New Thinking in Air Power Thursday 16 and Friday 17 September 2021

Hosted at the Museum, London, this conference brings together a broad range of academics and scholars to present Air Power research which challenges the accepted historical consensus. The conference will feature a keynote address given by Professor John Ferris entitled "Revolutions in Airpower, 1903-2021: An Anatomy". The research presented will offer new evidence and provide critical reflections on, and reframe our historical understanding of, Air Power and the past. In doing so, this research revises the conclusions of previous works and challenges myths which have developed within the study of Air Power. The conference represents an important moment in advancing historical knowledge as well as an exciting line-up of speakers from around the World assessing the current state of the Air Power historiography and the future direction of Air Power thinking The panels hosted at the conference will focus on presenting the latest research on a range of Air Power topics including: Rethinking the First World War: From Fighting in East Africa to Developing an Air Force Spirit; New Thinking and the Application of Digital Methods to the History of the RAF in the Second World War; Air Power Procurement: Concepts, Design and Diplomacy; and Air Power Doctrine and Strategy. There will also be panels reconsidering the motivations of individuals and air forces. The conference will present research and papers relating to Air Power both in Britain and abroad, with research on the Air Power capabilities of African regional powers; the stigmatization of psychological Issues in the US Army Air Forces; training and air forces in the Middle East, American statecraft and transatlantic collaboration on the Joint Strike Fighter; the Luftwaffe and National Socialism; and Soviet strike capabilities during the Cold War. The conference keynote will be given by Professor Ferris the author of Behind the Enigma: The Authorised History of GCHQ, Britain’s Secret Cyber Intelligence Agency and The Evolution of British Strategic Policy, 1919-1926. Professor Ferris has published over 100 articles or chapters on diplomatic, intelligence, imperial, international, military and strategic history, and strategic studies. His keynote will explore "Revolutions in Airpower, 1903-2021: An Anatomy". The conference will conclude with a roundtable Chaired by Professor David Edgerton which will explore both the issues raised at the conference and the future direction of revisionist Air Power history. Only those attending the conference in person will able to participate in the Roundtable discussion. The Conference Papers will explore themes related to: • Air Power Doctrine • Control of the Air • Identity and Motivation of air force personnel • Strategic Bombing • Research, Design and Procurement • International Relations • Air Power in a Middle East and African context • The Historiography of the Royal Air Force To book your conference ticket please visit: https://royalairforcemuseum.digitickets.co.uk/category/34275?catID=28958

Royal Air Force Museum Conference 2021 #RAFMconference NEW THINKING IN AIR POWER

Group Captain John Alexander Group Captain John Alexander is responsible for NATO and UK joint operational doctrine development at the MOD’s Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC) at Shrivenham. Now an Auxiliary, as a regular officer he specialised in air/land integration, from the Falklands in 1982, through various campaigns in the greater Middle East, culminating in air/land component liaison in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and as Chief Air in an Army Corps Headquarters. He spent much of 2011 to 2020 in Afghanistan and Pakistan. His contribution to the conceptual component of fighting power includes two tours at the RAF’s Air Warfare Centre, NATO’s Joint Air Power Competence Centre, and previously at the DCDC, and has been honed by academic research. He was twice a Chief of the Air Staff Fellow, at Cambridge and Oxford, and has four postgraduate degrees including one from the Pakistan National Defence University, was a historian at the RAF’s Air Historical Branch and has published in Air Power Review, the RUSI Journal and Asian Affairs. He intends to submit for a PhD by publication on the beginnings of British air/land operational art between 1918 and 1940. Title: New Thinking on the Royal Air Force in 1940 as an Allied Air Force. One of the enduring tropes of the Battle of France in 1940 is the RAF’s failure to support the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) as a cause of its defeat. Yet by the time the BEF first engaged the German Army in Belgium on 14 May, around half of British Air Forces France’s (BAFF’s) aircraft had been lost in action and the Fall of France decided. This paper rethinks BAFF as an allied air force rather than as an air support organisation for the BEF, in the context of the allied air/land battle, as well as in the BEF’s area of operations, and noting the inevitable allied defeat, despite broadly equivalent force strengths, given its flawed strategy of immediately advancing into Belgium, leaving no reserve to counter the German advance through the Ardennes. The paper argues the BEF, around ten per cent of the allied land force, was subordinate to French 1st Army Group, whereas BAFF, with a much larger proportion of allied air power, was independent of French command, though collocated with the French air command for the whole front. As both RAF and Luftwaffe doctrine prioritised control of the air and interdiction over close air support (CAS), the allies’ immediate response to the German Sichelschnitt was to attack the Meuse bridges at great cost to German fighters and FLAK. Despite enjoying control of the air, examples of decisive German CAS against well trained troops are rare. Whereas in desperation the RAF used any aircraft available to attack German forces at Calais and Dunkirk. As a result of its leading allied role, the RAF lost 950 aircraft compared to 750 French, 78 after Dunkirk. Nevertheless, Allied air forces lacked the strength to counter the Luftwaffe, compounded by poor communications throughout the allied force.

Dr Sophy Antrobus Dr Sophy Antrobus researches contemporary air power in the context of the institutional, cultural and organisational barriers to innovation in modern air forces, in particular the Royal Air Force. She joined the Freeman Air and Space Institute from Portsmouth Business School at the University of Portsmouth where she was a Teaching Fellow in Strategic Studies. She completed her PhD at the University of Exeter in 2019 which was a collaborative studentship with the RAF Museum. Her thesis researched the early politics of air power and networks in Whitehall in the inter-war years. She recently delivered the biennial Peter Nailor Defence Lecture at Gresham College on the subject ‘How are Drones Changing Warfare?’. Title: We Need to Talk About Control of the Air: challenging analysis of the RAF’s primary role

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Giulio Douhet’s The Command of the Air, published in the aftermath of the First World War, laid out his belief in the significance that Control of the Air would play in future conflicts. Although the RAF operated in the 1920s in areas where it faced no serious challenges to its dominance in terms of air superiority, the rise of the threat from Nazi focused air power thinkers on the future importance that dominating the air domain would be likely to have in protecting the from invasion. The Battle of Britain was to define Control of the Air as the RAF’s most important role and also cement the symbolism of the ‘Few’ flying combat aircraft to defend an entire nation. This paper will argue that this history remains influential in the 2020s in how much the RAF does and, more pertinently, does not talk about Control of the Air. It will analyse the development of air power thinking around the concept before arguing that contemporary debate on the subject is surprisingly sparse. While Control of the Air has remained accepted as the primary role of an independent air force, in an era of multi-domain operations the complexities of the concept are little debated. Is this because control of the air is most often identified with Combat Air – partly a legacy of the RAF’s history – the most expensive element of the RAF inventory? Is it because the early 2000s were spent fighting in environments where Control of the Air was a given? Is it because the RAF feels that, outside of major warfighting, Control of the Air is of lesser value than other air activities? Or is this because the term is no longer useful?

Justin Bronk Justin Bronk is the Airpower and Military Technology Research Fellow in the Military Sciences team at RUSI. He is also Editor of the RUSI Defence Systems online journal. Justin's particular areas of research focus include the modern combat air environment, Russian and Chinese ground-based air defences and fast jet fleets, unmanned combat aerial vehicles and novel weapons technology. He has written extensively for RUSI and a variety of external publications, as well as appearing regularly in the international media. Justin is also a part-time doctoral candidate at the Defence Studies Department of Kings College London and holds an MSc in the History of International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a BA (Hons) in History from York University. He is also a private glider and light aircraft pilot. Twitter: @Justin_Br0nk Title: Balancing Imagination and Design in British Combat Aircraft Development Developing effective combat aircraft has long been a key area of competition among military powers. The combat air environment is brutal for underperformers, whilst developing new aircraft is expensive and time consuming. To be successful, air forces and designers must combine a vision of what will be effective in future air combat with engineering solutions which harness the latest technologies in an aerodynamically viable form. This talk would be based on an ongoing interdisciplinary thesis (submission target, end of 2021) which draws on aeronautical engineering, debates about the nature of imagination in economics and technology studies, and detailed historical analysis of five RAF combat aircraft. It argues that there is an important tension between imagination- and design-led processes in combat aircraft development. This is important because an over-emphasis on either imagination or design during development can jeopardise combat effectiveness and adaptability – success depends on balancing the two. This theory offers a novel and useful lens through which to better understand combat aircraft development.

Ewan Burnet

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Ewan Burnet is the curator of film and sound at the RAF Museum in 2010. He has extensively researched the history of the English Electric Lightning and delivered a number of papers whilst working at the RAF Museum. Ewan’s daily role includes caring for the film and sound collection, cataloguing new material, recording of oral history interviews, processing enquiries from the general public, film and television producers and the preparation of audio-visual material for the museum’s exhibitions.

Title: Designing for the Future: The Changing role of the English Electric Lightning

The English Electric Lightning is one of the best-known post-war RAF aircraft. But, although the aircraft’s outward appearance changed little during its 28 years of service, expectations of the Lightning changed considerably, varying across time and in different areas of operations. These changes highlight the need for flexibility in design approach, but to what extent is it possible to anticipate future developments and design for them in the present?

Dr John M. Curatola Dr John Curatola is a Professor of History at the U.S. Army School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. A retired U.S. Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel, Dr. Curatola served in uniform for 22 years. He retired from the Marines in 2009 while also receiving his doctorate from the University of Kansas. Teaching in the Department of Military History at the Army’s Command and General Staff College for eight years, he moved to SAMS in 2016. His published works focus on the Second World War, airpower, and the Cold War. He has given a number of presentations at venues such as the National Archives, public libraries, podcasts, serves as a military advisor for National Geographic channel, and featured in a number nationally televised lectures on CSPAN. He is published in WW II magazine, the Marine Corps Gazette, and the scholarly journal Vulcan. His first book entitled “Bigger Bombs for a Brighter Tomorrow” examines the state of the American nuclear monopoly after the Second World War. His forthcoming book, “Autumn of Our Discontent: Fall 1949 and the Genesis of NSC-68” follows the events shaping American national security policy after the surprise of the Soviet atomic bomb explosion.

Title: Faux Pax Atomica: A New Look at the American Atomic Monopoly, 1945-1950 With the advent of atomic weapons, Americans increasingly looked toward airpower as the best way to defend both the nation and the free world. The US monopoly of weaponized fission was the primary military counter to the massive Soviet Red Army. With the emergence of the Cold War, Americans generally felt secure in their monopoly and looked to the future under the umbrella of an “American Pax Atomica.” However, the reality of a peace enforced by American atomic weapons was more form than substance. With the emerging importance of airpower, the newly created US Air Force’s Strategic Air Command (SAC) was America’s “Sunday punch” in the employment of atomic weapons. Despite its importance in an atomic offensive, SAC was rife with operational issues making it ill-prepared to conduct the kind of war airpower proponents envisioned. Equipment, personnel, and organizational issues precluded SAC’s ability to fulfill its assigned mission. Additionally, America’s ability to develop, produce, and store atomic weapons fell under the purview of the newly-formed civilian Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). Much like its SAC counterpart, the AEC too had problems accomplishing its assigned mission. Furthermore, the poor relationship between civilian entities with the military precluded the effective coordination of the entire atomic effort. As a result, the American nuclear monopoly was a model of dysfunction. While both civilian and military entities failed in managing their own areas of responsibility, they also failed to

NEW THINKING IN AIR POWER effectively cooperate with each other during the immediate post war period. As a result, the “American pax atomica” during the monopoly period was more chimera than a credible threat.

Arun Dawson Arun Dawson is a PhD candidate in War Studies at the Freeman Air and Space Institute, King’s College London. His thesis will study the contribution of airpower to the United Kingdom’s grand strategy. Prior to his Masters in the same department, he read engineering science at Oxford where he served in the University Air Squadron. Arun – a former aerospace intern at NATO – is also a research assistant at Yale to Professor Paul Kennedy and is writing a book on Concorde. Title: A ‘Trojan Horse’? American Statecraft and Transatlantic Collaboration on the Joint Strike Fighter, 1991-1995 Historical scholarship on airpower has hitherto focused chiefly on operations or times of political tension. Peacetime development of airpower – as shaped by the state – has seldom attracted attention, much less the recent past. Yet if arms sales have long been considered an instrument of foreign policy (Freedman, 1978; Pierre, 1982) and aerospace industry epitomises this behaviour more than most (Hayward, 2018; Clarke, 2018; Rounds, 2019), it behoves historians to study such cases to reveal policy-relevant insights concerning the influences on air force procurement. This paper uses the case of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) to explore the perennial question of competition versus cooperation on defence technology with allies. European experience had shown co-development was an ‘inherently inefficient and uneconomic’ model (Walker, 1974). American defence planners warned it would ‘reduce the probability of success’ and undermine national security (DSB, 1994). Why, then, did Washington pursue international collaboration on the JSF programme? This paper tests the paradox through applying Allison’s (1971) three models of government decision-making. Twenty interviews at the highest levels of government and the military, together with documentary research, renders an intimate narrative on the decision to collaborate. Contrary to existing scholarship, I find there was no deliberate attempt to use the JSF as a ‘Trojan Horse’ (Kapstein, 2004) by perpetuating European dependence on American weaponry. Rather, I find a blend of realism and bureaucratic politics to hold the most explanatory power. This paper makes an original contribution to our understanding of airpower from an understudied perspective. Theoretically, the JSF highlights a unique instance of bottom-up innovation and pushes the boundaries of Allison’s crisis-oriented framework. Yet there is value for policymakers, too. Enhanced understanding of the social and political history of 1990s airpower yields important lessons as the Royal Air Force conceives its 6th Generation fleet.

Eleni Elridge-Tull Eleni Eldridge-Tull is a second year PhD candidate at the University of Birmingham. Her PhD is researching masculinities, the self and spirituality within the Royal Air Force in 1930s and 1940s Britain. At its core, it analyses the subjective experience of aircrew during this time, focussing in particular on the negotiation of martial and civilian identities within British society and culture. Exploring the intersection of the airmen’s service and domestic lives, it informs the formation, negotiation and performance of identity within broader military discourse surrounding training, technology, stress, and ethics. It employs a wealth of private correspondence, visual culture, and Air Ministry papers to understand the multifaceted ways in which airmen understood themselves in a moment of modern warfare.

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Title: Nose Art, Superstition and Masculinities in RAF Bomber Command, 1939-1945 Via an analysis of non-traditional sources, this paper analyses aircrew experience within RAF Bomber Command during the Second World War. At its core, the paper focusses on nose art as a cultural expression of aircrews’ identities in two ways. Firstly, by analysing the images and names given to aircraft, it exposes the multifaceted aspects of the flyer’s masculine sense of self. The process of decorating one’s machine, and the continual process of visual engagement, demonstrates the active role airmen played in constructing and presenting their identities. Secondly, it explores nose art as a cultural tool for collective and personal expression of spirituality. As superstitions or mascots, nose art had a dual function, enabling aircrew to express both their sense of self, and a belief in the supernatural.

This paper thus challenges the historical consensus that for military personnel, superstition exists as a by-product of stress and the desire for control. Instead, it argues that airmen, operating in an inherently technical and modern operational setting, existed at the interface of both reason and magic. As a collective cultural tool, nose art allowed airmen to make sense of a complex and unsettling world defined by heavy losses and a high operational tempo alongside boredom and regular access to the civilian world. Analysing nose art as a means to explore one’s relationship with masculinity, the supernatural and fate, this paper builds on the work of Caitlin McWilliams, and provides a British companion to her study of nose art within No.6 Group Royal Canadian Air Force. This further adds to the intervention of Simon MacKenzie by acknowledging superstition as both an expression of selfhood and, in part, a belief in the supernatural. The paper therefore illustrates the value of adding a gendered and spiritual lens to examine military experience, traditions, and rituals.

Dr Viktoriya Fedorchak In September 2019, Dr Viktoriya Fedorchak joined the Department of Historical and Classical Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Trondheim, Norway), as Lecturer in European Studies. Previously, Dr Fedorchak held the position of Lecturer in Military History at the Department of History, Maynooth University, and taught within staff courses at the Military College of the Irish Defence Forces. Dr Fedorchak received her PhD from the University of Hull, exploring the subject of ‘The Development of RAF Air Power Doctrine, 1999-2013.’ Her first monograph ‘British Air Power: The Doctrinal Path to Jointery’ (2018) explored the shift from single-service to joint authorship of environmental doctrine and various stages of institutionalisation of jointery in the British Armed Forces. In her most recent book ‘Understanding Contemporary Air Power’ (2020), Dr Fedorchak explains air power to both military and civilian audiences, exploring the role of air power in conventional warfare, peace-support operations, and counterinsurgencies. Research interests: air power, military doctrine, contemporary warfare, multi-domain integration, European and international security. Title: British Air Power Doctrine: enduring challenges and new opportunities? Conceptual component in the UK endured multiple changes since the end of the Cold War. Each service had its own attitudes and ways of developing, conceptualising, writing and disseminating single-service doctrines. The later shift towards greater centralisation and joint authorship of doctrines was particularly evident for the single-service environmental doctrines. In the case of the RAF, the move was from AP 3000 series to JDP 0-30, with a consequent substitution of DDefS

NEW THINKING IN AIR POWER personalities-driven practice to the more significant role of joint authorship under the institutional umbrella of the DCDC. In this context of the post-Cold War changes in the development of the conceptual component in the RAF and the most evident shift from single-service to joint authorship of the environmental doctrine, the proposed paper is aimed to explore the recent trends in doctrine development based on the last 2 edition of JDP0-30 and also investigate how these trends align with the overall process of institutionalisation of jointery in the British Armed Forces. This paper will address the traditional questions associated with the conceptualisation of thinking on air power and military doctrine per se: - What purpose the recent doctrines serve? Who is the target audience? - What does joint authorship of the environment doctrine provide for the conceptual innovation and reforming of the service for the modern requirements? - Where does innovative thinking on air power fit in the doctrine development process? Moreover, the paper will also address the challenge of doctrine to preserve its primary function as guidance for the military personnel instead of becoming a socio-political document of many other purposes (Fedorchak, 2018). By addressing these questions, the paper will conclude with some suggestions to stimulate further discussion on identifying sources for innovative thinking on air power among serving personnel and the wider audience of air power specialists.

Christian Høgsbjerg Dr Christian Høgsbjerg is Lecturer in Critical History and Politics in the School of Humanities at the University of Brighton. He is the author of C.L.R. James in Imperial Britain (Duke University Press, 2014) and has published widely on history, the black experience of the British Empire and the black presence in twentieth century Britain, including on figures who served in the armed forces or merchant navy such as Rufus E Fennell and Chris Braithwaite (see pieces in Race & Class and the ODNB) Title: ‘We didn't come alive in Britain’: Contextualising the early lives of Caribbean-born Volunteers in the RAF This short paper aims to briefly contextualise the lives of those black colonial subjects growing up the British West Indies in the inter-war period who ended up volunteering for service in the RAF during the Second World War. It takes for its title one of the favourite sayings of the black Trinidadian political and cultural activist John La Rose, ‘we didn’t come alive in Britain’ alluding as it does to the traditions and memories of struggle against racism, slavery and colonialism which West Indians of the Windrush Generation (such as La Rose himself) brought with them. The West Indian volunteers for the RAF were all slightly older than La Rose – Ulric Cross, perhaps the most famous, for example was born in 1917 – and were inevitably shaped by ideas around ‘imperial Britishness’. Those like Cross himself who did ultimately radicalise towards Pan- Africanism did not become involved in anti-colonial struggles until after the Second World War. Nonetheless, they would all have been shaped by their dispiriting and alienating experiences growing up black in the economic and political context of the colonial British Caribbean in the inter- war period, with little job prospects or opportunities beyond menial wage slavery for the majority. They would have witnessed - or at least known about - the Caribbean Labour Rebellions of the 1930s, mass strikes amid the Great Depression which were often brutally and bloodily repressed by British troops.

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They would have also registered the rise of fascism in Europe, and Mussolini’s barbaric war in Ethiopia sparked anger across the African diaspora. It was the growing menace of fascism – and these young brave black’s understanding that it had to be urgently stopped by any means necessary (together with their desire for adventure) that meant that they made their voyage into the imperial metropole – and into the RAF.

Alan Jackson Alan Jackson turned to the study of air power following a career in business. Having earned an open BSc from the Open University, he completed Birmingham University’s MA ‘Air Power: History, Theory and Practice’ and graduated with distinction. He is now a PhD candidate in the Defence Studies Department of King’s College London, researching the history of the British strategic nuclear deterrent in its bomber-borne period from 1955 to 1969. Title: Soviet strike capabilities and UK air defence, 1955 to 1969 The paper considers the potential impact on the British strategic nuclear deterrent of Soviet strike capabilities during the period, in the context of the capacity of UK air defences to blunt such a strike. These defences needed to be sufficient to allow enough of the medium bomber force (MBF) to survive the attack, get airborne, and leave UK airspace. Absent this, the MBF would have stood little chance of reaching its targets, and thereby creating an unacceptable degree of damage to the Soviet Union. The paper opens with a summary of the existing historiography. Published information concerning Soviet capabilities, which became available following the collapse of the USSR, is then analysed, and compared with the understanding of RAF and government leadership of the period based on original British archival research. An archival research-based analysis of contemporary UK air defence capability follows. This is then compared with the Soviet strike capability. Some conclusions are drawn about the relative capabilities of attack and defence. These are put into the context of the existing historiography, in order to test the previously established view.

James Jefferies James Jefferies is undertaking his PhD at the University of Essex History Department studying depictions and memory of the First World War in computer games during the centenary. James also completed his MA History at Essex and his dissertation was entitled Bomber Command in the Battle of Britain: How Britain revered and then reviled the ‘few’ who flew bombers. He is a regular contributor to the History Indoors project at the Universities of Essex and Winchester and is currently working as a historical consultant for The Logistics of the Battle of Britain by Real Engineering and Junto Media, to be released in the summer of 2021. Title: Rethinking the Battle of Britain: The Forgotten Contribution of Bomber and Coastal Command The popular narrative of the Battle of Britain has focussed mainly on the role of RAF Fighter Command as they defended the skies over Britain from Nazi Germany’s Luftwaffe. However, the Battle of Britain was just as much about the RAF’s offensive capabilities as its defensive ones. Using contemporary sources such as newspapers, eyewitness accounts and speeches as well as post war examinations, this talk argues that Winston Churchill’s ‘Few’, the title so often bestowed solely upon the fighter pilots, was equally attributed to the bomber crews of the RAF Bomber Command who engaged on frequent, and often fatal, missions over enemy territory attacking Luftwaffe airfields, bombing German industrial targets and attacking the invasion barges. It will also examine the role of RAF Coastal Command who also contributed key roles such as minelaying and conducting coastal

NEW THINKING IN AIR POWER patrols. These contributions need to be immortalised? and commemorated alongside the actions of Fighter Command. As well as exploring the crucial the role of Bomber and Coastal Commands to the RAF’s success in 1940, this talk will examine why their story was neglected in the historiography of the Battle and why it has only come to light in the last decade and how their role can be commemorated. Building on Larry Donnelly’s The Other Few to more recent works about the Battle of Britain by historians such as James Holland and Stephen Bungay, this talk will also look at how our historical appraisal of the Battle is slowly changing and argues that this change/development? needs to be reflected in Rolls of Honour and on future memorials, especially with the centenary approaching in 2040. The talk will further examine the public memory of the Battle that still often chooses to omit the role of the bomber crews. It concludes that future narratives and cited Rolls of Honour should include members of RAF Bomber and Coastal Commands and suggests how this addition/inclusion? can be addressed.

Professor Patrick Major Patrick Major is Professor of Modern History at the University of Reading and has written on the Berlin Wall in Cold War Berlin as well as cinema in the Cold War. He lived and worked in West Berlin in 1985-86, teaching French servicemen and -women’s children at the Französisches Gymnasium, and takes an annual Reading student field trip to the city. He has previously published “The ionospheric response over the UK to major bombing raids during World War II”; Behind the Berlin Wall: East Germany and the Frontiers of Power; “Listening behind the Curtain: BBC Broadcasting the East Germany and its Cold War Echo” and “Shooting Rommel: The Desert Fox (1951) and Hollywood’s Public-Private Diplomacy”. Title: Mapping ‘Big City’: Spatial and Digital Approaches to the Allied Bombing of Berlin, 1940-45

Wartime Berlin – dubbed ‘Big City’ by Allied aircrews – was the world’s third largest city and the greatest industrial city anywhere at the time, quite apart from being the nerve-centre of the Third Reich. Bombing it became the idée fixe of Arthur Harris, who famously claimed that wrecking Berlin would cost Hitler the war. Bombed more often than any other German city, it suffered around 30,000 fatalities, but also accounted for one in ten of Bomber Command crew casualties.

As part of a project on the Berlin Blitz, I am developing a digital map with switchable layers on area, economic and political targets; air defences including the location of each flak and searchlight battery; as well as cultural landmarks and private residences. An area layer shows ground usage, revealing a sprawling city only partially built up, but using reconnaissance photos, one dotted everywhere with forced labour camps. Over these layers will be superimposed digitised raid tracks recorded by Bomber Command’s Operational Research Section, with bomb-fall plotted from the Hauptluftschutzstelle, Berlin’s air defence command. This allows an incremental and holistic visualisation of intended and collateral damage to the city which was bombed almost throughout the entire war and thus offers a microcosm of the Allied aerial war effort. The approach joins ‘top- down’ Allied airpower histories with the ‘bottom-up’ workings of dictatorship on the ground, for an integrated history of the air war which blends both military and socio-political history.

I propose a ‘guided tour’ talk in a 30-minute conference slot to take the audience over the wartime city, showing the hazards hidden below Allied air crew, as well as some of the key industrial targets such as Siemens and Daimler-Benz, but also buildings long since disappeared, such as the Alkett tank works at Spandau. The talk will also raise questions about whether Berlin’s dense ‘Mietskaserne’

NEW THINKING IN AIR POWER apartment blocks in the city centre were vulnerable to incendiary bombing, or whether the city’s modern construction rendered it immune to the kinds of attack which devastated and Dresden. Audience members will be invited to ‘zoom in’ on areas of interest.

Since this is still work in progress, I would be interested in using the event to recruit potential fellow ‘bomb plotters’ for a collaborative team-project to plot RAF and Luftwaffe claims and losses on the Berlin raids, but also, using digitised Allied and German bomb-damage maps, to plot bomb-fall. I have been using Google Maps, which is user-friendly and sharable, and would only require a collaborator to have a PC, a good eye and enthusiasm for the project. The first raids of 1943 will act as a sample of how this might look. In due course, this would become a public-facing online resource.

Air Commodore Fin Monahan, OBE, DFC, PhD Fin Monahan joined No 138 Initial Officer Training at the Royal Air Force College Cranwell on 29 September 1991 following three years of service on East Lowlands Universities Air Squadron. Selected to fly the Harrier, he flew on operations over the Former Republic of Yugoslavia during the 1990’s. In 2006, during one of his three tours of duty in Afghanistan, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for a short notice solo tasking to support embattled and surrounded coalition ground forces. Fin has enjoyed a very international career; his first RAF tour was at RAF Laarbruch in Germany, he later served in the Royal New Zealand Air Force, at Florennes in Belgium, with US forces at US European Command, Stuttgart and completed staff college in India. Fascinated by the different military cultures he has encountered in his service career, he completed a PhD that examined the origins of RAF organisational culture. More recently, Fin served at RAF Cranwell from 2016-2018 as the Commandant of the Central Flying School and commanded the 2016 and 2017 Red Arrows global tours. He is now the Head of Doctrine, Air Space and Cyber at the Development Concepts and Doctrine Centre, Shrivenham.

Dr Richard Newton Dr Richard Newton served for 22 years in the USAF as a combat rescue and Special Forces helicopter pilot, planner, and educator. Upon retirement from active service he taught air-land integration, operational-level planning, and case studies in unconventional and irregular warfare for the Joint Special Operations University, NATO Special Operations School, US Army School of Advanced Military Studies, and US Army Command and General Staff College. He was awarded a PhD from King’s College London in 2016. His thesis provided the foundation for his first book, The RAF and Tribal Control: Airpower and Irregular Warfare Between the World Wars. Although now semi- retired, he serves as an editor for the Air Commando Journal while writing a second book examining the roles of air power during the First World War East Africa campaign. Title: Air Power at the Distant End of a Long and Tenuous String The First World War came to East Africa in early August 1914 when Royal Navy warships bombarded Dar es Salaam, the capital of German East Africa. Four years later, almost two weeks after the Armistice had been signed, the Germans in East Africa surrendered. From the very beginning and throughout the campaign aircraft – aeroplanes, kite-balloons, and a Zeppelin – were employed to aid land and maritime forces. The East Africa campaign offers an interesting case study in joint operations, and there is much to be learned by modern airmen, sailors, and soldiers here. More importantly, though, and a topic seldom explored, is the critical aspect of air operations in an austere theatre of war and at the far end of a

NEW THINKING IN AIR POWER very long and often unreliable logistic support system. This paper will examine how airmen from the Royal Naval Air Service, Royal Flying Corps, and Imperial German Navy overcame the challenges of supply, repair, disease, and transportation to provide the advantages of air power to their counterparts in the British Expeditionary Force, Royal Navy, and German Schutztruppe. Unlike the Western Front, the numbers of aircraft engaged in the East Africa campaign was small, sometimes only one or two at any given time. Also unlike the Western Front, there were few set piece battles. The Germans fought a defensive hit-and-run campaign, rarely giving the Allies a static target and almost always breaking off engagements in order to preserve their force. The logistic challenges of keeping even a few aircraft flying in an environment these fragile craft were never designed to operate in were monumental. Still, the airmen found ways to overcome the problems and prove air power’s value in irregular warfare. This paper will explore air power in irregular warfare from the perspective of men who overcame severe challenges to prove air power’s value in a hostile environment.

Samuel Oyewole Samuel Oyewole is based at the Department of Political Science, Federal University Oye-Ekiti, Nigeria, and the Department of Political Studies and International Relations, North-West University, Mafikeng Campus, South Africa. He has authored and co-authored a number of journal articles exploring topics related to Air Power, African Affairs, Military and Strategic Studies, Crisis Management, and International Relations. Title: Air Power Capabilities and Applications of African Regional Powers Over the last century that air power has become a subject of military and strategic studies, this field of inquiry has developed around the perspectives and experiences of the global military super and great powers. Accordingly, studies of air power have become largely synonymous to research and documentations of relevant capabilities, strategies and operations of the United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union/Russia, France, Japan, China, Germany, Italy and few other developed countries. Amidst these, the capabilities and applications of air power by regional military powers in Africa and the rest of the global-South have received limited research attention. These factors have contributed to the marginalisation of this region in relevant knowledge production, and disarticulated knowledge consumption that have alienated its students on the subject matter. It is against this background that this article seeks to examine some of the capabilities, strategies and applications of air power by leading regional military powers in Africa (such as Egypt, Algeria, South Africa, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Angola, Sudan and DR Congo) in the recent past. This is expected to contribute to the efforts to raise public and research attention for the betterment of air power amidst military policy and strategies in Africa, the decolonisation of knowledge of the subject matter in the continent, as well as bridge the gap between the experiences of the global-North and the global-South.

Jorden Pitt Jorden Pitt is currently a PhD student at Texas Christian University in the United States. He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Wyoming and his master’s degree from Kansas State University. His master’s thesis, “Fear of Flying: Competing Notions of Flight Disorders in World War II and the Korean War,” examines the divide between medical officers and administrative officers concerning the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of mental illness among aircrews. His current research continues to examine the psychological problems that pilots and aircrews faced throughout

NEW THINKING IN AIR POWER the twentieth century. Furthermore, he follows the trajectory of these problems and how they play larger roles in gender and disability issues in the United States. Title: Feeling Yellow: The Stigmatization of Psychological Issues in the US Army Air Forces During the Second World War, a flying instructor in the United States’ Army Air Forces (AAF) suffered from a psychological illness known as Fear of Flying. During one flight, he had ominous feelings of an impending disaster. Overwhelming anxiety temporarily incapacitated him. After meeting with a psychiatrist, he told the doctor “that he had a yellow streak up his back a yard wide and did not know where he got it; that he never used to be yellow.” Commanders could revoke the airman’s commission, remove him from flight status, and reassign him to basic ground duties. By explicitly saying that he was “yellow,” this man admitted that he felt like a coward for failing to fulfill his responsibilities as a flyer. Many flyers feared they were cowards and failures because of their mental distress. Adding to the men’s anguish, commanding officers often agreed with these labels because the airmen did not evince the masculine qualities necessary to represent the AAF. Indeed, officers declared that sufferers were “lacking in moral fiber” or they “lacked intestinal fortitude.” Administrative policies reflected these views, even going so far as decommissioning flyers or separating them from the service because of a demonstrated fear of flying. Scholars have examined aircrew’s fear of flying but only as part of more extensive studies looking at aircrew experiences in the war. Using official policies, medical records, and other sources, this paper links psychological problems among flyers to broader gender concerns about masculine fortitude and mental health. It also appeals to scholars of military, aviation, gender, and disability history by arguing that there is a close connection between gender issues and psychological illness. Ultimately, by stigmatizing psychological distress, these policies proved detrimental to longer trajectory of mental health care, thereby challenging the “Greatest Generation” paradigm.

Jennifer Scott Jennifer Scott joined the Royal Air Force Museum as the Trenchard Project Archivist in February 2020. She has previously worked in archival roles at The British Library and Westminster Abbey. Her role involves cataloguing, conserving and digitising the personal papers of Hugh Trenchard, in order to increase the accessibility of the unique collection. Title: ‘One continual fight’: Trenchard’s application of air power thinking in the RAF and Metropolitan Police In October 1931 Hugh Trenchard reluctantly accepted the position of Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. At a time when the government was overwhelmed by economic crisis and concerned by unrest in the police, they felt that a strong-willed military man was needed to take charge. Trenchard brought with him more than 11 years of experience as the Royal Air Force’s Chief of the Air Staff. Having nurtured the RAF from a similarly precarious position, fighting to maintain its independence in the face of drastic cuts to defence expenditure, he was well poised to convert these ideas into the context of the Met. While it is accepted that Trenchard played a significant role in the development of the RAF, the extent to which the ideas he was implementing were those of Fredrick Sykes, David Henderson or the Air Staff advising him is contested. Historiography reinforces the cult of personality which surrounds Trenchard, but there is a lack of precise understanding of his motivations and methodology. This research will challenge received views by testing whether Trenchard’s leadership of the Met confirms that he had a clear set of priorities in mind when establishing the RAF. The

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Trenchard Archive provides a panoramic insight into his ideology and development as a leader, making it possible to trace the ideas which shaped his leadership of both the RAF and the Met. The appeal of Trenchard to the government for the position of CAS in 1919 can be attributed to his proposal for organisational simplicity in the form of a small Air Ministry and a similarly small air force, ‘not beyond the capabilities of a few carefully chosen officials to run.’ He carried forward this tactic of consolidating and simplifying the structure of the Met, abolishing one of its four main departments within two months of arriving in his post. The importance of deterrence underpinned many of Trenchard’s ideas on strategic air power. These views would also inform his approach to managing crime in Greater London, particularly his belief that re-distributing manpower and more extensive use of motor transport would act as ‘a great deterrent against would-be offenders’. Instilling professional identity was a priority for Trenchard, perceiving that ‘esprit de corps’ and standards of discipline were initially lacking in both the forces. Similarly, his dealings with the army and Royal Navy would influence Trenchard when tackling the unruly Police Federation. Trenchard’s commitment to establishing specialised training colleges and his determination to attract the ‘highly educated classes’ are also mirrored in his leadership of both services. In the same way that six places were reserved at RAF College Cranwell for students on the Aircraft Apprentice Scheme at RAF Halton who were deemed officer material, Trenchard envisioned that his new Metropolitan Police College would broaden recruitment to attract better qualified candidates for senior posts. Not all of Trenchard’s police reforms lasted as well as they had in the RAF and he was condemned as attempting to militarise the police by many of his critics. However, it is clear that Trenchard drew upon his RAF blueprint and continued to implement it throughout his career.

Victoria Taylor Victoria Taylor is a PhD candidate at the University of Hull and Sheffield Hallam University, where she is completing her thesis on the Luftwaffe and National Socialism in the Third Reich. For this doctoral research, she was awarded the 2020 Royal Air Force Museum Doctoral Academic Prize in 2021. She also completed her Masters in Historical Research (MRes) on Britain’s wartime and post- war mythologization of Operation CHASTISE at Hull, for which she was awarded a distinction and the Royal Air Force Museum’s RAF Centenary Master’s Academic Prize in 2019. Victoria’s specialisation is in the history of airpower, aviation and public imagination – particularly with regards to aviation in political discourse and the ethical questions provoked by aerial warfare’s rapid development during the twentieth century. Her main focus is on British and German aviation during the interwar period and the Second World War, though she has also occasionally written and spoken on First World War and Cold War aviation. She is an Assistant Editor of the scholarly airpower platform ‘From Balloons to Drones’ and has covered a variety of airpower subjects during her past collaborations with the BBC, the Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund, and History Hit. Title: The Luftwaffe and National Socialism ‘A Prussian army, an Imperial navy and a National Socialist air force.’ Once a popular sentiment in Nazi Germany, both present-day historians and casual observers frequently subscribe to this view of the Luftwaffe in the Third Reich. Certain scholars have often attributed the Luftwaffe’s apparent political malleability to it being the youngest German military force during the Nazi Machtübernahme (‘takeover of power’). Others, potentially unwittingly influenced by the ‘clean Wehrmacht’ myth that swirled around the infamous trinity after the war, allege that the Luftwaffe was devoid of political influence and was not subjected to a conscious process of Nazi indoctrination.

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Both lines of argument, however, cannot be convincingly asserted whilst an exhaustive and focussed socio-political study of the Luftwaffe and National Socialism remains unwritten. Though ‘Wehrmacht culpability’ in upholding the Third Reich has been extensively considered, such contributions have normally traced the politicisation of the Heer (army) or the Kriegsmarine (navy) and even civilian police battalions. Yet, as historians perpetually grapple with understanding how ‘The Land of Poets and Thinkers’ fell prey to such a nefarious regime, overlooking the influence of National Socialist ideology, propaganda, and figures within the publicly-adored Luftwaffe is a glaring omission. This paper seeks to address this historical lacuna by considering the ways in which the Nazi Party attempted to politically indoctrinate the Luftwaffe; to examine how far this was successful within certain individuals across its ranks and lesser-considered branches; and to highlight the tumultuous nature of the Luftwaffe’s relationship with National Socialism. It frames the traditional operational narrative of its military influences, conception, wartime rise and eventual collapse within a plethora of political, social, and cultural primary sources – many of which have not yet been translated from their original German - that the men were subjected to before and during their time in the Luftwaffe.

Dr Athol Yates Dr. Athol Yates teaches on internal security, disaster management and public policy at Khalifa University in the United Arab Emirates. His research focuses on the UAE military, policing and intelligence history. His major recent publications are: “Contracted Foreign Advisors in the Abu Dhabi Police Force: Explaining Their Enduring Presence from 2002 to 2015,” in Police Advising and Militarization, ed. D. Stoker and E.B. Westermann (Solihull: Helion & Co, 2018); The Evolution of the Armed Forces of the United Arab Emirates (Solihull: Helion & Co, 2020); “Forging a Force: Rulers, Professional Expatriates, and the Creation of Abu Dhabi’s Police”, Middle Eastern Studies, with A Rossiter (2020); “Military Assistance as Political Gimmickry? The Case of Britain and the Newly Federated UAE,” Diplomacy & Statecraft (in press), with A Rossiter; “The Formation of Military Intelligence in the United Arab Emirates: 1965-1974,” Journal of Intelligence History; “Intelligence Collection in Arabia: Britain’s Roaming Information-Gathers in the Trucial States, 1956-1971,” Intelligence and National Security (2020), with A Rossiter; “Building a Navy from Scratch in Just a Decade: The Abu Dhabi Sea Wing and Navy (1966-1976),” in Middle Eastern Naval History, ed. J. Dunn and D. Stoker (Solihull: Helion & Co, in press); “The Use of British Seconded and Contracted Military Personnel to Advance Britain’s Interests: A Case Study from the United Arab Emirates from 1965-2010,” in A History of Defense Engagement in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries, ed. G. Kennedy (Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2020); “The UAE’s National Security Machinery of Government,” in Handbook on UAE Security Studies, ed. W. Guéraiche and K. david ander (UK: Routledge, in press). Title: What’s new is old: Britain’s train, advise and assist mission in building the UAE air force Britain has long provided assistance to help develop and support local armed forces across its Empire. This was not done out of benevolence but as part of Britain’s efforts to encourage its proteges to be responsible for their own security. For Britain, this would both reduce the financial and political costs associated with maintaining and deploying British regular forces. While there is considerable literature on British air assistance to its formal dominions, there has been a gap in understanding how Britain assisted the development of local air forces in Britain’s informal empire. This case study starts to rectify the lacuna by describing how the Royal Air Force supported the development of a local air force in Abu Dhabi. In doing so, it provides what appears to

NEW THINKING IN AIR POWER be the first comprehensive history of British air force assistance in building a local force in Britain’s late decolonisation period. The case study rests on primary research material, notably material from the National Archives in Kew, and interviews with key players responsible for the development of Abu Dhabi’s air force. This case study not only expands the historiography of British assistance to cover air forces but also constructs a repertoire of support provided by the Royal Air Force. This paper has contemporary relevance as it provides insight into past cases of train, advise and assist missions, but not for the land forces but for air forces.