Connections 2000

Aerospace Power 101

Lecture by Lt. Col. Matt Caffrey


Airpower: "to decrease the length of combat and the evils of war" (1899)

1909: First military aircraft
1910: First aircraft carrier
1913: First air combat: US mercenaries with 6-guns blazing away at each other during Mexican Civil War

Impact on WWI

1914: Recon Failure: The French missed the German wheel, but the Germans missed the BEF.
1914: Recon Success: French found the Germans at the Marne, andteh Germans found the Russians at Tannenberg

Surveillance: Balloons (artillery spotters) were cheap and defensible, but fixed in position and had a low view angle. Aircraft were mobile and had mutiple view angles, but no communications with the ground.
1915: Counter air attacks on artillery spotting aircraft
1915: Strategic Air Attacks: French actually bombed German factories in 1914, but too little tonnage dropped and too little accuracy to do anything. Germans retaliated with Zepplin terror bombing of London in 1915. Gotha attacks in 1917 were not as scary ast Zepplins because they could be shot down.
1916: Synchronization: At Verdun, Germans achieved air superiotity and went after French balloons and blocked French aircraft from spotting. Later, French mounted counterair operations to regains eyes in the skies.
1916: Tactical Air tried. In 1917, British tried strafing of trenches nd lost 50% of their aircraft ina month. The life expectancy of a pilot was 21 days. Later switched to rear area suppression.
1918 St. Michiel OB: Allies: 696 fighters, 366 recon, and 323 bombers. Germans: 100 fighters, later 200 fighters.
WWI Aircraft production: 1914: insignificant. 1918: British: 30,000, Gemany 15,000, and US: 15,000.

Interwar

A lot of "practice" battles: Russo-Polish War (few aircraft), British in Palestine (air policing campaign, which didn't work in urban areas), USMC small wars in a variety of places, and later heating up with the Spanish Civil War and the Sino-Japanese War. The 1938 capitulation of the West allowing Germany to swallow Czechoslovaki was in part due to Luftwaffe threat.

Along the way, technology increased engine size, aluminum increasingly being used, and targeting approved.

WWII

The air campaigns went through changes in mission:

    Poland: German operational support and coercion
    Norway: Germans centered on British Navy and air transport
    Holland: Paradrops
    France: strategic use, especially by British.
    Britain: defensive victory
    Crete: paradrops and the price of victory

In the USSR in 1941, the early Luftwaffe campaign decimated the USSR air force, by mid campaign it was the Luftwaffe's "springtime," and later in '41, Luftwaffe sortoe rates drop as the army outruns air support and weather turns nasty.

In 1942, a German airlift in the Baltic states works, while Doolittle launches off a carrier and bombs Japan. The first Allied raids on Europe begin, and air power sinks ships at the battles of Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal.

By 1943, the Luftwaffe can't pull off an airlift at Stalingrad, and Allied "penny-packet" tactical air deployments over ground troops at Kasserine (North Africa) fail. Then came the Palm Sunday massacre--Allied fighters hit the "Tunisia air bridge" shooting down most of the Luftwaffe transports.

In 1944, air superiority belongs to the Allies, and even becomes a "maneuver element" to protect Patton's right flank during his breakout from Normandy. Meanwhile, the strategic destruction of the German war economy continues using day and night bombing.

Post WWII

The Berlin air lift in 1949 works, while in Korea, carrier-based air power and land-based P-51s wear down enemy land forces. The percentage destruction by air (and % by ground) is:

    tanks: 75% (25%)
    trucks: 80% (20%)
    artillery: 70% (30%)

There was nothing about Vietnam inthe talk.--RL

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© Copyright 2001 Hal Thinglum
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