Project 9: The Birth of the Air Commandos in World War II

Chapter 9

85 • • • Chapter 9 Chapter 9 As Phil Cochran and Johnny Alison put together their fleet of small planes to support a British Army operation in Burma, they did so during a time of tight budgets—both the United States and Britain were still suffering the effects of the worldwide depression—and no small amount of controversy about how best to use aerial assets, and what they should be, in modern warfare.1 The controversy was rooted in linguistics and definitions, especially of the word observation, on both sides of the Atlantic. Because of evolving technology and tactical realities, its definition began to change and became the center of an ongoing dispute between factions within the military establishments of both countries. Observation balloons had been used extensively in battle since before the U.S. Civil War.A tethered balloon lifted an observer several hundred feet into the blue, where he could see and report on the movements of a proximate enemy. Obviously the observer could not see whether another force was advancing just over the distant hills or what strategists were thinking in the enemy capital hundreds of miles away. Even so, observation by balloon was better than what had existed before—confused communiqués from a small cadre of scouts on horses—but it soon became obsolete, an easy target for winged aircraft. Those aircraft quickly assumed the observation-reconnaissance role, and military strategists soon learned that the mission dictated the type of aircraft needed, not the reverse. 86 • • • Project 9 In army flying schools of the 1930s young aviators received at least basic instruction in the four kinds of military airplanes of the day: pursuit , bombardment, attack, and observation.2 Military theorists of most nations followed the precepts of Gen. Giulio Duohet, the Italian air minister who held that future wars would be fought and won by bombardment aircraft, heavily armed, that would bomb enemy cities into terrified submission.3 Fighters, then called pursuit ships, were considered of minimal value (although most pilots still aspired to fly the fast and nimble machines), and attack aircraft were generally lightly armed pursuit planes with little real chance of changing the course of a closely fought ground battle. One of the Wright brothers’ early models was the 1912 Model D, built to meet the U.S.Army’s request for a“speed scout.”4 Between the world wars observation aircraft grew into large awkwardlooking airplanes, with crews of two or three, driven by powerful radial engines. They were armed with several machine guns and often had retractable gear. They were sophisticated, complex, heavy, and slow, requiring hard runways and highly trained ground crews, as well as large supplies of fuel, equipment, and parts. Planes such as the North American O-47 and the Curtiss O-52 Owl were capable of extended flights and what today is called loiter time, time spent over a target or area of interest, but would have been helpless against the fast heavily armed fighters that Germany and other countries were developing. By the time shooting started in earnest in Europe in September 1939, the day of the elephantine observation plane was past. It was not only easy prey for fighters, but its appetite for parts and fuel, and dependence upon hard runways, rendered it clearly impractical for use by ground forces such as artillery units. So the brass debated: Should they develop a single, multipurpose aircraft for general observation and reconnaissance , or multiple aircraft, each designed for a specialized purpose? In military parlance observation came to mean visual sighting in the area of front lines. Reconnaissance came to mean flights far behind the lines, requiring high-speed aircraft capable of flying long distances. The Air Corps—which did not become an independent service until after World War II—did not have the same requirements as the field artillery . The Air Corps preferred a fast high-performance airplane capable of flying deep into enemy territory and returning quickly. However, that was the last thing needed by ground units, who saw an airplane as a means of directing fire, as well as coordinating and communicating among units. The Air Corps needed a small, simple, and rugged plane. The Stinson O-49 Vigilant had proved to be a good general purpose observation plane. It could handle short fields, thanks to its 295 horsepower Lycoming radial engine, Hamilton-Standard constant-speed 87 • • • Chapter 9 prop, and slotted flaps and automatically deploying leading-edge slats (manufactured by the British firm Handley Page...