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Aviation History
1941
1941 - 0527.PDF
FEBRUARY 27TH, 1941. Air Strategy—XLH 177 GREECE and ALBANIA Lessons of the Tactical Employment of Fighters and Bombers in the Present War—V By CAPTAIN NORMAN MACMILLAN M.G., A.F.C. UNLESS one has visited a country, q^. better still(from the pilot's point of view), ffcwn over it,preferably in the pilot's* seat, it /fs difficult to appreciate precisely what that country looks like from the air. There may be some readers who will exclaim, J'Bnt why the pilot's seat? Surely one gets the same *»HFa from behind the pilot? " Personally I do not think that any member of an aeroplane's crew or passenger list gets the same idea of a country below as does the pilot: The individual in the nose cockpit of a multi- engined aircraft obtains the nearest approach to the pilot's outlook, but he looks upon the terrain below (and in mountainous country, sometimes alongside, or even above) as the man who is being transported over, past, or below it, and that is fundamentally different from the aspect seen by the man who has the responsibility for the aircraft in his hands, feet and brain.- I had this difference vividly brought home to me one day when I was a passenger in an airliner, cruising sweetly enough through narrow Swiss valleys with about 8-10 cloud intermittently covering' the mountains. It appeared positively frightening,' from the restricted out- look of the passenger window, to see walls of rock so steep that no snow could cling to them flash into view, and then next instant disappear in dense cloud at what- seemed like half a wing's span from the wing-tip. But, up in the pilot's cabin, with its hemispherical vision, it was easy to see that the valley ahead was opening out and that there was ample room to fly blind for a few seconds, if not for minutes. The passengers' view was that of vertical walls of unfriendly rock; the pilot's was the vista of a friendly valley with a carpet of snow below and a stream cutting a black course through it, and ahead journey's end. The passenger seldom sees the journey's end until the pilot is curving round in pre- paration for the landing. M As the Pilot Sees It ^jAnd so it is that I would hesitate to write anything <aDout Greece and Albania unless I had seen both countries from the air. They are wild and mountainous, especially Albania. Mountains in Albania build up to a plateau, above which rise the peaks. This difficult i country runs south to the Gulf of Corinth, where the rock walls fall sheer into the sea. Off the coast of the Ionian Sea the rocky islands guard the shore south of the tadpole-shaped island of Corfu, with an occasional beach on which one might land. Around Athens the country is one of barren mountains and rounded valleys. The land appears singularly bare of vegetation. In season it is the habitat of the flea. Beyond, rock islands rise from the water as though one of the mythological giants had gleefully scattered a handful of (to him) pebbles in play. In Crete the mountains rise to 7,000 feet Away up by Valona there is an area of flat land and sand by the shore, but inland it soon rises to the frozen waves of hills. Most pilots who have flown over that territory in hot weather have remarked that it is one of the bumpiest f bits of Europe, and that probably means the world. It cannot be less bumpy when the winter storms howl round the mountains and whistle down the gorges that cut a passage through the elevated plateau. A less pleasant land in which to carry out air operations in collaboration with fighting troops engaged in war is scarcely to be imagined. It was against the most difficult part of this country that the Italian attack was launched. The Italians had made no preparations for "quisling" Greece before the assault. And, compared with the German invasion of Norway, the Italian "invasion" of Greece was like the same operation turned upside down. To obtain the same facilities for the invasion of Greece as the Germans possessed for the invasion of Norway, Greece should have been invaded from the south. The initial attack . should have been launched against the Piraeus and Athens as the Germans launched their first attack in Norway against Larvik and Oslo. But Italy could not do that. Germany had the sheltered waters behind Denmark through which to. move her forces against Norway. Italian forces could have reached the Piraus only by running the gauntlet of the British Mediter- ranean fleet, and their line of communication would have had to be maintained by sea. - • ._.- - The Short Cut Success in this operation could have been achieved only by seizing the island of Crete, and thereafter main- taining Italian control of the middle Mediterrannean bounded by Sicily, Tripolitania, Cyrenaica, Crete and the Dodecanese. Instead Italian strategists ignored Crete, chose the short sea line of communication across the Adriatic between Bari and Brindisi and Durazzo and Valona, and attempted to invade Greece from the "Narvik" end of that country. The Italian strategy was apparently, an attempt to try to obtain by threat what Italy was afraid to obtain by action. Had Greece succumbed to the fiat of Italy, Italian forces would no doubt have moved into Crete (if the British had been prepared to acquiesce dumbly, which I doubt). The Italians are not good at poker. Their bluff was quickly called, and from the very beginning what they sought to get by threat and what they ought to have got by force if they were to succeed at all was at once lost to them by the British response to the Greek request for assist- ance, and by the occupation of Crete by British forces, which cut off the Italian forces in the Dodecanese, leav- ing them as beleaguered garrisons instead of outposts of an Italian empire. British assistance to Greece then took the direct form of air and naval aid, the delivery of war supplies and, later, the indirect aid of the Middle East offensive. Here we are concerned with the air side of the help rendered. The strength of the British air forces operat- ing with the Greek army has not been disclosed, but that it cannot be very great is denoted by the appoint- ment of an officer of the rank of Air Commodore as Air Officer Commanding. It must not be thought that the comparatively small size of the British air forces directly employed in the Italo-Greek campaign is due solely to British incapacity to do more; nothing could be more dangerous than such an outlook. Whatever may happen as a result of German pressure in the Near East, the original Italo-Greek front was small and the few possible routes of thrust defined by the configuration of the country. The throat through
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