Lecture by Lt. Col. Matt Caffrey
Airpower: "to decrease the length of combat and the evils of war" (1899) 1909: First military aircraft
Impact on WWI 1914: Recon Failure: The French missed the German wheel, but the Germans missed the BEF.
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.
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:
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:
trucks: 80% (20%) artillery: 70% (30%) There was nothing about Vietnam inthe talk.--RL More Connections 2000:
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