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Vol 19 Issue 3 AIR UNIVERSITY REVIEW AIR SUPERIORITY IN TACTICAL AIR WARFARE . AEROMEDICAL EVACUATION . FUTURE OF NATO MARCH-APRIL 1968 A I R U N I V E R S I T Y RE VIEW THE PROFESSIONAL JOURNAL OF THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE Air Superiority in T actical Air Warfare....................................................................................... 2 —' Gen. Bruce K. Holloway, usaf Aer o medica l Evacuation in Southeast Asia .................................................................................16 — Lt. Gen. Kenneth E. Pletcher, usaf (mc ) Vie w s on Aer o spac e Power...................................................................................................................................30 Col. Donald F. Martin, usaf T he Future of NATO............................................................................................................................................... 40 __ Dr. Thomas C. Schelling I so l a t io n ist Critics of Amer ica n Foreicn Policy.....................................................................48 — Dr. Paul S. Holbo W hat Is STOL?............................................................................................................................................................ 58 _ Lt. Col. Walter P. Maiersperger, usaf (Ret) Air Force Review Standardization: P r er eq u isit e for Equitable Manpower Dist r ibu t io n .... 63 Maj. Gen. Bertram C. Harrison, usaf D esicn , C onstruction, and Oper a t io n of Missil e Fa c il it ie s ......................................66 — Roman A. Metz Military Affairs Abroad T he Soviet Pil o t and Psyc h o l o g y.....................................................................................................73 _ Dr. R. H. Stacy Mrs. O. S. Fedoroff In My Opinion A P roposed Code of Ethics for Air Force Officers.........................................................77 ^ Capt. Howard G. Janssen, usaf Books and Ideas Marshall as Wartime Lea der ...........................................................................................................83 — Dr. I. B. Holley, Jr. T he Redisc over y of Ren e Fonck.....................................................................................................89 _ Maj. Philip M. Flammer, usaf T he Story of the Soviet Red Army—or at Lea st Half the Story.........................92 — Dr. Kenneth R. Whiting T he Contributors.................................................................................................................................................94 — the cover Address manuscripts to: Editor, Air Univer- The destruction of a MIG-17 was recorded by sity Review, Aerospace Studies Institute, Max- well Air Force Base, Ala. 36112. Printed hy an F-105’s gun camera as the MIG crashed Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. over North Vietnam, where our air superiority Subscriptions are sold by Air University "has yet to be seriously challenged,” accord- Book Department, Maxwell Air Force Base, ing to General Bruce K. Holloway. In the lead Ala. 36112: yearly $4.50, back issues 75 article, “Air Superiority in Tactical Air War- cents. USAF recuhhinc pu bl ic a t io n 50-2. fare," General Holloway discusses the essen- tial elements of air superiority and con- siders it in past and future perspectives. Vol. XIX No. 3 M arch-April 1968 UP AIR SUPERIORITY IN TACTICAL AIR WARFARE Gener a l Bruce K. Holloway TWENTY-SIX million living Americans are veterans of military service, and most of them have served in wartime. How many of these 26 million ever had to face an enemy who held air superiority? Not many: the 20,000 Army, Air Corps, and Marine troops who were cut off and overrun in the Philippines immediately after Pearl Harbor; scattered units in the Pacific during the early days of World War II; the soldiers and airmen in the Southwest Pacific prior to our defeat of Japanese air power at Wewak in August 1943; U.S. forces in North Africa up to the battle of Kasserine Pass in February 1943. In all, probably no more than one out of 150, for after February 1943 4 AIR UNIVERSITY REVIEW the U.S. and our allies had undisputed air Force based in Italy gained air superiority superiority in the Mediterranean and Western there and carried fighter sweeps and escort Europe; after August of 1943 we had it in the missions deep into Germany. Pacific. From that time on, there were iso- Air superiority came hard and high. Al- lated and relatively rare instances in which though the Allied air forces had won air our opponents gained temporary, local air supremacy over Normandy and the Channel superiority, especially in the Pacific, but these coast by the time of the invasion, Luftwaffe were the exceptions. attacks on our bomber formations continued In Korea we won air superiority twice— at a high level throughout the fall and winter from the North Korean Air Force in the first of 1944-45. Not until the closing days of the two months of that war, and again from the war was theater-wide air supremacy finally Chinese Air Force after November 1950. The achieved. latter was a novel kind of air superiority, pro- We entered World War II underestimat- phetic of things to come; I will discuss it later. ing the importance of air superiority and the In South Vietnam, our air superiority has difficulty of winning it. We were unprepared come by default. In North Vietnam it has yet both qualitatively and quantitatively. But we to be seriously challenged. emerged from that war with an unrivaled A generation of American fighting men mastery of the employment of air power. has almost forgotten what it is like not to We learned the hard way that air superiority have air superiority—what it is like to lose is the key to effective use of air power, mobility except by night; to be cut off from which is in turn the key to successful surface supplies and reinforcements; to be constantly operations. under the watchful eye of enemy reconnais- In the years since then, that lesson seemed sance aircraft; to be always vulnerable to to be forgotten or ignored, or set aside, twice strafing and bombing attacks; to see one’s and relearned twice: first, in the period be- fighters and bombers bum on their hard- tween World War II and the Korean War, stands; to be outnumbered, outgunned, and when hopes for a stable, peaceful world were outmaneuvered in the air. high. Korea at least temporarily changed that We sometimes forget, too, the cost of hope. Again between 1954 and the early 1960s gaining air superiority from a well-equipped, there was a widely held belief that strategic well-trained, and determined enemy. In the nuclear superiority was virtually a universal European and Mediterranean Theaters alone, deterrent and that any war which happened U.S. air forces lost 4325 fighters and bombers by accident or miscalculation was likely to be prior to June 1944. Nearly 17,000 of our air- measured in terms of hours or days. In that crew people were killed in action, and more context, tactical air superiority was again than 21,000 were missing or prisoners of war. neglected. The fighter losses were largely a result of the The United States was not the only nation battle for air superiority. A major part of our that learned in World War II the value of air bomber effort in preparation for the Allied superiority and the exorbitant cost of not invasion was devoted directly or indirectly having it. Hitler launched his attack on the to the air superiority mission. Soviet Union with 164 divisions supported by From D-Day until the German surrender 2000 German combat aircraft and 700 combat on 8 May 1945, a period of eleven months, aircraft of his allies. The Russians opposed the U.S. Eighth and Ninth Air Forces and the that force with about 119 divisions and some First Tactical Air Force flew 320,000 sorties 5000 aircraft, most of them designed for sup- to maintain the air superiority that we had port of ground forces. Within a week the won at so great a cost. This was about 25 Luftwaffe, with superior fighter aircraft and percent of the total number of sorties flown pilots, had achieved air superiority on the during that eleven-month period. In addition Eastern Front. Probably more than 4000 Soviet to these sorties, fighters of the Fifteenth Air aircraft were destroyed on the ground and in AIR SUPERIORITY IN TACTICAL AIR WARFARE 5 the air during that week. Luftwaffe fighter higher-priority theaters were taken care of. pilots scored phenomenal numbers of kills Despite these handicaps, we were able to against inferior Soviet aircraft. They con- maintain air superiority at times and places of tinued to shoot down Soviet aircraft wholesale our choosing. In three years of operations, the until the Allied offensive had turned full-tide Fourteenth Air Force destroyed 2300 enemy against Germany; her fighters were deprived aircraft at a cost of 500 of our own bombers of bases, fuel, and supplies; and the U.S.S.R. and fighters lost from all causes, combat and had achieved air superiority on the Eastern noncombat. The 23d Fighter Group and its Front. This expensive lesson in air superiority predecessor, the American Volunteer Group, was not lost on Soviet airmen. shot down ten Japanese aircraft for every one Five years after V-E Day the Soviets were of ours lost in combat—a total of 1238 kills. putting into the field jet fighters that were Our fighters and bombers sank and damaged technically the equal of any air superiority more than two million tons of shipping, killed fighter in the world. Before the close of 1950 an estimated 60,000 enemy troops,
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