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

AIR SUPERIORITY
tively low production rates for both aircrews and aircraft. In 1941, for
example, Japan produced only about one-half the total number of German
military aircraft, and one-quarter that of the United States. Aircrew training
rates (both army and navy) that year stood only at 6,000, while that
of the United States totaled 11,000. Yet, Japan-like Germany-stood
as the superior air power in its particular part of the world. Both
countries thought in terms of short war on the favorable terms of air,
sea, and land superiority. Their major dependence would be placed on
the element of surprise and on a limited number of well-trained airmen
in high performance aircraft executing skillfully laid-out geo-political
plans. Confident of early victory (provided at least partially through air
superiority in the theater of operations), Japan like Germany overlooked
the latent strength of her most potential enemy and what that portended
in terms of maintaining air superiority long enough to achieve ultimate
political victory.81
United States
Japan’s potential enemy was the United States, although European
colonial powers such as Great Britain, the Netherlands, and France also
blocked Japanese plans for expansion in Southeast Asia. Lying behind protective
oceans, yet intimately involved with the Pacific and Asian spheres
since the nineteenth century, America was a sleeping giant both politically
and militarily in the 1930s. Beset like the rest of the world by the Great
Depression, the United States also faced the same antiwar manifestations
and budgetary strictures for military spending as the other western democracies.
The United States Navy provided the traditional “first line of
defense” while smaller land-air garrisons guarded frontier possessions
from Alaska to Panama, and from Hawaii to the Philippines. America was
a maritime nation like Japan and Great Britain. Like the other two, U.S.
military planners had to think more expansively about the strategic implications
of distance and national security than the continental European
powers. The 2,400-mile distance from the west coast to Hawaii, for example,
held vast importance for military professionals grappling with problems
of air and sea power. Thus, military leaders divided their air assets
between Army and Navy (like Japan). U.S. Navy and Marine Corps air
missions hinged upon their tactical roles as fleet air auxiliaries. But, the
U.S. Army Air Corps remained organizationally part of the land service
(with attendant missions), yet searching for independence from ground
force control like Great Britain’s
Doctrinal struggles between the U.S. Army air and ground components
essentially focused upon three major mission areas: ground support,
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