Connections 2002

Lecture: Lessons from an
Expeditionary Air Campaign

by Russ Lockwood


North Africa 1942-3
presented by John Hill

Role of Wargaming and Air Power Effectiveness

What exactly are you measuring when you talk about air power effectiveness, and how can you then encapsulate that into a war simulation? According to John Hill, many different elements contribute to, or detract from, effectiveness, and that effectiveness is more than just the number of aircraft or the number of sorties. Hill defined the measurement of Air Power Effectiveness by the "number of sustainable effective sorties."

There's that word again: effective. How are you going to define it? Here, he punted somewhat, or at least I failed to fully understand (or he failed to fully explain), as he fell back on defining "effective sorties" based on what you feel effective results would be for particular aircraft missions, such as defensive air support or tank bombing. In essense, he's almost saying you'll know it when you see it. But there's a method to his madness, for he cautioned that to come up with a omniscient definition, you somehow have to keep defining that omniscience. It's not so much a chicken-and-egg situation as it is an infinite mirror image--where each image you see when looking between two mirrors equates to an intangible term that spins off the need for another definition while simultaneously spinning off another image...ad infinitum or ad nauseum, your choice. It's certainly enough semantics to make my head spin. Fortunately, he provided an historical example: US air power in North Africa, 1942-43.

From the quantitative examination we usually use to create a simulation of a historical period, the US Air Force, or more properly the US Army Air Force, should have swept the Luftwaffe from the skies of North Africa the way it did a year later at Normandy. The US had almost 700 aircraft deployed in forward airfields versus the 150-200 planes of the Luftwaffe. That's a comfortable 3:1 advantage, which is also about the ratio of sorties. And yet, if the Luftwaffe didn't actually rule the sky back then, they were more effective in conducting air operations.

"Effective" thus reared its ugly head again, and Hill dropped a bombshell--US Air Power Effectiveness depended on horse carts. All you have to remember is the infinite mirror metaphor, hold your questions until the end, and forget about horse carts until later in the sequence. But I get ahead of myself.

Horse Carts? Connections, Connections

In 1942, the US did little, if any, pre-war planning for deployment to North Africa. Indeed, even Operation Torch's original objective was to grab the Algeria-Morrocco area and that was about that. Only after the successful landings did the opportunity arise to nail the Afrika Korps in the rear and bag the entire German Army did the Allies drive forward towards Tunisia.

At that time, the US operated under the doctrine to get the most "shooters" forward as fast as possible, which means basing the aircraft at forward air fields. However, the region does not contain many indigenous airfields. As a result, the US overpopulated the airfields with aircraft without setting up the corresponding logistical support.

Furthermore, US air doctrine tied the planes to ground forces. FM 31-35 specifically stated that the ground commander has the final say regarding air missions. As a result, most missions were generic sweeps that accomplished little. Patton, for example, demanded dawn to dusk air cover over his headquarters.

The Germans used a more dispersed doctrine, in part because they had fewer planes and had better airfields, that concentrated aircraft for specific missions instead of generic sweeps. Even better, with smart deployments of radar, they consistently vectored their aircraft to hit the seams of US coverage. As a result, they were consistently able to inflict pinpoint attacks against US ground forces and rear-area airfields, which, of course, only made ground commanders demand more generic fighter sweeps over their troops. From Decemeber 1942 to March 1943, the US air force flew 10,254 sorties, of which 418 (about 4%) were offensive in nature against the German ground or air forces. Gen. Doolittle noted that of those 700 planes, only about 200 were used effectively.

Hill noted that overlooked or underappreciated events often shaped air power effectiveness. Forward airfields are fine, but that means supplies had to travel a long distance to get there. Inadequate supplies were a constant problem, especially with gas, spare parts, and maintenance facilities. Without gas, planes don't fly. If a plane needs a part and none are available, it won't fly either. If you strip parts from other planes, but don't have adequate facilities to make the repair, planes still don't fly.

Back in September 1942, when Torch was being prepared, the planners discovered the invasion would be short 83 ships' worth of cargo space to support the operation. So the planners compensated, and one of the first things to be left behind were 75% of the allocated trucks. And there were not a heckuva lot of railroad capacity, either, so even if you could designate a ship to bring supplies to a port, the supplies would pile up on the dock. Even worse, there was a shortage of forklifts, so heavy things like ammo cases and other crated supplies needed excessive amounts of time to move from dockside to any trucks or railroads that were available.

The air force started to use C-47s to fly in supplies to these forward airfields. The bulkiest item, fuel, was also the most important, and so took priority over spare parts. C-47s are an incredibly inefficient way to move enough fuel for aircraft operation.

Ground Terrain Affects Air

North African terrain consists of two types: dust and mud. You can't do effective engine maintenance if you're working in the open in a dust storm. Likewise, wheels get stuck in the mud, so aircraft can't move, and US forces suffered a shortage of winches. What do winches have to do with Air Power Effectiveness? If a plane is stuck in the mud, the best way to free it is to use a winch and gradually pull it out. If you don't have a winch, you use a vehicle to tow it out. Invariably, you attach one end of the tow cable to the vehicle and the other to the plane at the landing gear. The driver guns the engine, and cable jerks tight and snaps the leg off the landing gear. P-38s had a lot of those accidents. And the C-47s that came to the airfield were primarily carrying fuel, not spare parts--or winches.

To get rid of that mud problem, you need better runway and taxiway areas, and the engineers could put steel mats into place. However, you need about 2000 tons of steel mats to create one runway. In December 1942, the total rail capacity of Allied-controlled North African railroads was about 2000 tons. That's also assuming you could immediately pick up those heavy mats--sans forklifts--to put them on rail cars and get them to a rail head, where you need to get them off the cars--sans forklifts--and onto some trucks to bring them to the forward airfield. The 2000 ton figure was more like a two-day figure when you take into account actual movement.

However, if airfield runways turn to mud, then so do unpaved roads. Thus, the mats designated for airfields had to be used to create the roads used by the trucks. And since troops need food and ammo, you can't use the entire railroad capacity just to move the steel mats.

Do you start to see the infinite mirror images? Hill continued making images.

The Germans had sufficient radar coverage to plot Allied planes, which is why they were successful in hitting the seams and penetrating far behind Allied lines. Account after account meantions that Allied fighters would sweep over a sector devoid of Luftwaffe, only to find German planes hammering troops after the Allied fighters left. The Allies shipped a grand total of 15 radar sets to North Africa by December 1942--and left most of them guarding rear area ports as far awaay as Casablanca, because the Luftwaffe was good at penetrating through fighter seams and hitting rear areas.

The average US infantryman hauled 180 pounds of personal gear in his baggage, so it needed a tremendous amount of cargo hauling capacity to deliver a regiment to a spot. Since trucks were in short supply, for a period of time the US Army relied on horse-drawn carts, which had to be transported with the troops because carts aren't as mobile as motorized transport.

And here Hill showed a great picture of a train in North Africa with its rail cars piled with horse carts. So instead of all the other supplies that could have been loaded, the troops received horse carts.

Fixing the Bad Situation

If you want to know why Kasserine Pass occurred, and why vaunted US air power couldn't detect or stop the counteroffensive in the beginning, Hill offered an excellent analysis of the logistical tail wagging the dog.

To his credit, Eisenhower made railroad stock and people a priority in 1943, so by the end of April 1943, railroad capacity was 43,000 tons daily--an improvement, but a gradual one to implement. And not surprisely, as supply conditions improved, so did air power effectiveness across the board. And while you don't especially want to look ar sortie rates--remember the statistic about the lack of offensive sorties versus the total number of sorties--the number of sorties per day in December 1942 of about 250 increased to 2000 per day in April 1943.

One More Thought

Hill ended here, but I'd like to offer up another thought. The lessons learned in the North African campaign were taken to heart by the US Army Air Force. In May 1943, Brigadier General Follett Bradley led a committee to examine the tactical air war in North Africa. The recommendations that came from this committee were implemented by the IX Air Force in 1944, and the resulting doctrine bloomed into the overwhelming air superiority in the D-Day and post-D-Day campaigns in France.

Bio

Mr. John Hill - Wargame Designer, Defense Analyst Over the past twenty years, few wargame designers have impacted tactical design as much as John Hill. In the 1970s, as a wargame publisher, his Conflict Game Company quickly became noted for innovative designs, such as, The Brotherhood, Kasserine Pass, Verdun, Overlord, and Bar-Lev. In 1977, John designed Squad Leader, the best selling print wargame ever and a major advance in the modeling of the human factors of morale, tactical competence and small unit leadership. John's many other important designs include Jerusalem, Hue, Battle for Stalingrad, and Tank Leader. In 1979 John became the first freelance wargame designer to be inducted into the Charles Roberts Hall of Fame. His miniature wargame design, Johnny Reb, won the H.G. Wells award for Best Historical Miniatures Rules of the Year. Until 2000 John served as President of the Origins War College. John continues his wargame work as a senior military analyst for the US Government.

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