RAF after BoB: mid-term strategy, tactics technology?

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I think Id have to go with Glider on that one Steve. RAF always diverted huge resources to the strategic bombers, but insofar as committments were made for close air support, its just not logical to say the RAF didnt understand the value of CAS by late '43. What evidence have you to base the assertion that they didnt understand or value CAS as they needed to?
 
Well I'd start with the fact that from the invasion until VE day the 2nd TAF flew many more armed reconnaissance sorties than close air support.

A typical example might be No. 83 Group RAF (2nd TAF) for which I have the exact figures to hand. Between August 1944 and February 1945 it flew 15,157 sorties classified as "immediate and prearranged support sorties" and 24,169 'armed reconnaissance' sorties.

The myth of the cab rank would have us believe that the 2nd TAF was circling overhead just waiting for a call from a controller to dive to the aid of the Army, whereas in fact it spent most of its time doing its own thing.

Cheers

Steve
 
While we are on the subject of cooperation or lack thereof we might look at the efforts during 'Market Garden'.

Despite the fact that there were close air support procedures, however inadequate, in place since D-Day the British 1st Airborne Division went to Arnhem completely unversed in these procedures and lacking the means to contact tactical aircraft. It was something that the Army's planners simply hadn't thought about.

Now I'm not suggesting that Typhoons might have been a decisive advantage in the fighting in and around Arnhem given the confused and close quarters nature of the confrontation, WW2 fighter bombers were more or less useless in this context, but the fact that little or no thought had even been given to the issue speaks volumes.
Tactical aircraft might have been more useful in preventing German movement and the concentration of reinforcements. The weather was grim but had improved by the time the Poles dropped into a shooting gallery.

This was September 1944 and we are talking about an airborne operation in which the RAF must also have been involved.

Even the old Desert Air Force which had cooperated more closely with its Army than any other, many of the close air support procedures later adopted had their roots in North Africa, was always keen to do its own thing.
In January 1945 and now in Italy the DAF reported:

"The most noticeable feature of our activities has been the switching of the major part of our effort from the direct support of the Eighth Army in the battle area, to the interdiction of the enemy's communications. With the present stalemate on the battle front, brought about by atrocious ground conditions, it became obvious our forces could be better employed elsewhere."

In NW Europe the 2nd TAF was fortunate to have plenty of fighter bombers and pilots available and was usually able to carry out its close support operations at no significant cost to its other operations. Ground offensives inevitably saw a rise in close support sorties flown to meet Army demands but armed reconnaissance was never compromised to the point where the Germans ever felt that they could ignore the possibility of air attack in their rear areas. This was something the RAF had been happy to do since 1939.

Cheers

Steve
 
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Taking these points one at a time
stona said:
Well I'd start with the fact that from the invasion until VE day the 2nd TAF flew many more armed reconnaissance sorties than close air support.
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Prior to the landing there would be little if any need for CAS missions whereas Armed Reconnaissance missions which could be described as seek and destroy missions would predominate. So they performed over 39,000 missions against the Germans of which 24,000+ were seeking targets of opportunity and the rest planned missions against a known target. If the RAF hadn't considered GA to be a priority then the 24,000 missions wouldn't have been flown.

For Market Garden the 2TAF were tasked with supporting the first wave of the landing and then supporting the forces trying to reach the bridges, tasks they put a lot of effort into and achieved great success. It is true that they were not tasked with supporting the later drops a fatal error but equally the fault of the planners not just the RAF. The 9th Airforce did try to suppress the AA guns and paid a heavy price losing 25 P47's on these duties on the 18th September alone.
At the time of Market Garden 84 groups typhoon wings were supporting the drive of the First Canadian Army up the Belgian coast. The 2TAF may not have been supporting the Army in the manner in which we now might recognise as being of best use, but they were supporting the Army.
This also questions the view that the RAF did their own thing. If the Army had wanted to hold the thrust up the coast and deploy the aircraft in support of the attack on the bridges then I have little doubt the RAF would have complied. Does anyone disagree with this decision? Throwing aircraft at troops that are well dug in and not moving is only going to achieve little at a significant cost. The best use of airpower in this situation is as stated to attack communications, infrastructure and supply. Its a bit like complaining that the U Boat campaign and the USN submarine campaigns were failures as they didn't concentrate on warships but on merchant ships.
Also for this to be taken as an example of the RAF doing their own thing, then where is the evidence that the Army asked them to do something else, or disagreed.

Finally are there many examples of requests for air support not being answered? IN the fog of war there will be some but not many
 
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What "official" are we talking about here? While it may have been the view of a small minority of "officials" and higher ranks, you will be hard pressed to find documentation from the people that actually mattered, showing that inter-service co-operation at higher levels was not achieved.

If the senior officers of neither service backed inter-service co-operation, how on earth was 2 TAF formed? Who told the army to co-operate with 2 TAF? Which "senior officers" are you referring to?


Do you know what "armed reconnaissance" actually was? The objective was to range behind enemy lines and interdict and disrupt movement by German ground forces, as well as attacking supply lines etc (plus attacking the Luftwaffe).

In other words the Armed Recce missions were still a form of army support. It would have been ridiculous and pointless to limit army-cop-op sorties to "cab-rank" missions over the front lines, if the Germans were still able to move unhindered behind the front lines.

That's the advantage of having a flexible Tactical Air Force. It was not just limited to being glorified artillery for the troops on the front-lines, it was also capable of attacking the enemy well behind the front lines.

From Shores and Thomas 2 TAF vol 4:




Note, here (outlined in green) that even those operations instigated by the RAF were mostly directed against German supply and transport.



The "myth of the cab-ranks" is a phrase you've coined based on what evidence? Who actually believes that 2 TAF spent most of its time circling overhead, waiting for a call from the army? Can you quote from any quality source showing that the myth existed?
 
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Armed reconnaissance is NOT close air support. It is what we might now call interdiction and was something the RAF always considered a job it could do, depriving the enemy of freedom of movement, food and ammunition as discussed about 1,000 post ago in this thread. It objected to intervening on the battlefield and was only brought kicking and screaming to some sort of compromise in 1943 (a little earlier in North Africa).

In September 1944 The First Allied Airborne Army had no Air Support Signals Unit or training in air/ground cooperation. One Staff Officer had been sent from the 1st British Airborne Division to Normandy to learn how air support was arranged but nothing came of it. (He'd been sent to Bradley's US 12th Army Group's Air Effects Committee but never seems to have come back.) He could have learnt something as the Americans had a better developed system than the British.

A US study of air support operations in support of Market Garden would later say that without the ability to control aircraft from the ground (each airborne division had been allocated two US air-support parties and one was allocated to First Airborne Corps Headquarters, but none had ever worked with the troops they were to accompany and the operators were unfamiliar with the wireless sets they had to use, they unsurprisingly proved ineffective) the bomb line became a restriction denying the close support the airborne units required.

The weather didn't help and No. 83 Group of RAF 2nd TAF and the IX TAC of US Ninth Air Force were specifically forbidden from operating in the battlefield area when troops or supplies were being landed or dropped.

On 18th September 97 CAS sorties were flown in support of 82nd Airborne fighting around Nijmegen. On 22nd September 119 sorties were flown in support of 101st Airborne fighting around Eindhoven.

British airborne troops at Arnhem received their first air support from No. 83 Group on 23rd September, the official history (War Office Narrative) declines to give a number mentioning 'a few' sorties on this day. The first drops had been on the 17th, in the intervening six days there was NO close air support at all.
22 sorties were flown on 24th and 81 on the 25th. These are insignificant numbers in the context of a major allied operation.
According to the 83 Group Daily Intelligence Summary they asked to fly more sorties but their pleas were 'disregarded'.

Cheers

Steve
 

I dont see how that proves the point one way or the other. As a percentage, it means around 61% of combat missions were flown as "patrol" missions against targets of opportunity. Thats remarkably similar to the German experiences. in 1942, in support of Fall blau, Richthofens LF4 flew just under 70% of its missions as armed recon missions. I dont see the difference.

neither does this number suggest one way or the other whether the British ground forces were calling in these airstrikes once they arrived. what happened once these "armed recon" missions were there? Were they directed onto targets by communication with the ground forces? Maybe maybe not, but this comment does not prove it either way.

The myth of the cab rank would have us believe that the 2nd TAF was circling overhead just waiting for a call from a controller to dive to the aid of the Army, whereas in fact it spent most of its time doing its own thing.
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Maybe, but your comments just here dont show that its a myth or otherwise. it does show that the proportion of "armed recon" missions was about the same as the LWs effort from 1942. Thats about it.
 

Of course armed recces weren't direct air support; nevertheless 2 TAF was providing air support for the army, either directly or indirectly, in 1944. The idea that air support is somehow only relevant when it's directly over the front lines is a little anachronistic.

There was no need for direct ground support in Western Europe in 1943, so its irrelevant to complain that the RAF (apparently) wasn't interested in the concept until 1943. The fact is, once the concept was proven in North Africa the RAF in Europe engaged in a major restructuring to create 2 TAF. That included learning how to make its squadrons and wings mobile enough to operate from bases close to the front lines, and to move once more territory was liberated by the armies.


The only thing all this proves is that one large-scale operation failed badly because of hurried and poor planning; it does not prove that the RAF or 2 TAF failed to provide good air support, whenever possible, from D-Day to VE-Day.

It would be good to see the evidence that there was, or is a "Cab Rank myth."
 
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The crucial difference between armed reconnaissance and close air support in this context is that the former is entirely an RAF operation carried out, in a tactical sense, completely independently. The RAF might or might not act on any request or intelligence it received from another source or service. It was this independence that the RAF was so keen to preserve.

Close air support missions were flown at the request of another service and the aircraft were to some extent under the control of that service. Senior RAF officers felt that this compromised their independence in 1939/40 and they had not changed their minds in 1944. Senior army officers felt that they were bending over backwards to pander to the RAF's sensibilities and that the RAF was acting like a spoilt child, the junior service syndrome. Senior RAF officers thought, with some justification, that their Army counterparts did not understand either the limitations or capabilities of close air support.

The idea that this lack of trust had no knock on effect on the more junior officers who were genuinely trying to cooperate is ridiculous. The training, personnel, equipment and infrastructure to develop a really effective system was dependant on cooperation at the highest level and this was sadly lacking even in 1944.
The November 1944 report (BTW it is entitled 'Notes on Air Support, June-October 1944) I quoted above acknowledges this:

"The difficulties are usually greatest at the higher levels, and decrease at the lower end of the scale. At the first point where practical executive action has to be taken, the difficulties begin to disappear, and from there downwards, in nine cases out of ten, there is no problem"

It wasn't just a British problem. The May 1943 Field Manual 100-20, 'Command and Employment of Air Power' published in the light of experience gained during TORCH declared air power to be an independent and co-equal force, the command of which was to be centralised in the hands of a senior air commander, responsible only to the overall theatre commander.
Mission types were prioritised. First to secure air superiority, second attacks on enemy troop concentrations, supplies and communications outside the battle area. Finally came close air support with the caveat that such missions would be difficult to control, expensive, least effective and only justified at critical periods.

Does this sound familiar? Given the official stance of both the RAF and USAAF as late as 1943, months before the invasion, it is remarkable that a system of close air support was implemented at all. Much credit for it goes to individual officers, in the case of the British working on the experience of the DAF. It is no accident that names from the DAF crop up in the 2nd TAF, most notably Coningham and Broadhurst, both of whom had had 'difficulties' with more senior RAF officers over their promotion of close air support.

The British first used CABRANK in Italy in November 1943 during operations to clear the line of the river Sangro. The aircraft reported to a controller (ROVER) who controlled a sector and it was he who would assign target, often marked by artillery.

The Americans had a more closely integrated system developed by Major-General Quesada of IX TAC, what he called armoured column cover. He was able to keep a flight of four P-47s (replacing themselves every 30 minutes or so) over armoured spearheads during daylight hours. Controllers in the leading tanks could call the aircraft in whenever and wherever needed. This system was first used on 26th July 1944, the second day of COBRA, and proved very effective.
A post war US study showed that these operations absorbed between 30 and 60 per cent of the available air strength of a TAC, equivalent to one Fighter Group (US) per armoured division. The RAF's second TAF demonstrably devoted much nearer the lower figure to its CAS missions.

Cheers

Steve
 
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First, let's dispel this myth that the RAF diverted resources into bombers; aircraft were built to the Air Ministry's requirements, with the agreement (and financial resources) of the government. The RAF were (and still are) given the aircraft, and told to get on with using them, so they did/do their best with what they're given.
I have a report on the tactics used by Spitfire fighter-bomber Squadrons of 2nd. TAF, and would expect the Typhoons to have been the same. Under the "Outline of Operations," sub-heading "Direct Co-operation with First-Line Troops," it says that there were three main aims:-
a/. The attacking of targets which were supplied in advance by the Army to the Air force through regular channels. It used to take some time before the attack on the supplied target could be carried out.** Thus this method of co-operation could only be effective when the front was more or less stabilised or in the case of immobilised points of resistance such as dug-in artillery or tanks.
b/. Attacks on targets passed to the pilot from the Contact Car. The pilot who was linked by R/T to the Contact Car could attack any target upon receipt of instructions. The target could be a small one and even mobile.
[/COLOR]** I suspect that, as these were waiting to be called in, so probably forced into a figure-of-eight manoeuvre, this is the origin of the "cab rank" description. During b/. if only one pilot had direct communication with the ground, again the other aircraft might have had to circle, until they could be called in by him.
While flying normally, the finger-four was the standard formation, moving into echelon in the direction they were about to turn towards the target, just before diving in.
 
I don't have time to type up a breakdown of the operational control of a 2nd TAG Group or even the details of how attached ASSU's worked.
The British system actually worked quite well for pre-planned air support strikes (there were problems, but more related to a series of safe guards implemented over security concerns). It was simply not fast enough to deal with impromptu requests from forward units where speed was of the essence. The British Army report to which I have already referred, not published until November 1944, identified the problems. The failure was not in the communication system itself but in the number of links in the chain (I have a schematic somewhere but can't find it) and most importantly the time spent discussing the request between the Army and RAF staffs before any orders were issued.
The solution was rather complicated and actually put another link in the chain ( what became known as Forward Control Posts or FCPs) which were staffed by a senior RAF Controller, typically a Wing Commander, and which could short circuit the system. This controller could step in in urgent cases and handle the request. From an FCP he could talk to the troops on the ground, the RAF/Army Control Centre and airborne aircraft.
This system did not become fully developed until further decentralisation of command and the introduction of the Contact Car in late 1944. These cars were RAF vehicles, part of an RAF unit, and were often manned by an experienced pilot as what we now call a Forward Air Controller.
The British never really adopted the US system of 'Contact Tanks' to control aircraft overhead. The first use I can find is by the North Irish Horse with modified Sherman's in March 1945.

Let's dispel any idea that the system ever worked like a well oiled machine. Between 16th and 18th August 1944 the 1st Canadian Army listed 52 (that's FIFTY TWO) occasions on which it was attacked by allied fighter bombers. These attacks had killed 72 and wounded 119 officers and men and destroyed 12 vehicles. On one occasion an artillery spotter aircraft had even attempted to ward of the attacking Typhoons.
Canadian 1st Army was far from alone in this experience and warned that provision of air support might soon became a deterrent to ground operations rather than a stimulant for them. It's all in a 1st Canadian Army report entitled 'Attacks by allied A/C on own Tps - 18 and 19 Aug 1944'
The Canadians took their own initiative leading to a complaint from Coningham to AVM Robb at SHAEF on 29th August that the Canadians were setting their bomb line too far forward, thus depriving his pilots of profitable targets.
Yep, everyone was getting on just fine!

Cheers

Steve
 
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One thing that has not been mentioned here is fuel. Allied forces in NW Europe in 1944 were critical in fuel. Generals were lying and cheating to steal each others supplies so as to be able to drive their units forward. The Germans had control of the Channel ports into 1945 and also control over the mouth of the Schelde and Rhine. Every operation had to justify its fuel cost and operations were also mounted direct from Britain for this reason.

Another thing not mentioned is artillery. Soldiers prefer artillery support. It doesn't go away to refuel. It works as well at night as during the day, or in fog and rain if you can define the target. Whatever the technical merits, or otherwise, a cultural difference between the US and Commonwealth forces was the reliance placed upon artillery fire for close support by Commonwealth commanders. I believe the French army further south had the same leaning towards artillery fire. Had the column advance moved as planned then the airborne forces in Market garden would have been within range of Army and Divisional artillery support but let us not digress too far into that affair.
 
Armed reconnaissance was by far the most profitable use of the fighter bomber in WW2. As Coningham said of the effect of the North West African Tactical Air Force operating in Italy in late 1943 on the prospect of potential German counter attacks directed on Foggia or Naples.

"The preventative factor is the air war on enemy supply and communications, and the killing element in every enemy attack is the fighter bomber. This is especially the case in Italy where the weight of the attack depends upon the roads."

The effect of armed reconnaissance on German tactical mobility was significant and sometimes decisive. In 1945 the ORS 2nd TAF agreed when it wrote that armed reconnaissance was

"the most important of all tactical air work, because of the restrictions it imposes on enemy movement."

Slessor, Embry and all those other officers, fighting for the independence of their Service must have been pleased to hear it. So would the US authors of Field Manual 100-20.

Cheers

Steve
 
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OldSkeptic said:
The U-Boat pens in south eastern France should never have been allowed to be built. That should have been BC's #1 target and not allowed to hit anything else until the Germans gave up trying to build them.

Woeful.
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The RAF didn't have big enough bombs to destroy them so the raids were discontinued in 1942.
Submarine pen - Wikipedia
Night bombing of coastal targets is feasible at nighttime, it was the city raids at nighttime that only became feasible with area bombing.
For daylight bombing of Brest, only the Spitfire IIa with the fixed drop tank or the Spitfire Vb with the 30/45 gal drop tank are available before 1942. Lorient can only be reached by Whirlwinds with 90 gal drop tanks. Bordeaux, La Rochelle, La Pallice and St-Nazaire are too far. The Whirlwind didn't have the altitude capability to counter the Bf 109F which would have been its main opponent and the Spitfire IIa was too slow and cumbersome due to its fixed tank.
That's where the 1942 Dieppe raid comes in. It was an attempt to steal an enigma machine. If you can't destroy the pens then get an enigma machine and you will know where the U-Boats are.
 
I like the idea of a Lanc with just a tail turret. It worked well for the Superforts on their night missions over Japan.
 
Kevin J said:
That's where the 1942 Dieppe raid comes in. It was an attempt to steal an enigma machine. If you can't destroy the pens then get an enigma machine and you will know where the U-Boats are.
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Rather an overkill to commit 237 ships, 74 squadrons of fighters and bombers and over 10,000 men to capture a device that an example of which had been given to them by the Polish before the war, also considering that another device, which was fully operational, had been captured intact a year prior.

In comparison, the operation to steal a warzburg radar system, which was carried out in early 1942, a few months before Dieppe, required only 120 men, a small number of transport aircraft and a small number of RN support vessels.
 
IIRC the Germans had added an extra rotor.
 
If you're going to put a Hercules on anything, I would go for a Defiant. Boulton Paul were going along that path in their tender for the requirement that the Blackburn Roc won. So what about a Boulton Paul Roc based on the Defiant using the Hercules engines: wings that would fold upwards like a Corsair: maybe started as a two seat turret fighter with an option to replace the turret and gunner with a fuel tank and armament in the wings. Would have been a winner.
 
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