Strike From the Sky: The History of Battlefield Air Attack, 1910-1945

PART FOUR

PART FOUR The Second World War The literature of the Second World War is voluminous, and the works that deal with the air war between 1939 and 1945 make up a large proportion of this material. Generally speaking, however, researchers have devoted far more attention to the air superiority war and to strategic bomber operations than they have to other topics, such as research and development, special operations, and battlefield air support. Though virtually all the combatant nations used aircraft for ground support missions, the four that did the most to develop and exploit this field were Nazi Germany, Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union. Thus, this study examines cases from the experiences of these nations in various campaigns and theaters, emphasizing the blitzkrieg of 1939-40;1 the Anglo-American experience in the Western Desert, Southwest Pacific, Italy, and Western Europe;2 and the struggle on the Eastern Front, particularly during and after the "mature" phase (Kursk and subsequently) of Soviet air-land operations.3 One caveat must be offered concerning the studies in this part: the relative lack of discussion of the war in the Pacific, specifically the development of Navy-Marine close air support, and Gen. George Kenney 's Fifth Air Force operations. Since most operations in this theater concerned island assaults (essentially "snipping up" the Japanese empire ), the dominant superiority and concentration of force that the United States and its allies were able to bring to bear in these attacks, the nature of the support provided, and the battlefield environment all differed significantly from other theaters, such as the Western Desert, Europe, or the Russian Front. For example, General Kenney's Fifth Air Force made extensive use of "hit and run" low-level attacks by heavily armed A-20's and B-25's in the Southwest Pacific; such aircraft assaulted Japanese airfields, dropping parachute-retarded fragmentation bombs (dubbed parafrags) and strafing with batteries of machine guns. The peculiar circumstances of Southwest Pacific air warfare enabled them to get away with relatively light losses, something that would not have been possible in more densely defended European or Mediterranean skies. Where Pacific developments foreshadowed some of the issues and procedures that appeared in the major force-on-force engagements in these other theaters (such as the experience of the Solomons campaign), those developments and experiences are covered. When later campaigns such as the Philippines and Okinawa occurred, 129 130 STRIKE FROM THE SKY however, they came after the maturation of wartime air support as demonstrated in France and in Russia. This is not to denigrate the work of those who labored to create effective air-land operations in the Pacific, and some of the developments, such as amphibious command ships, did have important implications for post-1945 conflicts, notably in Korea and, subsequently, Vietnam. As a general case, however, battlefield air support in the Pacific war is set aside in favor of a more detailed accounting of the North African, European, and Russian theaters. ...