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Aviation History
1942
1942 - 0773.PDF
APRIL gra, 1942 FLIGHT 345 AIR WEAPONS Delusions Through Disasters : Novelties Always Over-rated : The Air Not One Weapon, but Many By MAJOR F. A. de V. ROBERTSON, V.D. WE have a Ministry of Aircraft Production, while tanks and all other weapons are dealt with by the Ministry of Supply. This lays stress on the special importance oi the air. The United Nations have been defeated in several land campaigns because the enemy has been clever in using aircraft in conjunction with his land forces, and particularly with his tanks, while the Allies have lacked the necessary antidote. In such cases the antidote is usually a dominating force of fighter aircraft. The Allies have lost ships, e.g., H.M.S. Prince of Wales and Repulse, from air attack, for the same reason. All these things together have made some commentators pro- -'irflaim that this is "an air war." Such generalisations are usually dangerous and mislead ing. Perhaps Napoleon went as far as it is safe to go in generalising when he said (if I remember right), " Fire is everything; the rest is nothing." Those words might be twisted into '' the war which we are fighting is a gun powder war." Though the great Corsican used his cavalry (which did not rely on firearms) with effect, as well as his infantry and his artillery, he was more correct than most concocters of epigrams. He usually was correct, except when he said to Soult on the eve of Waterloo, " You think because Wellington beat you in Spain that he is a good General and that the British are good troops. I tell you that Wellington is a bad General, the British are bad troops, and it will be a picnic." Throughout the ages there has often been a tendency to lay too much stress upon the possession by one side of a powerful weapon. Each new weapon that has been in vented has been claimed by i.ts inventor and his admirers as the dominating factor in war. Sometimes a campaign has been won by the new weapon if the enemy did not possess it and had no antidote. In prehistoric times wars were probably won by the first people to use missile weapons, and later by those who first domesticated the horse and learnt to ride it. Historic Cases In historic times we remember other cases. The historian Gibbon (again, if my memory does not fail me) said that the Byzantine Empire relied on the possession of '' Greek fire," a precursor of thermite, which set the Saracen ships ablaze. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the English longbow dominated western Europe. Cannon were said to have been used first at Crecy, but gradually gun powder (and its successors) came to dominate the battle field. More recently the torpedo was claimed by Mr. White head and by many naval officers as a revolution in naval warfare. The machine gun put defence ahead of attack in 1914- 1917, and it is commonly asserted that the British inven tion of the tank won the war in 1918. Now it is claimed in many quarters that aircraft are the decisive factor in war. When extreme claims are made for the newest weapon of the day, it is salutary to look back and remember how often similar claims have been.made for new inventions in past centuries. It is an exercise which preserves our sense of proportion and perspective. One is struck by the rarity with which a novel weapon has won an-(important cam paign. The myth of the Centaurs is said to be founded on the first acquaintance of some prehistoric Greeks with cavalry, yet the legend represents the Centaurs as having been defeated by the infantry of the Lapithfe. The longbow was not the latest invention of its age, for tech nically the crossbow was superior to it in range and pene tration, yet I believe the crossbow never won a campaign. The torpedo has been both a benefit and a nuisance to the British Navy, but it has never deprived Britain of her naval power. Here, perhaps, some will object that aircraft torpedoes sank two capital ships oft Malaya and left Britain helpless in the Pacific. The reply is that it was the reduction ol the Royal Navy by international agreement in the inter war years which made it impossible to be strong in all the seven seas at once, and that the Pacific was, and is, the concern of the United States. Britain did not lose the Pacific campaign ; she was never counted on to win it. The Pearl Harboui disaster was a case of treachery, not of war, and the weapon which did the damage there is believed to have been the bomb. H.M.S. Prince of Wales and Repulse by themselves could not have dominated all the Pacific, and would have been no match for the full battle fleet of Japan, had it been brought against them. The Japanese were merely astute enough to use torpedo aircraft against our ships when the latter had no fighter protection, as being the easiest and cheapest way to score a success. Superiority is Not Mastery It must be admitted that there have been a number ol cases since September, 1939, in which mastery of the air has made all the difference between success and failure. Mere superiority in the air has not had any such decisive effect. In the campaigns in Poland, Norway, France and the Low Countries, Greece, and Crete, the Germans held
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