The Command of the Air

CHAPTER III. The Aerial Battle

CHAPTER III The Aerial Battle UNLIKE ENGINEER A'ITAL, who at least recognizes that my writing is coherent, General Bastico has filled several pages of this review with an attempt to prove that I am guilty of flagrant contradiction in my evaluation of the aerial battle. Certainly not to prove that I am coherent on this theme, but to clear up misunderstandings and show up the reasoning of my opponents in its true light, I shall say something about the aerial battle, which is of great importance to the thesis I support. The simplest concept for the guidance of the stronger side is this: look for the enemy and defeat him wherever he is encountered . In a land war this is easily done. There are few easy lines of transit on the rugged surface of the earth, and they are well defined. To compel the enemy to fight, all you have to do is march against him and invade his territory. That is the way you meet your enemy on land. In a war on the sea, the concept is less easily carried out. The weaker side can easily avoid combat, even if he has to seek refuge in his own fortified bases. In the last war the weaker side was always being hunted and was never found. In the aerial war the enemy remains on the surface if he does not want to be found. Just as it is profitable for the stronger side to look for the enemy and defeat him wherever he is found, so it is equally profitable for the weaker side to avoid defeat by not letting himself be found. Therefore, a stronger Independent Air Force which looked JOY battle-that is, looked for the weaker Air Force-would be taking the risk of flying in all directions in vain and exhausting itself without finding its quarry. In other words, it would play into the hands of the weaker enemy. Similarly, if the weaker Independent Air Force went looking 244 Recapitulation 245 for battle, it would play into the hands of the stronger, very likely committing suicide. In war one must always do his best not to play into the hands of the enemy; therefore, I have always maintained, and I say it again, that an Air Force must never go looking for battle, neither the stronger nor the weaker one. This statement seems to me so dear, so exact, that it should not be misunderstoad. But if the stronger Independent Air Force happens to meet the weaker by chance, it has everything to gain from a battle because it is the stronger; while the other has everything to lose because it is less strong. Consequently, I have always m<;tintained, and I say it again, that the stronger Independent Air Force must not avoid battle, but the weaker must avoid it. Even this seems to me clear and unequivocal. Since the stronger Independent Air Force must not look for battle and the weaker must avoid it, and can easily do so, if the aerial war were decided by a battle, it could last for centuries without a conclusive ending, and the two Air Forces would grow old in their own airfields. Therefore, I assert that today, as ever, it is not enough for an Independent Air Force to be able to fight in the air, but it must also have an offensive capacity against the surface. When I say the stronger Independent Air Force, I mean one stronger in its ability to fight in the air, regardless of its bombing capacity. The stronger Independent Air Force must not look for nor avoid the battle. If it obeys that rule, it can operate with the utmost freedom against the surface; that is, during each flight it can attack the objective which best suits it, and fly straight for it without giving a thought to the enemy Air Force. The latter is either powerless to put up any opposition, in which case the offensive will be accomplished without fighting, or it will decide to show opposition, in which case it will be defeated. In this way the stronger Air Force will damage the enemy in some way or other on each of its flights. The weaker Independent Air Force must avoid meeting the stronger. Therefore, the only thing it can do is attack the enemy's surface, but always trying to avoid meeting the stronger Air Force. The Command of The Air Since the stronger Air Force must neither look for nor avoid meeting the weaker, it has no need of higher speed; but for the weaker it might come in handy when trying to avoid the stronger. The aerial struggle thus resolves itself into a series of offensive acts against the surface, with the stronger Independent Air Force enjoying the advantage of a larger freedom of maneuver. The offensive against the surface can seriously affect the potentiality of the two contending Air Forces if it is directed to the destruction of aerial forces on the surface, centers of aeronautical production, and similar objectives. The conquest of the command of the air may result from these indirect attacks on the enemy aerial potential. Only once in a while, for the reasons mentioned above, will it be the result of an aerial battle. A weaker Independent Air Force may also happen to gain an initial advantage by an action more intelligent, violent, and intense than the action of the stronger. It 'may happen that special circumstances and environmental factors lead an Air Force to attack the enemy population and leave objectives of purely aeronautical importance alone. Certainly the outcome of the aerial struggle will depend largely upon the vision. of the leaders, the courage of the pilots, and the morale of the people. That is a clear statement of my opinions. They may be criticized , but they should not be casually dismissed. Let us look at General Bastieo's ideas now. He will remember that he wrote as follows: The peculiar conditions of the aerial field will always, 01- nearly always, allow the weaker adversary to avoid at will a battle which might turn out unfavorably for him. So far we agree. But in the same article he wrote: It is true that if the latter [the stronger Independent Air Force] prefers to acquire freedom of movement, it must leave equal freedom to the enemy; that it must let the enemy carryon offensive actions, and it cannot be said that the stronger will not feel them. They may turn out to be weak offensives, pinpricks instead of spear-thrusts; but even pinpricks can be irritating. Then the stronger may very probably lose his patience and try to engage that same battle he had wanted to avoid. Recapitulation 247 To be accurate, General Bastico should have written, "that he had not wanted to look for," because I never said that the stronger Air Force had to avoid battle. And, I add [it is still General Bastico who writes] that in doing that he would not be wrong; on the contrary, he had been wrong heretofore because he had waited so long before using the necessary and most efficacious way to put the enemy Independent Air Force out of action. I must wonder at my colleague's strange reasoning. Why should the stronger Air Force give up its spear-thrusts simply to avoid pinpricks) and start looking for an enemy who can always) or nearly always) avoid the battle? Why should looking for a battle with the enemy be the necessary and most efficacious way to put out of action the enemy Air Force, which can always, or nearly always) avoid it at will? In my opinion, if the commander of the stronger Independent Air Force lost his patience under mere pinpricks, he would be showing such nervous instability that he had better go home and grow cabbages. Farther along in the same article General Bastico feels that it is useless to look for something which cannot be found, and writes: I have said that the battle has to be looked for, but did I say that the Air Force which desires it must find it by searching through the immensity of the sky for something which very probably cannot be found? Is it possible to attribute to me such naIvete? Really, no one wants to think of General Bastico as naIve. But still, it leaves one a bit puzzled to think of a battle which has to be looked for without the more or less deliberate intent to look for it. What does it all mean? Perhaps that the battle has to be looked for without looking for it? And one is still more puzzled to find in the same article: ... I repeat that the battle must be considered the apogee of the conception of the aerial struggle; and I make bold to affirm that the Independent Air Force which does not so consider it will lower its fighting capacity, and still more its spirit of aggressiveness. The apogee of the conception of aerial warfare, then, should be the battle; that is, that action which results from a clash which The Command of The Air the weaker Independent Air Force can avoid at will, and the stronger cannot look for deliberately without betraying colossal na'ivete. To give support to his argument, General Bastico quotes with praise an author who asserts that the predominant Independent Air Force has to look for the battle in order to eliminate as soon as possible the major obstacle to the destruction of the enemy bases. Toward the end of the article General Bastico reaffirms his point. In each case, as respects the particular conduct of the aerial war, the battle must be considered the pre-eminent action in the struggle. Then, perhaps remembering that he had previously said that to act with intention leading to this pre-eminent action would be to show colossal naivete, he adds: The ways of looking for the battle will depend upon contingent circumstances. Among these ways bombings and poisonings of the vital centers of the enemy nation should be considered as the most effective in the majority of cases. I do not happen to know of any other contingent ways, so I will have to be content with the ones he calls the most effective. According to General Bastico, in order to force the enemy to the desired battle, the stronger Air Force should provoke him by bombing and poisoning his vital centers. The weaker Air Force, thus provoked and playing into the hands of the stronger, would intervene between its threatened vital centers and the stronger Air Force; the clash would occur; the battle would take place; and naturally the weaker would be defeated. Afterward the stronger could bomb and poison the vital centers of the enemy nation with no further worry. All this could happen, of course; but only if the commander of the weaker Independent Air Force is a ---, as the Neapolitans would say. I prefer to picture the enemy as thrice bad, never as thrice good; so I cannot agree with General Bastico. I say that if a stronger Independent Air Force was bombing and poisoning our vital centers, we should not lead out our weaker Air Force to Recapitulation 249 defeat and destruction. Instead, we should use it to bomb and poison enemy vital centers, the more violently and intensely the weaker we are. Above all, we should always try to avoid that battle in which we would be risking defeat and destruction with no advantage to us. That point, incidentally, proves also that neither the stronger nor the weaker Air Force should take the defensive attitude-the former because it would be unprofitable to give up hurling spearthrusts to protect itself from pinpricks; and the latter to avoid being led to an aesthetic but foolish suicide. It is no use. No matter which way you tum, no matter what the contingent circ?mstances may be, two and two will never add up to three or five, only four. Anyhow, I have an idea that General Bastico himself must be almost convinced of my contentions, because he writes of the war on the sea: In the struggle on the sea, the defensive requires a superiority of means. A parity might not be enough because the high speed of modern naval units and the consequent possibility of sudden attacks makes larger forces necessary to oppose them. Inferior or even equal forces might not do. Substantially, a naval defensive does not mean an economy of forces, but rather a larger expenditure of them. Later on I will analyze this concept of warfare at sea; right now I wish to point out that if "in the air," "aerial," and "aerial defensive " were substituted for "on the sea," "naval," and "naval defensive" in the quotation above, my conclusions would appear to be justified. Such a substitution is fair, because not even General Bastico would deny that modern aerial units are even faster than naval units, and that they too are likely to launch sudden attacks. If the defensive does not allow an inferiority of means, but rather requires a larger expenditure of them, may I ask who would be so naIve as to assume the defensive in the air? Therefore , it is best always and everywhere to act offensively. It is no use. Two and two always add up to four. Somewhere in his article, no doubt by inadvertence, General Bastico attributes to me a statement I have never dreamed of making: namely, that a weaker Air Force is always at the mercy of the enemy. Nothing of the kindl On the contrary, i have always The Command of The Air maintained, and continue to do so, that a weaker Air Force may best a stronger one provided it can compensate for the difference in strength by showing more intelligence, more intensity, and more violence in its offensive actions. But since one should always try to be as strong as possible in war, regardless of any other circumstance, I have always proclaimed: "In the name of charity, do not let any aerial force be diverted from offensive actionl" As ever, to my mind, two and two inexorably add up to four. ...