Case Studies in the Achievement of Air Superiority - Air Force ...

LESSONS BEFORE WORLD WAR I1
Officer Commanding the Royal Flying Corps in the field for the British Expeditionary
Force (BEF), explained to Lt. Col. William Mitchell, an American
observer in June 1917: “When the airplanes began to attack each other
and drop bombs, the troops on the ground yelled for protection and brought
the air forces to task for not keeping all enemy airplanes out of the air near
them.” Thus began the contest for air ~uperiority.~
Historians have observed that the side in the conflict that possessed
the best aircraft momentarily commanded the sky. Indeed, part of the story
of air superiority was that of technological superiority. While the story of
individual aircraft types and designs, or the generational sequence from
Fokkers to Spads to Nieuports and Sopwith aircraft lies beyond the scope
of this essay, the technical edge remains important to understanding this
gestation period for air superiority doctrine. For example, the last part of
1915 and the first months of 1916 were dominated by what Allied pilots
termed the “Fokker scourge.” German aircraft manufacturer Anthony
Fokker (actually a transplanted Dutchman) produced his famous Eindecker
monoplanes, which mounted a novel synchronized machinegun mechanism
for firing through the propeller, thus affording flyers a relatively stable aerial
gun platform. This aircraft dominated the air for a time. Then, Allied
aviators recaptured technological superiority with their Bristol, Sopwith
Camel, Salamander, and Spad fighters, only to lose it once more when the
Germans came up with their Albatros and Halberstadt airplanes in 1917.
Such was the ebb and flow of aviation technology; the advantage became
as much a factor of superior aircraft designers and manufacturers by the
middle of the war as tactics and individual flying skill. At the time of Verdun
and the Somme in 1916, air superiority depended on factors all the way
from industry through ministries of defense, right to the frontline aviators
at aerodromes in Fran~e.~
Of course, aviators concerned with the air battle focused primarily
upon air fighting techniques, formation flying, increased training, and
proper command, control and coordination arrangements, as these factored
into the air superiority equation. Everyone worked to send the best prepared
flyers into battle, although the heavy attrition rate of men and machines
for both sides often lowered qualitative and quantitative levels
below the satisfactory point. Individual squadron commanders like Capt.
Oswald Boelcke of the German Military Aviation Service particularly recognized
the virtue of vigorously training pilots in fighter techniques before
taking them into combat. Boelcke’s pupils, such as Baron Manfred von
Richthofen, proved the value of such precombat training by combining
superior aircraft with superior pilot skills to win many air battles over the
Western Front. Here was the true cutting edge of air superiority in actual
combat-the wedding of man and machine. As one student of the air war
has concluded, the large number of inexperienced replacements, combined
with curtailment of training due to shortages of materiel, lubricants, gaso-
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