Air Power History

PDA Briefing Memo #30, 26 September 2003. Examines how air power helped bring about the rapid collapse of the Iraqi Republican Guard and regular army in the 2003 war. The memo focuses specifically on the role of battlefield air interdiction. (The author distinguishes air interdiction and close air support missions by arguing that the latter help decide the immediate battle, while air interdiction shapes the battlefield and helps determine upcoming battles.) An outstanding feature of the analysis is a comparison of the air campaigns of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Desert Storm (1990-1991). The memo also estimates combatant casualties due to air interdiction in the 2003 war.

Air power is a big topic and this is a big book. The Routledge Handbook of Air Power features some thirty well-researched, cutting-edge essays written by highly-regarded experts in their particular specialist areas within the broader air power field.  Before delving deeper however...

Reviews "Reach for the Sky" by Paul Brickhill (Ballantine edition, 1967), a biography of the Royal Air Force ace Douglas Bader.  Bader had lost his legs in an aircraft crash in 1927, but he succeeded in returning to flight status.  He led a fighter wing during the Battle of Britain, but later in the war he became a prisoner of war, held in Colditz Castle.  The book is of interest both to aviation and military historians and to those focused on helping the disabled.

(graduate; senior level undergraduate): Seminar course to include key strategic thinkers and how their theories apply to the study of war, both in history and by modern practitioners. Students read works by Vegetius, Machiavelli, Clausewitz, Jomini, Mahan, Corbett, Douhet, Mitchell, Brodie, and Boyd.

I gave this presentation on 13 November, 2014 at the Point of Remembrance in Hódmezővásárhely, Hungary. The one-day conference under the title “Air War over Hungary in World War II” was organized by the Point of Remembrance (Emlékpont). This particular presentation was about the Hungarian 101 "Puma" Fighter Wing's activity from its forming till the end of the war in 1944-45.

Birds and aircraft have a fundamental problem: their range and endurance are limited. To remain aloft requires the expenditure of energy. Eventually, birds must land and rest, and aircraft must refuel. The invention of nuclear power in the 1940s appeared to offer a way to cut this Gordian knot. A nuclear-powered aircraft could, it seemed, provide dramatically improved range and endurance compared to chemically fuelled powered aircraft.

Os desafios de natureza estratégica induziram alterações no pensamento militar. As necessidades de defesa estática diminuíram, surgindo a urgência de potenciar a capacidade de projecção de forças, tornando-as expedicionárias, modulares e flexíveis, para dar resposta a operações em qualquer ponto do globo. O novo paradigma de defesa, após o 11 de Setembro de 2001, conduziu a uma metodologia de planeamento de forças assente em capacidades centradas em rede, tendo em vista orientar as operações futuras baseadas em efeitos. A guerra de desgaste, característica dos séculos passados, cedeu lugar a uma aplicação precisa da força, num espectro alargado de conflitos, tendo como finalidade o condicionamento e alteração de comportamentos.
Este conceito das Operações Baseadas em Efeitos, como resposta ao volátil contexto estratégico, envolve uma aplicação integrada de todos os instrumentos de poder, com o objectivo de criar efeitos que permitam atingir os resultados pretendidos. Foi assim no Kosovo, no Afeganistão, no Iraque, e será assim no futuro.

This is the life of an extraordinary Messerschmitt Bf 109 G test pilot of the MGW Győr, Hungary. Ottó Lukács was an extraordinary person, because he flew the first Bf 109 combat sortie of the Royal Hungarian Air Force on 15 October, 1942 over the Estern Front.  He flew 93 combat sorties between 3 August 1942 and 19 July, 1943 over the Eastern Front (the first 25 were flown with Re.2000). From July, 1943 till the end of the war, he was a test pilot of the MWG, passed away in 1999. The paper was published in the 38th issue of Győri Tanulmányok (Győr Studies) in 2017, pp. 113-120. Unfortunately the photos were published separately.

This is an excerpt from the Messerschmitt Bf 109 G equipped Hungarian 102nd Figher Squadron's Combat Diary over the Eastern Front with many formerly unknown details about their activity, victories, losses and aircraft. It was published in the 1/2017 issue of the Hadtörténelmi Közlemények (Quarterly of Military History), the leading Hungarian academic journal related to military history.

In late 1912 and early 1913, people all over Britain reported seeing airships in the night sky, yet there were none. It was widely assumed that these 'phantom airships' were German Zeppelins, testing British defenses in preparation for the next war. The public and press responses to the phantom airship sightings provide a glimpse of the way that aerial warfare was understood before it was ever experienced in Britain. Conservative newspapers and patriotic leagues used the sightings to argue for a massive expansion of Britain’s aerial forces, which were perceived to be completely out-classed by Germany’s in both number and power. In many ways this airship panic was analogous to the much better known 1909 dreadnought panic. The result was the perfect Edwardian panic: the simultaneous culmination of older fears about Germany and the threat of espionage, invasion, and, above all, the loss of Britain’s naval superiority. But, in reality, there was little understanding about the way that Zeppelins would be used against Britain in the First World War—not to attack its arsenals and dockyards, but to bomb its cities.

The employment of airpower in CIO has remained controversial because of the issue of collateral damage. The lethality of air delivered weapons makes it difficult to selectively destroy the insurgent enemy who is not averse to using human shields. Despite the counter-productive effects that collateral damage can have on a CIO campaign, airpower offers many advantages in CIO. The highly social and political nature of CIO makes every CIO unique. However, the CIO conducted in Sri Lanka and being conducted in Nigeria have some important similarities. Boko Haram (BH), like the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE), is a highly motivated insurgent group in control of parts of a sovereign nation and it enjoys the support of some of the population. BH like the LTTE has also employed tactics ranging from suicide bombings to conducting well coordinated conventional attacks. The SLAF and NAF on the other hand are both tactical air forces with very similar capabilities and are tasked with supporting a larger CIO effort. From the research conducted on the air operations of the SLAF in the Eelam war IV, the study finds that airpower was decisive in the success of the CIO campaign because it was employed strategically. The SLAF was able to provide offensive and logistic air support to the entire campaign. This study, however, finds that the most crucial capability of the SLAF was its ability to provide enhanced situational awareness by providing timely intelligence to the appropriate commanders.

Biography and obituary of László Dániel (1922-2020), who was the last living Hungarian fighter ace of the Second World War. It was published in the 2020-2021 issue of the Magyar Repüléstörténeti Társaság Évkönyve (Yearbook of the Hungarian Aviation Historical Society), pp. 7-14.

My YouTube video about him (with English subtitles): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5pV42ULAmA

Seventy-five years after the Battle of Britain, the conventional wisdom remains that the Battle was won by the innovation of the ‘Dowding system’, which integrated radar and eight-gun fighters, and the skill and courage of the RAF's fighter pilots.  This article examines the design of the London Air Defence Area in 1917-18, the formation of the Home Defence Air Force in 1922-23 and the reorientation of Britain’s air defences to face Germany in 1934 to demonstrate that Britain continuously developed strategic air defence from 1922 to 1940 because of the alignment of both political imperative, defence strategy and the RAF's institutional air defence expertise. While successive Chiefs of the Air Staff favoured strategic bombing, the RAF, formed in 1918 to prevent German raids on London, had many air defence experts and advocates. Therefore, while strategic bombing was largely unproven and its impact exaggerated, air defence was based on lessons from the First World War, and increasingly on science, operational research and operational evaluation.  Furthermore successive British governments, not just Chamberlain's, pursued a deliberate defensive strategy, recognising Britain’s strategic vulnerability to the bomber and public anxiety, while seeking to use Britain’s technical, industrial and air strength in a long war and avoiding a bloody continental commitment.  This combination ensured victory in the Battle of Britain but also contributed to the Fall of France, without which the Battle of Britain would not have been fought.

Biography and obituary of Endre Frankó (1923-2020), who was the last living Hungarian fighter pilot of the Second World War who flew combat sorties (he passed way a month after László Dániel, the last living fighter ace). It was published in the 2020-2021 issue of the Magyar Repüléstörténeti Társaság Évkönyve (Yearbook of the Hungarian Aviation Historical Society), pp. 15-19.

The ever-expanding Lawrence literature overlooks the link between his concept of warfare and subsequent choice of the RAF for enlistment. Lawrence's fame stemmed from the cultural difference between Romantic heroism in the desert and the industrial warfare on the Western Front. Yet pare away the myth and enigma of 'Lawrence of Arabia' using the official archives and one finds a proponent of air power and a strikingly modern way in warfare, using machines rather than men, and combining aeroplanes and armoured cars with Arab regulars and irregulars. The experience resulted in Lawrence's subsequent postwar support of air power for colonial control in Iraq and probably influenced his choice of Service for enlistment.

"This article seeks to add to the post-Cold War character of conflict debate by putting air power, its attractiveness to liberal democracies and the subsequent British way of war, in both conventional war and counter-insurgency, into historical context. The article starts with a synoptic examination of the utility of air power in what David Edgerton has called liberal militarism, enabling Britain to avoid bloody and expensive land conflict by using economic, technical and industrial superiority. The article then questions the notion that air power has limited utility in counter-insurgency by examining Britain’s use of air power as part of a liberal militarist approach to counter-insurgency. The third section critically analyses the argument deployed before the SDSR that unitary, land-centric conflict would predominate and therefore Britain’s armed forces needed rebalancing. The article concludes by contending the intervention in Libya is an example of liberal militarism and continuation of the British way of war. The article’s conclusion is that air power remains fundamental to the British way of war in post-Cold War conflict, as it has since the First World War."

"The failure of Operation Jubilee, the raid on Dieppe, has partially been attributed to the failure of the RAF to provide the bomber support needed to support the landings. This fallacious argument, based on hindsight and a lack of understanding of the RAF’s capabilities at this point in the war, requires revision. This article examines the doctrinal and operational context of the RAF forces involved in Jubilee. Prewar combined operations doctrine stated that the key role for air power was the maintenance of air superiority. The absence of heavy bombers at Dieppe did not doom the operation. The RAF contributed significantly to the operation by seeking to battle the Luftwaffe in the manner that it did during Jubilee, and as such, it provided the most appropriate protection that it could for the assault forces."

Usually mischaracterised by hostile Soviet historiography as "peasants with pitchforks," the multi-partisan revolutionary Makhnovist movement in the Ukraine over 1917-1921 at its height was a technologically-competent conventional army with three navy flotillas, a small air fleet, several armoured trains, and armoured car squadrons - and administered / co-administered several significant cities and towns. Based on a range of new studies in the Ukrainian language, this brief illustrated piece aims to bring all those modernist elements together in English for the first time.

During the First World War, several writers began to argue that the main strategic risk to Britain was the possibility of a sudden, intense aerial bombardment of its cities, which would cause tremendous destruction and large numbers of casualties. The nation would be knocked-out of the war very quickly, in a matter of days or weeks, before it could fully realise its military potential. The theory of the knock-out blow solidified into a consensus during the 1920s and by the 1930s had almost become an orthodoxy, accepted by pacifists and militarists alike.

My thesis examines the concept of the knock-out blow as it was articulated in the public sphere, the reasons why it came to be so widely accepted in public life, and the way it shaped the responses of the British public to the great issues facing them in the 1930s: armaments and appeasement, war or peace. It mainly draws on published, but little examined, sources -- books, journals, newspapers -- produced in the period between 1908 (when aviation was first perceived as a threat to British security) and 1941 (when the Blitz ended, and it was obvious that no knock-out blow was coming). And it shows how, after having been taught to fear the bomber as the bringer of destruction to all they knew and held dear, the British people were instead taught to regard it as their best hope for victory.

Even before Operation Barbarossa petered out in December 1941, Germany's oil reserves were severely depleted. Adolf Hitler worried that his armed forces would soon grind to a halt for want of petroleum products. During the last months of 1941 and the first of 1942, economic considerations played as much of a role in the formulation of a new strategy as did the run-down state of the eastern armies and air fleets. Hitler feared heavy Soviet bombing attacks on Rumanian oilfields, his main source of oil, and knew that the Reich's reserves were almost exhausted. Consequently, he considered the protection of the Rumanian oilfields and the acquisition of new sources of oil crucial if he were to wage a prolonged war against the growing list of nations he opposed.

Politics and Military Advice: Lessons from the Campaign in Greece
1941 takes a fascinating, in-depth look at how the British intervention in Greece during the early part of the Second World War was a political imperative that was not militarily achievable
given the paucity of resources – not least of which were air assets. The contemporary pull through for military practitioners, academics, civil servants and politicians alike is manifest at
a time when air forces are being reduced in size and capability but political demand for air power is increasing.

While many are familiar with the Normandy Invasion, few American, Canadian or British citizens know about the massive air campaign waged against their occupied ally. This offensive lasted four long years and targeted most of France’s population centers and infrastructure. By the time the war was over, the Allied air forces killed as many French as the Germans killed British civilians during the “blitz” and vengeance weapon assaults, equaling between 60,000 and 75,000 out of a total of 150,000 French civilian deaths during the war were caused by Allied bombs.

For Rouen’s civilians the war did not end on June 6, 1944. For more than two months, the city continued to see both the movement of German forces to the front and the continuation of attacks by fighter-bombers. After months of heavy allied bombing, Canadian troops finally moved into Rouen, ending the nightmare.

Today, after decades of reconstruction, Rouen is a thriving, vibrant city. It has a beautiful riverfront, great shopping and wonderful cafés and restaurants. However, evidence of the wartime destruction is obvious: damage to the front of the Palace de Justice, the remains of burnt-out buildings, and the noticable differences in the architecture of buildings constructed before and after the war.

Justified or not, the devastation of Rouen in 1944 is part of the Second World War’s sordid history. It is certainly a narrative worthy of understanding when evaluating the war’s effect on politics and society in the latter half of the twentieth century.

The Allied failure to close the mid-Atlantic " air gap " before May 1943 is widely attributed to the prioritization of the strategic bombing campaign against Germany over the allocation of long range aircraft to trade defense. This article demonstrates that delays in acquiring Very Long Range aircraft for the " air gap " were the result of bureaucratic muddle rather than deliberate obstruction by the Air Ministry, Bomber Command, or Winston Churchill. It shows that the Royal Air Force's Coastal Command possessed enough aircraft to have provided air cover for convoys in the mid-Atlantic much sooner than it did. The Admiralty and Coastal Command were both slow to identify the need for land-based air cover in the mid-Atlantic because the threat did not develop until mid-1942, and because they initially assumed that the problem would be solved with escort carriers.

This paper will suggest that once air superiority was established by US forces in 1950 over the Korean Peninsula it was key in allowing the US to conduct air operations. However once outside help flowed in North Korea it became harder for the US to conduct air operations unopposed. While also arguing that USAF bombing of the Korean peninsula was ineffective and failed to break the communist will to fight. leading to a more favorable peace for North Korea and not the united Korea the US was hoping for.

This article discusses three aspects of air power in South Africa during the period between the two world wars, each one intermeshing with debates about what kind of political and social space the Union could claim for itself beyond its borders on the continent. First, during the First World War and in its immediate aftermath the advance of air power raised the question in what way the tense relations between Afrikaners and English speakers would be influenced by this new technology. Second, aviation offered new methods of control of the African majority and of other recalcitrant groups. Third, the progress in aviation technology, compounded by the international tensions in the 1930s and European armed intervention in East Africa, alerted white South Africans to the perils of their diminished geographical isolation at the southern tip of the continent.