air power

air power. Before the Second World War, there was no general agreement about the importance or capabilities of air power. In the UK, for instance, while the government was worrying about a possible ‘knock-out blow’ from the Luftwaffe, the Admiralty was cheerfully asserting that its warships at sea had little to fear from the air. This was not surprising. A mere infant in 1914, military aviation had become a vigorous young adult by 1918, but the achievements of the air forces during those years, though important, had been far from decisive. Since 1919, and particularly in the later 1930s, there had been abundant technical development but very little—except in the China incident and the Spanish Civil War—in the way of actual combat experience. As service attitudes were firmly entrenched, soldiers and sailors tended to play down the potential of air power, airmen to exaggerate it.

To some extent these differences of view arose from a very simple fact, so obvious as to be rarely stated, and for that reason often overlooked. A single bomber, unopposed, may do enormous damage: a dozen bombers, opposed, may do no damage at all. Those who entertained the most horrific visions of devastation tended to ignore, or disbelieve in, the possibilities of effective air defence.

During the First World War most of the main tasks of air power had become established: reconnaissance, artillery observation, bombing (tactical and strategic), strafing, and air fighting. For these, specialized aircraft had quickly developed. So, too, had aircraft for maritime work such as air-sea rescue—aircraft with floats (float planes) or hulls (flying boats) for operating from water, and aircraft which could take off from, and return to, a ship adapted as a carrier (see CAM ships, fighter catapult ships, and MAC ships). Airships, too, had done valuable work in the maritime sphere, although their vulnerability to bad weather and enemy opposition, as seen during the Zeppelin raids, was to deny them a significant military future (but see blimps).

In the years after 1919 a further task had emerged: mass transportation (see Air Transport Command, for example). Few countries could maintain a sizeable force of transport aircraft for purely military purposes, but many could use their developing civil aviation in emergency for wartime needs as the USA did when it formed the Civil Air Patrol.

As a development or refinement of the transport function was later to come the dropping of parachutists or the landing of troops from aircraft or gliders to seize an objective behind enemy lines (see airborne warfare).

A country's capacity for developing air power inevitably depends on its industrial, economic, and technical resources. The availability of a large industrial base, scientific knowledge, skilled manpower, facilities for training, and supplies of fuel (whether home-produced or imported under the shield of a strong navy) are some of the most obvious requirements. Accordingly in 1939 only the more developed industrial nations could hope to exercise any significant degree of air power.

In Europe, the USSR's air force came first in terms of numbers, Germany's second and Britain's third. France and Italy—the latter with hundreds of obsolescent machines—also maintained sizeable air establishments. Figures of first-line strength in 1939 can be quoted (e.g. Luftwaffe 3,609, RAF 1,911, Armée de l'Air 1,792), but they mean very little without reference to reserves or quality, about which generalization is difficult. In terms of aircraft production in 1939, the picture was much the same: the USSR produced more than 10,000 aircraft during the year, Germany more than 8,000, the UK—catching up fast—just under 8,000.

Outside Europe by far the strongest air force, excluding the Soviet Union's, was that of Japan, with the USA well behind. In both countries the naval and military elements were rigidly separated from each other, being component parts of the navy or army. In 1939 Japan produced nearly 4,500 aircraft of all types, the USA around 5,800. But the USA had enormous industrial potential which, when the need came, would transform this narrow margin into a huge superiority. By 1942 American aircraft production was more than five times that of Japan.

Among nearly all nations the primary task envisaged for air power was direct assistance to troops on the ground. Maritime duties were also considered important, but only the American, Japanese, and British navies operated a large number of carriers. Japanese aviation, especially had some bold ideas, and was well equipped to carry them out. It had, for instance, developed plans for an ‘all carrier’ naval task force, and its equipment, besides exceptionally efficient torpedoes, included the first monoplane carrier-borne fighters. Only two countries, the UK and the USA, had by 1939 pursued their ideas of ‘strategic’ bombing not immediately linked with military operations, and had in production suitable bombers for the task. Italy had warmed to the theory of strategic bombardment, but possessed nothing effective with which to put it into practice.

The first emphatic demonstration of air power in the war was provided by the Luftwaffe. Following the death of General Walther Wever, its principal proponent of strategic bombing, in an air accident in 1936, and the cancellation the following year of his four-engined ‘Ural’ bomber project, the Luftwaffe, though an independent service, had become largely committed to working directly with the German Army. The ‘volunteers’ of its Kondor Legion, supporting Nationalist troops in the Spanish Civil War, had gained valuable experience in this kind of work, and Hitler duly entrusted the opening of the Polish campaign to his air force. Contrary to popular belief, Göring had every intention of building a strategic bombing force (including long-range bombers capable of reaching the USA), but the four-engined He177 was plagued with development problems and very few were built.

With more than 1,500 aircraft allotted to the campaign, the Luftwaffe had no difficulty in demolishing the Polish air force, only some 400 combat aircraft strong, and thereafter could bomb more or less at will. Close support Junkers 87 dive-bombers—‘Stukas’—screamed down with pinpoint accuracy on any opposition to the advancing German tanks, while medium-range bombers attacked military depots and factories and wrecked the Polish lines of communication. Transport aircraft carrying supplies kept the German columns moving swiftly, and finally relentless bombing helped to force Warsaw into submission. Thus was revealed to the world a new kind of war, the blitzkrieg (‘lightning war’), the pattern of much to follow: a war of aircraft in association with fast-moving armoured and motorized columns on the ground.

During the phoney war which followed the defeat of Poland the Luftwaffe and the RAF largely confined their attacks to shipping. An innovation in long-range reconnaissance was the RAF's introduction of the ‘stripped’ unarmed Spitfire flying at 12,000 m. (40,000 ft.) and almost immune to interception. A whole new sphere of high-level photographic reconnaissance and its interpretation was to spring from this advance. In addition to its other tasks, the RAF also dropped leaflets over Germany (see Political Warfare Executive). There is no evidence that this last use of air power had any significant effect: propaganda delivered from the skies had hastened Austro-Hungarian disintegration in 1918, but propaganda against victorious and well-fed opponents was notably less effective. A further use of air power by both sides during this period was the laying of sea mines from the air.

For the Norwegian campaign and their occupation of Denmark in April 1940 the Germans employed some 500 transport planes, some to carry parachutists, most to ferry supplies and reinforcements across the Baltic once Norwegian airfields had been captured. Except in the Narvik area, where two RAF Hurricane squadrons opposed them vigorously, the Luftwaffe soon had virtually free range. Using some 800 aircraft from captured airfields against negligible opposition, it was able to harry at will the Norwegian troops and the Anglo-French forces which came to their aid in central Norway. Only because German bombers were not yet efficient at night were these forces able to make good their escape.

In France, as in Belgium, the main pattern of air operations followed that set in Poland. For their campaign in the west the Germans held a considerable numerical superiority, having amassed some 3,500 aircraft, excluding transports and gliders, while the Allies deployed only around 2,000. Their initial onslaught destroyed scores of aircraft on the ground, and dive-bombers and fighters then attacked front-line troops and strong-points while the longer-range bombers hit depots, railways, and road junctions. Both in Belgium and the Netherlands parachutists captured key points (see Eben Emael, for example) and the Luftwaffe's raid on Rotterdam was the principal factor in bringing about the surrender of the latter. Particular care was taken to sever the communications between the main French armies and the Allied forces soon cut off in the north. German fighters for the most part effectively protected their bombers from Anglo-French fighter opposition, and German mobile anti-aircraft guns massed at key points like the Albert Canal and Meuse crossings did enormous execution among the attacking Allied bombers. In the Sedan sector, the Ju87s wrought appalling havoc among the French Ninth Army's horses, so that much of its artillery became immobilized.

Dunkirk was to reveal that German air power, thus far all-conquering, had its limits. Göring had boasted that he would prevent the evacuation, but in the event the spoiling operations of RAF fighters from British bases, the hours of darkness and daytime mist, stout resistance at the perimeter by the trapped forces, and the heroic efforts of the French and British navies, the merchantmen, and the ‘little ships’ combined to foil the Luftwaffe and bring about ‘the miracle of deliverance’.

In the first days of June, as the evacuation proceeded, the Luftwaffe for the first time attacked strategic targets remote from the battlefield, including aircraft plants in Marseilles and Paris. The moral effect was at least as great as the physical, and soon the French, in retreat, were deciding not to defend their capital. It became apparent that, as in September 1938 and March 1939, air power could achieve results by its mere existence. The threat it posed could be sufficient in itself.

For all its successes, during the fall of France the Luftwaffe lost nearly 1,400 aircraft. Its consequent need to recuperate, as well as its need to regroup, gave Hitler's remaining opponent an invaluable few weeks in which to prepare for the inevitable onslaught.

The battle of Britain which followed the collapse of France was the first major campaign to be contested between air forces without fighting taking place on the ground below. It was also the first sustained refutation of prime minister, Stanley Baldwin's 1928 pronouncement, ‘the bomber will always get through’. Dowding, the C-in-C of Fighter Command, showed that the system of scientific air defence he had built up in RAF Fighter Command during the later 1930s could cope, in daylight at least, with attacking forces far more numerous than those at his own disposal. It was a system dependent on fast, modern, well-armed fighters—mainly Hurricanes and Spitfires—directed from the ground into visual contact with raiding aircraft on information of the attackers' approach derived from radar and the Observer Corps (see UK, 6), and on information of the defending fighters' own movements derived from their pip-squeak signal emissions picked up by direction-finding stations. Buttressing this fighter system were the ground defences of anti-aircraft guns, searchlights, and barrage balloons. It was a triumph, for the first time in the war, of defensive air power.

It also showed how far air power could be blunted by misdirection. While the Germans were attacking the southern airfields, they were doing relatively well. The key indicator was that, in the fortnight before 7 September, Fighter Command lost more aircraft than it could replace from repair and manufacture. It also suffered great damage to its ground installations. But on 7 September the Luftwaffe transferred its attack from the airfields to London, and thereafter Hurricane and Spitfire replacements well exceeded losses. The switch to London had strong reasons behind it: not merely Hitler's desire to avenge attacks on Berlin, but also the imperatives of his late September invasion timetable: the German need to create administrative chaos in the British capital and to bring to battle what were thought to be the last resources of Fighter Command before deteriorating weather conditions made Operation SEALION impossible. It was a decision flawed not only by faulty intelligence but by neglect of an obvious technical factor: the very short range of the otherwise excellent German escort fighter, the Me109. From their cross-Channel bases the 109s could fly and fight over London for only ten minutes. Lacking sustained escort the German bombers suffered unacceptable losses, and the whole tide of the battle turned against Germany.

German air power thus demonstrated an inbuilt weakness. The Luftwaffe lacked the aircraft—heavier, faster, better protected bombers carrying a bigger bomb load, and better long-range escort fighters—to wage a strategic campaign effectively by day against a strong defence. It accordingly turned to night operations against the UK, partly for intimidation, partly to strike at British industry and commerce and, in conjunction with the U-boats, to set up a blockade.

The Luftwaffe conducted these night operations economically enough: in eight months' bombing of London and other cities and ports it lost about 600 aircraft, or only 1.5% of the sorties flown. But without the pressure of German armies, these nightly attacks by 100–200 bombers could achieve nothing decisive against a resolute people. Unlike the British bombers of the time they had the benefit of radio beams for navigation (see electronic navigation systems) which usually brought them into the vicinity of their objectives, but they were normally unable to hit precise key targets. The Blitz (in the Londoners' term) caused misery and loss of production, but left Hitler as far as ever from subduing the UK. It ceased not because it was becoming more expensive—though it was, as better British night-fighters, directed from the ground into airborne radar range of German aircraft, gained in effectiveness—but because Hitler needed most of his aircraft for his forthcoming attack on the USSR (see BARBAROSSA).

Between the battle of Britain and the invasion of the USSR in June 1941 the RAF tried to exert air power in Europe in three main ways: by offensive sweeps (see circuses and rhubarbs) over France and the Low Countries; by the night bombing of Germany, two attempts at daylight bombing in 1939 having proved disastrous; and by incessant activity at sea, including reconnaissance, the protection of convoys, and anti-shipping and anti-U-boat operations. For the offensive sweeps and the night bombing the resources available were inadequate, both technically and numerically, to achieve significant results, but the maritime work helped to surmount the first great crisis in the battle of the Atlantic.

With Italy a belligerent and Germany in control of the entire north-west European coastline, the losses of Allied and neutral shipping increased dramatically. For April 1941 they reached the massive figure of 644,000 tons, far beyond replacement capacity. U-boats and auxiliary cruisers accounted for the greater part of this total, but nearly half was sunk by aircraft, especially the long-range converted airliners, the Focke-Wolf Condors, operating mainly from France. But just as German air power helped to bring about this crisis, so British air power helped to overcome it. Increases in the strength of RAF Coastal Command, including the introduction of Beaufighters; the provision of small escort carriers; the development of much improved ASV (air to surface vessel) radar and more effective depth-charges (see anti-submarine weapons); the establishment of new air bases in Iceland, Northern Ireland, the Hebrides, and West Africa; the pinning down of the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in Brest by bombing; the spotting of the Bismarck by an RAF Catalina and its crippling by Fleet Air Arm Swordfish—all these, like the much more systematic use of convoys, contributed greatly to the resolution of the crisis. By July– August 1941 the monthly average of merchant shipping losses had fallen to a very sustainable 125,000 tons.

Meanwhile in the Mediterranean and Middle East some 200–300 not very modern RAF aircraft had proved fully capable of overwhelming Italian opponents twice as numerous but flying for the most part outdated machines. This greatly helped in the spectacular British advance from Egypt across Cyrenaica in December 1940, and later in the East African campaign. So too did the remarkable feat of the Fleet Air Arm crippling the Italian fleet at Taranto in November 1940, an exploit which had repercussions for years to come. Even the detachment of squadrons from Egypt to sustain Greek resistance to Mussolini's invasion (see Balkan campaign) did not at first end the RAF's run of success; but the arrival of Luftwaffe units in Sicily in January 1941 and in Libya the following month, together with the formation of Rommel'sAfrika Korps and the German incursion into the Balkans, swiftly changed the picture. The loss of Cyrenaica (apart from Tobruk), the collapse of Yugoslavia after the savage bombing of Belgrade (which killed thousands of civilians), and the expulsion of the British from Greece were among the results. But once more the ineffectiveness of the Luftwaffe at night helped the Royal Navy to save most of the British Expeditionary Force from capture or destruction.

In Cyrenaica and Greece the Luftwaffe had followed its normal pattern of neutralizing the opposing air force, giving close support on the battlefield, and attacking more distant communications. In the airborne invasion of Crete, however, it brought off one of the most unorthodox operations of the whole war.

Most of the hastily concocted plan was known to the British through ULTRA intelligence (see also FLIVOS), and the Royal Navy was able to defeat the sea-borne element of the invasion. But the capture of just one airfield, Maleme, decided the issue. It was an issue which seemed for a while to hang by a thread, but in fact it might have been read in advance in the air power available to the opposing sides. To defend Crete there were initially about 24 fighters, including obsolescent Gladiators and Fulmars; to attack it the Germans could bring to bear from their new Aegean bases about 430 bombers and 180 fighters, in addition to 80 gliders and more than 500 transport aircraft. Including long-range bomber support from Egypt, the RAF managed to fly only about 20 sorties a day. The Luftwaffe flew many hundreds.

The sharpest lesson of Crete was that learned by the Royal Navy about air power. With great devotion and skill it had held the Cretan seas while there was any point in doing so, but in the course of this it had lost nine warships from air attack and suffered damage to another seventeen. However much warships might still be able to look after themselves in mid-ocean, it was now clear, that they ventured within range of a strong hostile shore-based air force only at their mortal peril. The capture of an island defended by an overwhelmingly strong navy was, for all to see, a portent: air power victorious over traditional sea power.

Shortly before Crete, a minor lesson in air power had been given in Iraq. When the usurper Rashid Ali besieged the RAF base at Habbaniya, the home of No. 4 Flying Training School, his forces were driven off by combined ground and air action, the latter supplied in the main by training aircraft flown by the instructors and senior pupils. The lesson was that against little opposition in the air, even out-of-date aircraft, if flown by resolute crews, can enormously influence the military situation.

In the titanic struggle between Germany and the Soviet Union (see German–Soviet war), air power was in the main employed tactically. For BARBAROSSA the Luftwaffe deployed about 2,800 aircraft—60% of its strength—against opponents with about 10,000 first-line aircraft west of the Urals. The Luftwaffe, however, by its initial surprise attacks on airfields, at once greatly reduced this disparity. On 27 June 1941, after only a week, the German High Command claimed the destruction of over 4,000 Soviet planes as against a loss of 150 by the Luftwaffe. Whatever the degree of exaggeration, Soviet losses were still stupendous. On both sides the fight against the opposing air force, and direct support of the armies by reconnaissance and by attacks on tanks, columns, points of resistance, and communications, became the staple pattern of operations. On the German side the medium-range bombers (Ju88s and He111s), as well as the Stukas, the fighter bombers, and the fighters, were expected to make low-flying attacks on troop positions in daylight. Anti-shipping attacks and mining also formed part of the Luftwaffe's programme, but on both sides long-range strategical operations were uncommon. There were notable exceptions, as when just before the German offensive against Kursk in July 1943 Luftwaffe bombers ranged far afield to attack a tank factory, rubber works, and oil targets, but such ventures were too infrequent to have much effect. Without definite air superiority, and in the face of the Soviets' very strong anti-aircraft artillery, they also tended to be expensive.

Other important features in the four years' fighting included the Soviets' ability to maintain a higher rate of serviceability in the winter than the Luftwaffe, the remarkable mobility of the Luftwaffe (thanks to transport aircraft and an effective ground organization), and the degree to which German operations suffered from the lack of a good long-range bomber. The increasing use by the Germans of air supply, too, was very notable. It peaked catastrophically when Hitler gave the Luftwaffe the impossible task of supplying the 500,000 troops locked up in Stalingrad. The effort cost the Germans almost half of their by then 1,000-strong transport fleet.

But perhaps the most surprising feature of all—certainly to Hitler, who had expected complete victory within six weeks—was the ability of the Soviets to move equipment east from their overrun territories and to develop in the Moscow area and behind the Urals an extremely strong aircraft and armaments industry (see USSR, 2). The massive Lend-Lease supplies which came in from the British and Americans, together with the effects of the Allied bombing of Germany, enabled the USSR to outperform the Germans in manufacture and to build up a huge air force which finally outnumbered the Luftwaffe on the Eastern Front by as much as 20:1. By 1944, the Soviets were producing more than 3,000 aircraft a month; in the whole war they produced about 40,000 more aircraft than Germany.

At an early stage, too, Luftwaffe units had to be withdrawn from the Eastern Front to bolster up the Axis forces in the Mediterranean, and later to strengthen the air defences of the Reich against the Allied bombing. Until 1942 the Luftwaffe more than held its own on the Eastern Front, but the force of 3,000 aircraft it managed to build up there was by 1944 whittled down to about 1,700—an impossibly small number to give all the support needed over a 1,600 km. (1,000 mi.) front. In the end, German air power there simply wore out from the incessant demands made upon it.

In the Mediterranean and Middle East from 1941 to 1943 air power was in the main employed tactically, but there was a big exception in the logistics battle. Attacks from Egypt on such Axis ports as Benghazi and Tripoli were a constant and productive feature of RAF operations throughout the Western Desert campaigns. Most important in this connection was lifting the siege of Malta: keeping Malta going as a staging-post for the delivery of aircraft to the Middle East and as a base from which to attack Italian ports and the shipping supplying the Axis forces in Africa, became a key element in British strategy, just as eliminating it became important for the Germans. Unquestionably the interruption of supplies—including, critically, fuel—to the German and Italian forces in Libya and later Tunisia played a major part in their defeat; and in this work aircraft based on Malta shared the main honours with submarines. The fact that the Axis did not attempt to invade this vital ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’, as at one time planned, stands out as a glaring failure in German policy a failure which was at least partly due to Kesselring's conviction that the island had been neutralized by his aircraft.

On the tactical side, it was in the desert campaigns that the RAF really learned how to give the army effective close support. Apart from increased forces, many of them obtained by opening up an air route to Egypt from West Africa (seeTakoradi air route), and aircraft of higher performance, two key elements were a new degree of mobility, and new high levels of maintenance in mobile conditions. Essential to the whole close support technique was to have fighters, fighter-bombers, and bombers with excellent air-to-ground radio communications, and forward joint RAF–army posts which could issue calls for action in the light of exact up-to-date information. Features such as the cab rank waiting in the sky to respond instantly to calls from below first proved their worth in North Africa and then helped the Allied armies to liberate Europe; but such refinements were possible only when superiority over the opposing air force had first been established.

For the air power to be applied effectively, the British Army had to make its own improvements in communications. In Norway, in France, and in Greece, the army had ascribed most of its problems to German air power. But in Libya in May– June 1942 it was still compelled to retreat, by forces under Rommel numerically inferior to its own, despite the fact that the RAF by then held a clear air superiority—indeed it was only this superiority which enabled the British troops to withdraw into Egypt relatively unscathed. The lesson emerged, and was applied by Montgomery, that the army itself must develop better communications with and between its tanks, so that they could be properly controlled and their whereabouts exactly known. Without this, air support could not be applied with full effectiveness.

Before the British and Americans could build up forces powerful enough to liberate Europe, they had first to win the battle of the Atlantic. Here again, air power was finally a deciding factor. After the U-boats' early run of success had been ended in the summer of 1941, they soon found it profitable to concentrate on the areas not covered, or only poorly covered, by Allied aircraft (see air gap). This tactic caused heavy shipping losses, but the introduction of auxiliary carriers (see CAM ships, fighter catapult ships, and MAC ships) and of very long-range aircraft (mainly US Liberators) first of all narrowed and then closed the gaps. With new short-wave (10 cm.) ASV radar, undetectable for some time to the Germans, to locate the U-boat, with Leigh lights (see searchlights) to illuminate them at night, and with more powerful depth charges filled with Torpex (see explosives) and fitted with better pistols, aircraft became not only U-boat spotters but also U-boats killers. By the end of the war the number of U-boats destroyed by the RAF, including those by bombing and aerial mine-laying, exceeded the number sunk by the Royal Navy.

When the Allies at length gathered their forces for the return to the Continent (see OVERLORD), air power exercised in a wide variety of ways was fundamental to the success of the invasion. By landing or parachuting agents and supplies from the UK it first helped to build up the Resistance and acquired essential intelligence. Then, in the weeks before OVERLORD, the RAF and the USAAF wrought havoc with the railway system in northern France, effectively sealing off the projected lodgement areas (and others, for the sake of deception) from any possibility of rapid reinforcement by the Germans. At the same time the strength of the British air defences denied the Luftwaffe the possibility of assessing the invasion preparations by reconnaissance. Next, during the invasion itself, air patrols protected the Allied vessels, ‘spoof’ air patrols falsely indicated a landing in the Pas de Calais, and air attacks, almost unopposed, on batteries, radar stations, troops, and airfields put the defenders at an impossible disadvantage. Airborne landings, too, played their part, and subsequently the whole panoply of air support techniques which had been developed in North Africa speeded the progress of the Allied ground forces (see carpet bombing).

Not merely was this air support superb in quality, it was completely overwhelming in quantity. For OVERLORD the Allied Expeditionary Air Force numbered no fewer than 9,000 aircraft, supported by another 3,000 from other Commands. Against this vast array the Luftwaffe locally could initially pit only some 300 machines, later to be increased to upwards of 1,000. On D-Day itself, Allied aircraft flew nearly 15,000 sorties in support of the invading forces, the Luftwaffe barely 100 against them.

The achievements of tactical and maritime air power, of reconnaissance, and of military air transport were soon universally acknowledged. About the Anglo-American strategic air offensive against Germany, however, there was and still is controversy. The main points of contention have concerned the morality of attacks on civilian centres, the wisdom of devoting such large resources to a virtually unproved form of warfare, and the actual results of the offensive.

With regard to the moral issue, both sides at the outset declared their intention of restricting bombing to strictly ‘military’ targets. Later, the British felt themselves freed from this inhibition by the German bombing of Warsaw, Rotterdam, London itself, and Belgrade. But a shift in bombing policy came not so much from changed moral attitudes as from the discovery that long-range strategic missions could not be flown in daylight against a good defence without heavy losses. The Germans found this out in the battle of Britain, and in the autumn of 1940 went over to night bombing, which with its greater inaccuracy inevitably killed many civilians. They also began attacking non-industrial targets (seeBaedeker raids). On the British side, RAF Bomber Command, having discovered as early as 1940 that it could not bomb Germany in daylight, later discovered that it had seriously misjudged its attempts to bomb precise targets by night. In December 1940 it first introduced area bombing, which meant deliberately bombing whole industrial and administrative areas, which were easier to find and hit. Inevitably, attacks of this kind, which became regular from mid-1941 onwards, especially after the Butt report of August 1941, caused much loss of life among civilians.

When the Eighth US Army Air Force arrived in the UK in 1942 its intentions were those originally cherished by the British—to attack only precise targets. Its leaders contended that the defensive power of their multi-gunned B17 Flying Fortresses, operating in formation, taken in conjunction with the bombing accuracy from great heights conferred by the new Norden bomb-sight, would permit precision bombing in daylight without unacceptable losses. The course of the Americans' operations over Germany was to show that, after many difficulties, they were in fact able to make good their claim. They did so finally, however, only after the development of good long-distance escort fighters, notably the P51 Mustang with drop tanks, possessing a combination of range, speed, and fighting power no one had thought possible at the outset of hostilities. For its part, RAF Bomber Command became progressively more effective in its night bombing. Successive radio or radar aids (see electronic navigation systems) in combination with the new Mark XIV bomb-sight and more sophisticated Pathfinder and marker techniques (see shaker technique) brought greater accuracy to navigation and bomb-aiming. Heavier concentration of attack to saturate the defences, tactical routeing (occasionally in the light of ULTRA intelligence), and the dropping of metallic foil (see electronic warfare) to disrupt the German radar, all helped to keep losses within acceptable limits. More specialized and much more powerful bombs and a more intensive use of incendiaries inflicted ever greater damage. Better aircraft, notably the four-engined Lancaster and the fast twin-engined wooden Mosquito (used over Germany largely for ‘intruder’, reconnaissance, and pathfinding purposes) reached the targets and brought the crews, except the unlucky four or five in every hundred, safely back again. Finally the point was reached, in the last months of the war, when the RAF's night bombing, reverting increasingly to precise targets like oil installations, was actually more accurate than the USAAF's daylight bombing, which was often done at excessive heights on account of the strength of the ground defences.

To the criticism that the strategic offensive involved a vast misuse of resources there is a simple answer. After the fall of France bombing was the only form of attack by which the UK could directly damage Germany, not only in 1940 but for years to come. Equally, when the USA became involved in the war, bombers could be flown to Europe and be in action long before American ground forces could be brought across in sufficient numbers to attempt an invasion.

After January 1943, however, the air offensive against Germany was essentially geared to the strategy decided upon at the Casablanca conference (see SYMBOL). It was to be waged with the object of weakening Germany to the point where it could not effectively repel an invasion. So in the end the foremost proponents of the strategic offensive— Portal and Harris on the British side, Arnold, Spaatz, and Eaker on the American—were never given the resources, around 6,000 heavy bombers, which they had considered necessary to weaken Germany fatally without major fighting on land. Though Harris relinquished that dream only with the greatest reluctance, their task became, essentially, to reduce Germany's industrial capacity, to weaken or destroy the Luftwaffe, and then to assist, by both tactical and strategic operations, the progress of the Allied ground forces.

The results of the offensive, which at its height occupied some 3,000 British and American bombers, have in recent years been seriously undervalued. Much has been made of the fact that during the peak period of Allied bombing German aircraft production actually increased; but a high proportion of these aircraft were fighters for Reich defence, much more easily manufactured than bombers, the production of which declined sharply. In 1939, 31% of German aircraft production consisted of fighters, 26% of bombers. In 1944 the proportions were 75% fighters, 11% bombers. This in itself was a victory for Allied air power.

The strategic air offensive in fact had profoundly important results. Though it failed to destroy German morale it greatly reduced German war production. Among other effects it finally brought about a shortage of oil (see raw materials) so acute that fuel could not even be found to give proper training to the Luftwaffe's new pilots. After the introduction of the long-range fighter it also, through the efforts of the Americans, fatally weakened the Luftwaffe by attacks on aircraft factories (see Schweinfurt, for example) and by combat in the skies.

This was far from being all. In the final stages, the offensive destroyed communications in Western Germany and utterly disrupted German troop movements. It caused Luftwaffe units to be withdrawn from the Eastern Front, so that only 32% of its forces were engaged there in 1944 as compared with 65% in 1941. In its last year it kept 2,000 or more German fighters, and nearly 20,000 anti-aircraft guns, many of which could have been used as anti-tank guns, pinned down to the defence of the Reich. As intended, it threw Germany on the defensive, and the combination of daylight attacks by the USAAF and night attacks by the RAF finally proved irresistible. The mature judgement of Albert Speer, Hitler's armaments minister, ran thus: ‘The real importance of the air war was that it opened a second front long before the invasion of Europe. That front was the skies of Germany…This was the greatest lost battle on the German side.’

In the final stages of the air war in Europe the Germans displayed great technological inventiveness. In addition to the flying-bomb and the long-range rocket (see V-weapons) they produced a bewildering variety of rocket and turbo-jet aircraft—22 types in all. The Me262, a heavily armed (4x30 mm. cannon) twin turbo-jet capable of around 870 kph (540 mph), was produced in the greatest quantity. First operational in the spring of 1944, it had an enormous advantage in speed over any Allied fighter and could have taken a deadly toll of the American daylight bombers. But Hitler foolishly demanded a modification for bomb-carrying, which delayed production, and it was not until March 1945, far too late to have much effect, that all Me262 resources were devoted to the fighter defence of the Reich.

Despite their ingenuity the German jets, were unreliable compared with the only British turbo-jet to go into service during the war, the Gloster Meteor, operational from August 1944. Some 80–95 kph (50–60 mph) slower than the Me262, it had the advantage of Rolls-Royce engines soundly derived from the designs of the inventor of the British jet engine, Air Commodore Frank Whittle. Used at first against the flying bomb, and then for ground attack, it never encountered the Me262. Its importance, like that of the German jets, was less for its achievements in the war than for beginning the ‘jet revolution’ that was soon to transform both military and civil aviation.

It was in the Far East that some of the most dramatic achievements of air power occurred. To begin with there were the devastating attacks by Japanese carrier aircraft against the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in December 1941—an operation influenced by the events at Taranto the previous November—and by land-based machines from Formosa against MacArthur's aircraft in the Philippines (see Clark Field). It was largely thanks to these initial blows, and the superiority of the Japanese Navy's Zero fighter to anything it was to meet for two years to come, that the Japanese were able to sweep through the ill-defended British and Dutch possessions in South-East Asia without the Allies being able to interrupt their communications. At the outset, too, the sinking of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse by Japanese aircraft ruined the British chances of interfering with the invasion of Malaya and confirmed, as had the Royal Navy's losses off Crete, that sea power could no longer be exercised without air power.

When the Americans had recovered and in 1942 were contesting the further Japanese incursions into New Guinea and the Philippines, two great sea battles marked a new epoch in naval history and in the history of air power. In the Coral Sea and off Midway Island the Japanese and American fleets fought by means of their aircraft. These two engagements, which turned the tide in the Pacific war, were the first occasions on which surface fleets fought an action without ever coming within sight or gunfire range of each other. Sea power, basic and essential, had come to depend on aircraft as well as surface vessels and submarines, and the hegemony of the battleship was over (for example, seeMusashi and Yamato). Outside the range of shore-based aircraft, the carrier now ruled the surface of the seas.

There were other unprecedented achievements of air power during the prolonged struggle which turned the Japanese back from the gates of India and recovered Burma. In addition to all their normal reconnaissance and combat roles, Allied aircraft played a major part in transport and supply. They made possible Wingate'sChindit expeditions and the Hump supply and transport service from Assam to China; kept a force of 150,000 supplied during the siege of Imphal (and evacuated 35,000 wounded and non-combatants); maintained supply to large formations of the British Fourteenth Army behind the Japanese lines, formations which had been landed not simply for raiding purposes but as outposts for a subsequent advance.

All this could not have been done without mastery in the air, but as time went on and the Allies were reinforced, Japanese air superiority evaporated. The figures of British air strength tell the story. In 1941 the RAF had five squadrons in northern India, mostly on out-of-date aircraft; by 1944 it had more than 60 squadrons, on modern aircraft, allocated to the Burma campaign. Against more than 1,000 Allied aircraft in Burma, the Japanese could finally pit only 200.

But it was in the final attacks on the Japanese homeland that air power achieved its most rapid, complete, and terrifying results. First there was the struggle to obtain air bases, which in the Far East meant capturing islands sufficiently close to Japan. In the course of these advances the Americans gained such complete air superiority over the Japanese that the latter's raw new pilots were forced to resort to kamikaze or suicide missions. The capture of the Mariana Islands in November 1944 provided an invaluable return landing point for the new B29 Superfortresses which had been operating against Japan from China. US landings on Iwo Jima in January 1945 and on Okinawa in April then made fighter escort possible; and everywhere the Americans' ability to construct bases and landing grounds rapidly was a key factor in their success (see engineers andSeabees). However, it was not, until they went over to the decried RAF tactics of area bombing by night, using incendiaries filled with napalm, that the Americans achieved big results (see strategic air offensives, 3). Finally, the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was decisive. Strategic bombing, though far from being the only cause of Japan's defeat, had unquestionably delivered the coup de grâce.

Air power: Numbers of military aircraft produced by four of the major air powers, 1938-44 (000s)

Year	Germany	Japan	UK	USA
The substantial increases by Germany and Japan in 1943–4 reflect their growing concentration on defence and the manufacture of relatively easily produced single-engined fighters. These types accounted for 24% of Germany's aircraft production in 1941, 65% in 1944.
There are no regular figures of comparable reliability for the USSR, but it is estimated that production there rose from approximately 10,000 in 1940 to approximately 40,000 in 1944.
Source: Contributor.
1938	5.6	3.2	2.8	1.8
1939	8.3	4.5	7.9	2.1
1940	10.8	4.8	15.0	6.1
1941	11.8	5.1	20.1	29.4
1942	15.6	8.9	23.7	47.8
1943	25.5	16.7	26.3	85.9
1944	39.8	28.2	26.5	96.3

Many factors lay behind the massive air power finally wielded by the Allies. The British and Americans harnessed their scientific resources to the war effort more systematically, and to more immediately practicable purposes, than did the Axis powers. The Allies gained, and held, a general advantage in the vital work of code-breaking (see signals intelligence warfare); their structure for the higher direction of the war was superior (see Grand Alliance); and the ready availability of fuel, and the huge open spaces of the USA and the British Empire, safe from hostile interference, gave the Allies inestimable benefits when it came to training (see British Empire Air Training Scheme). But it was above all the Allies' enormous industrial capacity which was the foundation of their air power (see Table). By the beginning of 1945, Allied aircraft outnumbered their opponents on all fronts by at least five to one. ‘God is on the side of the big battalions’ especially, when, as in this case, they are well-equipped, well-trained, well-informed, and well-led.

Curiously enough, the final consummation in the Far East may have marked the apogee of air power. Air forces would certainly remain key, even decisive, elements in warfare; but within a few years rockets would replace manned aircraft as the major delivery system for the most powerful weapons of mass destruction. In the new era, there would be a new fear: ‘the missile will always get through’.

Denis Richards

Bibliography

Higham, R. , Air Power: a Concise History (London, 1972).
Overy, R. J. , The Air War 1939–45 (London, 1980).
Stokesbury, J. L. , A Short History of Air Power (New York, 1984).