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Aviation History
1941
1941 - 0162.PDF
JANUARY I6TH, 1941. 'M.THE KJNC-PIN OF OPERATIONS (Continued) until the aircraft strength could be made up from Britain. It must, therefore, be assumed that the Western Desert offensive was intended to take place primarily as a military operation, and that it had not included the possibility of Royal Air Force aircraft being able to use aerodromes in Greece for the purpose of attack- ing targets in the Southern area of Metropolitan Italy ; attacks upon any such targets could only have been made by Fleet Air Arm aircraft had it not been for the Italian error in attacking Greece, and their scale would have been a limited one. Not Planned as Air Operation If, however, the Western Desert offensive had been planned in the first place as an air operation with naval and military co-operation, attack upon targets in Metro- politan Italy would have been a. primary feature of the campaign, and these attacks would have included raids upon all Italian lines of communication right up to the industrial North of Italy. Instead of that, the Western Desert offensive was made a dual military and naval operation accompanied by air co-operation. Most of the attacks launched against Southern Metropolitan Italy have been concerned with targets of naval import- ance. Attacks against other parts of Metropolitan Italy dur- ing the course of the W'estern Desert offensive have been too few in number to have results of value. We have made a nibble at Italy's military and naval forces when we ought to have taken a whole bite at Italian power to wage war. This policy of nibble will continue, I am afraid, so long as Britain's conception of air power remains simply that of a co-operative effort in the strategy of sea and land war instead of being the fundamental basis of all strategy to-day. One of the fundamental results which must follow the placing of strategy in the hands of naval and land commanders will be the demand for aircraft of types especially adapted to co-operate in naval and land war at the expense of aircraft particularly designed to con- duct air war as their primary function. Anyone who has had experience of the requirements for aircraft designed specially for naval use knows that specifica- tions for such aircraft produce a number of detail fea- tures which no doubt make them more valuable for purely naval duties, but which have the effect of intro- ducing the inevitable handicaps of the ever-specialised product when it is applied to other purposes. Limited Range One such feature of the aircraft of the Fleet Air Arm has been lack of range. These aircraft have to be transported by means of aircraft carriers to within reasonable striking distance of their objective. In the main, during the years which preceded the beginning of the present war, the Fleet Air Arm was intended to be an integral part of a Fleet. The aircraft carriers were intended to provide the majority of the aircraft required in a large-scale naval engagement, and in pre- war exercises the aircraft carriers functioned in this manner. In this war, however (as was not altogether unex- pected) , the enemy has avoided large-scale naval engage- ment, and the role of the aircraft carriers has therefore had to be diverted to other purposes, mostly con- nected with,attacks against targets in ports or on shore. For such attacks the carrier does not act as an air escort to the Fleet. More probably the Fleet has to act as an escort to the carrier when she has to approach close to shores occupied by the enemy ; under these conditions it is obvious that limited range of flight is a distinct handicap. There are other handicaps associated with the opera- tion of aircraft from carriers when these ships are diverted from the special purpose for which they were at first intended. One very great handicap is the neces- sity to move the floating aerodrome to the point from which an attack can be launched; this movement has to be made at the speed of the sea, the carrier has to remain in the vicinity during the course of the attack make by her aircraft, and she can only withdraw there- from at the same slow sea speed after her aircraft have again landed-on. Moving the floating aerodrome for- ward to get the aircraft within striking range of the target means, with comparatively short-range aircraft, that the number of targets which can be simultaneously attacked is restricted to taTgets lying along the radii of a narrow arc. Attack operations of this nature ma.iic from aircraft carriers are therefore subject to consider- • able time-lag intervals, and when they are made against shores heavily defended by aircraft or submarines they are fraught with considerable risk. Not Designed for Patrols The Admiralty demand for operational control over the Coastal Command is therefore based on the im- possibility of a Fleet Air Arm, designed in the first place to co-operate with naval ships in Fleet engagements, being able to convert itself into a Fleet Air Arm suit- able for routine duties in connection with a hostile coastline nearly 2,000 miles in length, not counting curves and indentations, from the basin of St. Jean de Luz to North Cape. The Fleet Air Arm was an un- suitable instrument for this work. Following this argument it may be said that there is no option when the de'il drives. If Hitlerian hordes had not overrun Denmark and Norway, Holland, Bel- gium and France there would have been no need for the Coastal Command to be placed under Admiralty operational control, for the Fleet Air Arm then, as for- merly, would have been able to cope with the duties which naval warfare requires of aircraft. 1 It was the external situation which required this step- c f handing over the control of the Coastal Command to the Admiralty to be taken. Possession of the operational control of the Coastal Command at an earlier date would not have enabled the Admiralty t;.> prevent the situation from arising, because the dynamic conditions which produced the situation were outside the power of naval forces to prevent or even hold un appreciably. That applied in Norway where the possibility of naval intervention was at its most favourable landfall in all that long coastline. Aircraft might have saved the situation in Norway> Aircraft and tanks might have saved the situation in the Low Countries and France. Aircraft might already have brought about the downfall of Italy. And so air- craft enter predominantly into all operations. How, then, is it possible to consider any strategical campaign without taking the Air Arm into the first consideration in relation to the conduct of the whole scheme? Of one thing I am certain. It is that, until the British High Command begins to understand that past dogmas of strategy are out-moded to-day unless they fit into a strategical scheme which is based upon Air Power as
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