Airpower, from the Ground Up

Air Force Historian Richard Hallion demonstrates that ground commanders no less than airmen have found airpower to be the critical element in battle. Airpower, From the Ground Up HE following is excerpted from “Quotable Quotes surrendered by the end of the month and the Ottoman on Airpower From the Perspective of Surface Empire a few weeks later. T Commanders and Political Leaders: From the ‘Great War’ to Allied Force,” compiled by Air Force ■ Historian Richard P. Hallion. “[In World War I] aircraft became an offensive weapon of the first order, distinguished by their ■ great speed, range, and effect on target. If their initial development experienced a check when hos- “I hope none of you gentlemen is so foolish as to tilities came to an end in 1918, they had already think that aeroplanes will be usefully employed shown their potential clear enough to those who for reconnaissance from the air. There is only one were on the receiving end. ... We do not have to be way for a commander to get information by recon- out-and-out disciples of Douhet to be persuaded of naissance, and that is by the use of cavalry.” the great significance of air forces for a future war and to go on from there to explore how success in —British Gen. Sir Douglas Haig, summer 1914, ad- the air could be exploited for ground warfare, which dressing the British Army Staff College. Within three would in turn consolidate the aerial victory.” months, World War I’s First Battle of the Marne and the Battle of Tannenberg had been decided on the —German Maj. Gen. Heinz Guderian, comment in basis of information furnished via aerial reconnais- 1937. Guderian became the father of the blitzkrieg sance. used in World War II. ■ ■ “[Australian air attacks] exacted the most fright- “The air force has become the hammer of modern ful sacrifice from [troops], severely damaging their warfare on land. ... Aviation gives modern battle a morale. The feeling of helplessness in the face of third dimension. ... Modern battle is the fight for the enemy fliers instilled a paralysis in both offi- cubic space.” cers and men. The columns of savaged artillery pieces, automobiles, and motor transport, together —Ferdinand Miksche, a Loyalist infantry officer in with shattered wagons, horses, and men, blocked the Spanish Civil War and postwar military commen- the road in many places.” tator, writing in 1942. —German Gen. Liman von Sanders, commenting in ■ his postwar memoirs on Australian air attacks against Turkish and German troops at the Wadi el Far’a in “[At the battle of Alam Halfa] nonstop and very Palestine in September 1918. With resistance shat- heavy air attacks by the RAF, whose command of tered, and with Turkish communications knocked out the air had been virtually complete, had pinned by an airstrike on the telephone exchange at Nabulus, my army to the ground and rendered any smooth Turkish forces fell back in confusion. Damascus deployment or any advance by time schedule com- AIR FORCE Magazine / November 2000 39 pletely impossible. ... We had learned one impor- was being most intensively patrolled by the Allied tant lesson during this operation, a lesson which air forces. No road movement by day was possible was to affect all subsequent planning and, in fact, in view of this air umbrella, which reached from our entire future conduct of the war. This was that Normandy to the Paris area.” the possibilities of ground action, operational and tactical, become very limited if one’s adversary —German Lt. Gen. Bodo Zimmerman, chief opera- commands the air with a powerful air force and tions officer, Army Group D, in a postwar memoir. can fly mass raids by heavy bomber formations unconcerned for their own safety. ... Anyone who ■ has to fight, even with the most modern weapons, against an enemy in complete command of the air, “The enemy’s air superiority has a very grave fights like a savage against modern European effect on our movements. There’s simply no an- troops, under the same handicaps and with the swer to it.” same chances of success. ... The fact of British air superiority threw to the winds all the tactical rules —Rommel, when he was commander of German which we had hitherto applied with such success. Army Group B at Normandy, days before he was In every battle to come, the strength of the Anglo– strafed off the road by Spitfires and seriously injured. American air force was to be the deciding factor.” ■ —World War II German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the “Desert Fox,” in 1942. “Utilization of the Anglo–American air forces is the modern type of warfare, turning the flank not ■ from the side but from above.” “If I didn’t have air supremacy, I wouldn’t be —German Vice Adm. Friedrich Ruge, Rommel’s here.” naval aide, at Normandy. —US Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme allied ■ commander, in comments made while surveying buildup area at the Normandy bridgehead after Op- “In the face of the total enemy air superiority, we eration Overlord, late June 1944. can adopt no tactics to compensate for the annihi- lating power of air except to retire from the battle- ■ field.” “The Normandy invasion was based on a deep- —German Field Marshal Hans Guenther von Kluge, seated faith in the power of the Air Force in over- who succeeded Rommel as commander of Army Group whelming numbers to intervene in the land battle, B, in a letter to Hitler after taking over German forces ... making it possible for a small force of land in Normandy. troops to invade a continent. ... Without that Air Force, without its independent power, entirely ■ aside from its ability to sweep the enemy air forces out of the sky, without its power to intervene in the “[German Field Marshal Walter Model] did not ground battle, that invasion would have been fan- immediately grasp the full gravity of the situation tastic. [Indeed] it would have been more than in France and hoped that he might yet restore it. fantastic; it would have been criminal.” But he was soon to realize the unimaginable effects of the enemy’s air supremacy, the massive de- —Eisenhower, in 1945 Congressional testimony, ar- struction in the rear area, the impossibility of guing for the creation of an independent United States traveling along any major road in daylight with- Air Force. out great peril—in fact, the full significance of the invasion.” ■ —Zimmerman, reflecting on the leadership of Model, “From the very first moment of the invasion, the who succeeded von Kluge as commander, Army Allies had absolute air supremacy. Therefore, the Group B. enemy, our own troops, and the population asked the obvious question, ‘Where is the Luftwaffe?’ ” ■ —German General of Fighters Adolf Galland, in “The long duration of the bombing, without any postwar memoir on Allied airpower at Normandy. possibility for opposition, created depressions and a feeling of helplessness, weakness, and inferior- ■ ity. Therefore the morale attitude of a great num- ber of men grew so bad that they, feeling the “[On D-Day, June 6, 1944] the whole of the area uselessness of fighting, surrendered, deserted to through which the [Nazi] divisions must march the enemy, or escaped to the rear, as far as they 40 AIR FORCE Magazine / November 2000 survived the bombing. ... The shock effect was disastrous and calculated selection of fuel tank nearly as strong as the physical effect. ... For me, trucks as fighter–bomber targets. He and others who, during this war, was in every theater com- have vivid memories of precious forward gasoline mitted at the points of the main efforts, this was dumps lost through air attack.” the worst I ever saw. The well-dug-in infantry was smashed by the heavy bombs in their foxholes and —Bradley in 1945. Bayerlein’s Panzer Lehr Division dugouts or killed and buried by blast. The posi- had to abandon 53 tanks from lack of fuel, and the tions of infantry and artillery were blown up. The Sixth SS Panzer Army had to abandon 180 tanks. whole bombed area was transformed into fields covered with craters, in which no human being ■ was alive. Tanks and guns were destroyed and overturned and could not be recovered, because “[Allied air forces] found worthwhile targets all roads and passages were blocked.” throughout the whole area of our offensive. Bomb carpets were laid down on the roads and railways —German Lt. Gen. Fritz Bayerlein, in a postwar behind the front, and our already inadequate sup- memoir on experiencing the Operation Cobra bomb- ply system was throttled. The mobility of our forces ing at St. Lo, which set the stage for the Allied decreased steadily and rapidly.” breakout across France. —German Gen. Hasso von Manteuffel, Fifth Panzer ■ Army commander at the Bulge, in a postwar memoir. “The chief credit in smashing the enemy’s spear- ■ head must go to the rocket-firing Typhoon planes of the Second Tactical Air Force. The result of this “[Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, the com- strafing was that the enemy attack was effectively mander of the attack at the Bulge, stated] that the brought to a halt, and a threat was turned into a main reason for the failure of the Ardennes offen- great victory.” sive was his own lack of fighters and reconnaissance planes and the tremendous tactical airpower —Eisenhower, reflecting on the role of airpower at of the Allies.” the Battle of Mortain, where the German Army at- tempted to split the invasion front at Normandy, —Bradley in 1945. supreme allied commander’s dispatch, 1945. ■ ■ “From the high command to the soldier in the “The greatest benefit derived from the tactical air field, German opinion has been agreed that air- force was in the offensive action of the fighter– power was the most striking aspect of Allied supe- bomber in blunting the power of the armored riority.” thrust and striking specific targets on the front of the ground troops.” —Bradley in 1945.

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