Controversial Ideas: Did We Ever Need an Independent Air Force

pinehilljoe · Jun 10, 2018

I just finished the book Blackett War, about Patrick Blackett, the English Physicist that essentially invented what we now call Operational Research. The author points to a lot of instances where lack of unified command, and interservice rivalry caused much of the delay in winning the U-Boat War. He is not kind to Air Marshall Harris, who refused to divert aircraft to fight the Battle of the Bay of Biscay. Blackett argued nearly every U-Boat had to traverse the Bay, regardless of its destination, and 250 VLR aircraft should be diverted to spot and hunt them. Harris argued bombing the city that made the U-Boats was the way to defeat them. Hindsight shows Blackett correct, but its an example of lack of unified command.

swampyankee · Jun 10, 2018

pinehilljoe said:
I just finished the book Blackett War, about Patrick Blackett, the English Physicist that essentially invented what we now call Operational Research. The author points to a lot of instances where lack of unified command, and interservice rivalry caused much of the delay in winning the U-Boat War. He is not kind to Air Marshall Harris, who refused to divert aircraft to fight the Battle of the Bay of Biscay. Blackett argued nearly every U-Boat had to traverse the Bay, regardless of its destination, and 250 VLR aircraft should be diverted to spot and hunt them. Harris argued bombing the city that made the U-Boats was the way to defeat them. Hindsight shows Blackett correct, but its an example of lack of unified command.

I don't think this is a problem of lack of unified command; I think it's a problem where a politically powerful and rather monomaniacal officer was able to enforce decisions made on the basis of personal ideology, not evidence.

Zipper730 · Jun 10, 2018

pinehilljoe said:
I just finished the book Blackett War, about Patrick Blackett, the English Physicist that essentially invented what we now call Operational Research.

Really?

The author points to a lot of instances where lack of unified command, and interservice rivalry caused much of the delay in winning the U-Boat War.

Actually even prior to the decision to mount the area bombing campaign from 1942-1945, there was a strong desire to take on RAF resources to help the Royal Navy hunt submarines.

He is not kind to Air Marshall Harris, who refused to divert aircraft to fight the Battle of the Bay of Biscay. Blackett argued nearly every U-Boat had to traverse the Bay, regardless of its destination, and 250 VLR aircraft should be diverted to spot and hunt them. Harris argued bombing the city that made the U-Boats was the way to defeat them.

Bombing the cities that made the U-Boats wasn't really a very smart move since most of the city-bombing was aimed at destroying a lot of surface area and killing the population living there. The city-center usually made the target and industrial targets were usually bonuses. Regardless, destroying the city that made the U-boats doesn't stop the U-boats that are already deployed.

As for a unified command, I would disagree since the RAF was already an independent Air Arm and would probably actually work against the argument that an independent air arm is a good idea.

swampyankee said:
I think it's a problem where a politically powerful and rather monomaniacal officer was able to enforce decisions made on the basis of personal ideology, not evidence.

Yep

tyrodtom · Jun 10, 2018

The city-center usually made the target and industrial targets were usually bonuses.[/QUOTE said:
I think you need to show some sources on that .

Zipper730 · Jun 10, 2018

tyrodtom said:
I think you need to show some sources on that

Sure...

This is an abbreviated clip from the interview below

The whole enchilada

tyrodtom · Jun 10, 2018

I haven't the time right now to watch the second clip, but the first abbreviated clip you chose said nothing close to what you posted.

Zipper730 · Jun 10, 2018

tyrodtom said:
I haven't the time right now to watch the second clip, but the first abbreviated clip you chose said nothing close to what you posted.

Basically, the statement was that he was generally told not to bomb any specific target and blast the cities as a whole. The city was the target, anything within it was gravy...

Admittedly the RAF would at times destroy submarine pens

tyrodtom · Jun 10, 2018

He says he was not to bomb anything specific, " unless I was told to do so".

Does he say that " unless" never happened ?

For some strange reason you don't seem to be aware that since the beginning of the industrial revolution, most factories were located close to their labor pool.
Do you think that labor pool could possibly be located in cities ?
Do you think those factories might also be located in cities ?

Environmental laws weren't even dreamed of in the early 20th century.

Ascent · Jun 10, 2018

The RAF was created to form a unified command. An amalgamation of the RNAS and the RFC to prevent duplication and waste and give proper direction to the air war.

The Canadians combined all three services into one, the ultimate unified command. Funnily enough they're now three services again for all practical purposes, shows what success that was.

GrauGeist · Jun 11, 2018

tyrodtom said:
He says he was not to bomb anything specific, " unless I was told to do so".

Does he say that " unless" never happened ?

For some strange reason you don't seem to be aware that since the beginning of the industrial revolution, most factories were located close to their labor pool.
Do you think that labor pool could possibly be located in cities ?
Do you think those factories might also be located in cities ?

Environmental laws weren't even dreamed of in the early 20th century.

Actually, since mankind started any form of manufacturing.

One such example: the Romans built towns around copper mines in order to concentrate labor for the extraction and processing of copper ore. While the miners were typically slaves, the smelter workers, metal smiths, shippers and others were not.

The point being, where there is manufacturing, there is civilians.

Zipper730 · Jun 11, 2018

tyrodtom said:
He says he was not to bomb anything specific, "unless I was told to do so".
Does he say that "unless" never happened?

Obviously not, there were many raids carried out by the RAF on specific targets, but the city raids were generally aimed at the city and it's population as a whole.

This isn't really anything new, this has been talked about to death, but the area-bombing directive basically said that the goal should be that of the civilian population with the working population listed as almost an afterthought. This is not a morality issue, just a matter of what was done, and why it was done.

I should point out that this was not unusual in this period of time: Many were inspired by people like Hugh Trenchard and Giulio Douhet, and were practiced by quite a number of nations (Germany, UK, US, Italy, Japan, to name some). Later on it would become unacceptable, but at the time, it was actually pretty much the norm.

Ascent said:
The RAF was created to form a unified command. An amalgamation of the RNAS and the RFC to prevent duplication and waste and give proper direction to the air war.

Correct

buffnut453 · Jun 11, 2018

Zipper730 said:
Obviously not, there were many raids carried out by the RAF on specific targets, but the city raids were generally aimed at the city and it's population as a whole.

This isn't really anything new, this has been talked about to death, but the area-bombing directive basically said that the goal should be that of the civilian population with the working population listed as almost an afterthought. This is not a morality issue, just a matter of what was done, and why it was done.

How on earth do you split the "working population" from the "civilian population" in a major conurbation? They're the same thing! I really don't understand your obsession with the RAF bombing just civilians. For the most part they were bombing industrial centres where it was impossible to differentiate between multiple, closely-clustered targets. To say that the campaign was solely based on hitting civilians is nonsense. It was about reducing Germany's war-making capacity.

Zipper730 · Jun 11, 2018

buffnut453 said:
How on earth do you split the "working population" from the "civilian population" in a major conurbation? They're the same thing!

Since I figured we established all of this earlier: One component of strategic bombing was attacking the will to wage war; the other was the means to make war: The first was expressed by attacking the population directly and as a whole -- precision was only important insofar as it was enough to kill shitloads of people.

Churchill had expressed interests as to public opinion as of April 1940 (Rotterdam), and started having plans drawn up for incendiary area raids as of July (the start of the BoB). Churchill had been quite a proponent of attacking populations as a means of coercing surrender for some time.

It wasn't politically acceptable to do this until the Luftwaffe started attacking cities in the UK.

I really don't understand your obsession with the RAF bombing just civilians.

It's not really an obsession: It was actually pretty normal for the time. I could talk about other air arms bombing the crap out of people if you'd like

buffnut453 · Jun 11, 2018

But they weren't bombing the population as a whole. There were huge areas of Germany, including a number of substantial cities, that didn't receive bombing raids. The emphasis was on Germany's industrial cities, ergo the targets were militarily significant themselves rather than merely targeting the population. Surely if the population was the target, bombing raids would have been mounted over the entire country?

pinehilljoe · Jun 11, 2018

The Dehousesing Campaign was a circular argument. We don't have the technology to accurately bomb military targets. We do have the ability to bomb houses, so the houses became the military targets and the way to win the war. If a greater percentage of aircraft production was used for tactical use and fighting the Battle of the Atlantic, perhaps it would have been more productive and even shortened the War. On the other hand a German economy without the strategic bombing effort would have been unfettered and produced more material and the resources dedicated to defense of the Reich could have been used on other fronts. All is a what if, and conjecture.

Shortround6 · Jun 11, 2018

The thing with the use of more bombers to fight the U-Boats wasn't that it was all or nothing.
From a few squadrons to up to 250 planes being wanted at different times, Not ALL the four engine bombers Bomber Command had.
On the other hand, Bomber command wanted every plane that could reach Germany and return with more than a hand grenade and seemed to have the attitude that 350 bombers on a particular raid instead of a mere 300 would shorten the war by weeks or months.

OK I am exaggerating but there was a lot of grey area between what Coastal Command wanted and what Bomber Command was willing to give up and Bomber Commands put down/s of having bombers "swanning" about all over the ocean was just plain wrong. Anti-sub aircraft concentrated on convoys and choke points (transit areas). Patrolling the whole ocean was unnecessary, just as bombing ALL of Germany (farm fields included) was unnecessary to hitting the shipyards.
This was especially true in the early part of the war when Bomber Command was lucky it found the right city let alone found the ship yards/slipways in the city.

pinehilljoe · Jun 12, 2018

Shortround6 said:
The thing with the use of more bombers to fight the U-Boats wasn't that it was all or nothing.
From a few squadrons to up to 250 planes being wanted at different times, Not ALL the four engine bombers Bomber Command had.
On the other hand, Bomber command wanted every plane that could reach Germany and return with more than a hand grenade and seemed to have the attitude that 350 bombers on a particular raid instead of a mere 300 would shorten the war by weeks or months.

OK I am exaggerating but there was a lot of grey area between what Coastal Command wanted and what Bomber Command was willing to give up and Bomber Commands put down/s of having bombers "swanning" about all over the ocean was just plain wrong. Anti-sub aircraft concentrated on convoys and choke points (transit areas). Patrolling the whole ocean was unnecessary, just as bombing ALL of Germany (farm fields included) was unnecessary to hitting the shipyards.
This was especially true in the early part of the war when Bomber Command was lucky it found the right city let alone found the ship yards/slipways in the city.

The USAAF wasn't much different. Even today, I never understood why strategic missiles are under the USAF and not the Army. Its a weapon that spends its entire life on the ground, except for the last 15 minutes.

tyrodtom · Jun 12, 2018

pinehilljoe said:
The USAAF wasn't much different. Even today, I never understood why strategic missiles are under the USAF and not the Army. Its a weapon that spends its entire life on the ground, except for the last 15 minutes.

Maybe not to that extreme degree, but that's true of almost all aircraft, except airliners. They spend a lot more time on the ground, dormant, or being worked on.

XBe02Drvr · Jun 12, 2018

pinehilljoe said:
I never understood why strategic missiles are under the USAF and not the Army. Its a weapon that spends its entire life on the ground, except for the last 15 minutes.

A B-52 spends most of its life on the ground, too. What's the difference? The Air Force and the Navy are essentially strategic arms, the Army is essentially tactical. A weapon that can strike a hemisphere away has no business in the hands of officers whose perspective is limited to the battlefield.
Cheers,
Wes

Zipper730 · Jun 12, 2018

buffnut453 said:
The emphasis was on Germany's industrial cities, ergo the targets were militarily significant themselves rather than merely targeting the population.

The objective of the directive was "To focus attacks on the morale of the enemy civil population and in particular the industrial workers; in the case of Berlin harassing attacks to maintain fear of raids and to impose A.R.P. measures": The first goal was the civil population, the second the industrial workers. The attacks on Berlin were to create fear of raids so kind of fall under the first item.

I figure since cavalry charges of the olde days revolved around the premise of penetrating deep into enemy territory and causing mayhem, and since a cavalry is part of an Army, such an aviation arm could have been achieved post WWI without much difficulty (and would have rocked the boat way less than Billy Mitchell's agitation for an independent air arm); some Naval aviation arms used both flying-boats and land-based aircraft, the latter of which could achieve the desired speeds, and would also provide an extension to ship-based artillery bombardment, and carrier based bomber aircraft.

Really, the basic problems that exist with the paradigm of an Army/Navy aviation arm are essentially as follows

Coordinating them both in combat
- The US managed to do this even in the era where there was no DoD, and the War Department & Navy Department were the only players in town by placing the aircraft under theater commands, which could be either Army/Navy General/Admiral officers and it worked out decently well.
- The German's during WWI generally worked pretty well together and were able to coordinate airship and bomber strikes
Coordinating an air defense system using both Army/Navy aircraft
- More complicated as defense of the nation would usually fall under the Army in such a set-up despite the fact that there might very well be Navy bases which operate aircraft.
- In the United States, there were several commands that were responsible for aviation seemed to be always Army controlled except cases where protection of Naval bases was concerned. I'm uncertain how effective they were in WWII as we never faced anything significant.
- Interesting Trivia
  - The Luftwaffe, despite being an independent air-arm, operated several commands not entirely different to what I'm describing for the US; it didn't work well in their favor though, as they were poorly coordinated (this is why Luftlotte Reich was created)
  - The IJAAS & IJNAS also were responsible for the defense of Japan: Considering the Japanese Army & Navy had a pathological inter service rivalry, I'm not sure how effective they were in coordinating overall defense.
Providing adequate funding with inter service rivalry: It seemed to ultimately work out for better or worse.

Clearly a unified arm with a unified goal and chain of command is preferable, the problem is that...

It sets up inter-service rivalry: It's now it's own service with it's own will, and wants to win the war on it's own if possible.
It balkanizes the other services
- Aircraft
  - The RAF took everything in it's entirety, far as I know: Didn't work so good with carrier-aviation...
  - The USAF took all of the US Army's combat airplanes leaving the Army with observation, liaison and tactical airlift, and eventually helicopters; the US Navy got to keep nearly everything so they basically just kept what they had with the USAAF and got nicer uniforms that have a nifty blue color.
- Air Defense
  - The RAF seemed to take control of that
  - The US Army seemed to get control of the bulk of SAM's under the justification that they were an extension of anti-aircraft and coastal-defense, with the USAF asserting the right to field missiles to protect SAC bases (and probably so it can keep some SAM's of it's own), in addition to making various arguments (true or not) that there was a possibility that poor coordination existed between Army missile batteries and USAF A/C (which could endanger them): There was almost certainly a desire to take control of SAM's for themselves (during this period the USAF had a habit of naming SAM/AAM's with fighter-designations, and ASM/SSM's with bomber designations), though a revised command-structure satisfied the Army & DoD (maybe a few guys in the USAF); Starting in 1956, the DoD gave the Army the authority to develop missiles with a range less than or equal to 200 nm, with the USAF having the authority to develop missiles with ranges exceeding this: When Sputnik took to space, this was quickly changed, though the USAF managed to keep BOMARC to themselves (probably because it was labeled as a fighter)
  - Abroad the USAF was allowed theater missile defense interestingly with the US Army tasked with tactical defense
- Ballistic Missiles & Cruise Missiles
  - Army & Navy was originally limited to short-ranged/medium ranged missiles with intercontinental missiles controlled by the USAF
  - Later the US Navy also managed to get itself some long-ranged missiles too
They are nearly incompatible with carrier based aviation
- The RAF operated the Fleet Air Arm at first and seemed to allocate little money to developing effective fighter planes (much of this was probably due to the fact that only a few carriers could be built under the treaty of the time, and that meant only a relatively small demand for aircraft to operate off their decks), and were eventually taken over by the Royal Navy (not sure who's butt they had to kiss to pull that off, but it was in the nick of time!)
- The Germans made a seemingly decent carrier but Goering wouldn't give them the aircraft unless he controlled all the aircraft that flew off their decks
- The Italians had various issues developing effective carriers due to the Italian Air Force's authority over aircraft. They did build one carrier admittedly
Their attitudes for the use of Air Power were largely constricted around specific tactics in a one sized fits all mentality

pinehilljoe said:
The Dehousesing Campaign was a circular argument.

No, it was largely a pre textual argument

XBe02Drvr said:
A B-52 spends most of its life on the ground, too. What's the difference? The Air Force and the Navy are essentially strategic arms, the Army is essentially tactical.

Why is the Navy strategic and the Army tactical?

Controversial Ideas: Did We Ever Need an Independent Air Force

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