By Group Captain John Alexander
The article was first published as Chapter 17 of the Army Staff Ride 18 Reader in July 2018.
The purpose of Army Staff Ride 18 (ASR18), as part of Operation REFLECT, was to honour all those who served, remember all those who suffered and to learn from their experiences, lessons to enhance the Army’s professional understanding. ASR18’s focus was the changing fortunes of the four principal armies of 1918 (German, French, British and American) on the Western Front, the restoration of operational manoeuvre and the subsequent conflict resolution, and reflected the critical role of air power by 1918. The lessons from the dedicated air power stands for Operation Michael and the Battle of Amiens (of a total of thirteen), the contemporary Air/Land Integration brief for the deep-battle planning exercise, and the contribution of the RAF participant in each of the twelve syndicates meant the importance of ‘Air’ in operational manoeuvre was the first lesson listed at the concluding after action review held in the fortress of Sedan. This article, the air power chapter of the ASR18 Reader, is published here with the kind permission of its editor, Major General (Retired) Mungo Melvin.[1]
Introduction
By 1918 air power was essential to what Jonathan Bailey calls the birth of the modern system of warfare, which transformed the linear battlefield of 1914, familiar to Napoleon or Wellington, to the three-dimensional battlefield of 1918, recognisable to us now.[2] Furthermore, air warfare and the major powers’ air services had been transformed since 1914, following substantial investment, as the first part of this chapter highlights. As emphasised here, the predominant task of the British, French, German and US air services on the Western Front was army support, albeit with differing emphasis on the roles of air power.[3] The chapter then considers from an air power perspective the Army Staff Ride 1918’s unifying themes of coalition warfare; innovation and adaptation; command, leadership and morale; and conflict resolution. Finally, the differing lessons identified are briefly summarised.
The Investment in Air Power
The rudimentary air services of 1914 had been transformed by 1918. The British Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) and Army Royal Flying Corps (RFC) mobilised in 1914 with around 113 airworthy aircraft and 2,000 all ranks. Yet by the Armistice the newly independent Royal Air Force (RAF) consisted of 291,174 all ranks and 3,300 front-line aircraft of a total of 22,647. The French and German air services had 120 and 232 aircraft respectively in August 1914, and France 4511 and Germany 2390 front-line aircraft at the Armistice.[4] Britain produced 55,093 airframes and 41,034 aero engines during the war, the French 67,982 airframes and 85,317 engines, and the Germans 47,637 airframes and 41,000 engines. In October the British aircraft industry had 374,712 employees, the French 186,000 and the Germans around 100,000, the difference in productivity explained by the British use of unskilled labour, including women and boys.[5]
Air combat on the Western Front reached a bloody peak in 1918. Of the total of 4733 British aircrew killed on the Western Front, 2051 were killed after 1 April 1918, substantially more than the RAF’s front-line strength of 1600 on 1 August 1918. For Germany, 56% of aircrew casualties were in 1918.[6] The hours flown per British aircrew casualty (killed or missing) on the Western Front was 289 in June 1918, up from 92 in ‘Bloody April’ 1917. Of the 27,333 officers serving in the RAF at the Armistice the vast majority were in the flying training system.[7] In November 1918 the RAF had 87 of its 187 operational squadrons on the Western Front, with a further twelve in the Independent Force or for maritime operations and UK air defence at Dunkirk. The remainder were employed overseas, in home defence or anti-submarine operations. In contrast, only around 10% of German strength was in other theatres.[8]
Air Power Roles on the Western Front
From 1917 all air services were increasingly specialised by air power role and ever more autonomous. All armies had recognised the utility of battlefield aerial observation before 1914: the four RFC squadrons totalling 63 aircraft that accompanied the BEF in 1914 were solely for reconnaissance. The French and German Armies had also recognised before the War the potential of aircraft to fight other aircraft and attack ground targets. Both France and Germany initiated strategic bombing campaigns in 1915: while the French bombed German industry, the Germans attacked British civilian targets with Zeppelin airships. In 1914 the RNAS had split from the originally joint RFC formed in 1912 because of its focus on attack, strategic air defence, and seaplanes, and deployed a wing to join the French strategic bombing campaign in 1915. When it ended in 1916 the RNAS fighter and bomber squadrons reinforced the RFC on the Western Front.
From 1917, after the lessons of the Somme and Verdun, all air services consisted of fighters, reconnaissance aircraft, and day and night bombers, though in differing proportions as shown in Table 17.1 below. By mid-1918 the British had proportionally more fighters and bombers than other air services and fewer observation aircraft because of the priority the RFC, and subsequently RAF, gave to offensive action, whereas in France and German the priority was air observation for the army. The German Air Service in 1918 had become increasingly defensive; hence by the Armistice the proportion of fighters had reached 50%.[9] The German Air Service also employed, uniquely, specialist battlefield ground attack aircraft, which made up 8% of its strength. The expanding US air service’s composition in 1918 was largely determined by aircraft availability.
Despite differences in composition, each air service had a broadly similar structure. By 1918 each BEF army had an RFC (and from 1 April 1918 RAF) brigade of at least three wings (units commanded by lieutenant colonels). One of the wings, the ‘corps wing’, consisted of several Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) squadrons (commanded by majors) of up to 20 aircraft each. One such squadron was allocated to each army corps for tactical ISR, sometimes allocating individual flights to specific divisions. These tactical ISR squadrons (called ‘corps squadrons’) provided liaison officers to corps and divisions. Each RFC/RAF brigade also included an ‘army wing’ consisting of fighter, day-bomber, night-bomber and fighter (long-range) reconnaissance squadrons, which the brigade commander retained control of. The third wing of a brigade was equipped with kite balloons for artillery observation.
The French and German air services had separate units specialised in long-range artillery, photographic and high-altitude reconnaissance. German doctrine was to allocate small tactical ISR units of six aircraft (Fliegerabteilung) to divisions, although resource constraints meant this was not always possible. Control of all fighter and bomber units was retained by the commanding general of the Air Service (Kommandierender General der Luftstreitkräfte (Kogenluft)) at GHQ (Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL)).
ISR
Tactical ISR
For tactical ISR the air services flew aerial observation patrols up to the ‘balloon line’ 15 kilometres beyond the forward line to take aerial photographs and to detect enemy artillery. They used a wireless-telegraphy (Morse) transmitter to control counter-battery fire. Meanwhile observers in tethered kite balloons used telephones to do the same. While increasingly from mid-1917 the British used sound-ranging and flash spotting to locate static enemy guns, aerial observation was relied upon to detect German artillery during mobile operations. Furthermore, all mapping was dependent on air photography. In 1918 the RFC/RAF in France took 5,284,826 oblique or overheard photographs, 827,514 in August alone.[11] Tactical ISR aircraft were robust and stable two-seaters, vulnerable to enemy fighters, such as the British RE8 and Armstrong Whitworth FK8, the French (and US) Breguet 14 and Salmson A2, and the German C-Types (predominantly Rumpler, Halberstadt and Hanoverian).
During an offensive tactical ISR aircraft flew ‘contact patrols’ below 1000 feet in tracks parallel to the start line to maintain contact, the British would use a Klaxon to sound the Morse letter A to ask ‘where are you?’.[12] British infantry responded by lighting flares or displaying reflective metal discs. Enemy anti-aircraft fire was an indication the aircraft had flown beyond the forward line. Once established, the forward line was marked on a map, dropped at division, corps or army HQ. Other tactical ISR aircraft flew at 2000 feet to observe enemy counter attacks, call in artillery fire, and warn friendly troops using pre-arranged signals. All air services used similar tactics: their effectiveness relied upon good weather and control of the air. Both British and German accounts tell of the unwillingness of attacking infantry to identify their position to friendly aircraft when control of the air was in doubt.
‘Strategic’ ISR
Long-range ISR beyond the balloon line became an increasingly important source of intelligence. Thus, in preparation for the German Spring Offensive, General Erich Ludendorff issued a directive to counter Allied aerial reconnaissance, based in part on captured British photographic intelligence doctrine.[13] Though aerial reconnaissance contributed to the Allies’ anticipation of the German Spring Offensive, detecting fourteen new airfields facing the British Third and Fifth Armies and identifying a four-fold increase in German aircraft wireless intercepts,[14] aerial reconnaissance could not identify conclusively where Operation Michael would be launched and in what strength. Constraints included poor weather for much of March 1918, and the British Fifth Army front was new to British intelligence. German camouflage and deception proved effective.
The French Air Service specialist long-range reconnaissance Groupe Weiller, however, identified Operation Marneschutz-Reims/Friedensturm in July 1918. Its commander Paul-Louis Weiller, an ex-gunner and leading innovator of aerial photography, had recently convinced General Phillipe Pétain to form this specialist group of high-flying Breguet 14 aircraft. By this time, the Germans had lost control of the air and were unable to conceal their intentions. As a result of this success, from 28 July Weiller reported directly to the new Allied Généralissime Marshal Ferdinand Foch, flying reconnaissance sorties up to 200 kilometres behind the lines.
The Allied attack at Amiens on 8 August 1918, in contrast, achieved total surprise, in part because of British control of the air as well as sophisticated deception measures, notwithstanding the near invulnerability of the oxygen and heated-suit equipped German Rumpler C.VII reconnaissance aircraft, capable of flying at 100 mph above 18000 feet. At Amiens the Allies assembled 800 British and 1104 French aircraft against initially 395 German machines.
Control of the Air
Despite the Allies’ numerical advantage in the air, the German Air Service continued to contest control of the air when it chose to, such as when Allied air interdiction threatened vital railway hubs at Metz close to the Meuse-Argonne front and also at Charleroi and Namur in Belgium. At the latter, on 30 October 1918, in what the RAF’s official history calls the fiercest air action of the war, the RAF lost 41 aircraft and claimed 67 German aircraft.[15] Whereas the RFC/RAF doctrine for control of the air, inherited from Major General Hugh Trenchard as ‘GOC RFC in the Field’, was to conduct relentless offensive patrols over the whole line to engage German aircraft, the German Air Service practice differed. Rather, it concentrated its fighters into mobile wings of 50 aircraft (called Jagdgeschwader or Jastas by the Germans, or Circuses by the British) and chose where and when to fight. In response, the British also increasingly fought in larger squadron or wing formations.[16] Thus, for Operation Michael the German Air Service concentrated 820 aircraft against 645 Allied aircraft, gaining control of the air for the first three days of the offensive. German economy of force, however, meant its observation aircraft were often at a disadvantage; reduced German opposition meant British fighters could be allocated to ground attack.
Increasingly, the balance of air power in 1918 reflected Allied industrial and economic strength and the impact of the naval blockade on Germany. Although the German Air Service enjoyed a slight qualitive advantage in the Fokker D.VII fighter, well-handled Sopwith Camels, SE 5As, Bristol Fighters and French SPAD XIIIs could match it. Furthermore, only 2000 Fokker D.VIIs were made, compared to 8500 SPAD XIIIs. German industry was not only running increasingly short of raw materials, but was also fragmented, using many types for each role when the Allies by 1918 used one or two. During the war German industry produced twice as many types and half as many aircraft as the French. Additionally, aircraft and fuel shortages severely degraded Germany’s pilot training, increasing flying accidents, and further reducing combat strength and qualitive advantage. The elite German Jagdgeschwader Eins started the Battle of Amiens on 8 August 1918 with only 21 of its 52 established fighters available; it finished on 11 August with eleven. At the same time, British pilot training was rapidly improving, with pilots arriving on the front-line with 65 hours flying rather than thirteen hours as in 1917.
All the powers employed ground-based air defence. Germany in particular had a sophisticated system under the command of the Kogenluft with 896 heavy anti-aircraft guns, including the forerunner of the Second World War’s famous 8.8cm Flak (Fleigerabwehrkanone), 454 searchlights, and 204 machine guns which forced Allied bombers to fly high. German Flak (known during the First World War by the British as ‘Archie’) shot down no fewer than 748 Allied aircraft in 1918–132 in September and 129 in October alone, representing around 20% of Allied losses.[17] The first recorded use of Flak guns in the anti-tank role was in August 1916 at the Somme.
Close Attack
From 1917 the British increasingly used its fighters for ‘ground-strafing’. The first large-scale use was the use of four squadrons at the transformational battle of Cambrai in November 1917, where despite a loss rate of 30%, GHQ was convinced of its worth. The most common type used in this role was the Sopwith Camel, armed with two .303 machine guns and four 25-pound bombs and typically flying below 100 feet. Meanwhile, German battle flights (Schlachtstaffeln) used the specialist armoured Junkers J1 or dual-role observation aircraft, the CL-types, to achieve considerable debilitating physical and morale effect against British troops at Cambrai and during the Spring Offensive. Whereas British training seems to have been limited to practising signals, the Germans conducted air land integration live firing exercises in preparation. For the French, Pétain thought ground attack too costly, calling it a ‘mission de sacrifice’, and restricted its use to situations of extreme emergency.[18]
The RFC’s planned response to the anticipated German Spring Offensive was to ‘render our artillery fire effective’. When Operation Michael started on 21 March, poor weather initially prevented flying. Once the weather cleared, however, the German Air Service had secured control of the air. In the meantime, British static communications had collapsed, with many artillery batteries losing their wireless sets or antennas in the retreat. Failing logistics, a lack of forward airfields and limited aircraft endurance, however, rapidly degraded German control of the air. Trenchard’s replacement, Major General John Salmond, on 25 March concentrated 50% of his fighter strength (27 squadrons) on reserve airfields in support of the British Third and Fifth Armies, ordering every available RFC aircraft to ‘bomb and shoot up everything they can see on the enemy’s side of the line.’ General Duval, commanding the French Air Service, ordered ground attacks from 25 March and one of Foch’s first actions as Allied Supreme Commander was to order on 1 April the ‘first duty of aeroplanes is to assist the troops on the ground by incessant attacks’.[19]
By 31 March the RFC was struggling to find German air opposition. General Hermann von Kuhl, Chief of Staff of Crown Prince Rupprecht’s Army Group, later claimed that the RFC accounted for one half of its casualties. General Johannes von der Marwitz, commanding the German Second Army, reported the same effect. General Ludendorff subsequently wrote all troops suffered heavily from ‘hostile airmen’.[20] Yet ground-strafing was extremely costly, accounting for over half of the RFC/RAF’s losses during Operation Michael. For example, No 80 Squadron RAF, employed in this role from March 1918 to the Armistice, lost 75% of its aircrew per month. Strafing was unpopular with aircrew because the high losses were thought arbitrary and notwithstanding the skill of the flyer; Manfred von Richthofen and ‘Mick’ Mannock were amongst the aces lost at low level. Nevertheless, notwithstanding the losses, by the time of the British attack on the Siegfriedstellung in late September 1918, around 60% of the RAF’s bombs dropped were from fighters, causing ‘morale effect’ as much as physical damage.
Air Interdiction
All air services used day and night-bombers for air interdiction and offensive counter-air (OCA) operations. British ‘army wings’, for example, used DH4 and DH9 day-bombers with two 112-pound or twelve 25-pound bombs, in formations of six to eight aircraft, typically bombing from around 1000–5000 feet in daylight and used squadrons flying obsolete FE2b and HP 0/400 aircraft by night. Before the German Spring Offensive, the General Staff in London was concerned that British air interdiction bombing efforts were diffuse and called for a greater concentration of effort. Bombing, however, was inaccurate, with limited destructive power, as demonstrated by the British failure in early August 1918 to destroy the Somme bridges during the battle of Amiens.
Given the right circumstances, air interdiction and OCA were effective, bombing crowded rear areas between 15 and 70 kilometres behind the front. Prominent examples included catching aircraft on the ground, as the Germans did at Doullens on the night of 26–27 March, or on 10–11 August 1918, when eleven German Gotha bombers destroyed over 50% of British vehicle spares in France in a depot near Calais. The resultant estimated financial cost exceeded that of all 52 German air raids on Great Britain during the war. Of note, German night bombing in Britain and France was enhanced by the use of radio navigation beams. In response to nearly 4000 German night interdiction sorties over the British front between May and October 1918, the RAF in mid-June redeployed a night-fighter squadron from London’s home defence to France, which subsequently shot down 20 German raiders for no loss, with the South African Major Quintin Brand becoming Britain’s first night-fighting ace.
Strategic Attack
The British, French and German transportation, industry and population targets for strategic attack were adjacent to the Western Front. The bombers used in 1915 for French attacks on German industry in the Rhineland and in the occupied Saarland were soon transferred to Western Front roles, and their accompanying RNAS wing at Luxeuil was transferred to the BEF in 1916. The German Zeppelin threat to the UK was largely defeated by 1916, whereas the daylight Gotha bomber raids on London in June and July 1917 killed several hundred people and caused Lloyd George’s government to fear the bombing’s impact on war production and political stability. Both General Sir Douglas Haig and Trenchard, however, were loath to transfer squadrons of modern aircraft from the Western Front to defend London or to bomb Germany. Consequently, the South African General Jan Smuts’ War Cabinet reports recommended a unified commander for London’s air defences and the formation of a separate air ministry and air service to rationalise aircraft production and create a surplus of aircraft to defend Britain and bomb Germany. British air defences eventually consisted of eighteen squadrons of modern fighters and numerous searchlights and anti-aircraft guns, all diverted from the BEF. Following the loss of 62 Gotha bombers in raids on England between September 1917 and May 1918, including 42 by flying accidents, the Kogenluft in May 1918 switched Bombengeschwader der OHL (Bogohl) 3, the ‘Englandgeschwader’, from raiding England to reinforcing air interdiction on the Western Front.
Meanwhile, in October 1917 the British formed a bomber wing in France to bomb German industry in the Rhineland and Saarland, which became VIII Brigade RAF and then on 6 June 1918 the Independent Force, commanded by the recently resigned Chief of the Air Staff, Trenchard, who reported directly to the Secretary of State for Air. Eventually consisting of ten squadrons, in five months the Independent Force dropped 537 tons of bombs in 1918, but only 47 tons on German industrial targets. The remainder was on German railways and airfields near the front, supporting French and US operations in the Meuse-Argonne, both in response to requests from Foch and also because losses to Trenchard’s day-bombers disrupted deeper raids. To defend the homeland the Kogenluft employed 240 modern fighters, 1200 anti-aircraft guns, searchlights, warning and reporting observers, and even decoy targets. As a result, the Independent Force in August 1918 dropped 100 tons of bombs at a cost of 81 aircraft lost. Monthly losses averaged over 70%, predominately to day-bombers. Immediate post-war survey showed the raids had no impact on German industrial production, often failing to find the target. Two-weeks before the Armistice, Britain, France, Italy and the US formed an Inter-Allied Independent Air Force to bomb Germany in 1919 with additional and more capable aircraft such as the four-engine Vimy bomber. The force was under Foch’s command, however, and would be used to support army operations if he ordered it.
Air Mobility
Air mobility was the least prominent of air power roles. Both Britain and France formed special duty flights to transport agents into enemy territory. At Hamel on 4 July 1918 No 9 Squadron RAF dropped small arms ammunition to forward troops and by late August this was routine practice for several squadrons. The largest airdrop took place on 2 October 1918 to the Belgian, British and French Army Group in muddy Flanders, when Belgian, British, French, and US Marine Corps aircraft dropped 15,000 rations and 65,000 rounds in 80 sorties.[21] When the requirement for air mobility arose after the war for imperial policing the RAF converted surplus heavy bombers for air transport.
Unifying Themes
Coalition Warfare
The Allies in 1918 increasingly exploited air power’s flexibly to reinforce each other. The British twice deployed IX Brigade RAF, the BEF’s reserve Brigade, to support the French defence against Operations Gneisenau and Operation Marneschutz-Reims/Friedensturm in June and July 1918 respectively. At Saint-Mihiel the Allies assembled 1400 aircraft; two-thirds French or British. Likewise, in the Meuse-Argonne the raw US Air Service was supported by the French Division Aérienne and Trenchard’s Independent Force, and each US corps had a French tactical ISR squadron.
The Allied air services were multi-national. All aircraft operated by the US Air Service were either French or British made; some British types in 1918 used American engines made under licence, and approximately one third of British aircraft had French engines. Many French aircraft were equipped with British-made Lewis guns. The British air services in the First World War were themselves coalition forces with airmen from the Dominions disproportionately represented, making up 20% of all British aircrew killed. While Australia formed an Australian Flying Corps of four squadrons, many Australians and all other imperial aircrew flew in British units. Ten Canadians shot down more than 30 enemy aircraft each and Canadians made up 25% of the RNAS. To address manpower shortages in 1918 the British were investigating markedly increasing the number of Indian aircrew. Two hundred and sixty American volunteers flew with the French Escadrille Lafayette, 150 pilots from the US Air Service served with the French Air Service and 150 US observers were French trained. Seventy-five Americans flew Italian Air Service bombers, and a further 36 flew with the RAF’s Independent Force and 180 with the RAF on the Western Front. Four US Air Service squadrons were assigned to the RAF in France until 1 November 1918.[22]
Innovation and Adaptation
The history of air warfare in the First World War is a history of innovation and adaptation, at a unique rate. One only has to consider the difference between the box-kites flown in 1914 with the aircraft of 1918. In contrast types such as the B17, Spitfire and Bf109 saw service throughout the Second World War, albeit heavily modified. There are countless examples of the rapid innovation and adaptation of air power in 1918, for example with the British from the Battle of Hamel onwards assigning No 8 Squadron RAF to provide tactical ISR for the tanks and after Amiens using the fighters of No 73 Squadron to ground-strafe German anti-tank guns. The RAF also innovated with air command and control. Increasingly Bristol Fighters were equipped with radio and allocated in small numbers to tactical ISR squadrons. Recognising the failure of command and control at Amiens the British within two weeks had created a radio-equipped Central Information Bureau (CIB) which used signals intelligence to detect and then ground-control the interception of German tactical ISR aircraft. The CIB also collected information on ground targets from tactical ISR aircraft and transmitted them to fighters holding in a cab rank above the front-line using voice messages over radio telegraphy (R/T). The British and French, and latterly the US, exchanged aerial photographic best practice. But there were examples of dogma as well, such as the British relentless offensive air patrols, which were not stopped until September 1918.
Command, Leadership and Morale
Command
There were both similarities and differences in the command of the air services on the Western Front. All were increasingly autonomous. The German Army Commander of the Air Service (Kogenluft), established in October 1916, worked directly to the OHL and commanded all flying, signals and Flak units. He retained central control of most fighters and the relatively few German bombers, allocating them as required, delegating to army corps and, where numbers allowed, divisions, task organised predominately tactical ISR units under army (Kommander de Flieger (Kofl)) and corps Grupperfüher der Flieger (Grufl)) air commanders, who also commanded the Flak units.
British command arrangements on the Western Front were unchanged with the formation of the RAF. The ‘GOC RFC in the Field’ became the ‘GOC RAF in the Field’ and retained command of the BEF’s air component. While most of the RFC/RAF strength was allocated to the numbered army RFC/RAF brigades, other than the GHQ reserve (IX Brigade RFC/RAF) which represented only 15% of the RFC/RAF strength, control was in fact centralised with the GOC. Hence, Salmond’s rapid concentration of force against Operation Michael and to reinforce the French, as previously mentioned. Furthermore, British Army and RFC/RAF commanders closely co-operated whereas according to the historian E R Hooton, German general staff officers often marginalised their air commanders once an operation started. The US system followed the British model though with different terminology for air formations as did the French Air Service, latterly commanded by General Maurice Duval. In May 1918, however, Pétain formed the Division Aérienne under Duval to concentrate France’s fighters and bombers, some 600 aircraft, to support manoeuvre.
Leadership and Morale
Air warfare was fought by junior officers and NCOs. The commanders-in-chief of the major powers’ armies on the Western Front were not aircrew, of course, but all were proponents of air power in support of their armies. The French and German Air Service commanders, Duval and General Ernst von Hoeppner, were not flyers either. Although Trenchard and the American Expeditionary Force Air Service commander, Brigadier-General Billy Mitchell, were both trained pilots, they had no combat flying experience, whereas Salmond had from commanding 3 Squadron RFC until May 1915. By 1918 formation commanders, such as RAF brigade commanders, were typically seasoned in air combat. Many RFC/RAF squadron commanders, however, did not lead every mission as they were considered too valuable to lose. As the historian George Williams notes, this was problematic for the Independent Force as it meant the leadership had little idea of the challenges of navigation and bombing and how to address them, or indeed the effectiveness of the raids. Nevertheless, despite the horrendous losses aircrew morale held up and there was no shortage of volunteers for aircrew training and to join what Prime Minister David Lloyd George called the ‘cavalry of the clouds’. The aces were famous even if individual combat had been replaced by ‘big wing’ air combat and ground strafing. Furthermore, in 1918 British aircrew life expectancy on operations and in training markedly improved, though its offensive doctrine meant British aircrew losses in 1918 were double French and German.
Conflict Resolution
By the Armistice air power was a key element of the divisional-corps level tactical battle and its operational impact was increasing but not yet decisive on the Western Front. Air power was at its most decisive on other fronts where the physical and morale effect of Allied air attack on retreating armies in Palestine, Macedonia and on the Italian front in late 1918 were harbingers of the Falaise Gap in 1944 and the Basra Road in 1991. Air power hastened the collapse of Ottoman, Bulgarian and Austro-Hungarian resistance.[23] Indeed, the belief in the morale effect of bombing on ‘Orientals’ was a factor in the British decision to use the RAF for post-war colonial control. It is a measure of the impact of air power in 1918 that an Armistice condition was the immediate destruction of 2000 aircraft including all Fokker D.VIIs. Significantly, the Treaty of Versailles allowed Germany a 100,000-man army, but no aircraft or anti-aircraft guns.
Lessons
The first commander of the post-war German Army, the Reichswehr, General Hans von Seeckt, was another proponent of air power. He retained 180 airmen to act as his air staff and identify lessons from the War in 27 committees focused on air power. Germany, von Seeckt’s committees concluded, needed an independent air force of fighter groups to gain air superiority and conduct home defence, heavy bombers to disrupt enemy mobilization and transportation systems, reconnaissance aircraft for divisions, specialist ground attack aircraft, and Flak in standardized calibres and for dual use as anti-tank guns.[24] Following the war, France retained an air service of 100 squadrons for army support, including the Division Aérienne.
In stark contrast, the RAF was rapidly demobilised and focused entirely on colonial control until in 1922 Lloyd George’s government formed a Home Defence Air Force of fighters and bombers to counter the so-called ‘French air menace’. Post-war revisions to the British Field Service Regulations and various mechanised experiments from 1922 onwards included air support. The Ten-Year Rule, however, meant preparing an expeditionary force for European war and retaining the air land integration lessons of 1918 were not priorities for either the British Army or the RAF. Much hard-fought learning was therefore lost and had to be painfully re-learnt during the Second World War.
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 Major General (Ret) Mungo Melvin, Senior Mentor Army Staff Ride 18, for his help with this chapter.
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Notes:
[1] John Alexander, ‘Chapter 17. Air Power on the Western Front 1918’, in Army Staff Ride 2018 Reader, ed. by Mungo Melvin (British Army, 2018).
[2] See J. B. A Bailey, ‘Chapter 13. The First World War. A Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) and the Birth of the Modern Style of Warfare’, in Army Staff Ride 2018 Reader (DS Reconnaissance and Rehearsal (14–18 May) Edition), ed. by Mungo Melvin (British Army, 2018). See Chapter 16.
[3] For the contemporary roles of air power see AJP 3.3 Allied Joint Doctrine for Air and Space Operations and Joint Doctrine Publication 0–30 UK Air and Space Power.
[4] Aircraft here includes aeroplanes, seaplanes and flying boats and does not include airships or balloons.
[5] 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), Appendices, 154–155.
[6] E. R. Hooton, War over the Trenches: Air Power and Western Front Campaigns 1916–1918 (Hersham: Midland, 2010). 229.
[7] 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), Appendices, pp. 160–61.
[8] See Sebastian Cox, ‘Overseas Air Campaigns’, in The Forgotten Fronts, ed. by Colonel John Wilson, The First World War Battlefield Guide, 2 vols (Andover: Army, 2016), ii, 111–23.
[9] E. R. Hooton, War over the Trenches.
[10] John Howard Morrow, The Great War in the Air: Military Aviation from 1909 to 1921, Smithsonian History of Aviation Series (Shrewsbury: Airlife, 1993), p. 346.
[11] John Peaty, ‘Chapter 18. Mapping and Survey on the Western Front’, in Army Staff Ride 2018 Reader (DS Reconnaissance and Rehearsal (14–18 May) Edition), ed. by Mungo Melvin (British Army, 2018). See Chapter 21.
[12] See for example SS 132 Co-operation between Aircraft and Infantry (April 1918).
[13] Terrence J. Finnegan, Shooting the Front: Allied Aerial Reconnaissance in the Great War (Stroud: Spellmount, 2011), pp. 97–98.
[14] Hooton, War over the Trenches, p. 202.
[15] H. A. Jones, The War in the Air, vi, pp. 544–46.
[16] See for example: Squadron Leader William Sholto-Douglas, ‘Fighting in the Air’, Air Power Journal, 21.1 (2018), 12–33.
[17] James S. Corum, The Luftwaffe: Creating the Operational Air War, 1918–1940, Modern War Studies (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997), p. 43.
[18] Greg Baughen, Blueprint for Victory: Britain’s First World War Blitzkrieg Air Force (United Kingdom: Fonthill Media, 2014), p. 34.
[19] Greg Baughen, The Rise and Fall of the French Air Force: French Air Operations and Strategy 1900–1940 (Stroud: Fonthill Media, 2018), p. 34.
[20] David John Jordan, ‘Army Co-Operation Missions of the Royal Flying Corps/Royal Air Force 1914–1918’ (unpublished Ph.D., Birmingham University, 1997), p. 345.
[21] Hooton, War over the Trenches, pp. 265–66.
[22] Michael Molkentin, ‘The Dominion of the Air: The Imperial Dimension of Britain’s War in the Air, 1914–1918’, British Journal for Military History, 4.2 (2018). Hooton, p. 267.
[23] Cox, Overseas Air Campaigns.
[24] Corum, The Luftwaffe: Creating the Operational Air War, pp. 52–66.
