Page images
PDF
EPUB

home, reveals its character, it is to be anticipated that the enemy will oppose a determined resistance, maintained to the utmost limit of his available resources, that is to say, maintained until his resistance is overcome by the superior fighting force employed by his adversary. This does not necessarily mean that the adversary either must or will be able to achieve a Tsushima or a Sedan, as Air Vice-Marshal Brooke-Popham implies. Such victories depend largely on the incompetence of the enemy's higher command and the general inefficiency of his fighting forces. The German fleet went to Scapa tamely, and on Ludendorff's advice the German Government asked for an armistice to avoid the evils of occupation of the homeland without the German fleet or German army being destroyed or captured in battle. But the argument does postulate a period, more or less prolonged, of successful fighting which results in breaking down the morale of the opposing navy, army or air force.

This contention is borne out by the story of the only air operation in the late war which, however remotely, partook somewhat of the character of sustained attack on vital targets in Germany, viz., the operations of the Independent Air Force against German munition and other works in the Rhineland and Ruhr in 1918. The following paragraphs from Air Chief-Marshal Sir Hugh Trenchard's report on these operations are quoted from "Basic Principles of Air Warfare," by " Squadron Leader."

It will be within your recollection that in the past I had referred to the necessity for equipping the British Expeditionary Forces on the Western Front with sufficient aircraft to hold and beat the German air forces on the Western Front, that the bombing of Germany was a luxury till this had been accomplished, but that, once this had been accomplished, it became necessary to attack what I may call the German Army in Germany, and to strike at its most vital point, its sources of supply; and the Independent Force was formed with this object.

The question I had to decide was how to use this Force in order to achieve the object, i.e., the breakdown of the German Army in Germany, its Government, and the crippling of its sources of supply.

The two main alternative schemes were, firstly, a sustained and continuous attack on one large centre after another until each centre was destroyed, and the industrial population largely dispersed to other towns; or alternatively, to attack as many of the large industrial centres as it was possible to reach with the machines at my disposal. I decided on the latter plan, for the following reasons: In the first place, it was not possible with the forces at my disposal to do sufficient damage to

completely destroy the industrial centres in question. And, secondly, it must be remembered that, even had the force been still larger, it would not have been practical to carry this out unless the war had lasted for at least another four or five years, owing to the limitations imposed on long-range bombing by the weather.

By attacking as many centres as could be reached, the moral effect was first of all very much greater, as no town felt safe, and it necessitated continued and thorough defensive measures on the part of the enemy to protect the many different localities over which my force was operating.

Before it was possible to attack Germany successfully it was necessary to attack the enemy's aerodromes heavily, in order to prevent his attacking our aerodromes by night, and by destroying his machines to render his attacks by day less efficacious. I considered that it was probable during the spring and early summer of 1919 that at least half my force would be attacking the enemy's aerodromes, whilst the other half carried out attacks on long distance targets in Germany.

Out of a total of 550 tons of bombs dropped between 6th June and 10th November, 1918, no less than 220 tons were dropped on aerodromes. This large percentage was due to the necessity of preventing the enemy's bombing machines attacking our aerodromes and in order to destroy large numbers of the enemy's scouts on their aerodromes, as it was impracticable to deal with them on equal terms in the air.

From these quotations it is clear that the operations in question were really a series of frequently repeated raids on a group of important targets covering a considerable area. No attempt was made to carry out attack sufficiently sustained to "bring about a continued dislocation of the normal life" by interrupting, beyond possibility of restoration, either centres of transport and supply, or water and lighting systems. Our bombing formations were frequently attacked: for some time with the utmost vigour, as the enemy reacted violently to the pressure put on him. After a time, the German counter attacks were found to be less resolute, as the machine-gun fire of our bombing formations gradually got the upper hand of the German fighting formations protecting the targets attacked. Towards the end of the operations the German fighters confined themselves more and more to engaging our bombing formations with long-range machine-gun fire and displayed an increasing disinclination to close to decisive ranges. This means that, as a result of prolonged air fighting, the British attackers had acquired, or were in process of acquiring, a decisive command of the air at the points where they required it in order to carry out their tasks, viz., in the neighbourhood of their targets.

To emphasise this point, let us see what would have happened had the results of the air fighting gone the other way-if day by day more and more British bombing machines had been shot down with fewer and fewer casualties to the German fighting machines. Surely a point would have been reached when the German pilots would have acquired a moral ascendancy over those of the Allies engaged in these particular operations, so that eventually the targets allotted to the latter would not have been bombed until the balance of force in the air had been redressed as a consequence of further fighting in the air after the arrival of adequate reinforcements. If this be true of operations which, as has been pointed out, partook more of the character of repeated raids on many targets than of sustained attack on a few carefully selected vital targets designed to dislocate the national life, surely the only logical inference is that the latter type of attack will not succeed unless and until command of the air in the neighbourhood of the vital targets has been acquired as a result of air fighting. In this connection, it must be remembered that the success of decisive air attack postulates, not the mere initiation of an attack, but actually dropping on the target selected the last bomb which is really necessary to achieve the decisive result aimed at. The attack must be successful right up to the very end, otherwise it has failed. In the air, as at sea and on land, it is the end of an attack that matters, not its commencement; and the end of all attacks depends on hard fighting, after all the fruits of surprise, initiative and initial evasion have been gathered in, and those fruits are very considerable at sea and on land as well as in the air.

If these considerations are correct, we are driven to the conclusion that the properties of air-craft do not give, to forces operating in the air, immunity from the laws which govern the use of force at sea or on land. They enhance, if it is possible to do so, the importance of the principles of surprise and mobility, but they do not justify the assertion that the objective has become fundamentally changed by contact with three dimensional space. That is to say, there is no justification for a doctrine of war in the air different from that of war at sea and on land.

This is the lesson which "Squadron Leader " draws in his timely study of the "Basic Principles of Air Warfare," a book which it is to be hoped will have an influence on thought in the Royal Air Force as important as Colonel Fuller's epoch-making

work on "The Reformation of War" had on thought in the Army. Colonel Fuller gave the Army the eight principles of war; "Squadron Leader " tells his comrades of the Royal Air Force that these apply to war in the air, no less than to war on land and at sea. As General Ironside says in his "foreword," "Squadron Leader' is to be congratulated upon having given to the military world a basis from which can be built a proper system of co-operation between the Air and the Navy and Army." From internal evidence one would hazard a guess that " Squadron Leader" is an officer who has not only pondered deeply the problem of war in the air, but has had some considerable personal experience of it as a combatant, a fact which should add weight to his conclusions in the mind of the public as well as of his own comrades.

66

It is ignorance of this practical aspect of aeronautics and of air warfare which vitiates "Neon's " study of aircraft in peace and war, published under the suggestive title of "The Great Delusion." "Neon" alienates the serious reader by an ignorant and angry denunciation of the Royal Air Force and all its works, and by his wild suggestions that no real importance, naval or military, is to be attached to air reconnaissance, artillery ranging, bombing or air fighting; Squadron Leader " holds the balance fair, discounting exaggerated claims on the one hand, while on the other hand emphasising the vital importance in war of air operations conducted in co-operation with those of the other two fighting services. Statesmen and citizens interested in the question would do well to compare some of Air Vice-Marshal Brooke-Popham's dicta on the objective in air warfare with Squadron Leader's " close reasoning on that principle which leads him to very different conclusions. Squadron Leader " is at one, however, with the Air Vice-Marshal in denying that by air power alone we can solve all the problems of Empire defence. The implications involved in this conclusion are considerable. It is hoped that they may be appreciated by those " statesmen and citizens" whose perfunctory study of war has led them to believe hitherto that in the air arm we have a national weapon cheaper, quicker and more potent for attaining victory than the Royal Navy or the British Army.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

RECENTLY PUBLISHED BOOKS

THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN AUSTRIA. By C. A. MACARTNEY. Cambridge University Press. 8s. 6d. net.

Until the publication of this book no authoritative study of the new Austrian republic had appeared, and the present volume is welcome for this reason, and also because it gives due consideration to the Socialist schemes which have been put into practice in Austria. The author has endeavoured to deal with these schemes impartially, and occasionally sums them up with attention to the humorous side, which is refreshing. In considering, for instance, the differences between the “Christian Socialist government and the "Atheist Socialist " municipalities, he tells us that Vienna set up a municipal crematorium as "an indispensable sign of culture," only to find cremation forbidden by the government under an old statute. After several fights in the courts," corpses are still being burned, but not in any great numbers, for the Viennese are not so cultivated as all that."

"

LETTERS TO AMERICA.

21s. net.

By BERNARD GILBERT.

Blackwell.

This is the eighth volume of the monumental work in which Mr. Gilbert is attempting to portray English life in all its aspects. In earlier volumes he has been concerned with the rural scene from the rural point of view. Here a townsman is describing for an American friend rural England as it strikes the town-bred eye. In spite of Mr. Gilbert's energy and his obvious love of the English countryside, it is difficult to feel that so immense an effort is quite justified by its results. There is in it almost too much material. Compared with a small volume reviewed here recently, which seemed to us "full of the spirit of England," this work is like a great crowded landscape painting showing every blade of grass by the side of an impressionist picture of the same

scene.

A CITY COUNCIL FROM WITHIN. By E. D. SIMON, Ex-Lord Mayor of Manchester. With a Preface by Professor GRAHAM WALLAS. Longmans. 7s. 6d. net.

As Professor Graham Wallas writes in his preface, the books on English local government are "amazingly few and uninforming." Here is a volume which will go a great way to fill the gap: a comprehensive study of the actual working of a city council, the problems to be met, and the lines on which progress may be made. Mr. E. D. Simon has devoted himself for many years to his city's affairs and is well qualified to write on municipal government. His book will be an invaluable work of reference for prospective city and town councillors.

« PreviousContinue »