Air University

AIR FORCE RESEARCH INSTITUTE

Learning How to Fight Together

The British Experience with 

Joint Air-Land Warfare

David Ian Hall, DPhil

Research Paper 2009-2

Air Force Research Institute

Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama 36112-6026

March 2009

00-frontmatter.indd 1 3/10/09 1:42:49 
ii

Disclaimer

The analysis, opinions, and conclusions either expressed or implied within are solely those of 

the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Air Force Research Institute, Air 

University, the United States Air Force, the Department of Defense, or any other US government 

agency. Nor do they necessarily represent the views of the Joint Services Command and Staff 

College, the United Kingdom Defense Academy, the United Kingdom Ministry of Defense, or any 

other British government agency. Cleared for public release: distribution unlimited.

Air Force Research Institute (AFRI) papers and Air University monographs are occasional studies written by Air 

Force researchers at large and military defense analysts 

assigned to the Air Force Research Institute at Air 

University and beyond. The purpose of the AFRI papers is 

to provide useful ideas and independent analysis of 

issues of current or potential importance to Air Force 

commanders and their staffs. This monograph and others 

in the series are also available electronically at the Air 

University Research Web site at https://research.maxwell 

.af.mil/and the Air and Space Power Journal Web site at 

http://www.airpower.au.af.mil.

00-frontmatter.indd 2 3/10/09 1:42:49 
iii

Contents

Page

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

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

ABOUT THE AUTHOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

SUMMARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

LEARNING HOW TO FIGHT TOGETHER: THE BRITISH

EXPERIENCE WITH JOINT AIR-LAND WARFARE . . . . . 1

Origins of the Air-Land Debate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Political Wrangling between the Independent 

Air Force and Army/Royal Air Force

during the Interwar Years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

The Battle for France, 1940 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

The Evolution of Air-Land Technique . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

North Africa: The Adoption and Refinement

of a New Air-Land Technique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Success without Harmony: British Air-Land

Co-operation by the End of the War . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Back to Afghanistan and Contemporary

Air-Land Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Enduring Themes and Contemporary Relevance . . . 29

NOTES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

ABBREVIATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

00-frontmatter.indd 3 3/10/09 1:42:49 
00-frontmatter.indd 4 3/10/09 1:42:49 
v

Foreword

Many of our leaders recognize the propensity to forget lessons 

from earlier battles. This is especially true of joint or integrated 

relations between ground and air support forces. One part of the 

problem is a lack of detailed history of integrated operations. 

Many claim that it is hard to find the details and historical context that can inform current operations. Another part of the 

problem is that integration is the continuing struggle between 

centralization for efficiency and mass versus decentralization for 

immediate responsiveness. 

This British historian, David Hall, found relevant cross-service 

problems in Afghanistan during recent British air-ground 

operations. He was stricken by the similarities with British airground operations during World War II when the Royal Air Force 

and the British Army first struggled with doctrinal air support 

practices.

Forces are supposed to work together now in an integrated 

fashion, and while conditions are different between twenty-first 

century operations in Afghanistan and those of the European 

and North African theaters in World War II, the problems were 

and still are about relationships between members of air and 

ground services who have different points of reference. This is 

true of Americans as well as the British. During World War II, 

both British and American airmen were concerned about the 

independence and equities of their service. At the bottom of most 

air-ground coordination problems is the factor of personal 

relationships, existing at both the tactical and strategic levels. 

Dr. Hall, using historical examples, clearly illuminates this profound issue that will inform our current military.

JOHN A. SHAUD

General, USAF, Retired, PhD

Director, Air Force Research Institute

00-frontmatter.indd 5 3/10/09 1:42:50 
00-frontmatter.indd 6 3/10/09 1:42:50 
vii

About the Author

Dr. David Ian Hall has a doctorate of philosophy in modern 

British history from the University of Oxford. He is a senior lecturer in the Defence Studies Department, King’s College London 

(KCL), based at the Joint Services Command and Staff College 

(JSCSC), which is part of the United Kingdom Defence Academy 

in Shrivenham, England. Before joining KCL and the JSCSC in 

1998, he spent five years teaching history and war studies in the 

history department at the Royal Military College of Canada. He 

has served as an academic airpower specialist on the chief of the 

Air Staff’s Air Power Workshop (Royal Air Force), and presently 

he is the European co-ordinator for the Society for Military History. 

In addition to his interest in airpower, he has specialised in 

military pedagogy and the role of applied history in contemporary officer education and training. He has led many staff rides 

and battlefield tours in Europe and North America for the British, 

Canadian, and US armed forces as well as for the headquarters 

of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Rapid Deployable 

Corps-Italy. He is a founding editor of Defence Studies: The Journal 

of the JSCSC, and he has published on a number of twentiethcentury warfare topics in Britain, Canada, and the United States. 

In 1997 he won first prize in the Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris 

Trust Essay Competition for an essay on law, ethics, and strategic bombing. His most recent book is Strategy for Victory: The 

Development of British Tactical Air Power, 1919–1943 (Westport, 

CT: Praeger Security International, 2008).

00-frontmatter.indd 7 3/10/09 1:42:51 
00-frontmatter.indd 8 3/10/09 1:42:51 
ix

Summary

Applying a methodology that is best described as “inductive 

synthesis,” this research paper examines the elusive quest for 

effective integration between air and land forces in the context of 

joint operations. It draws on the British experience from the first 

attempts to provide air support for land operations in the First 

World War to contemporary operations in Afghanistan. The study 

is reflective in nature. It is not meant to be a detailed chronological account of every twist and turn in the history of army-air 

co-operation between the British Army and the Royal Air Force. 

It focuses on command and control issues and the need, now as 

much as then, for air and land commanders to be in each other’s 

minds and plans from the outset. Both historical examples and 

contemporary experiences are used to illustrate enduring 

disagreements between soldiers and airmen over who should 

control aircraft on and above the battlefield and what air forces 

should do to assist the army in its operations. These two questions have bedevilled successive generations of generals and air 

marshals. Even when agreement has been reached on the 

operational benefits to be had by the two services working 

together—as equals and at all levels of command according to a 

common plan—effective and long-lasting co-operation has been 

difficult and illusory. Perhaps by taking another look at the historical struggle in Britain to develop army-air co-operation, contemporary airmen and soldiers on both sides of the Atlantic will 

be better equipped conceptually to develop and deliver air-land 

integration that meets their respective requirements in the 

complex operating environment of today and tomorrow.

00-frontmatter.indd 9 3/10/09 1:42:51 
00-frontmatter.indd 10 3/10/09 1:42:51 
xi

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Dr. Daniel Mortensen, chief of research, 

Air Force Research Institute at Air University, and Mr. Eugene 

Moseley Jr., group manager, Northrop Grumman IT-Defense 

Group, for their personal encouragement and the financial support given to me to produce this research paper. Academic research that aims to contribute to public policy debates can often 

fall between two stools: academic bodies too often discount the 

work because it is not published in their preferred journals, and 

public institutions sometimes question the relevance of opinions 

proffered by an academic as opposed to a practitioner. Thankfully, the United States Air Force has a much broader and more 

enlightened view on such matters, and has encouraged the widest possible academic discourse so that those who produce public policy are better informed on the choices open to them. In this 

respect, I also want to thank Prof. Matthew Uttley, dean of academic studies, KCL at the JSCSC, for his ongoing support for 

policy-relevant academic research.

00-frontmatter.indd 11 3/10/09 1:42:51 
00-frontmatter.indd 12 3/10/09 1:42:51 


Learning How to Fight Together

The British Experience with 

Joint Air-Land Warfare

Operation Herrick IV is the name that the British armed 

forces gave to their operations against the Taliban and other 

militant forces in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, during the 

summer of 2006.1 It was a difficult operation, and August was 

a particularly difficult month. The combination of a very harsh 

environment and a fanatically determined enemy, unwilling to 

give up ground and willing to die protecting it, proved to be a 

significant challenge for the British expeditionary air and land 

forces. Wing Cdr Ian Duguid, a veteran Harrier pilot and the 

commanding officer of the Royal Air Force’s (RAF) IV Army Cooperation Squadron, said: “I have been flying for 14 years and 

nothing has compared with this for the intensity of operations 

undertaken.”2 In August, Duguid’s Harriers attacked up to 12 

targets per day and fired 426 CRV7 ground-attack rockets. 

They fired only 58 of these same ground-attack rockets in July. 

Air support was an essential force multiplier for the army on 

the ground as it pressed on with its offensive against the 

Taliban fighters and their strongholds.

In an attempt to make sense of his combat experience, 

Maj Jamie Loden, commanding officer of A Company, 3rd 

Battalion, The Parachute Regiment (3 PARA)—the main United 

Kingdom (UK) battle group in Herrick IV—sent a deeply reflective e-mail to a fellow army officer. It would prove to be the 

beginning of an e-mail exchange that ignited a bitter public row 

between the army and the RAF over air-land integration in current operations. Loden was highly critical of the RAF’s ineffectiveness in Afghanistan, stating: “From my point of view controlling and directing air, arty [artillery] and mors [mortars] is 

the best way to influence the battle. The RAF have [sic] been 

utterly utterly useless [during operations against the Taliban]. 

In contrast the USAF have [sic] been fantastic, and I would take 

an A-10 over Eurofighter any day.”3 The content of this e-mail was 

leaked to a number of British broadcasters and news organisations, and not surprisingly, it made national and international 

01-Text.indd 1 3/10/09 1:43:50 
headline news. It also led to a series of immediate denials by 

senior army and RAF officers eager to emphasise the close and 

effective co-operation that existed between the two services deployed on current operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere. 

Even the chief of the General Staff, Gen Sir Richard Dannatt, 

was drawn into the fray, conceding that some frontline army 

officers were being “irresponsible.” Unfortunately, however, 

Loden’s criticisms were not just the intemperate words of one 

angry and demoralised soldier. Rather they reflect a very long 

and tortuous struggle between Britain’s soldiers and airmen 

over who should control aircraft on the battlefield. They also 

hint at the protracted difficulties often associated with the acceptance and implementation of new and innovative ideas in 

large, established institutions. At the heart of the challenge 

facing the army and the RAF in their efforts to improve air-land 

integration is the difficult task of matching the different means 

by which air and land forces support the conduct of expeditionary 

operations. Both Major Loden’s outburst and the uncomfortably anxious manner by which his criticisms were dismissed 

by senior officers in the army and the RAF suggest that there 

remains a lot to be done before Britain’s current operational 

commanders can be assured of close coordination and effective 

integration across components for decisive joint action on and 

above the contemporary battlespace.4

Bitterness amongst British soldiers over what they have perceived to be “negligible and sporadic RAF fighter cover and bomber 

support” has been a common feature of all British military operations since the First World War, when combat aircraft first appeared over the battlefield. On many occasions it has also led a 

number of senior army officers to call for wholesale changes to 

British air policy, particularly with regard to the “independent” air 

force providing the army with air support on expeditionary operations. Most soldiers believe their air-support requirements will 

only be met when army commanders have “air resources at their 

disposal which are adequate for the operations in hand.”5 The 

same soldiers are certain that this will happen only when all army 

commanders receive full control over whatever air resources are 

allocated to them, along with the unquestioned right to order the 

RAF to undertake any and all other tasks that are required in 

support of the land forces and the land operation. In short, most 

01-Text.indd 2 3/10/09 1:43:51 
soldiers want their own organic air for tactical actions whilst they 

tend to ignore the larger strategic and operational questions concerning national and theatre objectives and the appropriate allocation of high-value yet finite air assets.

Brig Cyrus Greenslade summed up the views of many of his 

fellow army officers with unreserved honesty when he said “it is 

axiomatic that it is impractical to attempt to fight without there 

being adequate air forces under the operational control of the 

Army.”6 He, like many soldiers, desired suitable close-support 

aircraft under the army commander’s direct command and control. Greenslade did not base his analysis on the shortcomings 

of air-land integration in recent operations in Afghanistan or 

Iraq. He was, in fact, one of more than one-third of a million British and Allied servicemen to be evacuated from Dunkirk in June 

1940 as the German blitzkrieg surged to victory in the battle for 

France. In the weeks that followed the Allied defeat, Greenslade 

was also one of a number of British army and RAF officers who 

studied the recent fighting in search of lessons for the future. By 

the end of July 1940, both the army and the RAF understood 

that the ability to conduct fully integrated air-land operations 

was one of the key prerequisites to winning the war. But just 

how the two services were going to establish a new approach to 

the planning and conduct of successful air-land operations was 

something the soldiers and the airmen could not agree on.

For Air Marshal Sir W. Sholto Douglas the solution to the 

problem was simple: “All you need is the willingness to co-operate 

and good signals.”7 Breaking down years of mistrust and misunderstanding, however, would prove to be much more difficult 

than the introduction of either new doctrine or new technology 

at the battlefront. The two services had to overcome distinctive 

cultural differences in the way they conceptualised their respective operations and the way they fought their battles against 

the formidable Wehrmacht. They also had to develop greater 

empathy for each other and foster real mutual respect that embraced rather than rejected their differences as sister services. 

All of this takes time, and time is not a luxury for a nation or 

its armed forces when fully engaged in war, especially when it 

is a war of national survival.

The process by which the British Army and the RAF overcame these difficulties between June 1940 and the spring of 

01-Text.indd 3 3/10/09 1:43:51 
1943 is one of the more remarkable stories to emerge out of the 

Second World War.8 Joint command and signals experiments in 

the UK along with successful battlefield experience in North 

Africa combined with the strategic and tactical acumen of Air 

Marshals Sir Arthur Tedder and Sir Arthur Coningham, the active co-operation of Gen Bernard Montgomery, and the political 

authority of Winston Churchill to produce a uniquely British 

system that afforded the most comprehensive, effective, and 

flexible air support provided by any air force in 1942. Under 

Gen Dwight D. Eisenhower’s initiative, America’s floundering 

armies in North Africa eventually rejected their wartime arrangements and practices and copied the new British method 

of army co-operation and air support.9 US air planners and 

strategists, drawing on their own very sound prewar theoretical 

studies and principles, further refined the British Western Desert Air Force (WDAF) system for the combined Anglo-American 

forces that fought so successfully in Italy and Northwest Europe. 

Neither new doctrine nor new technology alone can account for 

the stunning success Anglo-American forces achieved in their 

provision of effective air support by the later stages of the Second World War. Rather, as Douglas suggested during those 

bleak summer months in 1940, good communication and the 

willingness to co-operate proved to be the twin factors that accounted for the operational success achieved.

This study critically examines joint air-land warfare through 

a historical case study. It looks at the British experience in the 

two world wars, tracing the obstacles to providing effective joint 

army-air support at the beginning of the Second World War and 

illustrating the way these difficulties were eventually overcome 

by the spring of 1943. In terms of contemporary relevance, this 

study identifies key enduring lessons (or first principles) for the 

successful conduct of joint air-land operations. Finally, it 

concludes with a brief reexamination of the issues behind the 

British infantry commander’s harsh criticism of the RAF in 

Afghanistan, linking where possible the problems and the solutions of the past with contemporary concerns and impediments 

to effective air-land integration. This is achieved by addressing 

a number of the key contemporary questions: What are the 

army’s current grievances over air support? How are they different from or similar to past concerns? Why has effective co01-Text.indd 4 3/10/09 1:43:51 
operation between the army and the RAF proved to be so difficult and so illusory? What is being done about this deleterious 

state of affairs today? And why, despite the fact that the British 

armed forces have operated a Joint Services Command and 

Staff College since 1997, do middle-ranking officers, particularly from the army, still lack essential empathy for the other 

services—a key prerequisite for effective joint operations? By 

looking back into the not-so-distant past, we may unlock some 

of the answers to a number of the current problems in providing effective air-land integration in today’s complex and everchanging operating environment.

Origins of the Air-Land Debate

The origins of the British Army’s problems in obtaining effective air support began even before Britain had an established 

air service. A powerful and influential group of generals at the 

War Office, led by Gen Sir William Nicholson, chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), believed that no type of aeronautical 

device—dirigible, balloon, glider, or aeroplane—would be of 

much use to the army.10 During the summer of 1908, Nicholson shared his emphatic position on the uselessness of military 

aviation with the British press. It was a judgment that would 

be disproved with cruel completeness in less than 10 years’ 

time. Nonetheless, Nicholson’s antipathy to military aviation 

set a standard at the War Office that too many future CIGSs 

and other senior army officers have all too readily and cheerfully emulated.11

Despite General Nicholson’s rejection of military aviation, the 

British government pressed on with its desire to establish an 

air force to support the army and the Royal Navy.12 Lord Haldane, the secretary of state for war and chairman of the Standing Sub-Committee on the Committee of Imperial Defence on 

Aerial Navigation, justified his decision with a warning that air 

forces might play an important role in a future war, and that 

Britain required an air force that was capable of concentrating 

its resources for decisive engagements either on land or at sea 

as the circumstances of the conflict dictated.13 In May 1912, 

Haldane therefore recommended the establishment of a centralised aerial service, with a military wing, a naval wing, and a 

01-Text.indd 5 3/10/09 1:43:51 
central flying school that could be used to support either the 

army or the Royal Navy in future operations.14 Haldane’s vision 

of a flexible, centrally controlled air force would eventually become one of the fundamental principles of the future RAF, but 

in 1912 it was a concept that fell on the barren ground of an 

army versus Royal Navy dispute over who should develop the 

new air service, how military aviation should be controlled, and 

for what purposes it should be used. Finding this joint enquiry 

to be too difficult, the two services opted to develop their aviation independently and without further reference to the other. 

When war between the great European powers began in August 

1914, Britain’s army and the Royal Navy joined the fight with 

their own respective air forces, the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) 

and the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS).

Small and late in forming, the RFC that accompanied the 

British Expeditionary Force (BEF) to France consisted of only 

four squadrons of some 50 aircraft. Left behind in England 

were another 70 planes of assorted types of which only half 

were fit to fly.15 Yet despite this inauspicious beginning, British 

military aviation, and the army’s interest in it, developed and 

expanded rapidly during the course of the war.16 By 1916 military aircraft had already performed all of the basic operational 

roles—minus heavy lift and rotary wing—that would be developed 

by air forces in the years to come. RFC aircraft were employed 

on reconnaissance missions, artillery observation, escort and 

interceptor missions, air-to-air combat, bombing and strafing 

enemy troops and positions, close air support, direct air support, indirect support, fighter sweeps and air superiority work, 

and independent strategic bombing.17 The unprecedented expansion of combat tasks for aircraft over the western front 

exerted considerable pressure on aircraft manufacturers to 

produce more and better machines; it also challenged army 

commanders to use their finite number of aircraft more economically and effectively. Later on in the war, French and 

German military aviation developed specialised aircraft and 

squadrons, particularly for ground attack and army support 

operations.18 British policy, however, differed sharply from that 

of the continental powers. Maj Gen Hugh Trenchard, head of 

the RFC in France throughout most of the war and later the 

chief of the Air Staff, RAF, argued in favour of a policy that re01-Text.indd 6 3/10/09 1:43:52 
jected specialisation and emphasised instead speed of response, 

flexibility of application, and concentration of maximum force 

at critical times and points in a battle. Britain’s young aviators 

had learnt through trial and error that all air operations, and 

especially those in support of the army, were more effective 

when first air superiority was attained over the battle area. 

They also recognised that a system of centralised command 

and control was a necessary prerequisite to attaining air 

superiority.19 Achieving these conditions, however, had not 

been possible in the RFC on a regular basis.

Early command and control arrangements in the RFC reflected 

the army commander’s concerns and desires. The army viewed 

aircraft as auxiliary forces, similar to artillery and the new tanks, 

which were attached to army formations at the front and placed 

under the army commander’s direct control. On average one 

squadron of aircraft was attached to each army corps. Decentralised command and control negated concentration of force 

and thus prevented Britain’s air forces from exercising a strategic impact on the battlefield. But this was not their purpose in 

army planning. The army used aircraft as “flying artillery” to attack enemy guns and strong points at the forefront of the battlefield in order to help the infantry advance and achieve a breakthrough. Under this system air forces were subordinate to the 

army’s tactical objectives, and senior army commanders were 

not concerned with the wider application of air forces outside of 

their own narrow battle area.20 This, in part, was one of the major reasons for the creation of the Royal Air Force in 1918.21

As the British Army struggled to find a solution to trench warfare and the grim stalemate on the western front, army officers 

increasingly narrowed their focus on military aviation to close 

air support—a ground attack role in the immediate battle zone. 

They wrongly believed that more close support would enable 

them to achieve the thus far unattainable breakthrough, and 

therefore pursued its development to the exclusion of all other 

forms of combat aviation. RFC and later RAF leaders despaired 

at the short-sightedness shown by their former army colleagues 

and, with the benefit of a growing sense of air-mindedness, espoused a yet unwritten doctrine that emphasised a more strategic application of airpower centred on air superiority, interdiction, and long-range bombing. The Battle of Amiens, in August 

01-Text.indd 7 3/10/09 1:43:52 
1918, was the first mass experiment using aircraft under centralised control in a land battle. It also was the first time that air 

and land commanders worked together planning a battle. In all 

previous British offensives, air commanders had executed the 

army commanders’ plans without being included in their construction. Though only a qualified success, Amiens demonstrated the enormous potential that air forces had to isolate a 

battlefield and make a decisive impact on operations taking place 

on the ground.22 The airmen understood exactly what the army 

was trying to do because they had taken the trouble to find out 

at the planning stage. During the battle they were able to coordinate their air actions within an integrated air-land battle plan 

that succeeded in producing the desired operational effects. Airmindedness was leading directly to a new concept of airpower, 

which, Trenchard confidently and correctly concluded, had the 

ability to exert both strategic influence and a decisive operational effect on the conduct of war and campaigns in the future. 

It was also a concept that the soldiers neither accepted nor made 

any effort to study and understand.23 Diverging opinions between airmen and soldiers over the proper employment of aircraft in war soon became the focal point of increasingly bitter 

disputes between the two services.

Political Wrangling between the Independent 

Air Force and Army/Royal Air Force 

during the Interwar Years

After the war, extensive analysis of the use and misuse of air 

forces led Britain’s airmen to establish a set of first principles 

of air warfare—offensive initiative, air superiority, concentration of force, and the need for centralised command and control—principles which served them well in their development of 

theory and doctrine throughout the interwar years and the 

Second World War.24 Their advocacy of these principles and 

their advancement of the concept of “airpower” during the early 

1920s, however, exacerbated severely strained relations with 

the army and the Royal Navy, relations that had steadily deteriorated due to deep postwar cuts in the annual defence budgets. During these formative years, the RAF battled against the 

01-Text.indd 8 3/10/09 1:43:52 
forces of military reaction for its very life.25 In RAF circles the 

story is often told in mythological form and acted out in pantomime. The air force was the beleaguered maiden, the army and 

the navy were the dragon and its twisted mate, and Lord 

Trenchard was the holy knight Saint George.26 Throughout the 

interwar period, both the army and the Royal Navy viewed the 

Independent Air Force as an aberration of the last war and 

wanted it broken up with a view to returning the tactical air 

wings (army and navy) to the older services. Trenchard remained defiant. He was determined to keep the RAF one and 

indivisible. His reasoning for this was based on real fears that 

neither the War Office nor the Admiralty had either the aptitude or the means to advance the development of airpower 

properly. In the 1920s “properly” meant offensive airpower: 

long-range bombers and strategic bombing, not army co-operation 

or fighters for air defence.

Trenchard was convinced that the nation that considered and 

developed its air forces “as an auxiliary arm to the older services” would “suffer a rude awakening if faced by a nation which 

has recognised that the air may become a primary medium of 

war and has developed its airpower accordingly.”27 Strongly emphasising the offensive nature of air warfare, Trenchard and the 

Air Staff concentrated on developing their theory of strategic 

bombing. But without any real enemy to worry about in the 

1920s, it was “air control” in the trouble spots of the empire that 

preserved the independence of the RAF. Imperial policing provided substantial financial savings for the British government 

and in so doing also secured the RAF’s future as an independent 

service with its unique contribution to the defence of the United 

Kingdom—strategic bombing.28

Trenchard’s success in securing a future for the “third service” was purchased at a high price. “There was hardly an area 

of contact between the [army and the RAF],” wrote Derek Waldie, 

a historian of the interwar period, “where there was not, at 

best, friction, or, at worst, open hostility.”29 Parsimonious defence budgets, a severe lack of resources, and an absence of 

“good will” made it next to impossible for the three services to 

develop new doctrines, never mind co-operative or joint doctrines that incorporated the most recent technologies and theories of war. Throughout the 1920s and most of the 1930s, the 

01-Text.indd 9 3/10/09 1:43:52 
10

three services went their own separate ways planning and preparing to defend Britain and the empire in the unlikely event of 

a major war. Joint air-land training exercises were seldom held. 

When they were, too often they highlighted the different approaches of the two services and emphasised the chasm that 

existed between the army and the RAF over command arrangements and the proper application of air forces in support of a 

land battle.30 When war broke out again in Europe in September 1939, Britain’s armed forces were not only underequipped 

for battle, they were woefully unprepared for the close cooperation that was demanded by modern joint and combined 

warfare in three dimensions.

The Battle for France, 1940

The BEF and RAF that went to France in 1939 were two very 

different forces, with equally different obligations and objectives. Initially, the BEF was a single corps of two divisions. It 

took up positions on the left flank of the Anglo-French line 

between the Seventh and First French Armies on the FrancoBelgian border. RAF deployment consisted of the Advanced Air 

Striking Force (AASF) and the air component of the field force, 

which had a number of strategic responsibilities beyond that of 

providing direct support for the BEF.31 In addition to the AASF 

and the air component, the whole of Bomber Command was 

available to support the Allied armies if required by changes in 

the strategic situation. These arrangements did not satisfy Gen 

John Gort, commander in chief (C-in-C) of the BEF; Leslie HoreBelisha, the secretary of state for war; or Gen Edmund Ironside, the CIGS. The army wanted air forces under its direct 

command rather than “merely in support.”32 Air and ground 

training exercises in France had also exposed an overly complicated and unwieldy command structure. The Air Ministry too 

was eager to improve the existing command and organisational 

arrangements for the provision of air support. Accordingly, the 

Air Staff created a single air command, British Air Forces in 

France (BAFF), with Air Marshal Arthur Barratt as its air officer 

commander in chief (AOC-in-C). Barratt further proposed the 

creation of a joint army-air headquarters, with his own headquarters side-by-side on the same site as the C-in-C’s BEF 

01-Text.indd 10 3/10/09 1:43:53 
11

headquarters. General Gort, however, thought little of Barratt’s 

suggestion and dismissed it as being “unnecessary.”33

The calamitous Battle of France convinced the soldiers that 

they had been right all along: an army required its own aircraft 

if it was to have any chance of success in a war against a firstrate opponent such as the Wehrmacht. Furthermore, the War 

Office claimed that the army required its own specialised air 

forces, consisting of a fighter umbrella for defence and divebombers for close offensive support, suballotted to ground commanders at both corps and divisional levels. The Air Ministry 

disagreed. Whilst recent events in France had revealed a number of defects in the BAFF’s system of air support, there was one 

glaring weakness that overshadowed all of the others, and that 

was numerical inferiority. There were never enough RAF aircraft 

in France to perform the many and varied tasks envisaged for 

them, and substantial reinforcement was never a practical option. Fighter squadrons were in short supply, and, in any case, 

home-air-defence requirements tended to dominate decisions 

taken regarding the deployment of Britain’s comparatively small 

air force.34 Effective air support, cited the airmen, was dependent on a high degree of air superiority. Achieving this superiority demanded an air force superior in strength to the enemy air 

force opposite: a unified air force consisting of bombers, fighters, 

communication, and transport aircraft all under centralised air 

command with the flexibility to switch from one task to another 

as strategic and operational circumstances dictated. It would 

not be vast numbers of specialised support aircraft tethered to 

the ground forces. Lack of aircraft accounted for the reverses 

suffered—not, as the War Office wrongly believed, the RAF’s airsupport system. More aircraft, exhorted the airmen, along with 

more mobility for air forces on the ground to advance and withdraw with the army as well as better communications to coordinate the efforts of both services in the field, were required to 

turn defeat into victory.35

The Evolution of Air-Land Technique

During the late summer and autumn of 1940, the two services searched for answers to the air-support dilemma.36 The 

War Office established a special committee under Gen Sir 

01-Text.indd 11 3/10/09 1:43:53 
12

William Bartholomew, long renowned for his enmity toward 

the RAF, to study the problem and make recommendations 

for a new policy.37 After hearing oral evidence from a number of senior army officers and an airman who had fought in 

France, the committee recommended that the army receive 

its own independent air arm.38 It was the RAF system that 

was at fault. The conclusion was hardly a surprise. It did, 

however, reveal the parochial nature of army thinking and 

the failure of the army’s frontline commanders to comprehend the character of the newly combined air and armoured 

warfare that had just defeated them.

Whilst the army was blaming others for its battlefield defeats, the Air Staff promoted a series of joint army-air signals 

experiments to determine the most appropriate methods for 

developing close co-operation between air and ground forces 

fighting a land battle. Conducted in Northern Ireland from 

5 September through 28 October 1940, these investigations 

produced one of the most momentous developments of the war. 

Group Capt A. H. Wann and Lt Col John Woodall devised a 

system of joint army-air command in the field supported by a 

sophisticated signals network that linked forward ground 

troops with a combined battlefield headquarters and advanced 

airfields.39 Once fully developed, the air-support controls (ASC) 

provided British air and land forces with the organisational and 

technical means to direct and manage effective air support for 

both offensive and defensive operations.

Around the same time that the ASC system was being developed in the UK, a similar system—one that emphasised colocated army-air headquarters and a discrete, sophisticated signals network that linked forward and rear airfields with the 

joint army-air headquarters as well as with deployed divisions 

and brigades of the army—was the subject of a number of 

army/RAF experiments in North Africa. Uncertainty over the 

immediate benefits that these new ideas and operating procedures might bring to army-air co-operation in the field led to 

inevitable delays in the army accepting and subsequently making full and effective use of the new air-support system. In addition, battlefield experience—particularly the army’s all-tooregular defeats at the hands of Col-Gen Erwin Rommel’s Afrika 

Korps—provided a harsh test for the new air-support theories 

01-Text.indd 12 3/10/09 1:43:53 
13

as well as more ammunition for acrimonious debates between 

soldiers and airmen over the best arrangements for future 

army-air co-operation. Once fully developed, however, the ASC 

system proved capable of directing air support for both offensive and defensive operations. Expanded and refined over a period of 12 to 18 months by Air Marshals Tedder, AOC-in-C, 

RAF Middle East, and Coningham, air officer commanding 

(AOC), WDAF, a hybrid of the Wann-Woodall system and the 

air-support experiments in North Africa eventually led to the 

acceptance of the new joint air-support concepts and the deployment of the revolutionary WDAF system in the summer of 

1942.40

Another important step along the road to meeting the British 

Army’s air-support requirements was the formation of Army Cooperation Command on 1 December 1940. The Air Staff discussed the creation of such a command in July, but it was a 

formal request from the army in late September for a new RAF 

command that “specialised in air support for the Army” that 

paved the way for its creation. Anthony Eden, the secretary of 

state for war, reluctantly accepted the necessity of army-RAF cooperation if the air-support problem was to be solved quickly. 

There was insufficient time (and insufficient resources) for the 

army to start from scratch and “raise, train, and maintain an 

Army Air Arm before 1942 at the earliest.”41 The Air Ministry 

both welcomed and fully supported the War Office’s request for 

a new functional command, similar to Bomber and Fighter Commands, particularly if by meeting this request it could avert at 

least temporarily another political battle over the RAF’s independence. On 18 November, the two services agreed to establish 

Army Co-operation Command (RAF). Air Marshal Barratt was 

appointed AOC-in-C, with Woodall, recently promoted to brigadier, serving as his senior air staff officer. The new command 

was responsible for all air training in co-operation with the army 

and with the development of the tactics and techniques of Army 

Co-operation, including close air support. It was successful in 

improving the technical proficiency of both services when cooperating with each other, but it did not address the larger policy 

issues concerning command and the optimum use of aircraft in 

support of land operations.42

01-Text.indd 13 3/10/09 1:43:53 
14

North Africa: The Adoption and Refinement 

of a New Air-Land Technique

Harmonious and effective army-RAF co-operation in the Middle East predated the outbreak of the war in the form of the 

combined plan for the defence of Egypt. British offensive operations against Italian forces in Libya—namely Operation Compass in the autumn of 1940 and Operation Crusader fought during the autumn and winter of 1941–42—also provided irrefutable 

evidence that integrated planning between air and ground forces 

worked. Army and air commanders learned firsthand that land 

and air operations reinforced each other when planned and conducted in the closest consultation. Direct and continuous collaboration familiarised each service with the strengths and the 

weaknesses of the other. By the spring of 1942, ideas, equipment, and technique merged together and fashioned not only a 

formidable air weapon to support the army but also led to something entirely new: tactical airpower. Flexible for either attack or 

defence, the RAF Middle East was organised and trained to fight 

in equal partnership with land and maritime forces, as well as in 

its own separate element to command the air above North Africa 

and over the Mediterranean.43

The sine qua non of success in the desert war, indeed of all the 

major battles and campaigns in the Second World War, was air 

supremacy. Attainment and retention of air superiority over the 

battlefield was an essential prerequisite for an effective contribution by air forces to land operations. All other tasks, namely 

isolating the battlefield from enemy reinforcement and supply, 

reconnaissance, and attacking targets in forward areas of the 

contact battle, were secondary until a favourable air situation 

was established. Air superiority and air support for the land 

forces were not separate and antipathetic tasks. Once a satisfactory air situation was secured, the whole air force with all of its 

available strength—if centralised under the direct command and 

control of the air commander—could be switched to direct support, in effect saturating the battlefield with airpower.44 These 

guidelines, simple but sound, were the essence of the Tedder 

and Coningham doctrine for joint air-land operations.

The process of formulating the new doctrine began during the 

spring and summer months of 1941. Drawing on recent battle 

01-Text.indd 14 3/10/09 1:43:54 
15

experience and training exercises in the desert, Air Marshal 

Tedder deduced that the whole North African/Mediterranean 

campaign was a joint campaign that demanded the utmost 

interservice co-operation. The co-operation he envisaged involved more than one service drawing up a plan and then approaching the other two services for assistance, which, sadly, 

was the British Army’s historical approach to co-operation. Tedder regarded every operation from its inception as a joint operation that must be planned and executed on that basis. Army and 

air commanders must work together throughout all stages of 

drafting, planning, and executing their operations. To this end, 

he urged both services to maintain intimate contacts at all relevant levels of command, both at their respective permanent 

headquarters in the Middle East (HQME) and in the field. Such 

co-operation, he counselled, offered the additional benefit of 

strengthening the unity of purpose of the services. Tedder firmly 

believed that integrating both the army and the air force into the 

larger strategic mission and co-ordinating their actions through 

a joint plan of operations was the key to victory.45

Tedder believed that the best way to win the war in Libya was 

by combining the unique offensive power of the air force—its flexibility, ubiquity, power of concentration, and ability to penetrate—

with the power of the army to contain and occupy. The army 

would occupy and defend forward landing grounds whilst the air 

force would strike further afield, thereby assisting the army’s forward movement. As such, the fighting services were interdependent. Their success in battle therefore depended in large measure 

on the degree to which they assisted each other.46

Tedder was the thinker who conceived the new air-support system but Air Vice-Marshal Coningham (AOC WDAF) was the practitioner who made it work. Coningham realised that attaining 

both the flexibility to shift aircraft rapidly from one task to another and the ability to concentrate superior air strength at the 

decisive time and place were the essential preconditions to turning Tedder’s theory into practice. Air forces had to be controlled by 

one central authority if the maximum value was to be drawn from 

their unique offensive character. Coningham took the abstract 

concepts of centralised command and concentration of force and 

devised the tactical air doctrine that exploited them.47

01-Text.indd 15 3/10/09 1:43:54 
16

During Operation Crusader, Coningham established his 

headquarters beside the army commander’s. By collocating 

both air and army staffs and creating a combined army-air 

headquarters in the field, Coningham was ideally placed to view 

the battle in its entirety and to take rapid executive action in 

response to changing circumstances and operational requirements. Coningham commanded what amounted to a unified 

air force inclusive of all types of bombers, fighters, fighterbombers, and reconnaissance aircraft, centrally coordinated, 

in a broad combined plan of employment. Concentrating on 

battlefield air attack (excluding air transportation and operations by airborne forces), the air forces contributed to land operations in three ways: first by establishing and maintaining 

air superiority, second by isolating the battlefield, and third by 

providing direct support for the ground troops.48

Coningham’s ability to fight an air-land battle was improved 

considerably by the introduction of two technological innovations: air-support controls and the fighter-bomber (first the 

Hurribomber and later the Kittyhawk and Tomahawk fighterbombers). The intricate communications links of the ASCs enabled Coningham to direct and monitor the air battle. Flying 

from advanced airfields close to the battlefront, fighter-bombers 

provided air support independently and with a much shorter 

reaction time than that needed by ordinary bomber and reconnaissance aircraft and their fighter escorts. Fighter-bombers 

could also revert to their original role as fighters whenever circumstances demanded. Accurate in ground attack and adept 

at air-to-air combat, the fighter-bomber, as developed by the 

RAF, was the long-sought-after answer to the German “Stuka” 

Ju-87 dive-bomber.49 In tandem the ASCs and the fighter-bombers 

provided Coningham with a flexible air weapon that enabled 

the WDAF to seize the tactical initiative.50

The WDAF’s new air-ground doctrine proved far superior to 

the German blitzkrieg. During the middle years of the war, both 

in Russia and North Africa, the Germans increasingly subjugated their air forces to the demands of the ground commander, 

who wrongly insisted on the provision of close support at the 

expense of air superiority: the one vital element to sustained 

offensive initiative now in both air and ground operations.51

From 1942 through the end of the North African campaign, the 

01-Text.indd 16 3/10/09 1:43:54 
17

WDAF’s concept of operations began with the attainment and 

retention of air superiority. Coningham, more than any other 

RAF officer, eventually convinced his counterparts in the Eighth 

Army that air forces could make a decisive contribution to the 

outcome of a land battle in many ways, the least of which was 

as flying artillery at the ground force’s point of attack. But it 

was a lengthy and painfully slow process of reeducation.

British generals Sir Claude Auchinleck and Sir Neil Ritchie 

accepted the basic guidelines of the Tedder and Coningham 

system, which were codified in March 1942 in the Middle East 

(army and air) Training Pamphlet No. 3A, Direct Air Support.

52

Achieving true coordination between aircraft and forward elements of the army was, however, more problematic. Most 

ground commanders quite naturally viewed their leading role 

on the battlefield as a matter of tradition. They were, as Tedder 

and Coningham discovered, “instinctively antagonistic” to 

shared operational authority, especially with an airman. They 

also found it difficult to accept the fact that they did not have 

“a divine right to command [their] own private air forces.”53 One 

brigadier even told Coningham that “what a Corps Commander 

really wants is a squadron at his disposal to come up on his 

call and bomb something in front of him.”54 His candid comment betrayed a deeply rooted bias about aircraft serving as 

nothing more than auxiliary weapons for the army: one he 

shared with many other corps, division, and brigade commanders. More than any other obstacle, it was the lack of conceptual 

commonality—strategic, operational, and tactical—between 

soldiers and airmen that was the most difficult problem to 

overcome. It was the harsh test of battle that exposed the flaws 

and identified the solutions.

Rommel’s 1942 spring offensive against the Gazala positions 

began with brilliant success on 26 May and ended in stalemate 

42 days later at El Alamein, some 220 miles inside the Egyptian border.55 A rough comparison of the opposing numbers of 

tanks and aircraft reveals that the British had a substantial 

numerical advantage on the ground whilst the Germans had a 

similar edge in the air. Lack of air support for the army was 

not, however, the reason for the Eighth Army’s failure, a point 

fully accepted by General Auchinleck: “Our air forces could not 

have done more than they did to help and sustain the 8th Army 

01-Text.indd 17 3/10/09 1:43:54 
18

in its struggle. Their effort was continuous by day and by night 

and the effect on the enemy was tremendous. . . . Had it not 

been for their devoted and exceptional efforts, we should not 

have been able to stop the enemy on the El Alamein position.”56

Enemy war diaries corroborate General Auckinleck’s assessment.57 The problem, such as it was for the British in the Middle 

East, was the systemic weaknesses of the army in the field.58

Tedder was incensed at the army’s defeatist attitude and its 

poorly coordinated response to the German offensive. He did 

not doubt either the bravery or the courage of the British soldier, but he harboured serious misgivings about the lack of 

leadership exhibited by the army’s senior officers.59 The inherent weaknesses in the army’s organisation were exacerbated by 

the confusion and strain of the retreat: a pernicious combination unlikely to improve the performance of the fledgling armyair co-operation system. Under enemy pressure the Eighth 

Army—retreating all too often in headlong panic—demonstrated 

a fundamental disregard for the air-support arrangements that 

had been agreed on with the WDAF. Coningham was obliged to 

rely almost entirely on his own tactical reconnaissance in order 

to give the army any support at all.60 Auchinleck empathised 

with Coningham’s legitimate grievances, but he seemed powerless to rectify the situation.61

Effective co-operation, as the historian John Terraine has 

stated, depends entirely on how well all the parties involved 

work together: “The system fails if one party to it collapses, 

which is what the Eighth Army too frequently did in the face of 

the Afrika Korps.”62 The WDAF could not be expected on its 

own to produce the desired victory. Nevertheless, it was instrumental in preventing a catastrophic defeat.

The combined German and Italian armies reached the British 

positions at El Alamein at the end of June. Rommel commenced 

his attack on 1 July. Soon after, it was a decision he regretted 

bitterly. Co-operation from air forces was of decisive importance 

in a land battle at this stage in the war, and the first battle of El 

Alamein provided a stark illustration of this point.63

The Luftwaffe was exhausted, and without air support Rommel’s Panzerarmee could not dislodge the Eighth Army from its 

defensive positions; meanwhile the Axis ground troops were 

subjected to a powerful and punishing air assault. During the 

01-Text.indd 18 3/10/09 1:43:55 
19

first week of July alone, the WDAF flew 5,458 sorties against 

Rommel’s forces. As was the case during the latter stages of the 

Eighth Army’s retreat into Egypt, Coningham fought an independent air battle, selecting targets on the basis of his own 

reconnaissance. Auchinleck, despite his genuine belief in the 

importance of air support, maintained a separate army headquarters throughout the battle. Whilst the joint system, so 

carefully devised over the previous nine months, clearly had 

broken down, the overwhelming might of Allied airpower under 

the dual leadership of Tedder and Coningham proved too much 

for the overextended Afrika Korps. On 4 July, Rommel informed 

Berlin that he was suspending the offensive and taking up defensive positions.64

During the stalemate that followed, both sides struggled to 

build up their forces for the next and possibly final battle. 

HQME also used the lull in the fighting to deduce the lessons 

of the recent debacle. At an army commanders’ meeting on 

16 July, Tedder was questioned about the RAF’s supposed failure to provide close support. He responded with a detailed account of the WDAF’s recent accomplishments, noting that without it the army’s retreat “would have become a shambles.” 

Effective direct support, Tedder restated, depended on both 

services helping each other. Too often this was not the case. 

The WDAF was forced to collect its own information on the 

battle, and it seldom received adequate bomb lines from the 

troops it was tasked to support. Unimpressed with this explanation, a couple of generals confronted Tedder after the meeting and said “it was about time there was some plain speaking 

on the subject.” Tedder could not have agreed more, but he 

also noted that “to try and make an impression on the Army 

was rather like hitting a wall of cotton wool.”65

By early August, the army’s senior commanders in the 

Middle East had lost the confidence of the prime minister 

and the War Cabinet in London. Auckinleck was sacked. 

Gen Sir Harold Alexander took his place as the theatre commander, and General Montgomery was appointed commander of the Eighth Army.66

Montgomery brought to the Eighth Army an immediate and 

infectious winning attitude. His first order, issued on 13 August, 

two days prior to taking up command, was that the army forth01-Text.indd 19 3/10/09 1:43:55 
20

with would hold its ground. Instantly, Montgomery instilled a 

sense of purpose and direction in the army, something that 

had been absent for far too long. “Orders no longer formed ‘the 

basis for discussion’ but for action.” Montgomery firmly believed that “command must be direct and personal.” He also 

believed that a commander must plan his operations thoroughly in advance.67

The WDAF also felt Montgomery’s presence with advantage. 

Coningham met Montgomery on 16 August. The two men soon 

discovered that they held similar views on the benefits of a 

commander exercising personal control over his forces in battle. They talked about the importance of air superiority as a 

prerequisite for both effective air support and victory in a land 

battle, and also about the merits of a joint command system. 

Montgomery listened, and before their meeting ended he pledged 

to move his headquarters immediately in order to be beside 

Coningham. Montgomery was even better than his word. The 

advanced HQs of both services were not only collocated, but 

they joined together and remained this way for the duration of 

the campaign. It was an auspicious day for the Allies. Montgomery did what no previous British general in the desert had 

been willing to do: he worked out his plans and fought his 

battles together with the air force.68

There was “a spirit of quiet confidence” at the joint Army Air 

Headquarters.69 Together Montgomery and Coningham had 

worked out a joint plan to coordinate and direct their impending operations. Comprehensive victories in the Battle of Alam el 

Halfa and the Second Battle of El Alamein attest to the effectiveness of their partnership and the merits of the new airsupport system. Afterwards, a despondent Rommel wrote that 

“anyone who has to fight against an enemy with air superiority 

fights under the same handicaps and with the same chances of 

success as a savage against modern European troops.”70 The 

success achieved is correctly attributed to the system devised 

by Tedder and Coningham, but the system alone was not antecedent to successful operations. Continuous and intimate collaboration between Coningham and Montgomery accounts for 

the triumphant application of airpower. The personalities involved were as instrumental to the success attained as the new 

procedures themselves. Force of personality also led to the ac01-Text.indd 20 3/10/09 1:43:55 
21

ceptance of a new doctrine. From the Battle of Alam el Halfa to 

the victorious end of the campaign at Tunis in May 1943, the 

air-support system established by Tedder and Coningham was 

accepted and implemented by the Eighth Army. Air superiority 

was the key to success, and attaining it received priority.71

Under Montgomery the army accepted the fact that direct 

support was only a part, and often a small part, of the critical 

support provided by air forces during a land battle. Sadly, this 

was not the case with the Operation Torch landings and the 

early Anglo-American operations in Northwest Africa. 

Operation Torch was the first major attempt the American and 

British allies made at joint and combined operations. General 

Eisenhower was the commander in chief. His task-force commander was British lieutenant-general K. A. N. Anderson. An 

overall air commander did not figure in the Torch plan. British 

and American air forces were to operate separately and in different geographical areas.72 No provisions were made for liaison between the two air forces, and they formed their plans without 

reference to each other. In addition to the rigid demarcation lines 

for operations, which negated the RAF’s first principles of airpower—namely concentration of force and flexibility of action—

the Torch planners gave army and corps commanders clear operational control over their supporting air forces.73 In Northwest 

Africa the air forces were subordinate to the land forces.

The Torch planners, later to their regret, ignored the hardearned lessons learnt by the RAF in the Middle East. Neither 

the Tedder/Coningham command system nor the combatproven procedures and techniques of the WDAF were taken 

into account. Instead the Anglo-American air planners looked 

to an untried American doctrine, outlined in Field Manual (FM) 

31-35, Aviation in Support of Ground Forces, for their air-ground 

policy. On paper it offered a comprehensive tactical air control 

system: a central air command, a sophisticated network of ASC 

centres, and various levels of communications between the 

ground and the air forces. In practice, the techniques had yet 

to be developed. FM 31-35’s emphasis on corps-level air support also was inclined to foster the dispersion and subordination of the air force to the narrow close-support interests of the 

ground commanders. All other air operations, which often were 

more important to the outcome of a land campaign, were left 

01-Text.indd 21 3/10/09 1:43:55 
22

unattended. It was, as one historian, Richard Hallion, has concluded, “the kind of system the British Army wanted in 1939–

1941.”74 Terraine blames Air Marshal Sir Charles Portal, chief 

of the Air Staff, and the Air Staff for allowing these “inexcusable” shortcomings in air-support doctrine and planning to go 

forward. Others, however, rightly point out that burgeoning 

American influence, in particular that of Generals Eisenhower 

and Carl Spaatz, was responsible for the Torch air plan.75

Both in concept and in execution, the air support provided 

for Operation Torch was woefully inadequate. Bombers and 

fighters were kept “on call” by senior army commanders who 

insisted on receiving continuous protection from enemy air attack and on having aircraft immediately available for local 

ground-assault tasks.76 British and American air commanders 

were quick to criticise this “improper employment” of their 

forces. But their remonstrations fell on deaf ears. A wider application of airpower—to establish air superiority, isolate the 

battle area, and disrupt the enemy’s communications and supplies—seemed to be well beyond the experience and the limited 

understanding of the soldiers. In the words of one American 

fighter-group leader, “The army generals did not care two hoots 

about air superiority.”77 Furthermore, the gross misuse of Allied 

airpower in Northwest Africa enabled the numerically inferior 

Luftwaffe to secure local air superiority and successfully attack 

Anglo-American ground troops on a frequent basis. Less than 

a month after the Allied landings, the advance on Tunisia had 

slowed to a virtual halt. Eisenhower was learning the hard way 

that victory on the ground depended in large measure on the 

effective employment of airpower.

Help arrived at the end of November when Tedder visited 

Eisenhower’s headquarters in Algiers. The two commanders 

enjoyed a number of candid discussions on the growing crisis 

in air support and the many difficulties revealed in the Torch 

setup. Tedder was “deeply disturbed” by what he saw and 

heard.78 In addition to the tactical heresy committed by the 

ground commanders, he observed that communications for all 

of the services were practically nonexistent, landing grounds 

were wholly inadequate in both number and location (the most 

advanced fighter airfield was more than 100 miles behind the 

forward troops), and there was not even the semblance of a 

01-Text.indd 22 3/10/09 1:43:56 
23

joint headquarters to control air operations.79 Altogether these 

shortcomings negated the possibility of achieving a high standard of concentrated air effort and hence air superiority.80

These were familiar problems. Their remedy, also found in the 

recent past, depended on a complete reorganisation of the control of air operations.

Effective and efficient air support was, for Tedder, contingent 

on proper organisation and centralised control. It was a problem 

of executive decision making as much as or even more than one 

of tactical coordination and execution in the field. In Northwest 

Africa, the problem was complicated further by the political considerations of coalition warfare. This last hurdle was the most 

crucial one because, in Tedder’s opinion, the solution was a unified Anglo-American air force under a single air command with 

operational responsibility for all of North Africa and the Mediterranean. Only the RAF had the experience and the expertise to 

create and run such a command. Moreover, American acceptance of British ideas and procedures was by no means certain. 

Tedder knew this. He also knew that endorsement of his proposal required both careful management and tact. After a series 

of preliminary discussions involving Eisenhower, Tedder, Portal, 

and the chiefs of staff (COS) in London, the COSs, on 1 December 1942, proposed that all of the Torch air forces be integrated 

under Tedder’s command. In his capacity as AOC-in-C, he would 

also serve as Eisenhower’s air adviser.81

Eisenhower had some reservations, but in general he agreed 

with the recommendation for a unified command system. The 

radical nature of the proposed changes meant that numerous 

practical details had to be resolved before anything could actually be implemented. Not until the Casablanca Conference in 

mid-January 1943, in the presence of Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, 

Churchill, and the combined (British and American) COSs, 

were all of the various arrangements finalised. Even then it was 

not until 17 February that Tedder’s appointment as AOC-in-C, 

Mediterranean, took effect, and the Northwest African Air Forces 

(NWAAF) was constituted. Eastern Air Command and the 

Twelfth US Army Air Force combined to form the NWAAF under 

the command of General Spaatz.82 The Americans also accepted 

the RAF concept of dividing air operations by function rather 

than by geographic zones. The NWAAF was subdivided into 

01-Text.indd 23 3/10/09 1:43:56 
24

the Northwest African Strategic Air Force under Gen James 

“Jimmy” Doolittle, the Northwest African Coastal Air Force 

under Air Vice-Marshal Sir Hugh Pugh Lloyd, and the newly 

created Northwest African Tactical Air Force (NATAF) under 

Marshal Coningham.83

The debacle at Kasserine, which coincidently occurred at the 

same time that the Allied air forces were reconstituted, led to 

further and even more radical changes in American air doctrine.84

Coningham arrived at the front on 18 February and immediately 

changed the air-support arrangements. He discontinued American methods (prescribed in FM 31-35) and replaced them with 

his own WDAF organisation and system of command. Centralised control was the fundamental premise. Coningham therefore assumed direct command of all tactical air units (No. 242 

Group, RAF, and XII Air Support Command, US Army Air Forces) 

and ended the flawed and harmful practice of land commanders 

controlling aircraft. Corps and division commanders now made 

their requests for air support through the highest army commander (Gen Sir Harold Alexander, C-in-C 18th Army Group), 

who shared a joint headquarters with Coningham and his air 

staff. Communications, as in Egypt and Cyrenaica, were handled through an ASC network.85

On 20 February, Coningham issued his first general operational directive to NATAF. He emphasised that the first priority 

was the establishment of air superiority, and second was the 

isolation of the immediate battlefield. Henceforth, air support 

would be proactive and offensive. The practice of standing 

fighter patrols (air umbrellas) to protect friendly ground troops 

was replaced by offensive fighter sweeps against the enemy air 

force at or near its bases. Ground attack missions would also 

focus on targets in the rearward areas, namely troop concentrations and columns of soft-skinned vehicles, rather than 

tanks and enemy troops deployed at the battlefront. Close support (the American term), or direct support of ground forces, 

became a minor duty of the air forces. Its decline in importance 

was not, however, a rejection of the army’s needs; rather it was 

a prudent shift in accordance with established and battleproven RAF doctrine. Except for the Battle of El Hamma, from 

3 to 9 April, when the NATAF flew more than 3,000 sorties and 

dropped over 1,500,000 pounds of bombs in direct support of 

01-Text.indd 24 3/10/09 1:43:56 
25

the forward elements of the army, the campaign in Northwest 

Africa did not lend itself to major close-support operations.86

To their considerable credit, American commanders accepted 

Coningham’s idea of independent air support. During the spring 

of 1943, Eisenhower established a study group to examine the 

lessons of Kasserine and to make recommendations for a new 

field manual to replace FM 31-35. He also sent his air operations officer, Brig Gen Lawrence S. Kuter, back to Washington 

to promote the new air-ground relationship. Air Force generals 

Henry H. “Hap” Arnold and Spaatz were equally enthusiastic 

about the British concepts, and in July 1943 the US Army published FM 100-20, Command and Employment of Air Power. It 

specified three phases of an air campaign in support of a land 

operation and listed them in order of priority: “to gain and 

maintain air superiority, to isolate the battlefield, and to support the ground forces.”87 In short, the Americans adopted the 

British doctrine in toto.88 What the British Army had failed to 

do after three and a half years of war, the Americans did in less 

than nine months. They not only proclaimed airpower and land 

power equal and interdependent—neither being an auxiliary of 

the other—but also accepted them as such. In future land campaigns, control of all available airpower would be exercised 

through the air force commander, who would work with rather 

than for the land commander.89 In the arid wastes of North 

Africa, Allied air and ground commanders working together 

learned the art of joint operations and thereby found the key 

that opened the door to victory.

Success without Harmony: British Air-Land

Co-operation by the End of the War

Montgomery grasped both the essential character and the 

importance of air operations in support of a land battle. In the 

Western Desert he worked closely with Coningham at all stages 

of drafting, planning, and executing integrated air-ground operations. Success in battle depended on the degree to which 

the army and the air force assisted each other, not as ancillary 

to the other but as equals in pursuit of a common objective. 

Both men also benefited from Tedder’s strategic vision. Tedder 

01-Text.indd 25 3/10/09 1:43:56 
26

viewed war “as a single problem in which the strategy, and tactics, and the technique of sea, land and air warfare respectively 

are inevitably and closely interlocked.”90 Together, Montgomery 

and Coningham turned Tedder’s theory into battlefield practice, achieved a high degree of co-operation, and created a winning air-land combination on the desert battlefields in North 

Africa. Montgomery’s monumental ego eventually came to the 

fore and sabotaged his relationship with Coningham and other 

British and American commanders, but it was that same ego 

and burning desire to defeat the Germans that led him to 

search out his air counterpart and construct a winning strategy 

in the summer of 1942.91

The debate over the future of army-air co-operation in the UK 

had not moved on much since the winter of 1940–41. The army 

still wanted its own air arm under its direct command and control, and the RAF still refused to countenance such an extravagant and unsound use of finite air resources. Drawing on the 

recent lessons of army-air co-operation in North Africa, Marshal 

Portal told his army counterpart in May 1943 that the RAF would 

provide air support for Operation Overlord (and the subsequent 

Normandy campaign), along the lines of the WDAF system.92

Portal’s proposal did not meet with the War Office’s approval. In 

particular, Gen Alan Brooke, chief of the Imperial General Staff, 

still held out for the creation of an independent army-air arm. The 

deadlock was eventually broken by a combination of factors: the 

battlefield success achieved by Montgomery and Coningham in 

the Western Desert from August 1942 onwards; Churchill’s personal intervention in October 1942 when he restated the terms of 

the Middle East Directive on Air Support for the benefit of the 

army and the RAF in the United Kingdom; Fighter Command’s 

development of air-support techniques; and Exercise Spartan, 

the last of the great Home Forces exercises, which ran for 12 days, 

from 1 to 12 March 1943, and illustrated the clear advantages of 

a unified air force under centralised control over all other methods of meeting the army’s air-support needs.93 Reluctantly, Brooke 

and the General Staff acquiesced under the insurmountable pressure and accepted the Air Staff’s methods for providing air support. A victory of intellect and procedure had been achieved, but 

it had taken an inordinate amount of effort and was secured at 

considerable cost both in time and lives lost.

01-Text.indd 26 3/10/09 1:43:57 
27

With the formation of the Second Tactical Air Force (TAF) on 

1 June 1943, a policy that the RAF and the army had agreed 

upon as the most effective and efficient means of providing air 

support for the British armies in the field had been achieved.94

From this point in the war to its end, the army received substantial air support in its battles against the enemy. As for the 

RAF, its independence and first principles had been preserved, 

and its concept of air warfare in support of land forces was 

both accepted and practised. This marked a significant departure, though not, sadly, the end of a long and tortuous dispute 

between the two services dating back to the last years of the 

First World War. At its heart were vexing differences over the 

essential character of air warfare and a bitter struggle over who 

would manage limited air forces during a war and how. These 

appear to be innate problems and ones that the Anglo-American 

armies and air forces of the latter stages of the Second World 

War successfully managed rather than solved.

Back to Afghanistan and Contemporary

Air-Land Integration

RAF historian Sir Maurice Dean identified three fundamental features of effective army-air co-operation: the willingness to co-operate (goodwill), sound principles and tactics, and reliable communications.95 By the summer of 1942 

all three were in evidence in the British Army and the Western Desert Air Force (RAF) as they fought a series of successful joint battles in North Africa. These basic requirements, 

according to Wing Cdr Harv Smyth (RAF), appear to have 

been forgotten by the British Army and the RAF in the early 

years of the twenty-first century and had to be relearned after Operation Telic, the UK’s contribution to Operation Iraqi 

Freedom, the war to liberate Iraq fought between 20 March 

and 22 April 2003. Smyth expanded Dean’s list of key characteristics for successful air-land integration, citing five factors, which he divided into two groups: “key enablers” and 

“specific to the implementation of air-land operations.” His 

enablers include “air superiority and centralised command 

of air support assets.” His three factors specific to the suc01-Text.indd 27 3/10/09 1:43:57 
28

cessful conduct of air-land operations are “command and 

control (C2) structures, training and doctrine, and tactical 

level situational awareness.”96 Through his comparative 

analysis of both the 1942 North Africa Campaign and Operation Telic, Smyth concludes that British forces did indeed 

have to relearn historical air-land lessons but only relearned 

those that were in his group of enablers—air superiority and 

the need for centralised (air) command and control. What 

were not achieved by either the 1942 British Army and RAF 

in North Africa or British forces fighting in Iraq in 2003, according to Smyth, were the essential skill sets and structures that are the specific prerequisites for effective and successfully conducted air-land operations. Smyth further 

states that during Telic “the British implementation of Close 

Air Support (CAS) was most lacking.”97

It is highly unlikely that Major Loden and his men, fighting 

in Helmand Province during the summer of 2006, would have 

disagreed with Smyth’s criticism of the RAF’s ability to deliver 

effective close air support. Twice during intense close-contact 

battles with Taliban forces, Loden’s unit received “support” 

from RAF Harriers. Both times the results were much less than 

helpful. On one occasion, Loden states that “a female Harrier 

pilot couldn’t identify the target, fired 2 phosphorous rockets 

that just missed our own compound so that we thought they 

were incoming RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades], and then 

strafed our perimeter missing the enemy by 200 metres.” On 

the second occasion, Loden was with his fire-support team as 

it tried to coordinate air support against Taliban guerrillas, 

which were deploying heavy weapons from positions in-depth 

against a British infantry assault consisting of two platoons 

and numbering some 80 men. “We began to engage them with 

mortars,” Loden recorded. “Once more the RAF Harriers overhead could not identify a target, but would have been too close 

anyway for bombs. Nonetheless they fired a rocket that missed 

by about 700 metres. Thankfully by this stage 2 Apaches arrived.” Loden’s fire-support team successfully directed the 

Apache attack helicopters onto a number of enemy positions, 

which were silenced by accurate direct fire.98

01-Text.indd 28 3/10/09 1:43:57 
29

Enduring Themes and 

Contemporary Relevance

Loden’s frustration with the RAF Harriers that were meant to 

provide him with air support is understandable even if his detailed criticisms are not always accurate. RAF Harriers do not 

carry guns, so the female pilot who supposedly strafed Loden 

and his men either was not flying a Harrier or, at the very least, 

did not strafe them. Nonetheless, Loden’s command did suffer 

a number of casualties, and he, like many army commanders 

both now on current operations and those who have fought in 

the battles of a more distant past, harbours a searing belief 

that ineffective air support was to blame for the deaths and 

setbacks his unit suffered. Yet despite his bitterness, when 

Loden reflected on his battles against the Taliban in August 

2006, he came to the same conclusion that General Montgomery 

reached more than 60 years earlier in the Western Desert. 

Loden was of the firm belief that his experience “proves once 

again the old lesson, that all arms and services must be fit and 

capable” and they must work together.99 To achieve effective 

air-land coordination on the battlefield in Afghanistan, as was 

the case in North Africa during the Second World War, requires 

the services, as equal partners, to work together toward a common plan aimed at achieving common objectives.

British efforts to improve air-land integration began in 2003 

with Project Coningham-Keyes (PC-K), well before the army and 

the RAF began to experience problems fighting together in 

Helmand Province. PC-K is a two-star led, triservice undertaking to identify the air-land lessons from Operation Telic. 

Three separate working groups, each one led by one of the services, have been tasked to investigate a discrete set of doctrinal, operational, technological, and joint training issues, all of 

which have been deemed essential for the development of a 

more capable and robust British air-support system. Land 

Command is responsible for concepts and C2; Fleet has the 

lead in battlespace and intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance; and Air is in charge of training and 

simulation. The three groups have focused their efforts mainly 

on fundamental issues at the operational and tactical levels, 

and a number of positive developments have resulted from this 

01-Text.indd 29 3/10/09 1:43:57 
30

ongoing investigation. For example, the creation of the Joint 

Air/Land Organisation (JALO) has centralised the development of air-land integration. Technological solutions for future 

air support, new doctrine, and relevant training for the air and 

land forces all fall under the JALO’s broad remit to identify and 

disseminate best practices in air-land integration. The JALO 

also acts as a bridge between frontline command and the recommendations that continue to flow out of the successful work 

produced by Project Coningham-Keyes.100

In addition to the tactical and technical initiatives of PC-K, 

the Royal Air Force Centre for Air Power Studies, the director of 

defence studies, and King’s College London have taken the lead 

in organising a series of more conceptual studies to identify the 

problems and recommend solutions to the air-support dilemma. Some of these initiatives have been in direct response 

to Loden’s public criticisms, which also ensured the attention 

of the service chiefs. With the chiefs’ endorsement, a number of 

air-land conferences and seminars have been held at the Air 

Warfare Centre in Lincolnshire and at both the Joint Services 

Command and Staff College and the UK Defence Academy in 

Shrivenham, Oxfordshire. These conferences and study groups 

have varied in format, with some being open to a wider academic and military audience and others restricted to British 

armed forces personnel only. Additional academic/historical 

input has come from the RAF’s Air Historical Branch (AHB) as 

well as the Naval Historical Branch. In the spring of 2007, the 

head of the AHB, RAF led a three-star level staff ride to Normandy. “Applied history,” studied in the outdoor classroom, 

enabled senior army and air force commanders to explore contemporary air-land integration issues through their examination of Anglo-American army-air co-operation in the Normandy 

Campaign.101 Taken all together, these investigative/scholarly 

initiatives have not only put air-land operations on centre 

stage, they have enhanced the acceptance of a more common 

language between Britain’s soldiers and airmen, and helped 

both achieve a far better understanding of the problems and 

the possible solutions to achieving more effective air-land integration for the British armed forces.

Improved air-land integration, however, is only going to happen if both soldiers and airmen work together. As one air mar01-Text.indd 30 3/10/09 1:43:58 
31

shal stated recently: “It is not rocket science, but it needs a 

collective will to make it so.” In some respects, there is nothing 

new here—whether it was the Battle of Amiens in 1918, the 

British retreat from Tobruk in 1942, or Operation Granby (the 

British contribution to Gulf War I, the liberation of Kuwait, 

1990–91)—the reasons behind the failure to achieve effective 

air-land integration are all too similar. Soldiers and airmen 

have not worked together on a common plan, and they have 

lacked an essential understanding of the operating requirements of the other’s service. When they have made an attempt 

to understand each other and co-operate fully, as Montgomery 

and Coningham did in the summer of 1942, the end results 

have been very positive. In fairness, the RAF has done better at 

trying to bridge the conceptual gaps between the two services 

than the army. On a recent Higher Command and Staff College 

(HCSC) “staff ride,” a highly decorated colonel, destined for 

quick promotion to brigadier and command of one of the army’s 

brigades, was insufferably dismissive of the whole concept of 

air-land integration. “I am bored with all of this air cooperation,” he said. “What I, an army commander, want is to call up 

air when I need it to bomb something in front of me.”102 Oh, if 

only it were this simple.

 Effective air-land integration requires both soldiers and airmen to give it equal attention and importance in their respective planning and training programmes. Air and land forces 

need to train together. Training planning echoes that of live 

operations planning, and it must be undertaken as a joint action, each service being coequal with the other. Churchill said 

as much in his 5 September 1941 directive to the army and air 

force commanders in chief, Middle East, when he declared that 

“co-operation was to come from a combined [joint] plan of action drafted by the services working together as equals. Unity 

of purpose would be their guide . . . to achieve a common objective.”103 The concepts of “supporting” and “supported” are 

therefore dated and inappropriate, and they merely confirm the 

legacy of the dysfunctional command relationship that existed 

between the army and the RFC in France during the First World 

War, with air being an ancillary arm to the army. Just as the 

German army and air force found a force multiplier in the way 

they combined armour with aircraft in their highly successful 

01-Text.indd 31 3/10/09 1:43:58 
32

blitzkrieg tactics of 1940, Britain’s land and air commanders 

today must believe that working together is the right thing to 

do. A combination of better co-ordination of training, greater 

personal interaction between the army and the RAF at all levels, and a much better understanding of each service’s common and uncommon characteristics will all enhance the delivery of better air-land integration.104 It is a massive challenge, 

but then, what is the alternative if this opportunity is lost?

Notes

1. Operation Herrick is the code name under which all British operations 

in Afghanistan have been conducted since 2002. Herrick IV is the name given 

to the operations conducted between May and November 2006. 

2. Wing Cdr Ian Duguid as quoted by BBC News, “RAF Afghanistan 

Footage Released,” 4 October 2006, 19:50 GMT. See http://news.bbc.co

.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/south_asia/5408086.stm. 

3. Maj James Loden, commander, Company A, 3 PARA, “E-mails from 

Helmand,” edited for circulation, Guardian, 23 September 2006. See Mark 

Townsend, “RAF Retaliates over Useless Jibes,” Observer (London), 24 September 2006, 3; Kim Sengupta, “Army Chief Leaps to Defence of UK’s Afghan 

Mission; Leaked Complaints from Frontline Officers Fighting in Helmand Are 

‘Irresponsible,’ ” Independent on Sunday (London), 2nd ed., 24 September 

2006, 4; and Alan Cowell, “British Army Rejects Complaints from Officers,” 

International Herald Tribune (Paris), 3rd ed., 25 September 2006, 3. For an 

account of 3 PARA’s operations in Afghanistan during the summer of 2006, 

see Patrick Bishop, 3 PARA: Afghanistan, Summer 2006. This is War (London: 

HarperPress, 2007).

4. The Directorate of Operational Capability has been conducting an audit 

into air-land integration since May 2007 and is due to send its report to the 

vice-chief of the defense staff and the chief of staff (COS) for final endorsement before the end of the summer 2008. In addition to this report, Project 

Coningham-Keyes, a triservice, two-star led investigation into British air support following Operation Telic, is in the second stage of its enquiry. 

5. “Memorandum on the Co-operation of Air Forces with the BEF [British 

Expeditionary Force],” 18 June 1940, The National Archives (TNA) of the 

United Kingdom, War Office (WO) 106/1754; and WO (MO7) memorandum 

by Lt Col F. W. Festing, “Direct Support of the BEF in France,” June 1940, 

TNA AIR [reference code for Air Ministry, RAF] 20/4447. 

6. Brig C. Greenslade, DQMC, BEF, “Report on the Operations of the British Expeditionary Force,” 17 June 1940, TNA WO 197/111. 

7. Air Marshal Douglas as quoted in “Army/Air Co-operation,” C. E. Carrington Papers, 81/11/6, Imperial War Museum, London.

8. See David Ian Hall, Strategy for Victory: The Development of British Tactical 

Air Power, 1919–1943 (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2008).

01-Text.indd 32 3/10/09 1:43:58 
33

9. See B. Michael Bechthold, “A Question of Success: Tactical Practice in 

North Africa, 1942–43,” Journal of Military History 68, no. 3 (July 2004): 821–51; 

Paul Johnston, “The Question of British Influence on US Tactical Air Power in 

World War II,” Air Power History 52, no.1 (Spring 2005); and David R. Mets, “A 

Glider in the Propwash of the RAF,” in Air Power and Ground Armies: Essays 

on the Evolution of Anglo-American Air Doctrine, 1940–1943, ed. Daniel R. 

Mortensen (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Press, 1998), 45–91.

10. Gen Sir William Nicholson, CIGS, War Office communiqué to the press, 

23 July 1908, reprinted in C. F. Snowden Gamble, The Air Weapon (Oxford: 

Oxford University Press, 1931), 109–10. See also Alfred Gollin, The Impact of 

Air Power on the British People and Their Government, 1909–1914 (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1989), 11–12.

11. The list of such senior army officers is depressingly long. Some of the 

more prominent antagonists include Generals Sir Henry Maitland “Jumbo” 

Wilson, John Gort, Edmund Ironside, Sir John Dill, Sir William Bartholomew, 

and Alan Brooke, and Lt Col F. W. Festing (the head of MO7, the War Office 

department responsible for Army-Air Co-operation, established in January 

1940, and consisting of Festing and three other Army officers).

12. Three of the more prominent early advocates of the aeroplane and 

military aeronautics were Winston Churchill, Capt George Sandys (the conservative member of parliament for the Wells Division of Somerset), and Col 

J. E. B. Seely. See Gollin, Impact of Air Power, 180–85.

13. For a complete list of the membership of this committee, see ibid., 

185. For a short account of the early years of service aviation in Britain see 

Malcolm Cooper, The Birth of Independent Air Power (London: Allen and Unwin, 1986), 1–12. See also Sir Walter Raleigh and H. A. Jones, The War in the 

Air, vol. 1 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1922), chaps. 4 and 5.

14. Report of the Technical Standing Sub-Committee of the Committee of 

Imperial Defence on Aerial Navigation, 28 February 1912, TNA CAB [reference 

code for Cabinet] 38/20/1; Minutes of the 116th meeting of the CID, 25 April 

1912, TNA CAB 38/20/9; WO memorandum, “Naval and Military Aviation,” 

11 April 1912, as quoted in “Foundation of British Air Service” (lecture 12 in 

series “Role of the RAF in War”), Trenchard Papers, MFC 76/1/357, RAF 

Museum, RAF Hendon, London.

15. Cooper, Birth of Independent Air Power, 9. When the war began, the 

RNAS had 100 aircraft (of which half were serviceable) and one airship. 

16. At the end of the First World War, the RAF mustered almost 300,000 

personnel and some 22,000 aircraft (ibid., xv).

17. For a comprehensive account of the evolution of military aviation during the Great War (1914–18), see S. F. Wise, Canadian Airmen and the First 

World War: The Official History of the Royal Canadian Air Force, vol. 1 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980); W. Sholto Douglas, Years of Combat: A Personal Story of the First World War in the Air (London: Collins, 1963); 

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

(London: Allen Lane, 1982).

18. Lee Kennett, “Developments to 1939,” in Case Studies in the Development of Close Air Support, ed. B. F. Cooling (Washington, DC: Office of Air 

01-Text.indd 33 3/10/09 1:43:58 
34

Force History, US Air Force, 1990), 17–23; and Peter C. Smith, Close Air Support (Shrewsbury: Airlife, 1990), 8.

19. “Foundation of British Air Service” (lecture 12), 2–3, Trenchard Papers, 

MFC 76/1/357. 

20. Shelford Bidwell and Dominick Graham, Fire Power (London: George 

Allen and Unwin, 1982), 20–21; J. C. Slessor, Air Power and Armies (Oxford: 

Oxford University Press, 1936), 87–88; and Kennett, “Developments to 1939,” 

15–16.

21. Increasing demands for large numbers of aircraft from 1916 onwards, 

and the difficulties encountered in producing them, gave rise to acute differences between the Admiralty and the War Office over the direction of Britain’s 

air effort. As each service struggled to obtain its own separate and highly 

specialised air support, the wider development of a comprehensive air policy 

suffered. During the summer of 1917, daylight raids on London by German 

“Gotha” bombers brought the whole unhappy history of interservice cooperation on air matters to the attention of the general public and the politicians alike. In response to the shock of Germany’s aerial bombardment of 

London, the government took action to improve the confused state of administration and organisation of Britain’s air forces. Acting on the recommendations made in a report written by Gen Jan Christian Smuts, the British 

government established a single independent air service with its own ministry and air staff, which was responsible for all aspects of war in the air. The 

RAF was created on 1 April 1918, and it was given a broad mandate to pursue the strategic and operational roles of British air forces in war. See 

Cooper, Birth of Independent Air Power, 42–70, 97–107; Sir Charles Webster 

and Noble Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive against Germany, 1939–

1945 (London, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office [HMSO], 1961), 36–37; and 

“Policy 1917–1923” (lecture 1), 1–2, Trenchard Papers, MFC 76/1/357. For 

the entire text of Smuts’s second report, The Second Report of the Prime Minister’s 

Committee on the Air Organisation and Home Defence against Air Raids, 

17 August 1917, see Raleigh and Jones, War in the Air, appendices 8–14. 

22. Slessor, Air Power and Armies, passim; see also J. P. Harris and Niall 

Barr, Amiens to the Armistice: The BEF in the Hundred Days’ Campaign, 

8 August–11 November 1918 (London: Brassey’s, 1998). 

23. The British Army did not produce an official report on the lessons of 

the Great War until 1932, and even then this report was not published until 

1934. See “Lessons of the 1914–1918 War,” 1932, TNA WO 32/3115; and 

Gen W. Kirke, “Report on the Lessons of the Great War,” 1934, TNA WO 

32/3116.

24. TNA AIR 5/299. The RAF’s first official attempt to codify the lessons of 

the 1914–1918 war in the form of an air doctrine began in 1922 with the 

publication of RAF Operations Manual CD 22 (sometimes referred to as Air 

Publication [AP] 882, later reissued with revisions in 1928 as the RAF War 

Manual Part I—Operations, AP 1300). 

25. “Some Personal Reflections by MRAF [Marshal of the RAF] Sir John 

Slessor,” September 1964, Liddell Hart Papers 1/644, Liddell Hart Centre for 

Military Archives, King’s College, London. 

01-Text.indd 34 3/10/09 1:43:59 
35

26. Sir Maurice Dean, The Royal Air Force and Two World Wars (London: 

Cassell, 1979), 34.

27. Remarks by the chief of the Air Staff (Lord Trenchard), 30 May 1921, 

TNA AIR 8/2. 

28. David Ian Hall, “Ruling the Empire out of the Central Blue,” Air 

Power Review 10, no. 2 (Summer 2007): 68–76; and RAF AP 3003, A Brief 

History of the Royal Air Force (Norwich: HMSO, 2004), 49–69. See also 

David E. Omissi, Air Power and Colonial Control (Manchester: Manchester 

University Press, 1990).

29. Derek J. P. Waldie, “Relations between the Army and the Royal Air 

Force, 1918–1939” (PhD thesis, King’s College, London, 1980), 296.

30. Hall, Strategy for Victory, 22–24.

31. The AASF, under the operational command of Air Vice-Marshal P. H. L. 

Playfair, and equipped with 10 squadrons of Fairey Battles, was conceived as 

a temporary outpost of Bomber Command based in France. Only in extreme 

circumstances would it be diverted from strategic targets to provide support 

for the army. The air component, under the command of Air Vice-Marshal 

C. H. Blount, was a mixed force of four squadrons of fighters, four squadrons 

of bombers, and four squadrons of army co-operation/reconnaissance aircraft. It was to provide direct air support for the BEF and was under the operational control of General Gort, commander in chief (C-in-C) BEF. See Hall, 

Strategy for Victory, 41–43.

32. WO note, “Arrangements for Bomber Support for the Allied Army in 

France,”16 November 1939, TNA WO 106/1597.

33. “Operations in France, September 1939–June 1940,” Evill Papers, archive collection (AC) 74/8, RAF Museum, RAF Hendon, London; “Army Air 

Support,” 14, TNA WO 277; and RAF AP 3235, Air Support (Air Ministry, 

1955), 14, TNA AIR 10/5547. 

34. RAF figures put the number of combat-ready aircraft in Britain at the 

start of May 1940 at 692 aircraft, a total that includes both bombers and 

fighters. RAF AP 3235, Air Support, 20.

35. “Air Staff Note on the Army Air Arm,” July 1940, TNA AIR 20/3706; 

and Group Capt R. V. Goddard, D. D. Plans (MC), “Air Ministry Note on the 

War Office Point of View Regarding Close Support,” 22 July 1940, TNA WO 

106/5161. 

36. See David Ian Hall, “Lessons not Learned: The Struggle between the 

Royal Air Force and Army for the Tactical Control of Aircraft, and the Postmortem on the Defeat of the British Expeditionary Force in France in 1940,” 

in The Challenges of High Command: The British Experience, eds. Gary Sheffield and Geoffrey Till (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 113–25.

37. TNA CAB 65/7 WM 157(40)2, 7 June 1940; and Bartholomew Committee, “Lessons to be Learnt from Operations in Flanders,” final report, June 

1940, TNA CAB 106/220.

38. Air Vice-Marshal C. H. R. Blount, AOC RAF Component, BEF, was the 

only airman interviewed. Bartholomew Committee, “Lessons to be Learnt,” 

TNA CAB 106/220.

01-Text.indd 35 3/10/09 1:43:59 
36

39. Wann-Woodall Report, “Statement of the Objective of the Trials.” Copies of this report, along with critical notes, are contained in “Close Support by 

Bomber and Fighter Aircraft,” TNA AIR 39/140. See also “Army Air Requirements,” TNA WO 106/5161; and “Proposed Establishment of Close Support 

Bomber Control,” TNA WO 106/5162.

40. John Terraine, foreword in Charles Carrington, Soldier at Bomber 

Command (London: Leo Cooper, 1987), x. See also Hall, Strategy for Victory, 

105–7, 129–32.

41. Anthony Eden, secretary of state for war, memorandum, “Air Support 

for the Army,” 23 September 1940, TNA AIR 20/3706.

42. RAF AP 3235, Air Support, 23–26.

43. “The Organisation, Function and Control of Airforces in Support of the 

Army in an Overseas Theatre of War,” 21 May 1942, 1–2, TNA AIR 20/2812; 

Ministry of Information, RAF Middle East: The Official Story of Air Operations in 

the Middle East, from February 1942 to January 1943 (London: HMSO, 1945), 

7, 10; Lord Tedder, With Prejudice (London: Cassell, 1966), 211–12; John Connell, Auchinleck: A Biography of Field-Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck (London: 

Cassell, 1959), 402, 411; and Col Andy Tjepkema, “Coningham: The Architect 

of Ground-Air Doctrine,” Air Clues 45, no. 6 (June 1991): 205–8.

44. “Organisation, Functions and Control of Airforces”; “The Employment 

of Bombers and Fighter-Bombers in Co-operation with the Army,” April 1944, 

TNA AIR 20/3213; and Ministry of Information, RAF Middle East, 12. 

45. “Employment of Bombers,” 2, TNA AIR 20/3213; Correspondence between Portal and Lord Tedder, 5 and 11 September 1941, Portal Papers, file 12, 

nos. 4 and 4a, Library of Christ Church College, Oxford; Tedder, With Prejudice, 

163–4; Tedder, Air Power in War (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1948), passim; 

and Terraine, foreword in Carrington, Soldier at Bomber Command, x.

46. Tedder, With Prejudice, 175–76, 187–90, 443–44; Tedder, Air Power in 

War, 91–92; Tedder to Portal, memorandum, 17 September 1941, Portal Papers, file 12, no. 5; and “The Value of a Centralised Air Force” (lecture  12), 

Trenchard Papers, MFC 76/1/357. 

47. Air Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham, “The Development of Tactical Air 

Forces,” Journal of the Royal United Service Institute 91 (1946): 211–26; Tjepkema, “Coningham,” 205–6, 210; Vincent Orange, “The Commanders and the 

Command System,” in The End of the Beginning: A Symposium on the Land/

Air Co-operation in the Mediterranean War 1940–43, Bracknell Paper no. 3 

(UK: RAF Historical Society, 20 March 1992), 37–38, 43; and Orange, Coningham (London: Methuen, 1990), 81–83.

48. RAF AP 3235, Air Support, 64–65, TNA AIR 10/5547; “Organisation, 

Functions and Control of Airforces,” 1–2, TNA AIR 20/2812; “The Middle 

East Campaigns,” vol. 2, 289–92, and vol. 3, 93, TNA AIR 41/25 and 26; and 

Tjepkema, “Coningham,” 205–6.

49. Along with the advent of the fighter-bomber came the final eclipse of the 

Stuka dive-bomber. As one contemporary and rather picturesque report stated, 

“The bogy of the dive-bomber had finally been exposed; when opposed by a determined fighter force it proved to be a crow masquerading in an eagle’s feath01-Text.indd 36 3/10/09 1:43:59 
37

ers.” “Army Air Support,” 49, TNA WO 277/34; and Richard P. Hallion, Strike 

from the Sky (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989), 156–57.

50. RAF AP 3235, Air Support, 64, TNA AIR 10/5547; “Army Air Support,” 

48, TNA WO 277/34; Ministry of Information, RAF Middle East, 14, 26–27; 

and Tjepkema, “Coningham,” 207–8. 

51. “Air Warfare—Training Instructions,” 1941–42, Crerar Collection, box 

103; and Peter Supf, Luftwaffe von Sieg zu Sieg (Berlin: Im Deutschen Verlag, 

1941a). See also Joel Hayward, Stopped at Stalingrad: The Luftwaffe and Hitler’s Defeat in the East, 1942–43 (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 

1998); and James Corum, “The Luftwaffe’s Army Support Doctrine, 1918–

1941,” Journal of Military Affairs 59 (January 1995): 53–76.

52. “Middle East Command HQ RAF Operational Record Book,” March/

April 1942, appendices, TNA AIR 24/1055 and 1082; and “Middle East Campaigns,” vol. 2, 297–301, TNA AIR 41/25.

53. Tedder, With Prejudice, 404.

54. Elmhirst Papers, 6/6; and Orange, Coningham, 112. 

55. James Lucas provides a succinct account of the “Gazala Gallop” in 

War in the Desert: The Eighth Army at El Alamein (London: Arms and Armour, 

1982), 22–27. Detailed narratives can be read in I. S. O. Playfair et al., The 

Mediterranean and Middle East, vol. 3, British Fortunes Reach Their Lowest 

Ebb (London: HMSO, 1960), 223–97; Naill Barr, Pendulum of War: The Three 

Battles of El Alamein (London: Jonathon Cape, 2004); and Barrie Pitt, Year of 

Alamein 1942 (London: Macmillan, 1986), 132–45. 

56. General Auchinleck’s Middle East despatch as quoted in “The Middle 

East Campaigns,” vol. 4, 3–6, TNA AIR 41/50.

57. Extracts from 21st Panzer Division and Afrika Korps War Diaries as 

quoted in RAF AP 3235, Air Support, 68, TNA AIR 10/5547; “The Middle East 

Campaigns,” vol. 3, 195–97, 202–3, and vol. 4, 2–6, TNA AIR 41/26 and 50; Air 

Ministry Private Office Papers, TNA AIR 19/557; and “Extracts from POW 

Statements: The Effectiveness of British Bombing,” 12 July 1942, Portal Papers, file 12, no. 9. Rommel’s observations on the deleterious effect the RAF’s 

“continuous round-the-clock bombing” was having on his army can be read in 

B. H. Liddell Hart, ed., The Rommel Papers (London: Collins, 1953), 245, 260, 

283–6; and Desmond Young, Rommel (London: Collins, 1950), 258–59, 272.

58. “The Middle East Campaigns,” vol. 3, passim, TNA AIR 41/26; and John 

Terraine, The Right of the Line (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1985), 370.

59. Tedder to Portal, memorandums, 6 February and 26 July 1942, Portal 

Papers, box C, file 8, nos. 14 and 24a; and Tedder, With Prejudice, 313–14. 

60. “The Middle East Campaigns,” vol. 3, 128, TNA AIR 41/26; Tedder to 

Portal, memorandums, 21 April and 29 June 1942, Portal Papers, box C, file 

8, nos.18, 18a, 20; Tedder to Portal, memorandum, 12 July 1942, ibid., file 

12, no. 9; and Tedder, With Prejudice, 305–6, 309–10.

61. Tedder to Portal, memorandums, 29 June and 16 July 1942, Portal 

Papers, box C, file 8, nos. 20 and 21; and “Middle East Campaigns,” 4, 17, 

TNA AIR 41/50.

62. Terraine in the foreword to Carrington, Soldier at Bomber Command, x; 

and End of the Beginning, 65–66.

01-Text.indd 37 3/10/09 1:44:00 
38

63. “The Middle East Campaigns,” vol. 3, 224–27, TNA AIR 41/26; Ministry 

of Information, RAF Middle East, 72–82; and Air Historical Branch, RAF translations of German documents as quoted in Orange, Coningham, 99. For a detailed narrative of the First Battle of Alamein, see Playfair et al., Mediterranean 

and Middle East, vol. 3, 331–60; Lucas, War in the Desert, 29–38; Pitt, Year of 

Alamein 1942, 112–14, 202–4; and David Fraser, Knight’s Cross: A Life of Field 

Marshal Erwin Rommel (London: Harper Collins, 1993), 347. Rommel’s own 

impressions can be read in Hart, Rommel Papers, 243–53 and 327–29. 

64. “The Middle East Campaigns,” vol. 3, 226, and vol. 4, 3–4, 6, TNA AIR 

41/26 and 50; “Air Ministry Private Office Papers,” AIR 19/557; and R. T. 

Bickers, The Desert Air War 1939–1945 (London: Leo Cooper, 1991), 93–97. 

For Rommel’s precarious supply situation, the strategic significance of Malta 

as a base from which to disrupt Axis shipping, and the German High Command’s decision to forgo subjugating the island prior to the “final” conquest 

of Egypt, see “The Middle East Campaigns,” vol. 3, iii, 130–31, 195, and vol. 

4, xxix, TNA AIR 41/26 and 50; and Playfair et al., Mediterranean and Middle 

East, vol. 3, 277–78, 325–30.

65. Tedder to Portal, memorandum, 16 July 1942, Portal Papers, box C, file 

8, no. 21; and Tedder, With Prejudice, 312.

66. Tedder to Portal, memorandums, 25­­–26 July 1942, Portal Papers, box 

C, file 8, nos. 22a and 24a; Tedder, With Prejudice, 318–27; Correlli Barnett, 

The Desert Generals, 2nd ed. (London: Allen and Unwin, 1983), 231–39; and 

Lucas, War in the Desert, 40.

67. Lord Montgomery, The Memoirs of Field Marshal the Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, K. G. (London: Collins, 1958), 80–90, 99–100; Nigel 

Hamilton, Monty: The Making of a General 1887–1942 (London: Hamish 

Hamilton, 1981), 606–25; David Fraser, And We Shall Shock Them (London: 

Hodder and Stoughton, 1983), 234–38; and Barnett, Desert Generals, 257–62.

68. Montgomery, Memoirs, 102; Tedder, With Prejudice, 347; and “Report on 

Visit to the Middle East by Air Marshal Sir Arthur Barratt, AOC Army Cooperation Command,” August–September 1942, AIR 20/2106 and 37/760,

69. Elmhirst Papers, 6/2, vii, 14. 

70. Hart, Rommel Papers, 285.

71. Playfair et al., Mediterranean and Middle East, vol. 4, The Destruction 

of the Axis Forces in Africa (London: HMSO, 1966), 33–34, 76; Marshal of the 

RAF Sir Arthur Tedder, “Air, Land and Sea Warfare,” Journal of the Royal United 

Service Institute 91, no. 561 (February 1946): 59–68; Coningham, “Development of Tactical Air Forces,” 214–15; and Fraser, Knight’s Cross, 369, 375.

72. The RAF component under Air Marshal Sir William Walsh was designated Eastern Air Command. It covered Algeria east of Cape Tenes and provided support for the newly created First Army (a combined British and 

American force). The US Twelfth Air Force under Maj Gen James H. Doolittle, 

entitled Western Air Command, supported Maj Gen Lloyd Fredendall’s American 

II Corps in western Algeria and the American forces of Maj Gen George S. 

Patton Jr. in Morocco. See W. F. Craven and J. L. Cate, The Army Air Forces 

in World War II, vol. 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948–1958), 

41–66; George F. Howe, Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West

01-Text.indd 38 3/10/09 1:44:00 
39

(Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, US Army, 1957), 

32–88; and Playfair et al., Mediterranean and Middle East, vol. 4, 110–28.

73. Daniel R. Mortensen, A Pattern for Joint Operations (Washington, DC: 

Office of Air Force History and US Army Center for Military History, 1987), 

53, 56; Craven and Cate, Army Air Forces, 67–85; and David Syrett, “The 

Tunisian Campaign, 1942–43,” in Case Studies in the Development of Close 

Air Support, ed. Cooling, 164.

74. Hallion, Strike from the Sky, 163.

75. Terraine, Right of the Line, 390–91; Mortensen, Pattern for Joint Operations, 50–56; and Orange, Coningham, 130.

76. RAF AP 3235, Air Support, 83, TNA AIR 10/5547; Mortensen, Pattern 

for Joint Operations, 59; and Syrett, “Tunisian Campaign,” 164–67.

77. Tjepkema, “Coningham,” 210.

78. “Middle East Campaigns,” vol. 4, 471, TNA AIR 41/50; and Tedder, 

With Prejudice, 369.

79. Trenchard’s memorandum on United Air Command, 20 December 

1942, Portal Papers, folder 4, no.1; Tedder to Portal, 16 December 1942, Portal 

Papers, box C, file 8, no. 34; and Tedder, With Prejudice, 369–70.

80. Tedder, With Prejudice, 381.

81. Tedder to Portal, memorandum, December 1942, Portal Papers, folder 

4, nos. 1, 1a; and MRAF Sir Arthur Tedder, “Air, Land and Sea Warfare,” Journal of the Royal United Service Institute 91, no. 561 (February 1946): 59–68.

82. General Spaatz was appointed C-in-C of the Allied Air Forces in Northwest Africa on 5 January 1943, but not until 18 February was his new command made operational. See Playfair et al., Mediterranean and Middle East, 

vol. 4, 265, 271. 

83. For full details on the restructuring of the Allied air forces in North 

Africa and the Mediterranean, including the major command appointments, 

see “Combined Chiefs of Staff, System of Air Command in the Mediterranean,” 20 January 1943, TNA AIR 8/1035; RAF AP 3235, Air Support, 85–88, 

TNA AIR 10/5547; “Middle East Campaigns,” 469–77, TNA AIR 41/50; and 

Playfair et al., Mediterranean and Middle East, vol. 4, 306–13.

84. For Rommel’s surprise westward offensive toward the Kasserine Pass 

and the ignominious defeat of the US II Corps, see Martin Blumenson, Kasserine Pass (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1966).

85. Mortensen, Pattern for Joint Operations, 72–73; Hallion, Strike from the 

Sky, 171–72; Laurence S. Kuter, “Goddammit Georgie: North Africa, 1943: The 

Birth of TAC Doctrine,” Air Force Magazine 56, no. 2 (February 1973): 51–56; 

and Orange, Coningham, 135–42. George Howe’s Northwest Africa: Seizing the 

Initiative in the West (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, 

Dept. of the Army, 1957), 492–95, gives the army view of reorganisation. For 

details on the creation of the 18th Army Group, see Playfair et al., Mediterranean and Middle East, vol. 4, 303–5.

86. Mortensen, Pattern for Joint Operations, 72–73; Coningham, “Development 

of Tactical Air Forces,” 215; and Syrett, “Tunisian Campaign,” 174, 178–79.

87. US War Department, Field Manual (FM) 100-20, Command and Employment of Air Power, 21 July 1943,1,10–11; Mortensen, Pattern for Joint 

01-Text.indd 39 3/10/09 1:44:01 
40

Operations, 77–83; Hallion, Strike from the Sky, 172–75; and Robert Futrell, 

Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine: A History of Basic Thinking in the United States Air 

Force (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Press, 1971, 1989), 69.

88. C. E. Carrington, “Army/Air Co-operation, 1939–1943,” Journal of the 

Royal United Service Institute 115 (December 1970): 40; Carrington, Soldier at 

Bomber Command, 11; and “Army/Air Co-operation,” Carrington Papers, 81/11/6.

89. US War Department FM 100-20, Command and Employment of Air 

Power, 21 July 1943; and William R. Burt, Adventures with Warlords (New 

York: Vantage Press, 1994), 147–48.

90. Tedder, Air Power in War, 11. This book was based on a series of four 

lectures Tedder gave at Cambridge University, The Lees Knowles Lectures, 

delivered in February and March 1947.

91. Montgomery, Memoirs, 102; Tedder, With Prejudice, 347; “Report on 

Visit to the Middle East by Air Marshal Sir Arthur Barratt, AOC Army Cooperation Command,” August–September 1942, TNA AIR 20/2106 and 37/760.

92. TNA CAB 79/60 COS(43)91(0), 1 May 1943; and “Army-Air Co-operation,” 

76, TNA CAB 101/136.

93. “Exercise ‘Spartan’: GHQ [General Headquarters] Home Forces Combined Exercise,” December 1942—March 1943, TNA AIR 16/559; “Exercise 

‘Spartan’: General Arrangements,” January—March 1943, TNA AIR 39/91; 

and “Exercise ‘Spartan’: Reports,” March—May 1943, TNA AIR 39/118. 

94. The First Tactical Air Force was in fact the Western Desert Air Force, 

although the title was never used officially. By naming the new UK air formation the Second TAF, however, the Air Staff honoured the invaluable work of 

the WDAF in developing an effective air support system. For the formation of 

the Second TAF, see “Tactical Air Force Command: Formation in the United 

Kingdom,” 1943, TNA AIR 2/7808; “Tactical Air Force: Formation (May–

October 1943),” TNA AIR 8/988; and RAF AP 3235, Air Support, 43–45, TNA 

AIR, 10/5547. The Canadian contribution to the formation of the Second TAF 

is described in Bereton Greenhous et al., The Crucible of War, 1939–1945: The 

Official History of the Royal Canadian Air Force, vol. 3 (Toronto: University of 

Toronto Press in Co-operation with the Dept. of National Defence and the 

Canadian Govt. Pub. Centre, Supply and Services, Canada, 1994), 248–64.

95. Dean, Royal Air Force and Two World Wars, 215.

96. Wing Cdr Harv Smyth, RAF, “From Coningham to Project ConinghamKeyes,” Air Power Review 10, no.1 (Spring 2007): 1.

97. Ibid.

98. Loden, “E-mails from Helmand.” 

99. Ibid.

100. House of Commons (HC) Defence Committee, HC 635, Lessons of 

Iraq: Government Response to the Committee’s Third Report of Session 2003–

04, 8 June 2004 (London: The Stationery Office Limited, 2004), 9; and Smyth, 

“From Coningham to Project Coningham-Keys,” 17–19.

101. See David Ian Hall, ed., “The Relevance and Role of Military History, 

Battlefield Tours and Staff Rides for Armed Forces in the 21st Century,” Defence Studies 5, no. 1 (March 2005); and Capt Gilles Van Nederveen, USAF, 

01-Text.indd 40 3/10/09 1:44:01 
41

retired, and Daniel R. Mortensen, “Air Staff Rides: Wartime Leadership Experience,” Air and Space Power Journal 16, no. 4 (Winter 2002): 25–26.

102. HCSC, “Staff Ride,” 3–12 April 2006.

103. Churchill’s Middle East directive on air support was later published as 

Middle East Training Pamphlet (Army and RAF) no. 3, Direct Air Support, 

30 September 1941. See Hall, Strategy for Victory, 108, and appendix, 157–72. 

104. “Improving Training in the Air Environment” (unclassified presentation ACOS A7, Air Land Conference, UK Defence Academy, 30 August 2007).

01-Text.indd 41 3/10/09 1:44:01 
01-Text.indd 42 3/10/09 1:44:01 
43

Abbreviations

AASF	 Advanced Air Striking Force

AHB	 Air Historical Branch

AOC	 air officer commander/commanding

AOC-in-C	 air officer commander in chief

ASC	 air-support controls

BAFF	 British Air Forces in France

BEF	 British Expeditionary Force

C2	 command and control

CIGS	 chief of the Imperial General Staff

C-in-C	 commander in chief

COS	 chief of staff

GHQ	 general headquarters

HCSC	 Higher Command and Staff College

HQME	 headquarters, Middle East

JALO	 Joint Air-Land Organisation

KCL	 King’s College, London

NATAF	 Northwest African Tactical Air Force

NWAAF	 Northwest African Air Forces

PC-K	 Project Coningham-Keyes

RAF	 Royal Air Force

RFC	 Royal Flying Corps

RNAS	 Royal Naval Air Service

RPG	 rocket-propelled grenade

TAF	 tactical air force

3 PARA	 3rd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment

UK	 United Kingdom

WDAF	 Western Desert Air Force

02-Abbreviations.indd 43 3/10/09 1:44:24 
02-Abbreviations.indd 44 3/10/09 1:44:24 
Research Feedback

Air University is working hard to keep its research focused on 

interests important to the Air Force and to the nation. After you 

have read the research paper, please give us your frank opinion 

on the contents. All comments, large and small, complimentary or 

caustic, will be appreciated.

AFRI/DE

Dean, Air Force Research Institute

155 N. Twining St., Bldg. 693

Maxwell AFB AL 36112-6026

Title of Paper: Learning How to Fight Together: The British 

Experience with Joint Air-Land Warfare

Author: David Ian Hall, DPhil

Please use the scale below to answer these important questions:

1. Fail 2. Poor 3. Fair 4. Good 5. Excellent

1. Is the subject matter relevant to the Air Force?

2. How would you rate the readability of this paper?

3. How useful is this research to you and your organization?

1 2 3 4 5

1 2 3 4 5

1 2 3 4 5

Or note comments:

Thank you for your assistance.

Cut along dotted line

03-Feedback.indd 1 3/10/09 1:44:45 
Place

Stamp

Here

AFRI/DE

Dean, Air Force Research Institute

155 N. Twining St., Bldg 693

Maxwell AFB AL 36112-6026

FOLD HERE

03-Feedback.indd 2 3/10/09 1:44:45 
Learning How to Fight Together

The British Experience with Joint Air-Land Warfare

Commander, Air University

Lt Gen Allen G. Peck

Director, Air Force Research Institute

Gen John Shaud, USAF, Retired, PhD

Air University Press Team

Chief Editor

Jeanne K. Shamburger

Copy Editor

Tammi K. Long

Cover Art and Book Design

Daniel Armstrong

Composition and

Prepress Production

Mary P. Ferguson

Print Preparation and

Distribution

Diane Clark

04-Backinside.indd 1 3/10/09 1:45:06