Though by 1918 air power was essential to what General Jonathan Bailey has called the modern system of warfare, its impact at the operational level is less certain. Bailey described the use of three-dimensional depth artillery in 1917–18, enabled by aerial observation and photography and the necessary control of the air to allow it as a revolution in military affairs.[1] Yet, as the recent RAF CASPS article on the Battle of Amiens highlighted, Wing Commander John Slessor, in his seminal Air Power and Armies, criticised the RAF’s inability to alter the course of the battle after the highly successful first day on 8 August 1918 — ‘the black day of the German army’ — because confused air command arrangements and poorly co-ordinated air/land planning led to ad hoc exploitation.[2]
Slessor highlighted that at the Battle of Megiddo, 19–25 September 1918, in contrast to Amiens, air power had enabled the surprise and deception essential to General Sir Edmund Allenby’s great victory over the Turco-German army in Palestine and, furthermore, had destroyed retreating Turkish armies in the pursuit. According to Archibald Wavell, who had been a senior staff officer in Palestine, and was to write a biography of Allenby, ‘all these devices to mislead the enemy would have been of much less avail had not the [new and more modern machines] enabled the air force […] to wrest from the enemy command of the air’. Furthermore, ‘it was above all the dominance secured by our air force that enabled the concentration [of the massed cavalry] to be concealed’.[3] Of the pursuit, T E Lawrence, the renowned ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, wrote:
But the climax of the air attack, and the holocaust of the miserable Turks, fell in the valley by which Esdraelon drained to the Jordan by Beisan. The modern motor road, the only way of escape for the Turkish divisions, was scalloped between cliff and precipice in a murderous defile. For four hours our aeroplanes replaced one another in series above the doomed columns: nine tons of small bombs and grenades and fifty thousand rounds of S.A.A were rained upon them. When the smoke cleared it was seen that the organization of the enemy had melted away. They were a dispersed horde of trembling individuals, hiding for their lives in every fold of the vast hills. Nor did their commanders ever rally them again. When our cavalry entered the silent valley next day they could count ninety guns, fifty lorries, nearly a thousand carts abandoned with all their belongings. The RAF lost four killed. The Turks lost a corps.[4]
This short article examines whether Megiddo was the joint air land battle that Amiens was not.
Allenby
Air power suited Allenby’s concept of warfare. Wavell attributed Allenby’s success to surprise, mobility, and relentless pursuit, all evident at Megiddo.[5] On arrival in Egypt in June 1917 Allenby re-organised the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) for modern, industrial war using the corps formations used in France at the time. On taking over the EEF and finding only two squadrons of obsolete aircraft, Allenby successfully requested more aircraft of the most modern types in the initial assessment he sent to the War Office. In October he was able to report to General Sir William Robertson, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, that the ‘new Bristol Fighters [had] bagged two hostiles in a week’.[6] In fairness to Allenby’s predecessor, Sir Archibald Murray, it should be noted that aircraft had played an important role in the Middle East since the start of the war, detecting several Turkish advances on the Suez Canal, and that Murray had been quick to allocate aircraft detachments to the campaigns against the Senussi, to the Darfur and to the Arab Revolt. Murray’s task in Egypt had been to create a strategic reserve after Gallipoli and had only latterly gone onto the offensive at a time when modern German aircraft had control of the air. Allenby, however, was sent with prime minister David Lloyd George’s instruction to ‘take Jerusalem by Christmas’ and was thus given the men and materiel to do so.
Furthermore, the foundation of Allenby’s success as a general in high command was his care in administration and his method of personal command — what is now called mission command: giving orders and trusting his subordinates to fulfil them without undue intervention.[7] In an immediate change from Murray, Allenby relocated EEF General Headquarters (GHQ) forward into the desert and visited units, including air squadrons, whom Murray had never visited. Richard Williams noted that Allenby had visited his RAF wing headquarters (HQ) on the first afternoon of the Battle of Megiddo, informally and unannounced, while taking his daily ride.[8]
‘Mastery of the Air’
After the arrival of the additional aircraft and squadrons requested by Allenby, the EEF’s air component was organised on the Western Front model, and supported, like the British numbered armies in France, by a Royal Flying Corps Brigade. This became the Palestine Brigade, Royal Air Force on 1 April 1918, and comprised seven squadrons divided into two wings, commanded by Brigadier A E (Biffy) Borton, who was under Allenby’s orders. The additional squadrons meant 5th (Corps) Wing RAF had three ‘corps’ squadrons, one to co-operate with each army corps by providing tactical reconnaissance over the front-line; flying artillery co-operation, counter-attack and contact patrols, leaving the remaining four squadrons available for depth operations with 40th (Army) Wing.
In general, the RAF Brigade’s air/land tactical doctrine followed that developed on the Western Front but in a variation, Major General W G H (Geoffrey) Salmond, commanding the RAF in the Middle East and a future Chief of the Air Staff, allocated four Nieuport fighters each to Nos 113 and 14 Squadrons RAF — the XX and XXI Corps squadrons — in addition to their 18 RE8 tactical reconnaissance aircraft, to both provide on-call ‘ground strafing’ and act as escorts to the RE8s.[9] The Desert Mounted Corps was supported by No 142 Squadron RAF whilst 40th (Army) Wing worked directly under Borton in support of Allenby for ‘air fighting’, ‘strategical reconnaissance’ and day-bombing beyond the front-line. It comprised Nos 111 and 145 Squadrons equipped with SE5a fighters, No 1 Squadron Australian Flying Corps (AFC) equipped with Bristol Fighters for fighter reconnaissance and No 144 Squadron equipped with DH9 day-bombers. No 1 Squadron AFC also had the theatre’s only heavy night -bomber, a Handley Page 0/400 flown from the UK to Egypt by Biffy Borton himself.[10]
By August 1918 the RAF had attained complete control of the air as a direct result of the reinforcements Allenby had demanded. The RAF in Palestine, with forty-seven fighters, forty-four ‘corps’ aircraft, and fourteen bombers, outnumbered the German Air Service that supported the Turks by two to one. Furthermore, it had the advantage of a supply, repair and training organisation in Egypt, whereas German engines were returned to Germany for maintenance, through Turkey and central Europe. Such was the overall disparity in aircraft, serviceability and morale, when the German Air Service attempted to restore flagging morale in August 1918 by launching a sortie of seven newly arrived Pfalz fighters, all were shot down or forced to land by two Australian Bristol Fighters.[11] As a result the German Air Service stopped reconnaissance flights.[12]
At first glance the air/land command arrangements and planning for Megiddo seem as confused as those for the Battle of Amiens. At Amiens command of the RAF’s squadrons was split between John Salmond — commanding the ‘RAF in the Field’ and working under Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig’s GHQ — and Lionel Charlton, commanding V Brigade RAF and ‘under orders’ of Fourth Army. Neither John Salmond or Charlton were consistently included in Fourth Army’s planning, seemingly being left to produce an RAF plan to support the ground effort, and with the result that Charlton, not realising Fourth Army’s expanded objectives, issued a plan for a one-day attack only. For Megiddo, all the RAF squadrons were under Borton’s Palestine Brigade, though Geoffrey Salmond, whose command included Salonika, East Africa, Mesopotamia and India, told his brother John he was present at Borton’s forward headquarters in Jerusalem as a spectator. Salmond took over for one afternoon when Borton flew with the Handley Page and two Bristol Fighters to support the Arabs south of Deraa at Lawrence’s request on 22 September.[13] Lawrence described Salmond and Borton as ‘men of avid novelty’, planning this operation while Allenby watched on.[14]
As at Amiens, the army commander produced his plan for Megiddo before involving the RAF. Allenby first told his corps commanders of his plan on 1 August 1918 and then told them of his expanded objectives on 21 August.[15] Salmond and Borton were told of the plan by Allenby at a conference on 1 September, when ‘no special instructions were given to the Air Force beyond asking for general assistance’.[16] The EEF and corps’ operation orders all stated instructions for the RAF, like artillery, signals and administrative support, would be issued separately.[17] The air officers were left to support Allenby’s plan to ensure, as Geoffrey Salmond noted later, ‘the enormous opportunities of realising to the full the possibilities for the air force […] were realised’.[18]
‘Air Cooperation in the Preliminary Phase’
According to Geoffrey Salmond, the RAF’s control of the air allowed it to ‘practically guarantee’ the concealment of Allenby’s scheme of manoeuvre, to further deceive the enemy, destroy his communication centres and to contemplate the destruction of his retreating forces. Allenby’s plan was for XXI Corps to attack on his left, coastal flank, and for the cavalry of the Desert Mounted Corps to exploit the breakthrough and race up the coast and block the enemy’s retreat. To deceive General Liman Von Sanders into thinking Allenby would attack on the inland, eastern flank, the RAF allowed German aircraft to reconnoitre dummy positions, including 14,000 dummy horses, created to look like the Desert Mounted Corps. According to captured plans the enemy were completely deceived, despite an Indian Army deserter telling of the forthcoming attack.[20] Furthermore on 16 and 17 September, RAF aircraft supported a feint attack by the Northern Arab Army on Deraa, which caused German aircraft to be redeployed from Jenin to Deraa. Otherwise the RAF remained on the defensive.
‘Air Cooperation in the Strategical Phase’
On the night of 18–19 September and the morning of 19 September, the RAF, in Basil Liddell Hart’s words, ‘made the enemy’s command deaf and dumb by decisively bombing their main telegraph and telephone exchange at El Afule, a stroke by which Ross-Smith, who later made history by his flights to Australia, helped England to make history’.[21] There were in total six raids on Turkish communications centres on 19 September, the first by the Handley-Page 0/400 at 0115 hours on El Afule, which also blocked the railway junction, and five raids by DH9s on HQ Turkish Eighth Army at Tel Karm and HQ Seventh Army at Nablus. Von Sanders was unaware of the attack on his right flank until noon and was nearly captured when British cavalry reached his HQ on 20 September.[22]
The RAF also planned to maintain control of the air and pursue retreating Turkish forces, unlike at Amiens. The RAF placed two SE5 fighters over the enemy airfields at Jenin and El Afule during daylight for two hours at a time. They bombed any movement, and machine gunned the hangars on departure. No German aircraft left the ground, and therefore three British divisions of vulnerable massed cavalry were able to breakthrough Turkish lines undetected and free from attack.[23] At Megiddo the RAF identified and photographed before the battle the five available defiles for Turkish retreat, and positioned Bristol Fighters equipped with long-range wireless telegraphy over them once the battle started.
After the battle, Salmond reported immediately to Major General Frederick Sykes, the Chief of the Air Staff, and told his brother John, that the ‘great feature’ of the attack was the bombing of five retreating Turkish columns.[24] Australian Bristol Fighters spotted retreating Turks soon after the offensive’s opening fifteen-minute bombardment at 0445 hours on 19 September and five Bristol Fighters were attacking retreating Turkish cavalry, guns and transport between El Tire and Tel Karm by 1140. One aircraft was shot down and its crew temporarily captured before being rescued by the Australian Light Horse. By the afternoon of 19 September, the RAF was attacking retreating Turkish columns on the identified routes. On 20 September the RAF attacked the shattered Turkish Eighth Army retreating towards Jenin. Allenby wrote to his wife on 20 September 1918 telling her the Turks were being ‘smashed by our bombing aeroplanes’.[25] There was further evidence of the paralysis of the Turco-German command when a German DFW aircraft landed at El Afule after the British had reached the airfield on the afternoon of 20 September and was captured by British armoured cars.
On the evening of 20 September, the Turkish Seventh Army started to retreat and its long columns were spotted by Australian Bristol Fighters on an old Roman road running from Balata-Ferweh-Shibleh-Jordan through the defile of Wadi Fara. They were attacked from the air from 0630 on 21 September, with the effect described earlier by Lawrence.[26]
Conclusion
Geoffrey Salmond telegrammed to report to Sykes that he had subsequently walked along 16 miles of carnage and called the destruction ‘a new type of warfare’.[27] He told John Salmond that Lieutenant General Sir Edwin Bulfin, commanding XXI Corps, accused him of being a butcher, but that EEF GHQ were ‘beginning to realise what an immense effect the Air Force had on the victory’ and had agreed with the telegram he had sent to Sykes. Three Turkish armies had been destroyed with a loss of 25,000 killed, wounded or captured, effectively ending their ability to continue the war, by the joint action of British cavalry and aircraft, at a cost of 3500 British Empire casualties. Over sixty enemy aircraft were captured on the ground. The RAF lost three aircraft.
Despite the lack of joint planning or a joint plan as it would be eventually be understood in the Second World War, the RAF’s planning and plan was more joint than at Amiens, though there is no evidence this was a result of lessons learnt from Amiens. Geoffrey Salmond later identified several lessons. First was the need for complete confidence between the Army and RAF commander, and the co-location of their headquarters. Second was for the air commander to work out how air can best support the land campaign and to give forthright advice, noting at Megiddo the RAF’s plan enabled Allenby’s deception and surprise. Salmond also emphasised the impact of attacking retreating troops, and the importance of having planned to do so beforehand.[28] Finally, it is worth noting that Slessor, while reaching similar conclusions to Salmond in his Air Power and Armies, discounted the lessons of Megiddo when writing in 1936 because ‘absolute command’ of the air ‘can rarely if ever be secured in operations against a first-class enemy’.[29]
Biography: John Alexander is a part-time historian at the Royal Air Force’s Air Historical Branch, a Whitehall bureaucrat working on national security, and an RAF Reserve. As a regular he specialised in air/land integration, including in the Falklands and various Middle Eastern campaigns, was twice a Chief of the Air Staff Fellow, conceptualised future conflict for the 2010 SDSR, and spent his final six years in the Service in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The author wishes to thank his Air Historical Branch colleague Mr Stuart Hadaway for his help with this article.
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[1] J. B. A Bailey, The First World War and the Birth of the Modern Style of Warfare, Occasional Paper (Strategic and Combat Studies Institute); p. 22. (Camberley: Strategic and Combat Studies Institute, 1996).
[2] John Cotesworth Slessor, Air Power and Armies (London: Oxford University Press:, H. Milford, 1936), p. 164.
[3] Archibald Percival Wavell, The Palestine Campaigns, Campaigns and Their Lessons, 3rd ed (London: Constable, 1931), pp. 102, 201.
[4] T. E. Lawrence, Revolt in the Desert (London: Cape, 1927), p. 392, published while Lawrence was serving as an aircraftman in India and Geoffrey Salmond was Air Officer Commanding. SAA is small arms ammunition.
[5] Archibald Percival Wavell, Allenby, a Study in Greatness: The Biography of Field-Marshal Viscount Allenby of Megiddo and Felixstowe, G.C.B., G.C.M.G. (London ; Toronto: G G Harrap, 1940), pp. 249–50.
[6] TNA, WO 106/718 Communications between General Staff, War Office and Egypt. Outline of Operations Palestine, 1918.
[7] Wavell, Allenby, a Study in Greatness, pp. 249–50.
[8] Richard Williams, These Are Facts: The Autobiography of Air Marshal Sir Richard Williams, KBE, CB, DSO (Canberra: Australian War Memorial and the Australian Government Publishing Service, 1977), pp. 71, 94.
[9] TNA AIR 1/498/15/321/1 Lecture Report by Sir G. Salmond “Work of the R.A.F. in the Final Offensive in Palestine”. Later Air Chief Marshal Sir Geoffrey Salmond. John Salmond’s older brother he had followed John into the RFC. Followed John as Chief of the Air Staff for just two months before dying of cancer in April 1933.
[10] Peter Dye, ‘Biffy Borton’s Bomber’, Cross and Cockade International, 34.2 (2003), 71–78.
[11] Williams, These Are Facts, p. 91.
[12] AIR 1/2393/244/3 Air Cdre A E Borton Preliminary Report on R.A.F. Operations in Palestine, p. 2.
[13] TNA, AIR 1/498/15/321/1 Lecture Report by Sir G. Salmond “Work of the R.A.F. in the Final Offensive in Palestine”.
[14] T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph (London: J. Cape, 1935), pp. 615–16.
[15] George Fletcher MacMunn, Military Operations: Egypt & Palestine, History of the Great War Based on Official Documents by Direction of the Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence (London: printed and published by His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1928), pp. 448–49.
[16] TNA, AIR 1/498/15/321/1 Lecture Report by Sir G. Salmond “Work of the R.A.F. in the Final Offensive in Palestine”.
[17] MacMunn, Military Operations: Egypt & Palestine, Appendices, p. 23–27.
[18] Ibid, p. 6.
[19] The Forgotten Fronts, ed. by Colonel John Wilson, The First World War Battlefield Guide, 2 vols (Andover: Army, 2016), ii, p. Map 2.4, p. 13.
[20] H. A. Jones, The War in the Air: Being the Story of the Part Played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force, History of the Great War Based on Official Documents by Direction of the Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence, 6 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1937), vi, p. 210.
[21] Basil Henry Liddell Hart, A History of the World War 1914–1918. (London: Faber & Faber, 1930), p. 557.
[22] MacMunn, Military Operations: Egypt & Palestine, p. 495.
[23] TNA, AIR 1/498/15/321/1 Lecture Report by Sir G. Salmond “Work of the R.A.F. in the Final Offensive in Palestine”.
[24] RAF Museum Archive, ‘The Campaign in Palestine’, Letter, Dated 27th September, 1918, from Major-General W.G.H. Salmond, to the G.O.C., R.A.F. In the Field, Western Front, Describing the Work of the Royal Air Force in the earlier stages of the Final British Offensive against the Turks; TNA, AIR 1/725/115/1 Allenby’s Victory over Turks Undated Letter from G Salmond to Sykes (CAS) 1918.
[25] Edmund Henry Hynman Allenby, Allenby in Palestine: The Middle East Correspondence of Field Marshal Viscount Allenby, June 1917-October 1919, Publications of the Army Records Society, v. 22 (Stroud: Sutton, 2004), p. 179.
[26] F. M. Cutlack, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918. v 8, The Australian Flying Corps in the Western and Eastern Theatres of War, 1914–1918. (StLucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 1984), pp. 152–61.
[27] TNA, AIR 1/725/115/1 Allenby’s Victory over Turks Undated Letter from G Salmond to Sykes (CAS) 1918.
[28] TNA, AIR 1/498/15/321/1 Lecture Report by Sir G. Salmond “Work of the R.A.F. in the Final Offensive in Palestine”, pp. 15–19.
[29] Slessor, Air Power and Armies, p. 12.
