Americas Defense Meltdown - IT Acquisition Advisory Council

140 • Reversing the Decay of American Air PowerIn 1943, the Americans needed to conquer the small Italian island of Pantelleriaand the nearby Pelagian atoll to provide air fields near Sicily to support an invasionthere. They were held by dispirited Italian units. Gen. Hap Arnold ordered the ArmyAir Force to “Bomb the Hell out of them.” 40 Over 1,100 aircraft flew 7,000 sorties dropping12,400,000 pounds of ordnance on these two tiny outcroppings of land. Twicethe Italians refused Gen. Dwight Eisenhower’s surrender offer despite the bombing.He had hoped to avoid an invasion. Finally, he sent a 600-ship force into their harbor.The Italians surrendered to the invasion force.Despite this, the strategic bombardment leaders were ecstatic, claiming the lion’sshare of the victory. Tooey Spaatz declared the old debate about bombardment dead,“The application of air available to us can reduce to the point of surrender any firstclass nation now in existence.” 41 Nonetheless, less than 5 percent of the bombs camewithin 300 feet of their target. Almost all of the Italian big guns survived. Their hangarsdug into the side of the hills were unscathed. Very few Italian casualties resulted. Inother words, bombing accomplished little of military value. 42 The air staff – in thiscase the American one – studiously avoided the data and its implications. 43U.S. European fighter operationsOn June 27, 1943, an Allied landing force of 1,200 ships was en route to an invasion ofSicily. There were 1,500 German aircraft within striking distance. American and Britishfighters were tasked to provide air cover. Despite repeated Luftwaffe mass attacks, nota single ship was lost. On that day the Anglo-American fighters had won the air battlefor the Mediterranean. This was the last Luftwaffe mass attack in the theater.The European war was fought by the United States primarily with three fighters, theP-38, P47 and the P-51. All three were developed after the World War II build-up startedin late 1937. The P-38 and the P-47 failed as high-altitude dogfighters. Eventually theP-38 was withdrawn from Europe as a fighter, while it did continue in other roles. TheP-47 was pulled from the bomber-escort role and then employed on close support andinterdiction ground-attack missions. It failed as a high altitude, long-range dogfighter butbecame pre-eminent in the close support and interdiction ground-attack missions.The P-51 was initially developed as a private venture independent of the ArmyAir Force’s development bureaucracy. They favored the larger, less maneuverable andmore expensive P-47 and P-38. After the P-51 was mated with the Rolls-Royce Merlinengine, license-built in the United States (a modification strongly opposed by the ArmyAir Force leadership), it became perhaps the best fighter aircraft in any World War IItheater. Over 15,000 P-51s were ultimately procured, most of them with the Merlinengine. Interestingly, it was also the smallest and least expensive U.S. fighter – yet ithad the longest range: 600 miles, compared to only 375 miles for the larger P-47. 44The U.S. bomber generals’ assumptions proved particularly wrong about theiroft-repeated claim that heavily armored bombers would always get through. Once