Air Defense

In the last two decades, only a handful of combat aircraft have been downed by anti aircraft system. This has more to do with the fact that the majority of the high intensity conflict developed during that time mostly involved the use of aircraft designed in the United States. These aircraft were employing the latest in electronic and avionics packages as well as more advance electronic countermeasure systems. Add to this fact the new air tactics developed and you have a combination of circumstances that had enable Western aircraft to defeat and, in most cases, destroy enemy’s anti aircraft systems (AAS). Not since the early days of the Korean War (almost fifty years ago) had any US Army or Western-equipped ground force been attacked from the air. In fact, today the US Army maintains only a two level air defense system instead of the multi layer umbrella it use to have since World War II. Today’s Army used the short range, shoulder firing Stinger missile as its only short area air defense platform. For longer range, the Army employs an upgraded version of the Patriot system. The fact that the US Army only employs those two systems is a testament to the US Air Force ability to achieve and maintain air superiority over its enemies during the past six decades. It also a rebuff of the glomming predictions made after the Great War in 1918.

During the first three decades of air traffic military commanders thought that early air platforms such as the famous German, British or French mono and biplanes were easy prays to ground based gun fire. They believed that the fragility of those early aircraft would be shatter by a powerful, ground delivery shell or shells. But to the amazement of many commanders and visionaries, those glom scenarios never materialized over the Western or Easter front. Nevertheless, Luftwaffe leaders in Germany prior to the start of World War II still clung to the idea of shooting down a high percent of enemy aircraft with AAS fire. On the center of their assumptions was famous German 88mm anti aircraft gun shell. Engineers and commanders alike believed that it would take only fifty rounds of this impressive shell to down an incoming plane. Unfortunately for the Germans, the reality turned out to be very different. Between the summer of 1940 until the end of hostilities in May 1945, the German rate of AAS shoot down remain remarkable constant at 12,000 shells per one aircraft. Again, the prognostication of the demise of the aircraft proved to be greatly exaggerated. Notwithstanding the German experience, commanders of all nations again asserted the demise of the aircraft when the first anti aircraft missile batteries began to appear in the early 1950s. But again their confidence in those ground based system was misplaced. During the 1960s and 1970s and in the mist of highly involved conflicts such as the Vietnam War and the series of wars Israel and its Arab neighbors played out during those years the missile to downed aircraft ratio was about one per fifty launched missiles. Although the ratio appears to have decreased dramatically, close examination of the data shows that the improvement was not as sharp as originally seen. First, the fifty missiles use to down an aircraft had the same cost as 12,000 of the dreaded 88mm shells did in the early 1940s. Second and more importantly to the development of AAS is the fact that for the first time in history, incoming aircraft have develop the tactic of engaging AAS instead of going around them.

Although the ratio may not show it, AAS does have proved to be a real defensive deterrent, but not the all stopping platform early visionaries thought it will be. As it is currently employ a sophisticated AAS is develop with the idea of attrition. To make aircraft packages suffer as many losses as possible in order to deter further incursions. It is also design to maneuver the aircraft’s path towards a designated ‘target’ area where a concentrated fire could be muster on only one sector. A by product to these two factors is the profile the AAS force an aircraft to follow. In order to avoid heavy saturated AAS sectors, an incoming aircraft must follow a low altitude flight profile. Such a profile will expose the aircraft to a heavy concentration of small arms fire. It is in this, low level profile, that the majority of aircraft are shut down by small caliber, ground based fire. Case in point: North Vietnam. In that high intensity conflict, over eighty percent of all aircraft loss was due to low altitude gun fire. The ratio was somewhat smaller in the 1973 Israeli-Arab war. Almost fifty percent of Israeli jets lost were by heavy machine gun fire. One static that remained very similar in both conflicts was the shell-to-down aircraft ratio. Almost 10,000 machine gun shells were needed to shutdown a single airplane. A ratio closely similar to that achieved during Word War II. Fixed wing aircraft are not the only flying platform affected by low-level ground fire. Helicopters are probably the most exposed flying machine. Their profile: a low flying pattern can not be altered to counter AAS’ small caliber fire. They run low to the ground to avoid such system, thus making them perfect targets for small fire. Unlike the fix wing aircraft, their main threat does not come from heavy machine gun fire, it comes from RPGs (rocket propelled grenade). For RPGs to work, they need the helicopter to be real close (one hundred meters or closer) to have any opportunity to engage an incoming helicopter. Helicopter pilots know this. They know that the most likely areas for RPG attacks are city streets, canyons and river lines. Pilots also chance routinely their takeoff and landing patterns while operating from forward bases. They don’t use the same incursion pattern twice and when they fly in formations, they do it with a 500 meter+ gap between air platforms.

No matter which system the ground defense units utilized, there are four procedures that will always be employed. It’s a four step defense drill aimed to shutdown and incoming aircraft. The first step is to detect the air platform. Any aircraft, no matter how big they are, is just a “blimp” in the vastness of the sky. It is also because this vastness that AAS’s radars can not cover the entire skyline forcing AAS’s managers to select entry points. These “points” represent the expected incursion areas an incoming aircraft should take. Planners as well as pilots know this and they try to minimize the detection area by engaging AAS’s radars with advance electronic countermeasures (EC). If ECs did not suppress the enemy’s ability to read the aircraft, then the pilot will use the old age trick to “decking his airplane”. Most conventional radars arrays can not look below their profile scope altitude (usually between 100 and 300 meters from the ground) thus providing the aircraft with an invisible window. But this window is not without peril. It is in this low altitude area were the heavy concentration of small arm, ground fire occur. The third measure an aircraft can have to avoid detection is stealth. A technology currently use by the United States on its massive B-2 Stealth Bomber, the new F-22 Raptor air superiority fighter and to a lesser extent, on the broad based, F-35 Lighting II program. Others countries are now poise to break into the US stealth monopoly mainly with unmanned platforms. To counter the low flying tactic, in the early 1960s the US develop the concept of the Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS). AWACSs platforms not only can be forward-looking post, but because they are airborne, they have look-down capabilities as well. Unfortunately, the sheer vastness of the earth comes into play here too. It is virtually impossible for any current radar system, ground based or airborne, to cover the complete spectrum of the sky.

If an incoming aircraft is detected, the next step is to acquire it. Before engaging any aircraft, AAS’s operators must make sure that the plane is either a friend or foe and then proceed to chart a flying course for it. The charting of the course is one of the most important aspects of the AAS procedures. In order to engage the aircraft, the AAS need to have it within range of its surface to air (SAM) batteries. Detection and acquisition of target have a longer range spectrum that that of the aircraft’s weapon package. This is significant because the AAS is design to engage and destroy any aircraft as far from its territory or defense area as possible. Most conventional ground radar can detect an aircraft up to 550Km away and at a top altitude of 30Km. On the edge of the 550 spectrum, the probability of making an accurate identification of the aircraft is between 45 to 55 percent. The percent improve as the aircraft move forward the radar covering zone. For example, at 375Km, the probability ratio jumps at 90%, high number, but ones that still leaves a substantial margin for error. This “probability window” between the top operational range of the radar and the 90% point is the area where pilots began to implement their countermeasures (EC or low flying patterns). An advance AAS can detect and acquire an aircraft within one minute of the incursion. If both areas are successfully taken, then the AAS shifts towards the tracking phase. Is essential for the AAS to track the inbound aircraft long enough until System’s batteries can be brought to beard. The tracking aspect of the AAS engagement begins while the aircraft is outside the System’s weapon platforms operational range. Once inside the weapons’ spectrum, the first platform to be employed is the long range SAMs. After, the guns aspect of the system is engaged. Because guns are shorter range weapons, their radars have to track the aircraft the longest. The last step of the AAS procedure is the destruction of the aircraft. Even if the AAS is successful in detecting, acquiring and tracking and incoming plane, this does not translate into a successful engagement. In fact, the majority of engagements favor the aircraft. Modern flying machines are built very advance defensive systems that it makes it difficult to shutdown even by a direct hit.

Air defense systems are built around various sub-systems such as missile, small caliber projectiles and even nuclear weapons. The size and complexity of the missile system varies depending of the warhead. The smaller missiles, primarily the low altitude, short distance portable systems utilized a small warhead (5-7 pounds). These missiles are very limited due to their lack of size and proximity fuse (a radar mechanism that allows the missile to explode near the target). The smaller missiles are heat seeking devices that in most of the times can only be fire from behind the aircraft’s tail. Frequently, portable operators had only a few seconds (10-12) to fire its missile before the aircraft is out of the weapon’s range. This kind of missiles operated at altitude no greater than 1,000 meters. Because the smallness of the warhead, the portable missiles have to hit the target almost in the middle of the fuselage or on one of its engines in order to be able to shot it down. Meanwhile, Anti Aircraft Artillery (AAA) gun’s shell ranged between 20 and 57mm in size. The gun shells need a direct hit to cause any type of damage. Even if a single hit the target, it probably will not be enough to bring down the plane. This is why guns shells are use in high quantities. Shells’ sizes also vary. A regular 20mm shell weight in at around 3.5 ounces, 23mm weight 7 ounces, 40mm weight 30 ounces and the much powerful 100 ounces. The guns are usually aligns in a multi-barrel configuration. Two prime examples of these platforms are the vaunted Russian ZSU-23 which mounts four 23mm guns and can fire up to 60 shells per second. The second battery is the Swiss-made GEPARD. The GEPARD consisted of two 35mm guns delivering a rate of 18 shells per minute. These weapons and other like them are use primarily against helicopters and slow moving, fixed aircraft. But upgrade in helicopter armor has made the use of the lower caliber guns almost obsolete. AAS also deploy some of the largest guns ever devised. The much discussed 75mm (and even larger systems) are a real threat to any airborne platform. These large shells usually have a proximity fuse and fragmentation warheads. 75mm and beyond shells are expensive to develop, thus they are not widely available. Also, as with the other shells, although not in the same ratio, 75mm shells need to be use in numbers to achieve the AAS objective. Gun engagement procedure has not changed much since the days of Word War II. A massive barrage of shells is thrown up in the area where the radar predicts an aircraft will be appearing. The main user of these high caliber weapons are the Russians along with many of their client states. The AAS also employs a large number of small caliber weapons. This use goes all the way back to the Great War when attacked ground troops would fire machine guns, rifles and even handguns in the air. This was not only done to down an aircraft but also to boots morale in the dreaded Western Front. The “fight back” idea behind the small caliber attack still permeates battlefields today. Although is extremely rear to bring down an aircraft utilizing such mechanism, most of the times pilots are unaware of small caliber action, it still can inflict some damages to the airframe.

The other spectrum of the weapons employed by an advance AAS is the large warhead area. Larger missiles are often more elaborated in its design and weight more heavily than its portable counterparts. Their warheads are designed to, not only hit the target with more accuracy, but in a case of a near miss, to inflict as heavy damage to the aircraft as possible. Some large warhead missiles utilized a shaped charge to direct a flight of high velocity metal fragments towards and aircraft. These type of warheads can be a deadly weapon is its makes it within a 100m radius of the aircraft. These warheads also carry the much use proximity fuse which detonates near, not directly, the aircraft. Heavy or large warheads are also use to shot at helicopters. In fact, the use of dedicated anti-tank weapons is being closely studied by military planners as a way of shooting slow moving, low flying air platform. The same reverse concept was utilized by the Germans during WW II. On that occasion, the Nazis employ their vaunted 88mm AAA in the tank busting role with great success.

The deployment of an integrated AAS is done accordingly to the System’s operational range and mobility profile. The shorter range weapon platforms always accompanied the combat formations while the lesser mobile systems are set up around 100Km behind the front in order to protect supply depots and other rear-area installations needed for the continuation of the war effort. The main key for an effective AAS alignment is the layer concept. The saturation with multiple depth areas at different altitudes is what it makes the AAS concept work more proficiently. Case in point: the USSR. During the hey days of the Cold War, Russian generals and commanders were well aware that in a case of war, they would most likely lose control over the skies, so they develop a multilayer integrated system to deter allied incursions. The first layer was saturated with ZSU-23 cannons with a 2Km firing range augmented by a variety of less accurate should fire missile systems. After the cannons, lay the once feared SA-9 (8Km range) missile batteries. The ground troops were covered by SA-7/14 and its 4Km practical range. Immediately after the front, the Soviet placed SA-8s (12Km range) and SA-10s (50Km) to protect the more sensitive areas supplying and maintaining their front line troops. Today’s pragmatic budget realities have made such multilayer systems almost obsolete in the East. Today, much of the former USSR’s supplied countries still use some kind of layering systems based on portable SAMs, small number of medium-to-long range missile batteries and a few cannons. Their Western counterparts on the other hand, relied on an integrated systems of short-medium and long range missile batteries augmented by the ultimate air defense weapon system: air superiority.

During the past five decades the only interaction between aircraft and AAS has pitted Western-developed air platforms against Soviet design air defense systems. These encounters has demonstrated to some extend the ineffectiveness of the Soviet designed systems. During the past fifty years, the hit, not the shutdown, ratio for a Soviet-made SAM was 50-1. Meanwhile, the Western’s SAMs ratio is almost 65% hit ratio. This is an amazing discrepancy figure that speaks volumes to the technological development of each side. In the 1970s Israel-Arab wars, Israeli Hawk SAM batteries require less than five shots for every hit on a Soviet-build, Arab operated combat jet. While the Arabs in the 1973 war fired 2,100 missile hitting 85 (4%) aircraft. Unfortunately 45 of the hit aircraft were Arabs. The US developed Stinger missiles has an even more impressive hit percentage (near 50%) in an impressive twenty plus year career. The incredible success ratio of Western aircraft against Soviet-developed AAS is the product of two convening forces. First and foremost, the Western aircraft are more advanced than the AAS they are facing. They also are usually fitted with the latest electronic countermeasure packages relegating the effectiveness of the AAS’ radar arrays. Finally, the Soviet/Russian AAS developed systems are designed with a more “fixed” operational profile than a mobile providing the incursion aircraft a window to operate. In the late 1980s the USSR constructed the most advance AAS network outside the one operated by its satellites states in Eastern Europe. Seventy six radar arrays, twenty four missile batteries locations and one hundred interceptor missiles were erected and deployed in the African country of Angola. Manned by East German technicians, the defenses proved worthless against the incursions of South Africa’s more westernize Air Force. The trend continued in both Gulf Wars (1991-2003) and the Afghanistan operation (2001) where the United State’s Air Force was able to suppress Russian developed AAS with amazing accuracy.

The chart below list the most utilized air defense systems. The Soviet/Russian developed weapon platforms are named after NATO’s codenames. The Effectiveness Ratio is a 1 to 100 scale that estimates the weapon’s combat accuracy and reliability. The Maximum Range is the top altitude a system can operate without loosing its overall capability.

Today’s air forces dedicate a great deal of training to the suppression of AASs. Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses or SEAD is one of the most sophisticated missions any aircraft can undertake. But, as important as SEAD is, the mission is not undertook without extensive research. Like air forces, AAS are encountering a greater threat from incoming cruise missiles such as the US Tomahawk. The US and Russia to a lesser extend, are either upgrading existing platforms or are developing new, purely designed Anti Ballistic Missile Systems (ABMS). One example of this latest development is the much publicized Patriot System. The Patriot first demonstrated its ability to, not only shutdown incoming aircraft, but to intercept ballistic missiles. A trend that should continue to develop as the situation on the air changes from the current, aircraft-based profile.

- Raul Colon

References:
Jane’s Aircraft Recognition Guide, Gunter Endres and Mike Gething, HaperCollins Publishing 2002
Skunk Works, Ben R. Rich and Leo Janos, Back-Bay Books 1994
US Strategic and Defensive Missile System 1950-2004, Mark A. Berhow, Osprey Publishing 2005
Russian Aviation and Air Power in the 20th Century, Robin Highanm (editor), Frank Cass 1998

An Overlook of the Air Defense
of Great Britain: 1946-1985

With the end of World War II, there were a sense in most political and society circles inside Great Britain that the country could gradually scale down its high military alert status. Unfortunately for them, the Berlin crisis of 1948 and the Korean War just two years later, rekindle in the country the spectrum of Hitler’s Blitz of 1940. As a direct result of those two crises, the Royal Air Force (RAF) Fighter Command strength remained about the same levels of WW II thought much of the 1950s. Fighter Command achieved its pick in total air assets in 1957. Total inventory that summer topped 600 operational fighters augmented by a powerful network of airfields and radar arrays. That year also marked a major policy shift inside the Ministry of Defense. This “shift” would drain Great Britain of its air defense independency in a couple of decades.

In the autumn of 1957, policymakers began evaluation the Soviet Union’s nuclear missile capacity and the threat it actually represent to the U.K. At the time, the United States enjoyed an overwhelming nuclear deterrence force. This overwhelming arsenal will lead Britain’s leaders to adopt a new policy. A policy referred to as Trip-Wire. As part as of the policy review, it was decided that from 1957 onward, the biggest threat facing Britain was the vulnerability of its nuclear delivery force: the newly developed V-bomber fleet, to the USSR’s ever increasing nuclear ballistic missile force. It was suggested that a fighter shield, augmented by a powerful detection network ringing the V-bomber’s bases could provide the force enough time to take-off and to commence its retaliatory profile. The “trip-wire” strategy was coupled with Britain’s ability to deliver a massive nuclear strike deep inside the USSR. It was because of Britain’s leaders strong believes in trip-wire that Fighter Command did not proceed with many advance research and development projects. It also did not saw the necessity to invest high amounts of money into fighter concepts and/or procurement of new systems. But as the Soviet’s ballistic missile capacity grew, both policies began to show their flaws. Because of the projected parity between American and Soviet nuclear arsenals, leaders in the UK began to understand that the next conflict will most likely be fought on a mix (conventional and nuclear) environment. Britain’s whole defense posture will now be asked to operate in a non-nuclear environment as well as an atomic one. This change in position destroyed the operating assumption of the trip-wire strategy and, to a lesser extend, that of massive retaliation.

In the mid 1960s it was recognized by the MoD that a Soviet conventional air threat was larger than their nuclear one. Unfortunately for Britain, years of following “trip-wire” have reduced its operational air defense structure to a bare minimum. It was not just a matter of the numbers of available airplanes it was also the matter of the shortness of men and material. Years of budgetary constraints and of neglecting available systems left Britain’s once powerful radar and control network in a state of flux. Adding to this problem was the lack of operational airfields. By the end of 1945, the UK possessed one airfield per every twenty kilometers. A ratio that held true for most of the 1950s. But by the late 1960s there were only a handful of them. Most of the decommissioned airfields were handed over to municipalities for land development.

The arrival of the new air-deployed stand-off weapon platforms in the early seventies forced air defenses specialist to think on a wider band range. Air defenses operational ranges were now pushed out hundreds of kilometers in order to engage the launching aircraft in time. By now the British were assigned by the Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic (SACLANT) and Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) a much wider air defense sector. Beside the Home Islands sector, the UK was now responsible for the vital Easter Atlantic area which extend from the Channel to the North Norwegian Sea in the north and out very nearly to the coast of Iceland in the west. This was a tall order for any country to assume. If NATO’s fears were ever to be realized then Britain’s air resources in the mid-seventies would prove inadequate for the task because as a rearward base for SACEUR and a forward base for SACANT, roles that were assigned to England because of its geographical position rather than by air defense strategies, they would be a prime target for the numerical superior Soviet Red Air Force.

SACLANT called for a British operational profile that beside air defense included anti-submarine warfare and air patrols in support of maritime shipping operations in the Eastern Atlantic and Channel areas. SACLANT’s command also viewed the UK as its home base for mounting flack support for its strike fleet in case it needed to fight its way against the Soviet sea and air assets deployed on the North Norwegian Sea. The other command, SACEUR planned to use the UK as a mounting base for much of the deeper air penetration effort just inside the forward edge of the Soviet’s battle sector in Continental Europe. In the case of war, the UK bases would have also served as the “world” largest air bridge. Much as it happened during World War II, Great Britain would act as a gigantic aircraft carrier. Heavy lift aircraft and jumbo commercial planes carrying thousand of troops and supplies would make the UK its staging area before deployment to the Continent. It was in this area where the British Air Defence Commander asserted its independence, because it was his Command that was assigned the task of defending the air bridge.

Thank God war never erupted in the mid to late 1960s because the RAF was woefully unprepared for it. Years of attrition and budgetary constraints have left the RAF Fighter Command a “shell of its former self”. Gone was the force that once could blank most of the sky above Europe. But the situation began to improve in the mid 1970s. By the fall of 1976, the RAF as a whole was beginning to rise from the ashes. That same year the RAF added two additional air defense squadrons fitted with upgraded Lighting interceptors. The RAF was also in the process of making the F-4 Phantoms the backbone of its air defense component. It had re-deployed the vaunted Bloodhound surface-to-air missile system (SAM) to the south east corner of the country for low level protection. Riper SAMs were deployed to the country’s northern areas to guard the vital bomber bases. If the present looked good to the RAF’s top brass, the future was looking even better. In the pipelines laid the much anticipated Tornado air superior platform which was schedule to replace the Phantom by the mid 1980s. The force was also expecting delivery of its coveted Nimrod Airborne Early Warning aircraft. Major improvements were also performed to the extremely important radar and communication network. The RAF was also planning the deployment of a new and flexible jamming resisting data link connecting the United Kingdom Air Defence Ground Environment (UKADGE) with fighter base control centers and early detection platforms. UKADGE was a control and communication interface system that worked through a mutually supporting hardened control centers and accepted digitized data from all sensors (ground, early warning stations, sea bases sensors and airborne radar platforms) British, French and NATO. The system gave Air Defense Commander an immediate profile of the air threat and resources available to counter it.

The mid 1970s also produce another, equally important, development; a shift in the political environment in Great Britain. The massive Soviet expansion of the early 1970s brought the threat of conventional destruction to the UK’s door step. In this climate, the RAF was able to find many influential allies inside the House of Commons who were able to push forward a very ambitious air expansion program. Of course, any major rearmament effort not only needs monetary support but a more boarder production base that not only include production lines, but also the training of thousand of skill workers and their support facilities. Nevertheless, rearmament began in the late 1970s at a frantic pace. By the summer of 1985 delivery of Tornado units were considerable thanks to the efforts of around-the-clock production lines. That same year, the Nimrod began entering front line service replacing the aged Shackleton (AEW). New SAM batteries were deployed to every operational airfield. New systems, such as the EUROSAM, a joint British-French venture, were also in the process of being incorporated into the RAF’s air defense structure. For air-to-air refueling, the RAF began to utilize the recently converted V-10 transport aircraft as well as a small number of converted Boeing jets.

Despite these and other measures taken by the RAF in during the first half of the 1980s, the force was still short of the skilled manpower needed to run its new and sophisticated systems. As the seventies gave way to the eighties, more and more RAF pilots and specialized ground personnel began to emigrate into the more profitable private sector. Despite several pay increased, such as the one of 1978, RAF retention rates began decrease dramatically. By the middle of the decade, turnover rates in the RAF began to stabilize and, in some areas (ground support personnel) it actually stopped. It’s safe to say that by 1985 the RAF’s operational capabilities were back to its immediate post WW II levels. Total number of available aircraft by 1985 fluctuated between 850 and 1,100 (including the Royal Navy) with more (around 200) on reserve alter status. Its once vaunted radar detection system was again one of the world’s top technological marvels and its active and reserve manpower was increasing in ratio with the country’s population for the first time in three decades. Not small feats considering the turmoil of the 1960s and 70s.

- Raul Colon

References:
The Encyclopedia of 20th Century Air Warfare, Editor Chris Bishop, Amber Books 2001
The Classic Book on Military Strategy, BH Liddell Hart, Penguin Book 1991
How to Make War, James F. Dunnigan, HarperCollins Books 1993

“Building an army in the air, regiments and brigades of winged cavalry on gas driven flying horses”,
The America Air Entry into the Great War

By late 1916, three years of continuing and savage fighting had ravaged much of northern France and the Low Countries. A dreaded stalemate had descended over the Western Front. By January 1917, and after showing early promise, the air campaign that visionaries thought would magically deliver a knockout blow to the enemy’s will to fight, did not materialized and in fact, it can be argued that it exacerbated the horrendous stalemated of the trenches. Aviation pioneer Orville Wright wrote in December 1916 that “neither side has been able to win on account of the part of the aero plane has played. The two sides are apparently equal in their aerial equipment and it seems to me that unless present conditions can be changed, the war will continue for years!” The only hope Orville saw of ending the war promptly was if the Allied achieve “such overwhelming superiority in the air that the Germans’ eyes can be put out” But by early 1917, the only real opportunity to accomplish Orville’s proposition rested with the United States and on April, that possibility grew with America’s entry into the War to End all Wars.

Along with the US entry in the war came boosting remarks by many American commanders about what the new American power could bring to the table. General Squier, the US Army’s top aviation officer remarked that “America would put the Yankee punch in the war and sweep the German lines”. This sentiment was echoed in Washington where the nation’s leaders blindly believed that the American way and know-how will carry the day for the exhausted Allies. No where was the sentiment more palpable than in the War Department, where Secretary of War, Newton Baker declared that “a huge American aviation program would be an expression of America’s traditions of doing things on a splendid scale”. The seeds were planted for the US to develop and deploy the grandest air armada the world had ever seen. And if America planed to deploy such a “splendid force”, they needed a strong willed man to lead it.

A brash, self promoting, aggressive and extremely capable, thirty-seven year old Major named William “Billy” Mitchell was the choice. The young Mitchell became a converted to the cause of air power sometime in the early 1900s. By 1906, he published an article on the Cavalry Journal stating that “Conflicts no doubt will be carried out in the future in the air”. In the spring of 1917, Mitchell and several other Army officers were sent to France as military observers to learn about air tactics and operations. Mitchell heard the news of the US declaration on war while he was traveling in Spain. He immediately boarded the first train he found bound for Paris. In Paris, Mitchell opened a small office with two French military liaison officers attached to it. It was there that the brash Mitchell began to craft numerous air plans and operational packages that he would cable to Washington for further study. In his papers, Mitchell wrote about the size of the Army’s air arm, America’s manufacturing capabilities and his goals for a massive industrial effort concentrated on aircraft design and development. There are rumors, albeit without much evidence to support it so far, that Mitchell played a pivotal role in French Premier Alexandre Ribot’s request to Washington for 4,500 new aircraft, 5,000 pilots and 50,000 mechanics early in the summer of 1917.

The “outrageous” proposal caught the US General Staff completely off-guard. But it did find a sympathetic ear on the President and his allies in the US House of Representatives. In July 1917, the House passed the largest, single piece appropriation bill ($ 640,000,000) in the country’s history. Unfortunately for the Allied, no amount of money was able to cover the fact that by the mid 1910s, America’s industrial base was unable to mass produce the numbers of aircraft the Bill intended. Even with the decision to manufacture only European design, America’s industries were inadequate set up for the task. This was a daunting task for an industry that “only” produced 87 airplanes the previous year. The Americans were years behind Europe. Something “must be done” said a surprise President Wilson. In the spring of 1917, the President appointed Howard E. Coffin to head a committee for the mobilization of the nation’s resources towards mass production of aircraft and its systems. Coffin, a workaholic automobile executive, promptly applied his automaker, assembly line methods to the aircraft industry. He was so sure of his methods that a few months after his appointment, Coffin boosted to The Saturday Evening Post that “fifty thousands open roads to Berlin” will be available very soon. To make his promise a reality, Coffin had to employ several unorthodox methods. Chief among them was the creation of the Spruce Production Regiments. In 1917, the US had a sever shortage of spruce lumber, a vital ingredient in the construction of aircraft frames. To combat this, Coffin recruited 26,500 soldiers and placed them in massive logging camps all along the Pacific Northwest. He also shifted all aircraft engine production into one single model, the American Liberty engine. The Liberty was the brainchild of two auto engine designers, JG Vincent of Packard Motor Car Company and EJ Hall of Hall and Scott Motor Car Company. On May 1917, both men was urgently summoned to Washington and told that they will be sequestered in a hotel room until they came up with a workable and innovating design. With the help of workers from the National Bureau of Standards, they did it in just five days. The first Liberty engine rolled out of the production lines in December.

If designing and building a workable engine turned out to be relative easy, building the aircraft itself turned to be a long and painstaking process. It was soon realized inside Washington circles that the Americans would take years, even a decade, to catch up with the Europeans in aircraft design and development, so the decision was adapted to standardized few of the Europeans models. Planes such as the Italian Caproni bomber, the French SPAD, and the British Bristol fighter as well as the DH4; were viewed as firm and basic concepts from which the massive US industrial base could made “copies” of. But the reality was, as it is today, that aircraft manufacturing and design goes hand in hand. The degree of hand craftsmanship so integrated in all European designs clashed with the American way of mass production. The production problem would lead to countless delays and setbacks on the productions lines. Tens of millions of dollars were “wasted” on producing Italian and British aircraft. For example, the failure to properly adapt the Liberty to heavier Caproni bomber meant that the vaunted Italian bomber would be underpowered for its task. The same goes with the DH4 conversions. The DH4 was the only aircraft type the American mass produce (1.400 units were sent to France), but once it arrived on the front, the American DH4 proved to be an unreliable air platform. The Liberty engine, which was adapted to fit a smaller engine section, gave the plane a bigger torque than its airframe could take. Pilots who try to run the engine at full throttle usually discovered that the plane’s airframe began to disintegrate in mid air. Such was the traumatic experience of American manufactured aircraft than by the end of the war, more than 80% of all US Air Service pilots were flying French made aircraft.

No matter which planes they flight, Mitchell was determined to make the American air effort in the war as grandiose as he could. It must have shock the inflatable Mitchell the news that Brigadier General Benjamin Foulois was appointed Chief of the Air Service, “an artillery man” as Mitchell usually called him. Foulois arrived in France in the fall 1917 ready to take command of one hundred officers and around three hundred men. The next summer saw Foulois take overall command of air operations for the American First Army under the command of “Black Jack” Pershing. For Mitchell the appointment of a “land commander” to such a prestigious (and a post he himself held briefly) was adding insult to injury. He repeatedly clashed with his new leader. So much so that Foulois wrote a letter to Pershing asking him to relive Mitchell from all active commands and to “ship him to the US for good”. Pershing’s response was as pragmatic as his management skills. He knew men like Mitchell would form the cornerstone of his Army’s air arm. Pershing would live with a hotheaded officer as long as he delivers in the battlefield. Foulois was “asked” by Pershing’s chief of staff to accommodate the brash, but highly innovating Mitchell. Foulois abdicated and in July 1918, ceded to the young officer the top tactical command of all United States air forces in Europe.

Mitchell did not have long to bask in the glory of his new command. A few weeks later, Pershing’s First Army was given its own sector on the Western Front, the Saint-Mihiel salient. A twenty four mile long bulge in the lines that the Germans had held since their 1914 Verdun campaign. Now, four years later, the newly arrived Americans were given the task of straightening out the bulge. The situation was tailor made for Mitchell’s newly developed tactics. The brash American would have under his command the largest air armada the world had ever seen, 1,418 aircraft, around 700 of them from French operated squadrons. Their assigned task was more complex than any air effort so far in the conflict. First, they will sweep the salient’s skies of any German fighter paving the way for the second phase of the operation: the strafing of enemy positions. Meanwhile, after achieving air superiority, the artillery spotting package began to pin point German troop concentration areas for artillery bombardment attacks.

On the early hours of September 12th, and in the mist of a strong southwest winds, Mitchell’s massive air armada took to the air. With more than 700 fighters in their fold, the force was prepared to face the new Fokker D.VII, a single seat fighter that came too late to alter the results on the front. In fierce air to air combat, the Allies were able to clear the Saint-Mihiel sector of any organized German resistance. Without fighter cover, the Germans on the ground were sitting ducks. For most of the American offensive, Allied fighters and bombers pounded away at the retrieving German columns near Vigneulles and St. Benoit. “Dripping down at the head of the column I sprinkled a few bullets over the leading teams”, recalled the famous American air ace, Eddie Rickenbacker. “Horses fell right and left…The whole column was thrown into the wildest confusion” added an exuberated Rickenbacker. The clearing and strafing strategy proved so successful that Mitchell employed it a moth later in the Meuse-Argonne offensive. On October 9th, a force of two hundred bombers and one hundred fighters attacked with impunity the German ground formations in the largest, single daytime raid of the war.

The Saint-Mihiel air success was, for the most part, due to the enormous scarifies and valor exhibit by the American airmen and their ground support personnel. It’s a testament to them and their visionary leaders that the 1918 battle for the important Saint-Mihiel salient resulted in a clear Allied victory instead of another stalemate. And although the Americans did not built an “army in the air”, their new air tactics and the implementation of old concepts by their leaders, more noticeable, the brash Mitchell; accentuated the American entry into the War to End all Wars.

- Raul Colon

References:
The First World War, Hew Strachan, Penguin Books 2003
World War I, HP Willmott, Covent Garden Books, 2003
The Illusion of Victory, Fleming, Basic Books, 2003
The US Air Force: A Complete History, Group West Publishing 2004

The End of Germany’s Air Effort
on the Western Front

In the wake of the Germans ineffective and disastrous Spring Offensive of March-June 1918, most of the Allied commanders and even their political leaders, believed that Germany was a defeated country. Its Army has just suffered a massive defeat. A defeat that would certainly means the end of Germany as a cohering state. But if this was the case in June 1918, the situation in the air did not match the one in the ground. After the June offensive, many German Jastas (squadrons) operating on the Western Front were removed from the frontline to rear areas for re-fitting and rearmament purposes. New aircraft types such as the impressive Fokker D VII were assigned to those refitted units in greater numbers than early. In fact, by the end of June 1918, more than 270 D VII were distributed among the frontline Jastas. In an ironic twist of fate, by the time of the great German ace Manfred von Richthofen’s death on April 21st JG-1 was in the process of assimilating their first D VII units. The timeline coincided, more or less, with the arrival of the first American scout units over the desecrated grounds of the Western Front. The first American operational squadron actually arrived on February. Assigned to the Villeneuve sector, they carried out their first combat sortie on the March 15th when Raoul Lufbery led an unarmed squadron of Nieuport XXVIIIs over the dreaded front. Later on their tour on France, the Americans traded their Nieuports for the more agile SPAD S.XIII. Although the Americans entered the conflict on its later stages, their pilots displayed a flair for the dramatic very characteristic of their counterparts in the ground. Lead by Captain Eddie Rickenbacker (26 confirm victories) and Lieutenant Frank Luke (21) the American began raking up an impressive victory total during the summer and autumn of 1918 confirming their status as one of the most successful flying groups of the times.

Back in the front, on August 18th Great Britain launched its massive offensive along the Flanders section. The “Big Push” as the operation was referred to, was supplemented by thirteen squadrons of S.E.5as, seventeen equipped with Sopwith Camels, six with Bristol, fourteen with R.E.8s, four of the newly introduced Sopwith Dolphins, four with F.K.8s, five with D.H.4s, fourteen composed of the D.H. 9/9A platform, seven with F.E. 2b/d and seven additional units armed with the O/400 heavy bomber. In all, the British commenced their offensive with over 1,700 available aircraft assigned to 91 squadrons. Meanwhile, on July 18th, the French launched its massive counterattack on its section of the front. During the early days of 1918, the Aeronautique Militaire underwent a total makeover that included the much talked about unit standardization among its escadrilles. By mid June, most of France forward deployed escadrilles were fitted with the SPAD XIII scout pursue plane. Forty nine escadrilles, augmented another ten reserve units were available for the “push east”. In addition, the French possesses twenty three dedicated bomber escadrilles flying the vaunted Breguet 14, the Caproni 10 and the underrated Voisin 10. One hundred and forty additional units were available for action. Those supplemental escadrilles came from the French Army and its Navy counterpart. The total amount of aircraft available in the front dwarfed anything the Germans can deploy on that sector. Over 2,800 units were operational by the summer. The number would increase to 3,225 units by the time hostilities ceased. With such an overwhelming number, the Allies were able to achieve and maintain air superiority over the whole front from June onward.

On the other side of the lines, the Germans did not sit idle while her enemies regrouped. In the summer, Germany created a fourth Jagdgeschwader, JG-2, under the command of a veteran Bavarian fighter pilot, Ritter Eduard von Schleich. The Pour le Merite winner (1917) brought in an organizational structure sorely needed by Germany’s air force. Schleich implemented new formations and introduced new tactics that, for a time at least, gave Germany a fighting chance in the air. His JG-2 was able to inflict heavy losses to their enemies on limited actions. One example of it was the American Metz offensive of September 20th. In action over the small French town, JG-2′s pilots downed eighty nine American airplanes in just two days. Unfortunately for Germany, those types of accomplishments were an aberration rather than the norm it use to be.

By September, the Royal Air Force was in the early stages of receiving the first units of the much anticipated Sopwith Snipe dedicated fighter. The advance Snipe design was to prove so successful that the RAF utilized on its colonials affairs for up to twenty years after the war. Although ordered in great numbers and its delivery hastened by RAF commanders, the Snipe came too late into the conflict to directly affect the outcome. Nevertheless, the Snipe monoplane did leaved an impression on the war. On October 27th, Major WG Baker, a pilot attached to the RCF’s No. 201 squadron, flying patrol patterns over the Forte de Mormal, encountered seventeen enemy airplanes. Rather than turn back his monoplane, young Baker engaged the Germans and was able to down four (confirmed) aircraft, including three Fokker D VIIs; before he was force to land on the British side of the dreaded trenches. For his actions that afternoon, the British awarded Baker the prestigious Victoria Cross.

On the German side, like the British Snipe, they did not get their “next generation” pursue aircraft, the Fokker D VIII until very late in the war. This was the aircraft the Germans pitted their air fortunes on. Faster than the Snipe (approx. 10 miles faster by some accounts) and lighter at the controls, there’s little question than the new German parasol monoplane would have done more than just held its own against anything the Allies could put in the air. But time ran out for Germany. Internal strife, critical food and fuel shortages, coupled with the Allied penetration of their last major defensive line (Hindenburg) in October; forced Germany to the armistice table. In the end, not even the valiant German air force filled with one of the best aircraft ever designed, the “in erster Linie alle apparete” as the Fokker D VII was known to the French, could change the number situation.

- Raul Colon

References:

The First World War, Hew Strachan, Penguin Books 2004
The Bomber War: The Allied Air Offensive Against Nazi Germany, Robin Neillands, Overlook Press 2001
Air Power: The men, machines, and ideas that revolutionized war, from Kitty Hawk to Gulf War II, Stephen Budiansky, Penguin Books 2004