Air Power and Armies

II. THE MAIN OFFENSIVE

II THE MAIN OFFENSIVE 'Air superiority is obtained by the combined action of bomber and fighter aircraft. The detailed measures to obtain and maintain the requisite air situation must vary with the circumstances of the campaign, but purely defensive measures will rarely be successful.'I IN this and the next chapter it is proposed to examine briefly those detailed measures by which we must obtain and maintain the control of air communications for our own use and deny them to that ofthe enemy. And in order to afford a background for this examination it may be useful to remind the reader oftwo periods during the Great War, in different theatres and under widely different conditions, which clearly illustrate the influence that a favourable air situation may exert upon the operations of an army. The first example-that of Palestine-provides an exception to the rule that absolute command of the air in a theatre ofwar is an unattainable ideal. In 1917, before General Allenby's arrival, the German air forces operating in support of the Turkish army had enjoyed a high degree of superiority in the air. The British aircraft on that front were few and of inferior performance, and the consequent unfavourable air situation was a contributory factor in our earlier reverses at Gaza, and had a generally adverse effect on the morale of the troops, none the less potent for being indefinable. One of General Allenby's first acts on assuming command in Palestine was to demand, and obtain, three additional squadrons of upto -date aircraft. The air situation naturally took an immediate change for the better, a change which was promptly reflected in the victory ofBeersheba. Allenby was a master ofstrategical surprise, and the success at Beersheba-like the greater victory a year later-was largely due to the adoption ofvarious devices to lead the Turks to imagine that the attack was coming elsewhere , on this occasion at Gaza. Says Colonel Wavell in his book on the Palestine Campaign:2 'All these devices to mislead the enemy would have been ofmuch less avail had not the new I Manual, sect. 9. 2. Z Campaigns in Palestine, p. 107. 12 AIR SUPERIORITY squadrons and more modern machines received from home enabled our air force in the late autumn to wrest from the enemy the command of the air which he had so long enjoyed in this theatre.' But if the effect of air superiority was striking in the autumn of 1917, it was far more so a year later, when General Allenby staged his great break-through (incidentally the only breakthrough which a British army ever achieved in the war) that was to end the campaign in the Middle East. By this time our air superiority in Palestine practically amounted to complete command. Once more the preparations for the attack included the most elaborate measures to deceive the enemy: empty camps, rows ofdummy horse-lines, and artificially raised clouds ofdust at the Jordan valley end distracted the Turks' attention from the stealthy concentration of the British and Australian mounted and dismounted divisions at the Mediterranean end of the line. To quote Wavell again:l 'It was above all the dominance secured by our air force that enabled the concentration to be concealed. So complete was the mastery it had obtained in the air by hard fighting that by September a hostile aeroplane rarely crossed our lines at all.' During the final preparations and on the morning of the attack we had fighter patrols sitting over the enemy aerodromes, which effectively prevented any hostile aeroplane from leaving the ground2 at all; and both close co-operation pilots and the bomber and fighter patrols that co-operated with the mounted troops in the pursuit, with such disastrous results to the enemy, were able to go about their tasks completely unhampered by hostile air opposition. Superiority on this scale, amounting as it did to absolute command, can rarely if ever be secured in operations against a first-class enemy. But we may note in passing that on this occasion not only did it endow the commander with the invaluable-and otherwise almost unattainable-advantage of strategical surprise, but also enabled an air striking force to make perhaps the most decisive contribution it has ever made to the issue ofa battle by direct action against an enemy army.3 Its effect was summed up by General A1lenby in his dispatch 1 Campaigns in Palestine, p. 201. Z Vide Evidence of German M...