AMR-June-July-2013

A I R P O W E R
C O U N T E R
I N S U R G E N C Y
FLIP THAT COIN
The British operated aircraft over the Middle East in the
Twenties and Thirties because they were a much cheaper way of
countering insurgents than battalions on the ground. Over
the years, major air forces invested in new jet engines and swept
wings, but there remained a place for old technology.
by Andrew Brookes
For example, from 1948 the RAF
battled Communist insurgents
in Malaya with a variety of piston-engine
aircraft including
Avro Lincolns. Come 1955 and
the first RAF jet bomber squadron went
on active duty overseas. Four Canberra
B6s left Lincolnshire for Malaya to bomb
insurgents in their jungle hide-outs.
Hitting roughly-constructed
bashas under dense jungle
foliage with 1,000lb bombs
as directed by Air
Observation Post Austers, or
against a six-figure map reference provided
by a ground liaison officer, was asking
a lot. On one occasion a Canberra overshot
the aiming datum by 3,000m. As
the official historian of the Malayan
Emergency put it, “Canberras carried half
the bomb load of Lincolns and their cruising
speed of 250kt at the optimum bombing
height required more elaborate navigational
aids and made map-reading
impracticable and visual bomb-aiming
difficult. The pilot had a poorer visibility
than in a Lincoln and the Canberra could
not be flown at night or in close formation,
and could not be employed in a
The North American F-105 Thunderchief was another aircraft used extensively in the counterinsurgency
role by the United States Air Force during the Vietnam War. However, the aircraft
showed itself to be vulnerable to ground-based air defences © US DoD
strafing role. They suffered, in common
with all jet aircraft in the tropics, from a
serious limitation in their endurance at
low level, which precluded postponing or
delaying an air strike once they were airborne.
This was a serious disadvantage in
the uncertain weather conditions of
Malaya, especially when Canberras were
operating in the northern part of the country
far from their
parent base in
Singapore.”
It was horses for
courses and while the
shiny B-52s and centuryseries
fighters practised for a war of
survival against the USSR, the USAF
procured light warplanes for use over
Korea and Vietnam. US airmen used
armed versions of the piston-engined T-6
Texan trainers dubbed ‘Mosquitos’ for
artillery spotting and forward air control
over Korea. In the early 1960s, the US
Army tested armed versions of the Cessna
YAT-37D Dragonfly (or Super Tweet),
Douglas A4D-1 Skyhawk, and Fiat G.91.
But the lessons of the Second World War
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