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

AIR SUPERIORITY
battle, followed by relentless pursuit of the tactical air offensive to win and
maintain air superiority. He used this offensive to clear the skies of enemy
fighters and then to attack the enemy’s trenches, staging areas, supply
dumps, and logistical network. Trenchard’s advocacy of aggressive air warfare
reflected the growing interest among senior war leaders on both sides
that airplanes might offer a war-winning weapon.& After witnessing a German
aerial bombardment of London in mid-1917, the perceptive South
African senior statesman and member of Great Britain’s Imperial War Cabinet,
Gen. (later Field Marshal) Jan Smuts declared that air power could be
used as an independent means of war operations. “As far as can at present
be foreseen,” he proclaimed, “there is absolutely no limit to the scale of its
future independent war use.”9
Implicit in such conclusions about the strategic virtue of air power was
the notion that bombardment of an enemy’s homeland industries and war
production would have an effect on the tactical stalemate in France. Yet,
the needs of ground generals prevented switching the principal emphasis of
air operations to strategic attacks beyond the battlefield. A given fact of
World War I remained that aviation (as part of essentially what was a
ground war) had to remain at the call of the soldier. Airmen had to formulate
their doctrine and mission in light of that consideration. As late as
September 11, 1918, merely two months before the Armistice, Brig. Gen.
William “Billy” Mitchell, now the Chief of the American Air Service for
First Army, issued his Battle Orders Number 1, citing in italics: “Our air
service will take the offensive at all points with the object of destroying the
enemy’s air service, attacking his troops on the ground and protecting our
own air and ground troops.”’O
American entry into the war coincided with growing concern about
doctrinal codification of air operations. The American aviators, for example,
sought to collect experience and lessons upon which to base their own
air contribution. Mitchell in 1917 posited tenets that very much reflected
conventional military thought of the period. Only ground arms could win
the ultimate victory, he acknowledged, and the Air Service was a supporting
arm of land warfare. But, within aviation itself, there existed two general
types, he claimed. “Tactical” aviation operated in the immediate
vicinity of surface forces; and “strategical” aviation worked far in advance
of the other arms and had an independent mission. Tactical aviation would
comprise observation, pursuit, and tactical bombardment. Strategical aviation
also included pursuit, as well as day and night bombardment. Pursuit
aviation, uniquely, would work both the strategic and tactical mission
areas. Its object, declared Mitchell, was to attain “mastery of the air”
through air battles. Mitchell’s differentiation of aviation types paralleled
the thinking of other Air Service officers such as Maj. Marlborough
Churchill and Maj. Frank Parker. Both were members of an AEF board
studying the role of aviation, and Churchill, at least, referred openly to
6