COMBAT AND COMPETITION.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

COMBAT AND COMPETITION
dangerously dependent on air power? Had the wheel turned full circle,
reproducing some of the worst features of the Wehrmacht/Luftwaffe
relationship which had been so damaging to the German Air Force?
The answer must emphatically be no. We were part of a tactical air
force and army support was our job.
The RAF had other Commands and massive resources elsewhere.
Within 2nd TAP itself the Spitfires, IXs, XVls, an increasing number
of Mk XIVs, and two wings of Tempest Vs were there to hold the ring
with the Luftwaffe. Sufficient to say that the Germans learned as much,
when they tried to achieve local air superiority, during von Rundstedt's
last winter offensive in the Ardennes.
Of course the Typhoons did get an occasional fighter sweep when
the Luftwaffe was in its more active phases. But these were few and far
between. Never really enough to satisfy the desire of any pilot worth his
salt, flying a single seat fighter, to prove himself in air combat. Even
those of us deeply committed to ground attack were not immune.
But the real point at issue, it seemed in retrospect, was the
balancing act needed between battlefield air superiority and effective
ground attack. For the needs of the army could best be met once the
enemy air forces had been driven onto the defensive. If the Luftwaffe
had been stronger in the last year of the war the pattern of Typhoon
ops might have been different.
As for the Germans they had learned to live without air superiority
- and that held some lessons too.
By now 1 suspected that my developing syllabus had overshot the
boundaries of any brief which might have come my way. But it never
got that far.....
The low lying north German plain, divided up by three great
rivers, was never more at risk from flooding than in the winter of
1945/46. Earthworks and retaining walls, damaged or suffering from
lack of maintenance during the war years, could fail at any time. 35
Wing was given the task of recording the state of the flood defences.
The forward facing camera in the slipper tank of our Spitfire XIVs
was aligned some 15 below the horizontal, allowing a continuous
series of forward oblique photographs to be taken in level flight,
almost ideal for the job.
I covered many miles of the Weser and the Maas - for the risk of
flooding was a Dutch problem as well. The straight sections were easy
and small changes of direction could be photographed in a flat
skidding manoeuvre. Sharp bends could only be followed in a steeply
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