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Aviation History
1945
1945 - 0817.PDF
APRIL 20TH, 1945 FLIGHT 455 AIR ARM PARADOX based R.A.F. equipment. The CinderellaService went into battle under the shadow of suspicion—doubt as to its use-ful value, in that German bombers would almost certainly sink the carriers, andmisgivings to the effect that even if they were not sunk their aircraft would bemassacred by land-based defence. The doubters had a very good case.They went further and made a number of unsupported claims though they ob-served with bewilderment that the Ark Royal was not in fact sunk by bombs inspite of prolonged air attacks. More- over, when things began to hot up inNorway, ships which were almost inces- .• santly attacked by German bomjjerssomehow lived to fight on, though some were sunk. Courageous, first aircraftcarrier victim, was sunk not by bombs, but by the deadly torpedo from a sub-marine. Glorious vanished before naval 'guns, not before bombs. In Narrow Seas When Italy took up the sword, thebomber kings were sure the day of the battleship was ended. There were hun-dreds of competent Italian bombers available—but oddly enough not one ofthem sank a battleship in all the long years of opportunity in the Mediter-ranean. Nor was the bitter pill less palatable when British capital shipsbombarded Genoa using '' obsolete '' biplanes of the Fleet Air Arm to spotthe fall of shot. Th^y flew at no more than 1,000 feet ov^r the town and itmight seem that here, if anywhere, the superior landplanes ashore should havegone into action. Still doubt lingered over the issue.When Japan struck at Pearl Harbour and wrecked the fleet there, the bomber boysjubilantly—yet sympathetically for our Allies—said: We told you so. Threedays later the British capital ships Prince of Wales and Repulse were sunk by tor-pedoes from Jap bombers, and again the cry went round that the day of thebattleship was done. Air power alone had supplanted sea power in priority and wasthe clue to the future. Then a remarkable thing occurred.Using aircraft-carrier aircraft, the U.S. Navy arrested the Jap path of aggres-sion with a brilliant sea-air victory in the Coral Sea. The enemy invasion fleet wasrouted although it was within easy range the land-based aircraft defence range,the use of carrier-borne aircraft which had long been thought inferior^ Next, at Midway Island, the U.S.Navy, assisted in small part by long- range land-based Army Air Corpsbombers, utterly defeated the most powerful invasion fleet the Japs had everdespatched. This was a contest of carrier aircraft versus carrier aircraft, and thelosses in the air were hard on both sides. On the sea surface, however, the Japs 'suffered a defeat from which they never recovered. As before, there were circumstanceswhich could be argued in favour of both sides. But the Americans were convincedof the value of aircraft carriers, which they put into large-scale and rapid pro-duction. Their programme ranged from 45.ooo-toii super-carriers down to small"flat-top" escort carriers with the im- portant Essex class in between. Then cgxne the first real test—atLeyte. ^rh e Japs had formidable sea forces, operating from a ring of islandson which were, or could be, based the best fighters and bombers. In theory, theseland-based aircraft were far superior to the carrier-borne, and it was by carrieraircraft alone that the Americans could bring air power to the invasion of thePhilippines. The test was made, and the paradoxwas that the carrier aircraft won the vic- tory in the air. Fierce battles werefought, but the answer was indisputable. Sea-going air power had proved itselfunder the sternest test of all—War. To clinch the matter, action at Luzonand other Philippine islands left no doubt of the decisive result of the em-ployment of carriers. But none of the official bulletins has made the pointthat only by the use of carriers could the necessary air umbrella be given the fleetsat sea. The actions were fought hun- dreds of miles beyond the maximum rangeof friendly land-based fighter aircraft. We now come to the most importanttest of all, though we cannot refrain from mentioning the series of attacksmade by Barracudas, Avengers and Fire- fly fighters with full escort air cover byHellcats, Seafires and Corsairs at widely separated points extending overthousands of miles of the Indian Ocean littoral, Dutch East Indies, Malaya andthe nearer Far East. These attacks, all mounted by British carrier forces andcarried on for more than a year, were against and in the teeth of land-based airopposition, with its acclaimed superiority over sea-borne aircraft. Early in April this year, however, theissue was put to its biggest test of all. With great daring, the Japanese fleet wasattacked in its home waters and within the protective range of the entire home-based Jap air forces. In spite of the protection accorded Jap warships infierce, air encounters between home-based fighters and Allied carrier-borne fighters,the American sea-going attack aircraft sank six of Japan's warships, includingthe mighty 45,000-ton Yamato. Effective A.A. Fire— Admiral Mitscher's report states thata large force of Jap aircraft was sent to defend the Jap fleet and attack theAmerican sea forces. The result was that 116. Jap aircraft were destroyed, 55 byAmerican fighter aircraft and the remain- der by'A.A. fire. Note that for the firsttime in any large-scale naval air engage- ment, the A.A. ship defences surpass thesuccesses of the defending aircraft. But note' also the scale of the attack,for on the previous day the U.S. Navy had destroyed 245 Jap aircraft. Thiswas done in the face of the best land- based air opposition. A British carrier force was also in theengagements in this area. Before the main American action, British aircraftfrom carriers—and, of course, in the teeth of land-based air opposition—attacked airfields at Ishigai and Miyako (east of Formosa) and on the Ryukyuislands. In other words, the ring of air defence of the home-based Jap fleet wassavaged by British aircraft - carrier fighters. In two days, it is reported,the Japanese lost 417 aircraft, mostly in the Okinawa area on the Friday andSaturday preceding the sinking of the Yamato on Sunday, April 8, 1945. Several interesting points arise. TheYatnato, Jap equivalent of the German Tirpitz, was sunk by at least eight tor-pedoes, eight rockets and machine-gun fire: The interpretation of this news isthat it is not exclusively necessary to use the large armour-piercing bombs,such as the 12,000 lb. jobs used against Tirpitz in the. brilliant attack by R.A.F.Lancasters. On the contrary, a Sword- fish can carry a torpedo and rockets.Once again the torpedo is shown to be by far the most dangerous of all presentnaval weapons. But, by inference, if a single-engineaircraft can carry the means of destruc- tion of a major modern capital ship,why worry about four-engined aircraft which, by their size, cannot be operatedfrom aircraft-carrier decks? And if there is no patent need for the laud-based heavy bombers in a sea action, clearly the case for the aircraft carriergains the more by 'that. —And Ineffective The next thing to be seen in the offi-cial reports is that the Jap fleet did not rely on its own carrier air forces but onthe land-based aircraft. In some aston- ishing way, despite the repeated lessonof the need of air cover in war at sea, the Jap fleet was unprotected by aircraft(most of them being shot down on the previous days) but relied exclusively onA.A. protection. Heavy though this was, only seven American aircraft werelost, against the sinking of the Yamato, a light cruiser, a heavy destroyer andthree medium destroyers. And so, twenty years and more afterthe furious controversies of the 'Twenties, vindication of the aircraftcarrier has come. It is idle to write down the opposition of the Japanese air force,nor will any sane person assert that the best German and Italian attack aircraftare inferior aircraft. The fact of war is that the myth of land-based super-iority has been exploded in every sea action where it has been put to the test,with the solitary exception of the slaughter of a flock of Swordfish in NorthRussia. However, coupled with this a greatchange of heart in the Navy is apparent. The new breed of sailors remain faithfulto the irrefutable principles of Lord Nelson, but the method of applyingthose principles now takes in the air arm as a first consideration. GreatBritish Admirals like Vian, Rawlings and the C.-in-C, Sir Bruce Fraser, seemto revel in their employment of naval air power. Their interest has beenaroused to a pitch of enthusiasm, and it is infectious, spreading throughout everybranch of the Senior Service. We can expect important repercussionsfrom this change in outlook. We can look forward to changes in the Ad-miralty, to junior officers being required to do gliding courses as they now doboat courses. We can expect a rise in the status of the Navy's air arm, and agood riddance to the airman's view of the salt horse as a pompous prig, andthe sailor's view of the bird man as a pushing parvenu. We can expect aninflux of new aircraft that will make the biplanes of yesterday seem like somestrange nightmare. And, in line with this, a new type of carrier with entirelynew devices for aircraft operation.- For Naval air power is in the ascend-ant. One of the subjects that will assuredly be discussed behind lockeddoors at San Francisco will be the future of Anglo-American sea-air power whichto-day is of the maximum strategic con- sequence.
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