Biography: John Alexander is a historian at the Royal Air Force’s Air Historical Branch, a principal civil servant in the Ministry of Defence, 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 six years working on counter-terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Air-land integration was a critical factor to the stunning success of the British Fourth Army and its British, Canadian, and Australian corps — alongside the French First Army to the south — on the first day of the Battle of Amiens on 8 August 1918. The battle initiated the ‘100 Days’ Campaign that led to the end of the War on 11 November. British Fourth Army’s commander, General Sir Henry Rawlinson, wrote that ‘no factor did more to bring about success than the skilful co-operation with the infantry, of the various arms — cavalry, artillery, machine-gunners, engineers, the Air Force, and last but not least the tanks’.[2] General Erich Ludendorff (Field Marshal Hindenburg’s chief of staff) later referred to 8 August 1918 as ‘the black day of the German Army in the war’ because of its moral collapse that day, including for the first time massed surrenders, which in part were caused by low-level air attack.[3]
Yet the British use of air power at Amiens remains controversial because, notwithstanding numerical superiority, it had little impact after that first day. As future Chief of the Air Staff John Slessor argued in his seminal Air Power and Armies, the Royal Air Force’s (RAF’s) attempt to trap retreating German divisions by destroying the Somme bridges failed, with heavy losses of aircraft, diverted British aircraft from vital control of the air and air interdiction roles, and exposed a failure in land/air command and control, and operational planning.[4]
Preparation
By mid-July 1918, the tide had turned on the Western Front. Preparations for the last of Ludendorff’s 1918 offensives had been detected by French long-range aerial reconnaissance and subsequently defeated by Allied Generalissimo Marshal Ferdinand Foch’s counter-offensive at the Second Battle of the Marne in the Champagne region by an Allied force which included the British XXII Corps and the RAF’s reserve, IX Brigade. From 12 July, Foch and Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, commanding the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), began planning for British Fourth Army to clear the German threat to the railway hub of Amiens once reserves could be redeployed from Champagne. On 25 July, Haig issued orders for the attack. Led by the elite Canadian and Australian Corps, supported by British III Corps and the French First Army, it was intended to employ the combined arms tactics first used at Cambrai in November 1917 and used by the 4th Australian Division at Hamel on 4 July 1918, in which air power had been integrated to an unprecedented extent.[5] As German weakness at Amiens become apparent, at a conference on 5 August, Foch convinced Haig to expand Rawlinson’s objectives from a ten kilometre limited operation to a deeper advance of twenty-four kilometres.
Slessor highlights the failure to integrate ‘Air’ in Fourth Army’s planning. Major General John Salmond, commanding ‘the RAF in the Field’, as the BEF’s air component had been called since the formation of the RAF on 1 April 1918, attended the penultimate planning conference, though did not discuss the precise role of the RAF. Brigadier General Lionel Charlton, commanding Fourth Army’s V Brigade RAF, attended the early planning conferences only, and neither Salmond nor Charlton attended the final conference. Consequently, Charlton issued orders to his brigade on 5 August for Rawlinson’s original one-day only operation, though he issued clarification the following day concerning raiding by cavalry and armoured cars once the German line had been penetrated.[6] Although on 7 August Salmond wished Charlton’s brigade well ‘for tomorrow and the next few days’, it seems there was no clear land or air plan for day two and after.[7]
Salmond split his command, and made Charlton responsible for close co-operation with the attacking corps, while Salmond himself retained responsibility for the deeper battle. Both, therefore, had to co-ordinate with Rawlinson’s Fourth Army HQ. Salmond reinforced Charlton’s ‘corps wing’ to comprise six squadrons assigned to tactical reconnaissance work, including: Major Trafford Leigh Mallory’s No 8 Squadron RAF, which, at the Tank Corps’ request, was to warn of anti-tank guns and obstacles; and No 9 Squadron, which was to air drop small arms ammunition for advancing infantry and machine guns, both innovations first used at Hamel. Salmond also reinforced Charlton’s ‘army wing’, normally used for deep operations, to give it eight fighter squadrons dedicated to low-level ‘ground-strafing’, an innovation at Cambrai. For control of the air and interdiction, Salmond reinforced his reserve, IX Brigade, with squadrons from other RAF brigades giving him six fighter, four day bomber, two night bomber and two fighter reconnaissance squadrons, and another nine squadrons available from other brigades. [8]
The RAF also helped enable the surprise essential to the attack’s initial success. To support the deception of a Canadian attack in Flanders, on 27 July, Salmond issued orders for increased activity on the British Second Army front. Salmond also ordered increased activity on the British First and Fifth Army fronts for the two-days before the attack, delayed redeploying the reinforcement squadrons until 5 and 6 August, and night bombers were used to drown the noise of assembling British tanks. Meanwhile the RAF continued to fly offensive air patrols up to the enemy observation balloon line, fifteen kilometres beyond the front line, and prevented German air observation or air attack of the British preparations. Furthermore, Charlton’s reconnaissance aircraft took 37,825 whole plate photographs from 1–6 August,[9] which combined with sound ranging and flash spotting allowed the British to detect ninety-five per cent of German artillery before the battle began. Salmond’s plan for the battle was for his day-bombers to attack German airfields on Fourth Army’s front at daybreak on 8 August, escorted by fighters. Fighters were to fly relentless offensive patrols over the German line and, in the evening, day bombers were to interdict expected German reinforcements at Peronne and Chaulnes railway stations, followed by night bomber raids.[10]
The RAF concentrated 800 aircraft for the battle, almost half of which were fighters, representing forty-seven per cent of the RAF’s front-line strength in France. In addition, on 7 August, the French Commander-in-Chief, General Phillipe Petain, redeployed his French air reserve, the Division Aérienne, of 627 fighters and day bombers from Champagne, which together with the French First Army’s aircraft meant a total of 1,104 French aircraft were available for the battle. Against this, the German Air Service had 369 aircraft, inclusive of 140 fighters, on the German Second and Eighteenth Army fronts, whilst the bulk of the German aircraft remained in Champagne.[11]
The effectiveness of British air power on the Western Front had improved steadily throughout 1918. The British government’s huge investment in air power meant that in addition to replacing the estimated average monthly losses of 2,200 aircraft and 800–900 pilots, the ‘RAF in the Field’ had received thirteen additional squadrons, including two American (Nos 17 and 148), since the RAF’s formation. Furthermore, fighter squadron strength was increased from eighteen to twenty-four aircraft to enable two-squadron wing formations to match the German Jagdgeschwaders of fifty aircraft sometimes encountered. Other enhancements included a night fighter squadron (No 151), deployed from London’s defence, to protect British rear areas and the conduct of experiments in bombing railways which highlighted bombing inaccuracy and limited destructive effect of such operations. There were also significant improvements in command and control practices when Bristol Fighters, which were able to carry heavy two-way radio/telephone sets, were increasingly used for longer range aerial reconnaissance and also to guide single-seat fighter formations that had previously lacked wireless communications. Moreover, Artillery Liaison Officers were permanently established with each tactical reconnaissance squadron to improve co-operation with the BEF’s corps.[12]
The Battle
Air power played a key part in the first day of the battle, once the fog cleared. The first day-bombers to attack St Christ airfield were unable to find it in the mist and when No 98 and No 43 Squadron attacked it later in the day, the Germans had dispersed the aircraft and little damage was done. Due to fog, Captain Freddie West, a No 8 Squadron RAF flight commander, was unable to see any tanks to co-operate with and on returning from the sortie he flew his aircraft into a hangar at his airfield. He and his observer survived and West was awarded the VC for a subsequent action on 10 August. Even when the fog cleared after 0900, 8 Squadron’s anti-tank gun patrols were ineffective as the tank crews were unable to make out the aircrafts’ visual signals and had no wireless communications due to the technical difficulty of fitting antennae to tanks. No 8 Squadron, therefore, sent wireless messages to the Tank Battalion HQs and directly attacked enemy positions or dropped phosphorous bombs to create smoke screens, losing two aircraft to ground fire.[13]
In 1918 the only way corps and division commanders had of tracking their advancing infantry was from contact patrols flown by corps aircraft. The infantry were often loath to give away their position if control of the air was in doubt, but at Amiens, such was Allied superiority and speed of advance, they happily did so, as this report from No 3 Squadron Australian Flying Corps, flying RE8s, indicates:
Lt R Armstrong pilot, Lt F. Hart observer. Contact patrol, airborne 10.30 landed at 11.30. Flares called for [using a Klaxon to sound A in Morse to ask ‘where are you’] at 10.50 am and 11.30. Our line apparently runs [series of map references given]. Message and map dropped at 5th Australian Division, Australian Corps and 4th Army report centre. Height 1,000 feet. Tanks and infantry moving forward without opposition.[14]
Many German accounts tell of the moral effect on retreating troops of ground strafing by British, one saying the ‘airmen worked over us like madmen’.[15] Each squadron sent two aircraft over the line at less than 100 feet in thirty-minute shuttles to use their two machine guns and four twenty-five pound bombs on retreating Germans. At 1030 two Sopwith Camels from No 201 Squadron RAF attacked three trains, succeeding in immobilising one containing German soldiers returning from leave who promptly surrendered to the aircraft! Another two Camels captured a 240mm railway gun.[16] Losses were heavy though, with Nos 24, 65 and 201 Squadrons each losing at least six aircraft.[17]
British fighters were at first unopposed. Lieutenant Paul Winslow, US Air Corps, flying an SE 5A with No 56 Squadron RAF, noted a dawn patrol on 8 August:
We took off while it was still dark and got to 12,000 feet. All that could be seen were hundreds of our machines and thousands of gun flashes, denoting the top of the barrage. It was a wonderful sight to watch, and we were not bothered by Archie [anti-aircraft fire] so we could enjoy it. Landed at 7:00 am.[18]
German Second Army had sent for reinforcements the moment the barrage opened at 0420 and from midday over 300 additional aircraft arrived at a speed that surprised the British. While German fighter opposition over the battlefield increased on the afternoon of 8 August the German Air Service’s main effort would be to protect the Somme bridges.
The Somme Bridges
In response to fighter reconnaissance reports from midday, which stated the Somme bridges were crowded with retreating German troops and transport, Salmond, according to the official history ‘presumably on instructions from GHQ’,[19] ordered all IX Brigade RAF’s fighter and day bombers to cancel existing missions and instead bomb the bridges, which were technically challenging targets for the time. This report from a Bristol Fighter of Major Keith Park’s fighter reconnaissance No 48 Squadron is typical:
Corbie — Bray Road, from [map ref] to Bray congested with mixed traffic moving East. From [map ref] to Proyart road full of horsed transport moving East. Amiens — St Quentin Road between Proyart and Estrees seen to be congested with mixed traffic, general trend easterly…”.[20]
On 8 August the British attacked the bridges with 205 sorties and dropped twelve tons of bombs. The Camel fighters had no bomb sight, their four small bombs were ineffectual and also prevented them from protecting the bombers. Furthermore, the German airfields were adjacent to the bridges and they fought hard to protect the vital bridges. As the RAF official history notes ‘the German pilots, for the first time in the war, stayed to fight without calculation’. In the fierce fighting, Hermann Göring’s elite Richthofen Jagdgeschwader was soon reduced from fifty to eleven aircraft.[21] Two thirds of the 97 RAF aircraft lost or damaged beyond repair on 8 August 1918 were at the Somme crossings, and seventy of these aircraft were engaged in low-flying attacks on the Somme bridges or ground strafing when damaged.
Nevertheless, attacks against the bridges continued on 9 August, when British fighters were ordered to escort the bombers rather than bomb themselves. Salmond then ordered all available aircraft to attack the bridges at 1700 when thirty bombers were escorted by fifty fighters and another seventy-four aircraft flying sweep. RAF losses were fewer on 9 August at forty-five aircraft overall. Seventy-five per cent of those were when attacking the bridges as the fighters, unpractised in escorting bombers, flew too high to be effective. The underpowered DH9 aircraft were particularly vulnerable; No 107 Squadron lost five of twelve aircraft in one attack,[22] whereas No 205 Squadron’s DH4s attacked the bridges on nine occasions over three days without loss, claiming to have shot down three German aircraft.[23] Nonetheless, not one bridge had been destroyed though the raids added significantly to the confusion. On 10 August the bombers were switched to the interdiction of rail centres, too late to disrupt the arrival of German reinforcement divisions.
After the Battle
After Amiens, the RAF continued to adapt and innovate rapidly, incorporating lessons learned in order to improve efficiency. These included assigning No 73 Squadron’s fighters to ground strafe anti-tank guns in future attacks and establishing a radio-equipped Central Information Bureau to collect information on ground targets from corps aircraft to direct ground-strafing fighters using voice radio messages and also to use signals intelligence to detect and then ground-control fighters to intercept German aircraft. Another lesson highlighted by Slessor was to use intelligence and long-range air reconnaissance to plan second and third day objectives to isolate the battlefield.[24] At Megiddo in Palestine in September 1918, General Sir Edmund Allenby and John Salmond’s brother, Geoffrey, had identified before the attack likely Turkish escape routes and instigated planned ‘shuttle’ attacks to destroy a retreating Turkish Army at Wadi Fara.
The longer-term lessons for the RAF were that interdiction was more effective than costly close air support and that air power should be centrally controlled to enable concentration of force. [25] These lessons, used by Slessor and others, eventually led to the formation of the tactical air forces of the Second World War, and this is perhaps the main legacy of the RAF’s contribution to the Battle of Amiens.[26]
[1] War Diary, 5th Canadian Infantry Battalion, quoted in S. F. Wise, Canadian Airmen and the First World War, The Official History of the Royal Canadian Air Force, v. 1 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press [for] the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Government Publishing Centre, Supply and Services, Canada, 1980), p. 521.
[2] Archibald Armar Montgomery-Massingberd, The Story of the Fourth Army in the Battles of the Hundred Days, August 8th to November 11th, 1918 (London: Hodder and Stoughton limited, 1920), p. x.
[3] Erich Ludendorff, Meine Kriegserinnerungen, 1914–1918, 3. Aufl (Berlin: ES Mittler und sohn, 1919), p. 547.
[4] John Cotesworth Slessor, Air Power and Armies (London: Oxford University Press:, H. Milford, 1936); for an account of the battle see Charles Messenger, The Day We Won the War: Turning Point at Amiens, 8 August 1918 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2008) and Gary Sheffield, ‘The Battle of Amiens, 8–11 August 1918’, in The First World War Battlefield Guide. the Western Front Volume 1 Volume 1, ed. by Mungo Melvin, 2nd edn (Andover: Creative Media Design, Army Headquarters, 2015), pp. 163–70.
[5] Michael Molkentin, ‘Air Power and the Battle of Hamel’, From Balloons to Drones, 2018 <https://balloonstodrones.com/2018/07/11/air-power-and-the-battle-of-hamel/> [accessed 12 July 2018].
[6] TNA, AIR 1/1592/204/83/17 5 Brigade RFC/RAF Correspondence and Instructions Re Operations July 1917 — November 1918, p. instructions issued 5 August 1918.
[7] TNA, AIR 1/695/21/20/205 History of 205 Squadron, R.A.F. 1916–1931, p. 14.
[8] TNA, AIR 1/677/21/13/1887 Air Operations, the Western Front. 1918 May — Nov. AHB Narrative. Originally A.H.B. Reference 21/13/1887, pp. 94–100.
[9] Montgomery-Massingberd, p. 25.
[10] TNA, AIR 1/677/21/13/1887 Air Operations, the Western Front. 1918 May — Nov, pp. 93–99.
[11] TNA, AIR 1/677/21/13/1887 Air Operations, the Western Front. 1918 May, p. 103.
[12] Ibid, pp. 66–93.
[13] AIR 1/725/97/10 History of Tank and Aeroplane Co-Operation 1 Jul November 1918.
[14] Dr Alfred Price, ‘Air Power Taken to Its Limits and Beyond: The Battle of Amiens’, Air Power Review, 4 (2001), 118–35 (p. 124).
[15] Thilo von Bose, Die Katastrophe des 8. August 1918, Schlachten des Weltkrieges ; Bd. 36 (Oldenburg i. D.: Stalling, 1930).
[16] Montgomery-Massingberd, p. 50.
[17] Trevor Henshaw, The Sky Their Battlefield: Air Fighting and the Complete List of Allied Air Casualties from Enemy Action in the First War: British, Commonwealth and United States Air Services 1914 to 1918 (London: Grub Street, 1995), pp. 368–72.
[18] Price, p. 121.
[19] 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. 441.
[20] Price, p. 128.
[21] Jones, vi, pp. 441–44.
[22] Henshaw, p. 373.
[23] TNA, AIR 1/695/21/20/205 History of 205 Squadron, R.A.F. 1916–1931, p. 14.
[24] Slessor, pp. 170–71.
[25] 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 (p. 118).
[26] See the so-called ‘Slessor Paper’, TNA CAB 80/37, Continental Operations 1943: Operational Organisation and System of Command of the RAF, Memorandum by CAS, 21 July 1942.
