations 

and that the optimum use of helicopters in offensive operations were against 

second-echelon enemy forces. However, close operations were given 
154

equal importance, and the integration of aviation into ground operations 

permeated all discussions of aviation employment considerations.55

With the creation of the Aviation branch in 1983 and the concurrent 

conceptual shift to the view that aviation was a maneuver arm, it seemed, 

as with the Army Air Force before it, that Army aviation was moving 

away from supporting the ground commander to a more independent, 

more distant role. Contemporary analysts addressed this possibility. Some 

military observers, even from within the aviation community, believed 

that aviation officers were not well trained in combined arms operations 

and had become out of touch with the ground force operations they were 

supposed to support. Similarly, aviators and trainers cited that training 

rotations at the National Training Center (NTC) at Fort Irwin, California, 

did not adequately represent the role of attack helicopters.56

However, these fears were premature. In the years immediately before 

the War on Terrorism and in the operations in 2003, trends appeared that 

placed Army aviation more clearly as a member of the combined arms 

team rather than a developing, separate combat entity. NTC rotations began 

incorporating attack helicopter units as integral parts of the combined 

arms forces assembled to participate in the training. Army theorists began 

developing concepts that more closely tied aviation with the ground arms 

in works such as “Dominating Maneuver Synthesis Report” (1998) and Air 

Mech Strike: Asymmetric Maneuver Warfare for the 21st Century (2002). 

Operations in 2003, despite the defeat of TF 11, clearly showed attack 

helicopters most often working closely with ground units, particularly in 

the Iraqi cities.57

While the Army considers aviation (i.e., attack helicopters) to be a 

maneuver element, pure helicopter units are not maneuver assets in the 

traditional sense. Helicopters can maneuver against enemy forces in that 

they can move to a position from which to place fires on the enemy. However, 

the aircraft cannot and do not remain or hold the positions from which they 

fire as do the traditional ground maneuver arms. After DESERT STORM, 

Army doctrine writers discussed the theoretical concept of whether fires 

could maneuver against the enemy. The definition of maneuver posted in 

the subsequent field service regulation seems to say fires do.58

Originally, the combat role of aviation was as aerial artillery or target 

servicing. With technological advances, attack helicopters became capable 

of moving against enemy forces deep behind the front line. However, 

such independent operations were susceptible to enemy air defenses and 

defenders alerted by modern communications networks. After the March 

2003 deep attack failure, US Army forces restricted the use of their attack 

helicopter assets to more traditional close support missions. 
155

Summary

Since 1975, both field artillery and close air support acquired 

precision munitions. However, the field artillery soon limited the use of 

such munitions to special situations, while the Air Force, with its greater 

ability to find lucrative targets, used such munitions in both strategic and 

tactical concepts. This revolutionized the relationship between artillery 

and aviation. The field artillery remained an area fire weapon, best able to 

limit the abilities of the enemy to fire or move in the presence of friendly 

forces. Tactical air, which had since World War II primarily used bomb 

loads for CAS operations, had also been an area fire weapon for the most 

part, although aircraft-mounted cannons gave CAS craft additional point 

target capabilities. 

Air operations developed new paradigms. Operation DESERT 

STORM introduced the separate, virtually independent air campaign 

that almost brought a large nation to its knees. Kosovo presented a small 

nation being brought to its knees. In Afghanistan, the new paradigm was 

the combination of proxy forces plus SOF teams plus precision airstrikes 

equaled victory. However, in the subsequent Operation ANACONDA, the 

substitution of close air support for the traditional close support role of field 

artillery fell flat because of poorly coordinated airstrikes and an erroneous 

appreciation of the enemy situation. This latter operation showed the 

continued importance of close and effective coordination between ground 

and air forces. 

The new paradigms all stressed the importance of airpower to ground 

operations. Effective airpower may preclude ground operations; it may 

facilitate ground operations so that 4 days is all that is needed to defeat a 

large enemy force; it may strengthen proxy forces to the point that they 

are able to accomplish what seemed impossible in a matter of weeks. 

However, these paradigms are all situationally based. The Afghanistan 

model so successful in November 2001 was far less successful in Anaconda 

in March 2002.

The Army deployed the attack helicopter in aviation brigades. The 

concept of an independent role for such craft received a bloody nose in 

its first attempt to conduct such an operation in Iraq in 2003. The Army’s 

traditional concept of mutually supporting combined arms seems to apply 

to the attack helicopter as much as it applied to infantry, armor, and field 

artillery. 
156

Notes

1. Close Support Study Group, “Final Report,” 21 November 1975, 

Executive Summary.

2. Ibid.

3. Janice E. McKenney, The Organizational History of Field Artillery, 

1775–2003 (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 2007), 299–

300.

4. Janice E. McKenney, 13.

5. Janice E. McKenney, 297–298, 313.

6. Janice E. McKenney, 286–287.

7. Janice E. McKenney, 287, 321.

8. Janice E. McKenney, 314.

9. John A. Bonin, “Toward the Third Dimension in Combined Arms: The 

Evolution of Armed Helicopters into Air Maneuver Units in Vietnam, 1965–

1973,” (Monograph, US Army Command and General Staff College, 1986), 30, 

32, 43; John B. Wilson, Maneuver and Firepower: The Evolution of Divisions and 

Separate Brigades (Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 1998), 

337.

10. House Hearings on Cost Escalation in Defense Procurement Contracts 

and Military Posture, HR 6722, 93d Cong., 1st sess. (1973), 868; Colonel Charles 

E, Canedy. “From ACCB to the 6th Cavalry Brigade (Air Combat),” US Army 

Aviation Digest 21 (May 1975): 3.

11. Bonin, 39, 41; Frank W. Tate, “Army Aviation as a Branch, Eighteen 

Years After the Decision” (Monograph, School of Advanced Military Studies, US 

Army Command and General Staff College, 2001), 18–19.

12. US Department of the Army, Field Manual 100-5, Operations

(Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 1982), 4-8, 5-9; Tate, 21–22, 41–

42; John L. Romjue, From Active Defense to AirLand Battle: The Development 

of Army Doctrine, 1973–1982, TRADOC Historical Monograph Series (Fort 

Monroe, VA: US Army Training and Doctrine Command, 1984), 25, 27, 46, 68.

13. US Department of the Army, Field Manual 100-5, Operations

(Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 1982), 4-8, 5-9; Tate, 21–22, 41–

42; John L. Romjue, From Active Defense to AirLand Battle: The Development 

of Army Doctrine, 1973–1982, TRADOC Historical Monograph Series (Fort 

Monroe, VA: US Army Training and Doctrine Command, 1984), 25, 27, 46, 68.

14. Romjue, From Active Defense to AirLand Battle, 63–65.

15. Romjue, US Department of the Army, Field Manual 100-5, Operations

(Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 1986), 42; John L. Romjue, American 

Army Doctrine for the Post-Cold War (Fort Monroe, VA: Military History Office, 

US Army Training and Doctrine Command, 1997), 54; Matthew Allen, Military 

Helicopter Doctrines of the Major Powers, 1942–1992: Making Decisions About 

Air-Land Warfare (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1993), 37–39.

16. Bonin, 1; Tate, 41.

17. Bonin, 41–42.

18. Wilson, Maneuver and Firepower, 354; Shelby L. Stanton, Vietnam 

Order of Battle (Washington, DC: US News Books, 1981), 109–123.
157

19. John L. Romjue, A History of Army 86, Volume I: The Development of 

the Heavy Division, September 1978–October 1979 (Fort Monroe, VA: US Army 

Training and Doctrine Command, 1980), 1, 53, 97.

20. Ibid., 97; John L. Romjue, A History of Army 86, Volume II: The 

Development of the Light Division, the Corps, and Echelons Above Corps, 

November 1979–December 1980 (Fort Monroe, VA: US Army Training and 

Doctrine Command, 1982), 7–9, 41–42, 132; John L. Romjue, The Army of 

Excellence: The Development of the 1980s Army (Fort Monroe, VA: US Army 

Training and Doctrine Command, 1993), 41, 89, 91, 93.

21. Romjue, A History of Army 86, Volume II, 7–9; Joseph C. Barto III, 

Task Force 2-4 Cav—“First In, Last Out”: The History of the 2d Squadron, 4th 

Cavalry Regiment, During Operation Desert Storm (Fort Leavenworth, KS: 

Combat Studies Institute, 1993), 3, 11–12.

22. Romjue, A History of Army 86, Volume II, 8, 119; Romjue, The Army of 

Excellence, 90, 93–94.

23. Romjue, The Army of Excellence, 93–94; Barto, 5. 

24. Tate, 26; Major General (Retired) Benjamin L. Harrison, “Aviation: A 

Branch Decision Revisited,” Army 41 (January 1991): 22.

25. Tate, 35–39, 42; Harrison, “Aviation: A Branch Decision Revisited,” 

24–25.

26. Christopher E. Haave and Phil M. Haun, eds., A-10s Over Kosovo: The 

Victory of Airpower Over a Fielded Army as Told by the Airmen Who Fought 

in Operation Allied Force (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air University Press, 

2003), 3, 11. 

27. Christopher E. Haave and Phil M. Haun, 3–4, 8. 

28. Steve Call, Danger Close: Tactical Air Controllers in Afghanistan and 

Iraq (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007), 3–5.

29. Steve Call, 15.

30. Charles L. Toomey, XVIII Airborne Corps in Desert Storm: From 

Planning to Victory (Central Point, OR: Hellgate Press, 2004), 247–253.

31. Benjamin S. Lambeth, “Task Force Hawk,” Air Force 85 (February 

2002): 79.

32. Colonel Daniel J. Petrosky and Major Marshall T. Hillard, “An Aviation 

Brigade Goes to War,” US Army Aviation Digest 37 (September–October 1991): 

54–61.

33. John J. McGrath, “Gulf War Build-Up,” PowerPoint presentation, 2001; 

John J. McGrath, “Gulf War Organization,” PowerPoint presentation, 2001.

34. John Warden “Air Theory for the Twenty-First Century,” in Battlefield 

of the Future: 21st Century Warfare Issues, eds. Barry Schneider and Lawrence 

Grinter (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air University Press, 1995), 103–124. 

35. Final Report to Congress on the Conduct of the Persian Gulf War

(Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 1992), 101, 142.

36. Final Report to Congress on the Conduct of the Persian Gulf War, 1992), 

100.

37. Final Report to Congress on the Conduct of the Persian Gulf War, 102.
158

38. Final Report to Congress on the Conduct of the Persian Gulf War, 133, 

137, 141.

39. Final Report to Congress on the Conduct of the Persian Gulf War, 142; 

William F. Andrews, Airpower Against an Army: Challenge and Response in 

CENTAF’s Duel With the Republican Guard (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air 

University Press, 1998), 61.

40. David J. Morris, Storm Over the Horizon: Khafji—the Battle that 

Changed the Course of the Gulf War (New York: Free Press, 2004), 229–230.

41. Haave and Haun, xxix–xxxiii.

42. Haave and Haun, 15–16, 21.

43. Craig D. Wills, Airpower, Afghanistan, and the Future of Warfare: An 

Alternative View (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air University Press, 2006), 35–

36.

44. Craig D. Wills, 35-36.

44. Call, 25, 29–30.

45. The 1-87 brought its battalion 81-mm mortar platoon plus an extra 

120-mm mortar. The 2-187 brought no mortars in its first lift. See Steven Clay, 

“Operation Anaconda,” Unpublished manuscript, US Army Combat Studies 

Institute, 2008, 118.

47. F.G. Hoffman, Decisive Force: The New American Way of War (Westport, 

CT: Praeger, 1996), 100–101.

48. McKenney, 323.

49. Sean Naylor, Not a Good Day to Die: The Untold Story of Operation 

Anaconda (New York: Berkley, 2005), 201–202, 207–208.

50. Robert McElroy and Patricia S. Hollis, “Afghanistan: Fire Support for 

Operation Anaconda,” Field Artillery Journal (September–October 2002): 6–8. 

51. Lawrence E. Casper, “The Aviation Brigade as a Maneuver Headquarters,” 

Army 45 (March 1995): 20–23; Tate, 43–44; Lambeth, 78–81. 

52. 3d Infantry Division (Mechanized), “Third Infantry Division 

(Mechanized) After Action Report, Operation IRAQI FREEDOM” (Baghdad: 3d 

Infantry Division (Mechanized), 2003), 131.

53. Gregory Fontenot, E.J. Degen, and David Tohn, On Point: The United 

States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies 

Institute Press, 2004), 179–190.

54. Ibid., 191–195; 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), “Operation 

IRAQI FREEDOM Lessons Learned Part I (30 May 2003)” (Mosul: 101st 

Airborne Division (Air Assault), 2004), vii, 2–4. 

55. Romjue, American Army Doctrine for the Post-Cold War, 71–72; US 

Army Aviation Warfighting Center, Aviation Warfighting Treatise (Fort Rucker, 

AL: US Army Aviation Warfighting Center, 1993), 13, 16–18.

56. Tate, 42, 46–47, 50; Major General (Retired) Benjamin L. Harrison, 

“The Army Has Failed to Fully Develop, Train and Employ Its Aviation Assets.” 

Army 50 (April 2000): 15. 

57. Henry C. Perry Jr. “Air Integration in the Heavy Division: First Attack’s 

Lessons From the NTC,” Armor 112 (May–June 2003), 21–25; Strategic 
159

Assessment Center, Science Applications International Corporation, “Dominating 

Maneuver Synthesis Report,” SAIC Report No. 97-6980, 1997; David L. Grange, 

Huba Wass de Czege, Rich Liebert, Chuck Jarnot, Al Huber, and Mike Sparks, 

Air-Mech Strike: Asymmetric Maneuver Warfare in the 21st Century, 2d ed. 

(Paducah, KY: Turner Publishing Company, 2002).

58. Romjue, American Army Doctrine for the Post-Cold War, 72, 117–118. 

The 1993 Army definition of maneuver was “the movement of combat forces to 

gain positional advantage . . . to deliver—or threaten to delivery of—direct and 

indirect fires.” See US Department of the Army, Field Manual 100-5, Operations

(Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 1993), 2-10

.

161

Chapter 5

Conclusions

Over the last hundred years, both cannon field artillery and close air 

support have developed exponentially from their humble origins. This 

progress was both rhetorical and kinetic. The latter is reflected in the wars 

that the United States has fought. After complete unpreparedness in World 

War I, the field artillery has been prepared for each successive war. During 

the interwar period, the Field Artillery School developed the techniques 

and tactics that made American artillery the most effective in World War 

II. This tradition continued in later wars.

Close air support has had a more uneven record of preparedness. In 

both World Wars, the Air Service improvised CAS procedures and refined 

them by the end of the war only to have to reinvent similar procedures 

in the next war. The reason for this was a cyclical devaluation of close 

air support in favor of strategic bombing. This cycle finally broke with 

the adoption of flexible response by the Kennedy administration. The Air 

Force thereafter retained ground support operations as a major mission.

However, even under this construct, Air Force officers continually 

stressed the independence of air operations. At first, this was reflexive of 

the belief that strategic bombing would be decisive. When events proved 

that the United States would still have to fight conventional ground wars, 

Air Force doctrine split close air support into two pieces. Close air support 

itself now became support provided close to ground troops. Air interdiction 

was deeper attacks that could be executed against the enemy rear area 

without direct reference to the concurrent actions of the ground troops. 

Ironically, when the Army developed the attack helicopter as its own 

CAS force, eventually this force too advanced the concept of independent 

operations in the form of the deep attack. In American military history, 

this is a basic difference between air assets and the field artillery. At no 

point has the field artillery sought to conduct independent operations, a 

firepower offensive of sorts. 

Air units and the field artillery have other distinct characteristics. 

However, there are also similarities. Until the development of precision 

guided munitions, both were essentially area fire weapons. Field artillery 

fire landed in an elliptical beaten zone around the target. Its effects were 

the ability to neutralize and disrupt any enemy forces in the beaten zone. 

While disrupted, the enemy cannot fire or maneuver against friendly 

troops. 
162

In World War I, close air support was principally through the direct 

fire of machineguns against point targets. After the war, improved light 

bombers and fighter-bombers were developed. Accordingly, in later wars, 

close air support depended on bombing. This too made an area fire weapon, 

with its inherent inaccuracy. The principal difference between air and 

cannon fires during this time was in terms of range, responsiveness, and 

coordination. Before World War II, the US Army field artillery developed 

techniques that made it much more responsive to the ground maneuver 

units. Effective fires could come fast and impact close to friendly troops. 

As an area fire weapon, close air support also had certain advantages. It 

could apply the disruptive effect ranging deep behind the enemy lines. If 

massed, whole enemy units, such as Panzer Lehr, could be taken out of the 

fight even while losing minimal materiel. 

Precision guided munitions revolutionized fire support. While PGMs 

were developed for both aircraft and field artillery, the limited range and 

field of vision of field artillery, particularly in difficult terrain, in relation 

to the high cost of PGMs meant that field artillery usage was usually 

reserved for special missions. Meanwhile, the Air Force adopted PGMs as 

its primary munition for its fighter-bombers and multifunctional aircraft. 

Therefore, in the last 30 years, there has been a distinct dichotomy between 

air and ground fire support. The air assets have become point fire weapons, 

while the artillery has retained its traditional, highly responsive area fire 

capabilities. 

This dichotomy allows the two systems to complement each other as 

part of the joint combined arms team. The unique characteristics of the 

field artillery include the ability to operate close to and in cooperation 

with friendly ground forces in a timely manner and the ability to destroy 

or degrade the enemy’s ground capability close to friendly forces. 

Artillery batteries can operate around the clock and at night. Effective 

communications, now digitized, and coordination channels have been well 

developed. Because of indirect fire, artillery has been able to position itself 

in survivable positions while still providing support. As a weapons system, 

it is also capable of quickly placing many rounds on a target and controlling 

a large area of action in front of its supported unit. The usual decentralized 

employment of field artillery units enhanced responsiveness.1

The field artillery has had certain limitations too. Its range is limited 

beyond its zone of action. Ammunition resupply increases the logistical 

load for the force. In rapid advances and retreats, it would have to displace, 

disrupting its ability to provide fire support. Additionally, terrain such as 
163

mountains or jungles can disrupt its fires because field artillery depends on 

the ability of ground and air observers to identify targets. 

CAS characteristics include a much farther range of operations than 

field artillery. Planes can mass against targets for devastating effects. 

Because the pilot views his targets directly, fires do not need to be adjusted 

and he can pick out targets of opportunity without requiring further 

coordination. With PGMs, aircraft fires can destroy specific targets with a 

minimum expenditure of munitions.

Air limitations include weather, the effects of enemy ground 

fire, and communications and coordination difficulties. The weather, 

including night operations, often can restrict air operations. Aircraft are 

susceptible to ground fire. A-10s could not operate in areas with a lot of air 

defenses. AC-130s were prohibited from daylight operations. Even with 

decentralized execution of air missions, immediate missions require the 

use of specialized TACP personnel with particular radio equipment. Strike 

aircraft require air- or ground-based guides to direct the pilot to the target. 

Coordination, particularly for preplanned fires, but even for immediate 

strikes, as seen in ANACONDA, can slow responsiveness. 

Attack helicopters combine some of the characteristics of field artillery 

and fixed-wing aircraft. They combine the responsiveness of artillery with 

the point fire effects of CAS aviation. Attack helicopters can loiter for 

long periods in an area. Coordination of fires is simplified as they follow 

the same apparatus as field artillery. The weapon platform fires direct at 

point targets and is equipped with both PGMs and rapid-firing cannons 

and missiles. However, like fixed-wing aircraft, attack helicopters are 

susceptible to ground fire and bad weather. 

Four themes from the Korean War provide good points on the ArmyAir Force conflict in relation to close air support.

The first theme is the prioritization of air missions. Traditionally, this 

has been the prerogative of the air commander after receiving guidance 

from the theater commander, who has usually been a ground officer. 

Air Force doctrine stressed close air support as a lower priority mission 

than air superiority and air interdiction. This was only an issue when air 

assets have been limited, as they were in Korea. In World War II and 

DESERT STORM, such assets were virtually unlimited. Also in DESERT 

STORM, the success of the preliminary air campaign made close air 

support unnecessary during the ground campaign. In counterinsurgency 

operations, where the battlefield is frontless and troops are dispersed, the 
164

distinction between close air support and interdiction becomes blurred to 

the point that both sides in the debate can interpret air missions as either. 

The second point, the control and tasking of air missions, has been 

the most contentious. Even in field artillery, this has been a contentious 

issue at times, as seen in the disagreement between Hunt and Hancock 

at Gettysburg. In World War I, air support was under the control of the 

ground commanders. In World War II, the abundance of air support and 

the cooperative attitude of air commanders like Quesada smoothed over 

any difficulties. In Korea, ground commanders such as Almond fought for 

control over their air support because of a weak air-ground system. After 

Korea, the Army and Air Force forged together a system of cooperation and 

control that has worked well ever since. Difficulties in Afghanistan were 

based on a combination of factors, including inexperience, ad hoc changes 

in the system, and the dependence on unconventional SOF operators to 

run the system. In Vietnam and DESERT STORM, the system worked 

well. Horner’s master air plan and air tasking order simplified tasking and 

control until the results of previous operations made the MAP a much 

more fluid document. 

The third point was the centralization of air assets. This theme 

reflects the biggest difference in CAS and field artillery employment. 

Without losing any ability to mass fires, the field artillery, with its support 

relationships, operates in a decentralized manner. While the Air Service 

operated this way in World War I, it became axiomatic that airpower had 

to be centralized. In World War II, centralization was doctrinal policy, but 

the TAC commanders in Italy and the ETO decentralized the execution 

of CAS operations on a de facto basis. The issue did not come to a head 

until the Korean War when there were limited air assets and the newly 

independent Air Force forced the issue. However, as part of the more 

cooperative attitude between the services since Vietnam, the Air Force has 

adopted a policy of centralized planning and tasking and decentralized 

(albeit by Air Force personnel) execution. The placement of a TACP in 

the staff of Army maneuver battalions has facilitated this. In Korea, such 

parties were generally only at the division and regimental levels.

Table 5. CAS Aircraft Characteristics2

1. Long loitering capability. 

2. Armor protection against ground fi re.

3. Ability to carry a suitable load of weapons and munitions.

4. Engine with suitable power.
165

The types of aircraft for use in close air support have been a 

controversial issue for a long time. Since World War I, the Air Force has 

almost continually used planes for close air support that were originally 

developed for other missions (usually air superiority). In the mid-1930s, 

the Army Air Force went through a brief period where it fielded attack 

aircraft for CAS missions. However, before World War II, these aircraft 

were converted to light bombers. For CAS during the war, the AAF 

converted a number of fighters into fighter-bombers, which had great 

success in the later years of the war. By the time of the Korean War, the 

Air Force had begun fielding exclusively jet fighters, considered necessary 

to challenge Communist air forces, but less suitable for CAS operations. 

After first reviving several World War II aircraft designs, the Air Force 

then fielded a second generation of jets that could fit the role of the World 

War II fighter-bomber.

After Korea, the Army slowly and adeptly developed the armed 

helicopter to provide close air support, while the Air Force fielded a 

series of fighter-bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons but less 

capable of conducting ground support operations. For Vietnam, most of 

these designs proved to be inadequate, and the Air Force had to adopt 

several Navy designs, particularly the F-4 Phantom to provide effective 

close air support. Additionally, a series of cargo planes were converted 

into specialized CAS craft.

Near the end of the Vietnam War, the Air Force, to preempt the 

development of the Army’s projected advanced attack helicopter, the 

Cheyenne, agreed to develop a CAS-specific jet. While the Air Force 

produced the A-10 in the 1970s, the Army eventually received its advanced 

attack helicopter in the form of the Apache in the 1980s anyway.

One military observer has cited the ideal characteristics of a CAS 

aircraft, which are shown in table 5. 

The A-10 design reflected this design. The plane is highly maneuverable 

at low altitudes and relatively slow speeds. It can carry a large bomb and 

missile load and has a large cannon in its nose designed after that found 

in the German World War II Stuka dive-bomber. In an ironic twist, the Air 

Force has begun to use the single-function A-10 in other missions such as 

FAC and search and rescue.

The US Army conducted two major operations where close air 

support was used in lieu of field artillery support, at Buna in 1942 and 

in Operation ANACONDA in 2002. In both cases, the substitution was 
166

not done out of any belief that aircraft could outperform the artillery in 

terms of support. Ideally, the commanders involved would have preferred 

to have had both mediums available. The substitution was basically a 

logistical matter. In Buna, the operation was run via air transportation and 

resupply. Artillery pieces took up too much of the airload. The ground 

commander in ANACONDA cited the terrain and airlift as reasons why he 

would not have used field artillery, at least initially, even if the units had 

been available. At a higher level, field artillery units were not brought into 

Afghanistan at first because of austerity concerns. Air assets were already 

in the theater and available. 

In both cases, the use of artillery would have had a minimal impact 

on operations. At Buna, both air support and the limited availability of 

artillery proved to be ineffective based on the difficult jungle terrain and the 

inexperience of the US troops, commanders, and airmen. At ANACONDA, 

the field artillery required security and would have become a big target to 

the enemy holding the high ground. Any supporting batteries may have 

had their hands full just to survive. 

The two cases are not as anomalous as they first seem. Close air support 

has been used in the past in lieu of field artillery whenever guns were not 

available or when the terrain was otherwise prohibitive. Examples of the 

former include the D-day invasion, during the early days in Korea, and in 

1952 when there was a 105-mm ammunition shortage. 

This special study has been a historical survey and comparison between 

the two key elements of the joint combined arms team, indirect fire support, 

as provided by field artillery and mortars, and direct aerial fire support 

(close air support and interdiction) provided by aerial platforms (fixedand rotary-wing aircraft). Cannon field artillery and close air support are 

complementary weapons systems, not competitors. They should be best 

used together in ways that maximize their strengths and minimize or cover 

for each component’s weaknesses. This team then presents the enemy with 

a difficult, sometimes irresistible, force. 

The biggest historical hindrance to this happening was the effects 

of institutional and organizational factors. Often, arguments in favor 

of or against certain arms have not been based on the capabilities or 

characteristics of the specific arms but on other considerations external to 

the objective, such as a doctrine of centralization. 

Together, CAS and field artillery assets, along with the units they 

support, provide the joint combined arms team. While each component 

of the joint combined arms team has specific and complementary 
167

characteristics, the basic historical contrast between close air support 

and field artillery fires has been threefold: responsiveness, precision, and 

organizational. The interpretation of these three factors and the application 

of these interpretations is the basic continuity that ties together the 

opposition between field artillery support and close air support. 

In the modern technological age, military and civilian leaders often 

base organizational and employment decisions on certain components of 

the joint combined arms team not on military realities as to the usefulness 

or ineffectiveness of certain arms, but in terms of general policy guidelines 

or expediency. Such decisions can degrade the effectiveness of the longdeveloped joint combined arms team. However, the team has enough 

redundancy that the lack of one element can be tolerated in limited 

circumstances.
Notes

1. Michael Lewis, LtGen Ned Almond, USA: A Ground Commander’s 

Conflicting View With Airmen Over CAS Doctrine and Employment (Maxwell Air 

Force Base, AL: Air University Press, 1997), 44; Ian Gooderson, Air Power at the 

Battlefront: Allied Close Air Support in Europe 1943–45 (Portland, OR: Frank 

Cass, 1998), 165–167.

2. Lewis, 14.
169

Glossary

A

AAF Army Air Force

AAHP Advanced Attack Helicopter Program

ACCB air cavalry combat brigade

ACP air command post

ACP air control party

ACTS Air Corps tactical school

ADVON advanced echelon

AEF American Expeditionary Force

AFAC airborne forward air controller

AFATDS Advanced Field Artillery Digital Data 

System

AFCC Air Force Combat Command

AGF Army Ground Forces

AH attack helicopter

AKA Artilleriekämpfungsgruppe 

(counterbattery group)

ALNO artillery liaison officer

ALO air liaison officer

AOE Army of Excellence

ARA aerial rocket artillery

ARKO Artilleriekommando (divisional artillery 

command)

ARST Program Aerial Reconnaissance and Security 

Troop Program

arty artillery

ARVN Army of the Republic of Vietnam

ATGM antitank guided missile

ATO air tasking order

avn aviation

B

bn battalion

BSL bomb safety line

btry battery

C

CAB combat aviation brigade

CAS close air support
170

cav cavalry

CENTAF Central Command Air Forces

CENTCOM US Central Command

CLGP cannon-launched guided projectile

co company

CONAC Continental Air Command

CONARC Continental Army Command

CSSG Close Support Study Group

CTOC corps tactical operations center

D

DASC Direct Air Support Center

DASC District Air Support Command

div division

DIVARTY division artillery

DOD Department of Defense

DPICM dual-purpose improved conventional 

munition

DS direct support

DTOC division tactical operations center

E

ETO European Theater of Operations

EW electronic warfare

F

FAA Federal Aviation Administration

FAC forward air controller

FADAC field artillery digital automatic computer

FASCAM family of scatterable mines

FDC fire direction center

FEAF Far East Air Force

FEKA Fernkampfgruppe (long-range group)

FIST fire support team

FO forward observer

FSB forward support base

FSCC fire support coordination center

FSCOORD fire support coordinator

FSO fire support officer

FSV fire support vehicle
171

G

GB group de bombardment (bomber 

squadron)

GC group de combat (fighter squadron)

GHQ general headquarters

GPS Global Positioning System

GS general support

H

HMMWV high-mobility, multipurpose wheeled 

vehicle

HQ headquarters

I

IBB Infanteriebegleitbatterie (artillery 

battery)

ICM improved conventional munition

IGB Infanteriegeschützbatterie (specialized 

assault artillery battery)

IKA Infanteriebekämpfungsgruppe (infantry 

assault group)

J

JAAFAR Joint Army and Air Force Adjustment 

Regulation

JAGOS Joint Air-Ground Operations System

JFACC Joint Forces Air Component Commander

JOC joint operations center

K

KTK Kampftruppenkommandeur (frontline 

commander)

KTO Kuwait Theater of Operations

L

LSK Luftstreitkräfte (German Air Service)

LZ landing zone

M

MACV Military Assistance Command, Vietnam

MAP master air plan

MEDEVAC medical evacuation
172

MLR main line of resistance

MLRS multiple launch rocket system

N

NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NCO noncommissioned officer

NTC National Training Center

NVA North Vietnamese Army

O

OIF Operation IRAQI FREEDOM

OP observation post

P

PGM precision guided munition

prep preparatory

R

RAF Royal Air Force

RCT regimental combat team

recon reconnaissance

regt regiment

reinf reinforcing

RFC Royal Flying Corps

RIF reduction in force

ROAD Reorganization Objective Army Division

ROMAD radio operator, maintainer, and driver 

(old name) recon, observe, mark, and destroy (new 

name)

rte route

S

SAC Strategic Air Command

SAM surface-to-air missile

SECDEF Secretary of Defense

SF Special Forces

SOF special operations forces

spt support

T

TAC Tactical Air Command

TACAF Tactical Air Force
173

TACC tactical air control center

TACFIRE Tactical Fire Direction System

TACP tactical air control party

TADC tactical air direction center

TAF tactical air force

TASE Tactical Air Support Element

TF task force

TOE table of organization and equipment

TOW tube-fired, optically-tracked, wire guided

TRADOC US Army Training and Doctrine 

Command

TRICAP triple capability

U

UN United Nations

USAAF United States Army Air Force

USAF United States Air Force

175

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About the Author

Boston native John J. McGrath has worked for the United States Army 

in one capacity or another since 1978. A retired Army Reserve officer, 

Mr. McGrath served in infantry, field artillery, and logistics units both on 

Active duty and as a Reservist. Before coming to work at the Combat 

Studies Institute, he worked for four years at the US Army Center of 

Military History in Washington, DC, as a historian and archivist. Before 

that, Mr. McGrath worked full time for the United States Army Reserve in 

Massachusetts for more than 15 years both as an Active duty Reservist and 

as a civilian military technician. He also served as a mobilized Reservist 

in 1991 in Saudi Arabia with the 22d Support Command during Operation 

DESERT STORM as the Command Historian and in 1992 at the US Army 

Center of Military History as a researcher/writer. 

Mr. McGrath is a graduate of Boston College and holds an MA in 

history from the University of Massachusetts at Boston. He is the author 

of numerous articles and military history publications. In 1994, the Army 

Material Command published his book Theater Logistics in the Gulf War. 

The US Army Combined Arms Center Combat Studies Institute Press has 

published the following books written by Mr. McGrath: The Brigade: 

A History (2005), Crossing the Line of Departure: Battle Command on 

the Move (2006), Boots on the Ground: Troop Density in Contingency 

Operations, The Other End of the Spear: The Tooth-to-Tail Ratio (T3R) 

in Modern Military Operations (2007), and Scouts Out! The Development 

of Reconnaissance Units in Modern Armies. Mr. McGrath was also the 

general editor of the proceedings of the Combat Studies Institute’s 2005 

Military History Symposium, An Army at War: Change in the Midst of 

Conflict, and contributed to CSI’s anthology In Contact! Case Studies 

from the Long War. Aside from a general interest in things military 

and historical, his areas of particular interest include modern military 

operations, the German Army in World War II, August 1914, and the 

Union Army in the Civil War. He also has a keen interest in ancient history, 

historical linguistics, the city of Boston, and baseball. He is also a PhD 

candidate at Kansas State University.


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