World War II, air war

See also: World War II, air war, German European offensive

See also: Battle of Britain

See also: World War II, air war, Mediterranean and European tactical operations

See also: World War II, air war, Allied offensive counter-air campaign

See also: World War II, air war, Southwest Pacific

See also: World War II, air war, European Theater strategic operations

See also: World War II, air war, Pacific Theater strategic operations

See also: Battle of the Atlantic

It is difficult to assign a firm starting date to the beginning of the Second World War, but air power featured prominently on several candidate date

1940: Threatening Britain

See also: Battle of Britain

British Hawker Hurricane fighter

Air superiority or supremacy was a prerequisite to Operation Sea Lion, the German amphibious invasion of Britain. German amphibious warfare tactics and capabilities were primitive, and the German Army and Navy believed an invasion could succeed only if the German Air Force could guarantee the Royal Navy would not be able to attack the landing force. To do so, the Royal Air Force had to be defeated.To achieve this, the Luftwaffe battled British air defense after the fall of France, from August to September.

The Luftwaffe used 1300 medium bombers guarded by 900 fighters; they made 1500 sorties a day from bases in France, Belgium and Norway. The Germans immediately pulled out their Ju-87 Stukas, which were too vulnerable to modern fighters. The RAF had 650 fighters, with more coming out of the factories every day. Thanks to its new radar system, tightly coordinated with fighters, anti-aircraft artillery, and other defenses, the British knew where the Germans were, and could concentrate their counterattacks.

At first, and with the greatest danger to the British, Germans used their strategic bombing doctrine to focus on RAF airfields and radar stations. After the RAF bomber forces (quite separate from the fighter forces) attacked Berlin and other cities, Hitler swore revenge and diverted the Luftwaffe to attacks on London.

The success the Luftwaffe was having in rapidly wearing down the RAF was squandered, as the civilians being hit were far less critical than the airfields and radar stations that were now ignored. London was not a factory city and aircraft production went up.The last German daylight raid was September 30; the Luftwaffe was taking unacceptable losses and broke off the attack; The Luftwaffe lost 1733 planes, the British, 915. The British showed more determination, better radar, and better ground control, while the Germans violated their own doctrine with wasted attacks on London.

The British surprised the Germans with their high quality airplanes; flying close to home bases where they could refuel, and using radar as part of an integrated air defense system (IADS), they had a significant advantage over German planes operating at long range. The Hawker Hurricane fighter plane played a vital role for the Royal Air Force (RAF) in winning the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940. A fast, heavily armed monoplane that went into service in 1937, the Hurricane was effective against both German fighters and bombers and accounted for 70-75% of German losses during the battle. The Battle of Britain showed the world that Hitler's vaunted war machine could be defeated.

Churchill's tribute to the Royal Air Force is eloquent:

Never, in the course of human events, have so many, owed so much, to so few.

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1941

Hitler had a shrewd sense of political timing, but, as a military leader, he had a poor tolerance for frustration, and kept opening new campaigns that might, somehow, turn the tide. While the plans for an invasion of the British Isles was no longer under consideration, there were still air, and limited sea activity, against those islands.

More importantly, the Luftwaffe was part of the Battle of the Atlantic, and also operations against the convoys to Russia, after Germany had rather drastically renounced its friendship treaty with the Soviet Union with the starting of Operation Barbarossa fighting in June 1941.

In December 1941, as he was beginning to experience the Russian winter, while there might have been a chance of neutrality against the United States, to Churchill's relief, he declared war on the United States. That act, through its changing Lend-Lease to direct support of an ally, had quick effects on the Western balance of power.

Operations against the British Isles, 1941

Britain still faced starvation if the Battle of the Atlantic could not be won, and there was a long road ahead to defeating the Nazis and any possible invasion in the future.

Invasion of Russia

Operation Barbarossa opened in June 1941, with striking initial German succcesses. In the air, the inferiority of many of their aircraft was still somewhat better than their pilot quality. The purges of military leadership during the Great Terror heavily impacted command and control in all services.

1942

Fundamental to understanding the situation of the Luftwaffe from 1942 onwards is that they were fighting on multiple fronts. While they reached maximum size of 1.9 million airmen in 1942, the density of those forces was not neecessarily high.

Eastern Front

Fighting had started in June 1941, and the first winter was met.

Eastern Front, 1943

Grueling operations wasted it away on the eastern front after 1942.

In the Mediterranean, the Luftwaffe tried to defeat the invasions of Sicily and Italy with tactical bombing. They failed because the Allied air forces systematically destroyed most of their air fields, and because by 1943 German pilots were so poorly trained that they could scarcely handle large planes. The Germans ferociously opposed the American landing at Anzio in February, 1944, but the Luftwaffe was outnumbered 5 to 1 and so totally outclassed in equipment and skill that it inflicted little damage. Italian air space belonged to the Allies, and the Luftwaffe's strategic capability was nil. The Luftwaffe threw everything it had against the Salerno beachhead, but was outgunned ten to one, and then lost the vital airfields at Foggia.

Foggia became the major base of the 15th Air Force. Its 2,000 heavy bombers hit Germany from the south while the 4,000 heavies of the 8th Air Force used bases in Britain, along with 1,300 RAF heavies. While bad weather in the north often canceled raids, sunny Italian skies allowed for more action. After that it had only one success in Italy, a devastating raid on the American supply depot at Bari, in December, 1943. Only 30 out of 100 bombers got through, but one found an ammunition ship, which had been secretly carrying a stock of chemical weapons for retaliatory use should the Germans use theirs.

1944

t lost most of its fighter planes to Mustangs in 1944 while trying to defend against massive American and British air raids. When its gasoline supply ran dry in 1944, it was reduced to anti-aircraft artillery, for which the German term was "flak", and many of its men were sent to infantry units.

Me-109, the Messerschmitt 109 Fighter; 30,000 were made

Ironically, the Germans had an aircraft, the Me-262, that was far superior to the P-51. The first British jet appeared a month later; the first US jet was ready in late 1945. However, Hitler sent the ME-262 back to the drawing boards for reconfiguration as a bomber, and it never played a major role in the war. Hitler saw airplanes only as offensive weapons, and his interference prevented the Luftwaffe from acquiring and using enough fighter planes to stop the Allied bombers.

Hitler instead emphasized ant-aircraft defenses, such as the flak batteries that surrounded all major German cities and war plants, and which consumed a large fraction of all German munitions production in the last year of the war.

British airpower was sigificant in North Africa, and, when the strategic bombing campaign against Germany began in earnest, it was an around-the-clock effort, with British bombers at night and U.S. aircraft during the day. The aircraft, tactics, and doctrines were different; there is argument how complementary they were in achieving strategic effect.

Air Power and the U.S.

The stunning success of the Luftwaffe's Ju-87 Stuka dive bombers in the blitzkriegs that shattered Poland in 1939 and France in 1940, proved to civilians that air power would dominate the battlefield, leaving the infantry far behind. The US Army was reluctant to draw that conclusion, but it was dumbfounded by the performance of the Stukas acting as a highly mobile, highly effective strike force--a super artillery.

To defend against the Luftwaffe the Army decided to vastly expand the anti-aircraft units provided by the otherwise obsolete Coast Artillery branch, creating the air defense artillery branch. Airmen retorted the only solution was to build better planes that would shoot the Stukas down and gain control of the air. Airmen felt strongly that only they understood the enormous potential of air power, and that their vision was being held back. They dreamed of complete independence, noting that Germany's Luftwaffe and Britain's Royal Air Force (RAF) had long been disentangled from the old-fashioned, narrow-minded mud soldiers. The American people, enthusiastic about aviation in exact proportion to their fear of high-casualty trench warfare, and their love affair with modern technology, had long been supportive of a well-funded, independent air force. President Roosevelt sided with public opinion and the aviators. In 1940 he vowed to build 50,000 airplanes a year, far more than the most starry-eyed aviator had ever imagined.

He gave command of the Navy to an aviator, Admiral Ernest King, with a mandate for an aviation-oriented war in the Pacific. FDR allowed King to build up land-based naval and Marine aviation, and seize control of the long-range bombers used in antisubmarine patrols in the Atlantic. Roosevelt basically agreed with Robert Lovett, the civilian Assistant Secretary of War for Air, who argued, "While I don't go so far as to claim that air power alone will win the war, I do claim the war will not be won without it."

Roosevelt rejected proposals for complete independence for the Air Corps, because the old-line generals and the entire Navy were vehemently opposed. In the compromise that was reached everyone understood that after the war the aviators would get their independence. Meanwhile, their status was upgraded from "Army Air Corps" to "Army Air Forces" (AAF) in June, 1941, and they seized almost complete freedom in terms of internal administration. Thus the AAF set up its own medical service independent of the Surgeon General, its own WAC units, and its own logistics system. It had full control over the design and procurement of airplanes and related electronic gear and ordnance. Its purchasing agents controlled 15% of the nation's Gross National Product. Together with naval aviation, it recryuted the best young men in the nation. General Hap Arnold headed the AAF. One of the first military men to fly, and the youngest colonel in World War I, he selected for the most important combat commands men who were ten years younger than their Army counterparts, including Ira Eaker (b. 1896), Jimmy Doolittle (b. 1896), Hoyt Vandenberg (b. 1899), Elwood "Pete" Queseda (b. 1904), and, youngest of them all, Curtis LeMay (b. 1906). Although a West Pointer himself, Arnold did not automatically turn to Academy men for top positions. Since he operated without theater commanders, Arnold could and did move his generals around, and speedily removed underachievers.

Aware of the need for engineering expertise, he went outside the military and formed close liaisons with top engineers like rocket specialist Theodore von Karmen at Cal Tech. Arnold was given seats on the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and the US-British Combined Chiefs of Staff. Arnold, however, was officially Deputy Chief of [Army] Staff, so on committees he deferred to his boss, General Marshall. Thus Marshall made all the basic strategic decisions, which were worked out by his "War Plans Division" (WPD, later renamed the Operations Division). WPD's section leaders were infantrymen or engineers, with a handful of aviators in token positions.

The AAF had its own planning division, whose advice was largely ignored by WPD. Airmen were also underrepresented in the planning divisions of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and of the Combined Chiefs. Aviators were largely shut out of the decision-making and planning process because they lacked seniority in a highly rank-conscious system. The freeze intensified demands for independence, and fueled a spirit of "proving" the superiority of air power doctrine. Because of the young, pragmatic leadership at top, and the universal glamor accorded aviators, morale in the AAF was strikingly higher than anywhere else (except perhaps Navy aviation.)

The AAF provided extensive technical training, promoted officers and enlisted faster, provided comfortable barracks and good food, and was safe. The only dangerous jobs were voluntary ones as crew of fighters and bombers--or involuntary ones at jungle bases in the Southwest Pacific. Marshall, an infantryman uninterested in aviation before 1939, became a partial convert to air power and allowed the aviators more autonomy. He authorized vast spending on planes, and insisted that American forces had to have air supremacy before taking the offensive. However, he repeatedly overruled Arnold by agreeing with Roosevelt's requests in 1941-42 to send half of the new light bombers and fighters to the British and Soviets, thereby delaying the buildup of American air power.

The Army's major theater commands were given to infantrymen Douglas MacArthur and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Neither had paid much attention to aviation before the war (though Ike learned to fly). By 1942 both had become air power enthusiasts, and built their strategies around the need for tactical air supremacy. MacArthur had been badly defeated in the Philippines in 1941-42 primarily because the Japanese controlled the sky. His planes were outnumbered and outclassed, his airfields shot up, his radar destroyed, his supply lines cut. His infantry never had a chance. MacArthur vowed never again. His island hopping campaign was based on the strategy of isolating Japanese strongholds while leaping past them. Each leap was determined by the range of his air force, and the first task on securing an objective was to build an airfield to prepare for the next leap.

Offensive counter-air, to clear the way for strategic bombers and an eventually decisive cross-channel invasion, was a strategic mission led by escort fighters partered with heavy bombers. The tactical mission, however, was the province of fighter-bombers, assisted by light and medium bombers.

Tactical Aviation

Tactical air doctrine stated that the primary mission was to turn tactical superiority into complete air supremacy--to totally defeat the enemy air force and obtain control of its air space. This could be done directly through dogfights, and raids on airfields and radar stations, or indirectly by destroying aircraft factories and fuel supplies. Anti-aircraft artillery (called "ack-ack by the British, "flak" by the Germans, and "Archie" by the Yanks) could also play a role, but it was downgraded by most airmen.

The Allies won air supremacy in the Pacific in 1943, and in Europe in 1944. That meant that Allied supplies and reinforcements would get through to the battlefront, but not the enemy's. It meant the Allies could concentrate their strike forces wherever they pleased, and overwhelm the enemy with a preponderance of firepower.

This was the basic Allied strategy, and it worked. Air superiority depended on putting the offensive counter-air force in positions where they fought on terms of maximum advantage. For example, British "Rhubarb" operations exploited bad weather, so they could approach German airfields, shoot down aircraft committed to landing or takeoff, and strafe ground facilities.

See also: World War II, air war, Allied offensive counter-air campaign

Engineers Bulldoze New Airfields

Arnold correctly anticipated that he would have to build forward airfields in inhospitable places. Working closely with the Army Corps of Engineers, he created Aviation Engineer Battalions that by 1945 included 118,000 men. Runways, hangers, radar stations, power generators, barracks, gasoline storage tanks and ordnance dumps had to be built hurriedly on tiny coral islands, mud flats, featureless deserts, dense jungles, or exposed locations still under enemy artillery fire. The heavy construction gear had to be imported, along with the engineers, blueprints, steel-mesh landing mats, prefabricated hangars, aviation fuel, bombs and ammunition, and all necessary supplies. As soon as one project was finished the battalion would load up its gear and move forward to the next challenge, while headquarters inked in a new airfield on the maps.

The engineers opened an entirely new airfield in North Africa every other day for seven straight months. Once when heavy rains along the coast reduced the capacity of old airfields, two companies of Airborne Engineers loaded miniaturized gear into 56 transports, flew a thousand miles to a dry Sahara location, started blasting away, and were ready for the first B-17 24 hours later. Often engineers had to repair and use a captured enemy airfield. The German fields were well-built all-weather operations; by contrast the Japanese installations were ramshackle affairs with poor siting, poor drainage, scant protection, and narrow, bumpy runways. Engineering was a low priority for the offense-minded Japanese, who chronically lacked adequate equipment and imagination.

Strategic Bombing

No power on either side had, even on the drawing boards, anything, bomber or missile, that could have delivered more than a nuisance transoceanic. The only, and very minor, air attacks on the United States came from Japanese balloons and submarine-launched floatplanes. German submarine warfare against the United States (Operation Drumbeat), in the early part of the war, however, was significant.

To bomb Germany, it was necessary to have an unsinkable airfield in Britain, or possibly North Africa. In a very few cases, the Soviets allowed Anglo-American bombers to hit eastern targets, land, refuel, and fly back either to home bases or another attack on the way home.

In like manner, before Japan could be attacked, advanced airfields were needed. Basing in China, even using the very-long-range B-29 Superfortress, did not work out. It became the job of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps to seize islands, in the central Pacific, to threaten Japan.

The Germans had some theoretical ideas about a submarine-launched ballistic missile, but it never got to the stage of a prototype.

Anglo-American

British and American strategic bombing advocates had different paradigms of what is, today, called strategic strike. This resulted in different aircraft designs, training, targeting, and operational techniques. The Royal Air Force (RAF) had its own strategic bombing campaign, so a division of labor was agreed on whereby the RAF flew missions at night with Vickers Wellington bombers, which carried more bombs but had much less defensive capability than the B-17. The better-protected U.S. bombers flew daytime missions.

The Pacific operation was essentially American. While there was a generally shared doctrinal concept, the problems of conducting effective strategic bombing was different: the supporting actor award went to the amphibious warriors of the United States Navy, United States Marine Corps, and United States Army, who captured and rebuilt the airfields needed to reach the Japanese home islands.

Had the war in Europe lasted longer, although some claim the nuclear weapons were saved, for "racial" reasons, against Japan, had the weapons been ready and there was not the same confidence in ground victory, they would have been used. For that reason, the article World War II, Air War, nuclear warfare deals first with the concept of nuclear warfare as then understood and the Manhattan Project to develop them. It deals with the decision to use them on Japan, and the mechanics of that operation, because Japan was the only available target when the first bombs were available.

Russian

The Russians never spent significant development on long-range aviation. Perhaps their outstanding design was the Il-2 Stormovik, a heavily armored, heavily armoed ground support and antitank aircraft, which was an inspiration for the much later U.S. A-10 Thunderbolt II.

German

Hitler was insistent on bombers having tactical capability, which meant dive bombing at the time, a maneuver impossible for any heavy bomber of the time. His aircraft had limited effect on Britain for a variety of reasons, but low payload certainly was among them

Manned bombers

The most basic reason that Germany achieved little in strategic bombing was that they never produced quantities of an appropriate heavy bomber. Early in the war, they had excellent tactical aviation, but when they first faced an integrated air defense system, their essentially medium bombers did not have the numbers or bombload to do major damage to Great Britain.

Failure of German secret weapons

Hitler tried to sustain morale by promising that "secret weapons" would turn the war around. He did indeed have the weapons. The first of 9,300 V-1 flying bombs hit London in mid- June, 1944, and together with 1,300 V-2 rockets caused 8,000 civilian deaths and 23,000 injuries. Although they did not seriously undercut British morale or munitions production, they bothered the British government a great deal--Germany now had its own unanswered weapons system. Using proximity fuzes, British ack-ack gunners (many of them women) learned how to shoot down the 400 mph V-1s; nothing could stop the supersonic V-2s. The British government, in near panic, demanded that upwards of 40% of bomber sorties be targeted against the launch sites, and got its way in "Operation CROSSBOW." The attacks were futile, and the diversion represented a major success for Hitler. In early 1943 the strategic bombers were directed against U- boat pens, which were easy to reach and which represented a major strategic threat to Allied logistics. However, the pens were very solidly built--it took 7,000 flying hours to destroy one sub there, about the same effort that it took to destroy one-third of Cologne. The antisubmarine campaign thus was a victory for Hitler.

Every raid against a V-1 or V-2 launch site was one less raid against the Third Reich. On the whole, however, the secret weapons were still another case of too little too late. The Luftwaffe ran the V-1 program, which used a jet engine, but it diverted scarce engineering talent and manufacturing capacity that were urgently needed to improve German radar, air defense, and jet fighters. The German Army ran the V-2 program. The rockets were a technological triumph, and bothered the British leadership even more than the V-1s. But they were so inaccurate they rarely could hit militarily significant targets.

Furthermore, the program used up scarce technical resources that could have gone into the development of air defense weapons like proximity fuzes and "Waterfall," a deadly ground-to-air rocket. The secret weapon of greatest threat to the Allies was the jet plane that could outfly Allied fighters and shoot down bombers. The Messerschmitt ME-262 prototype flew in 1939, but was never given high priority until too late. Hitler never understood air power; his personal interference repeatedly delayed the jets. First he proclaimed they would not be necessary, then insisted they be redesigned as bombers to make retaliation raids against London. The Luftwaffe would have been a much more deadly threat if it built ten thousand jets; it only made one thousand and they rarely flew combat missions.

Destroying Germany's Oil and Transportation

Besides knocking out the Luftwaffe, the second most striking achievement of the strategic bombing campaign was the destruction of the German oil supply. Oil was essential for U-boats and tanks, while very high quality aviation gasoline was essential for piston planes. Germany had few wells, and depended on imports from Russia (before 1941) and Nazi ally Romania, and on synthetic oil plants that used chemical processes to turn coal into oil. Heedless of the risk of Allied bombing, the Germans had carelessly concentrated 80% of synthetic oil production in just 20 plants. These became a top priority for the AAF and RAF in 1944, and were targets for 210,000 tons of bombs. The oil plants were very hard to hit, but also hard to repair. As graph #1 shows, the bombings dried up the oil supply in the summer of 1944. An extreme oil emergency followed, which grew worse month by month.

Germany's supply of aviation gasoline 1940-45

The third notable achievement of the bombing campaign was the degradation of the German transportation system--its railroads and canals (there was little truck traffic.) In the two months before and after D-Day the American Liberators (B-24), Flying Fortresses and British Lancasters hammered away at the French railroad system. Underground Resistance fighters sabotaged some 350 locomotives and 15,000 freight cars every month. Critical bridges and tunnels were cut by bombing or sabotage. Berlin responded by sending in 60,000 German railway workers, but even they took two or three days to reopen a line after heavy raids on switching yards. The system deteriorated quickly, and it proved incapable of carrying reinforcements and supplies to oppose the Normandy invasion. To that extent the assignment of strategic bombers to the tactical job of interdiction was successful. When Bomber Command hit German cities, it inevitably hit some railroad yards. The AAF made railroad yards a high priority, and gave considerable attention as well to bridges, moving trains, ferries, and other choke points. The "transportation policy" of targeting the railroad system came in for intense debate among Allied strategists. It was argued that enemy had the densest and best operated railway system in the world, and one with a great deal of slack. The Nazis systematically looted rolling stock from conquered nations, so they always had plenty of locomotives and freight cars. Furthermore, most traffic was "civilian," and urgent troop train traffic would always get through. The critics exaggerated the resilience of the German system. As wave after wave of bombers blasted away, repairs took longer and longer. Delays became longer and more frustrating. Yes, the troop trains usually got through, but the "civilian" traffic that did not get through comprised food, uniforms, medical equipment, horses, fodder, tanks, fuel, howitzers, flak shells and machine guns for the front lines, and coal, steel, spare parts, subassemblies, and critical components for munitions factories. By January, 1945, the transportation system was cracking in dozens of places, and front-line units had more luck trying to capture Allied weapons than waiting for fresh supplies of their own.

Effect of the air war

Airmen did not win the war singlehandledy, as their more optimistic prewar visionaries suggested, but the war could not have been won at least in the same way, without them.

Tactical

Due to the nature of the terrain and fighting, air support was much more vital in Europe and North Africa than in island fighting. In the larger land masses of the Southwest Pacific, Kenney's forces were invaluable.

Air support was still evolving, for both sides, in North Africa. Air-ground-sea coordination were lacking, as when many transports carrying U.S. paratropers were shot down by allied ships in the invasion of Sicily. The preliminary air bombing at Normandy was ineffective, largely from the bombers dropping their bombs too late for fear of hitting the landing force.

Once inland, however, Allied fighter-bombers seemed everywhere, and it was difficult for the Germans to move in daylight.

Strategic

Germany and Japan were burned out and lost the war in large part because of strategic bombing. Targeting became somewhat more accurate in 1944, but the real solution to inaccurate bombs was more of them. The AAF dropped 3.5 million bombs (500,000 tons) against Japan, and 8 million (1.6 million tons) against Germany.

The RAF expended about the same tonnage against Germany; Navy and Marine bombs against Japan are not included, nor are the two atomic bombs. While it can be calculated that strategic bombing cost the US and Britain more money than it cost Germany, that calculation is irrelevant. The Allies had plenty of money. The cost of the US tactical and strategic air war against Germany was 18,400 planes lost in combat, 51,000 dead, 30,000 POWs, and 13,000 wounded. Against Japan, the AAF lost 4,500 planes, 16,000 dead, 6,000 POWs, and 5,000 wounded; Marine Aviation lost 1,600 killed, 1,100 wounded. Naval aviation lost several thousand dead.

One fourth of the German war economy was neutralized because of direct bomb damage, the resulting delays, shortages and roundabout solutions, and the spending on anti-aircraft, civil defense, repair, and removal of factories to safer locations. The raids were so large and so often repeated that in city after city the repair system broke down. In 1944 the bombing prevented the full mobilization of the German economic potential. Speer and his staff were brilliant in improvising solutions and work-arounds, but their challenge became more difficulty every week as one backup system after another broke down. By March, 1945, most of Germany's factories, railroads and telephones had stopped working; troops, tanks, trains and trucks were immobilized. With all their great cities crumbling into rubble, with the awareness the Allies had a weapons system they could not answer, Germans suddenly realized they were going to lose the war. In February, 1945, General Marshall overruled the ethical objections of Air Force commanders and ordered a terror attack on Berlin. It was designed to help the Soviet advance and to convince the Nazis their cause was hopeless; 2,900 died (both sides exaggerated the total to 25,000 for propaganda purposes.) Josef Goebbels, Hitler's bloodthirsty propaganda minister, was disconsolate when his beautiful ministry buildings were totally burned out: "The air war has now turned into a crazy orgy. We are totally defenseless against it. The Reich will gradually be turned into a complete desert." By July, 1945, Japan was almost totally shut down. The American and British airmen had achieved the goals of strategic bombing--but neither Berlin nor Tokyo would surrender.