Air Power in the Age of Total War

John Buckley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781135362751
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Politik

Warfare in the first half of the 20th century was fundamentally and irrovocably altered by the birth and subsequent development of air power. This work assesses the role of air power in changing the face of battle on land and sea. Utilizing late-1990s research, the author demonstrates that the phenomenon of air power was both a cause and a crucial accelerating factor contributing to the theory and practice of total war. For instance, the expansion of warfare to the homefront was a direct result of bombing and indirectly due to the extent of national economic mobilization required to support first rate air power status. In addition, the move away from the principle of total war with the onset of the Cold War and the replacement of air power by ICBMs is thoroughly examined. This work should provide students of international history, war studies, defence and strategic studies with an insight into 20th-century warfare.

Chapter One: Air power in the age of total war

There have been many changes in the nature and conduct of war in the twentieth century, but perhaps that which has had the greatest impact, both in revolutionizing the battlefield and in expanding the scale and scope of war, has been the advent of air power. In the space of a little over 40 years, aircraft progressed from the Wrights’ first faltering flights in the Kill Devil Hills in 1903 to the mass destruction of Dresden, Tokyo and, most poignantly, Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The air raids of the Second World War, in particular those which to this day evoke bitter feelings of resentment and guilt, were the culmination of a revolution in warfare which saw aircraft do more than any other weapon to bring in the era of total war.

Air power was to prove radically different from any other arm in the history of war. In the 5,000 years or so of recorded history, stretching from the nascent cities of Sumer to the end of the nineteenth century, war had been essentially two dimensional. Enemy fleets and armies could be avoided, even defeated, by means other than direct combat but ultimately ground forces of infantry and cavalry and their supports were the final arbiters of victory or defeat. Enemy forces, for the most part, could be kept at arm’s length by effective military activity whereas cities and rear zones could be protected by high walls and fortifications, thus minimizing the impact of enemy raids. The destructive zone of war was always limited to where the enemy could deploy their land or naval forces, whether it was in armed combat or in the prosecution of a siege or blockade. The impact of such war was consequently restricted to the damage done by the armed forces themselves, with little, if any, immediate consequence for the civilian populations not directly in their path. Economically, politically and culturally the war may have had significant consequences, but physical destruction was more often than not confined to the combatants and those unlucky enough to be too close to the fighting.

Aircraft changed this natural order of things. The effective utilization of air power added, for the first time in history, a third dimension to war: a dimension which allowed direct attack on enemy rear zones, cities, economies and, perhaps most importantly, civilian populations. Moreover, the zone of conflict was extended by aircraft from the immediate battlefield to the rear zones of armies. Supply routes were open to attack and soldiers were given little respite from the front. Just as importantly, air power offered the means with which to gather intelligence and information on the enemy army’s movements and aircraft rapidly developed the ability to intervene in a direct and offensive manner on the battlefield itself. Nevertheless, the impact of air power on military campaigns, while it was eventually to become crucial and at times pivotal to success, was only one facet of the significance of air power. In addition to tactical or operational air power came strategic air power: that is the use of air forces to attack the enemy state, its centres of population, and its economy directly. This facet of air power was instrumental in shaping the attitude of human civilization towards war, culminating as it did in the atomic bombings of Japan in 1945.

Strategic air power and total war

The twentieth century saw the advent of so-called “total war”, and aircraft were to play a significant role in developing the totality of conflict. In the past, long drawn-out wars had had devastating effects on societies, causing massive upheaval and even mass migration of dislocated populations. However, these conflicts had only rarely resulted in direct and sustained attack on the people themselves. That had changed by the time of the Second World War in particular. Air power provided the means with which to attack enemy populations directly, creating huge ethical and moral problems. Was targeting civilians a justifiable or legitimate stratagem simply because the capability now existed? If they were working in factories producing tanks and guns, were they not as culpable as the men in uniforms who represented them? In the age of total war, was it not true that whole societies rather than elites were, for the first time in the modern era, in conflict with each other and consequently open to attack?

There is a widespread perception that war and human society has somehow degenerated into a new barbarism in the twentieth century and that the emergence of total war and all its attendant excesses has been the principal result.¹ However, compared with the wholesale destruction of civilizations and cultures in the ancient and medieval world, the desire in the twentieth century to use extreme methods in war is nothing new. It is spurious to confuse inability with unwillingness or restraint in the prosecution of war. What air power contributed to the development of a more total war than the Mongol conquests, or the destruction of the indigenous civilizations of the Americas, was the means with which to prosecute a greater degree of war, both in terms of destruction and in the perceptions of societies. Many civilizations have used whatever methods were available to prosecute war, often with few restraints, and air power was in reality nothing more than a further, if highly significant, step in this particular direction.

However, it is clear that in many ways the thought of aerial attack on civilians, particularly massed strategic bombing, has coloured our perceptions of air war in the first half of the twentieth century. Although popular images such as the Great War’s knights of the air, Biggles and victory rolls over Biggin Hill still pervade our thinking, the starkest images we have of air war are those of Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Generally, studies of air power in the broadest sense have concentrated closely on the relative merits or failings of strategic bombing. From the very earliest days of controlled air flight, and indeed even before, the advocates of air power claimed that aerial bombing attack would prove to be the most decisive form of warfare, bringing enemies to the point of capitulation in a very short space of time. Despite the fact that they had little impact on air force development themselves, air power advocates such as Guilio Douhet, Billy Mitchell and Alexander de Seversky did much to publicize the notion that air power alone could be decisive in wars. Their claims proved to be the yardstick by which the bombing offensives of World War II would be measured, and ultimately be seen to fail.

However, this perceived failure, coupled with the shocking imagery of Dresden and Hiroshima, has distorted the picture of air power. Strategic bombing was a failure only by the standards of its arch-proponents. Clearly, bombing did not win World War II by itself, nor was it ever likely to. But it did contribute greatly to the economic collapse of the Axis powers, not only in terms of direct destruction but also in the restraining impact it had on production and in destroying the Luftwaffe in the last two years of the war.² It is not enough to argue, as some have, that the considerable expansion of the German economy from the middle of 1942 was evidence for the failure of the bombing offensive.³; It is indicative, however, of what Albert Speer might have achieved if he had not had to take into account the repeated aerial pummelling of Germany for the last three years of the war.

Nevertheless, despite its achievements, the bombing offensive of World War II still raises many questions. The resources allocated to the campaign by the Allies, especially the British, were huge and, it has been argued, they were denied many other possible strategic options. The continued prosecution of the offensive on a vast scale when the Germans seemed to be taking it in their stride and suffering only limited losses – though of course they were suffering in many hidden ways – only becomes shrewd when viewed with the benefit of hindsight. Moreover, the heaviest destruction inflicted by the bomber fleets came in the last year of the war when, many have argued, German and Japanese defences were already starting to crumble. The importance of the bombing offensive to the outcome of World War II remains a hotly disputed issue and, if the moral and ethical aspects of the campaign are also considered, it is clear that the debate will continue to dominate perceptions of air power.

Ethics and air war

The expansion of war into the air resulted in significant changes to perceptions of what was acceptable in wartime conditions. Targeting cities and industrial centres certainly appeared to make good strategic sense, but clearly there was far more to this issue than mere military expediency. Bombing urban centres, on whatever pretext, meant killing civilians and to many this was an unwelcome and immoral escalation of the already brutal activity of war. Yet, arguably, the conduct of war throughout history has been influenced less by morality and more by military capability, balanced by political acceptability. This in turn has been shaped by the objectives for which a society was fighting. In total war environments, both the stakes and the military capability have been high, resulting in the use of previously unparalleled methods of waging war. Ultimately, the key factor for the legitimacy of a stratagem has been its effectiveness. Would it allow you to win and bring the war to a speedy conclusion?

Aerial bombing clearly offered the greatest challenge to those who sought to limit war to military personnel. However, even before 1914, the distinction between combatant and non-combatant had become blurred and the scale of mass industrial war was often to render such notions worthless. Attempts to outlaw or limit the effects of bombing ultimately came to very little and, as has often been the case in war, technical capability and political need have usually dictated the level of violence in conflicts. Even at a theoretical stage, the emergence of air power served to cause debate at the 1899 and 1907 Hague Conferences which were set up to offer guidelines to moderate the conduct of war. There were immediate ambiguities as attacks on undefended urban centres, by whatever means, were not allowed, but naval bombardment of a military target was, even if in the vicinity of the civilian population.⁴ Moreover, history is replete with examples of civilians being deliberately targeted in war, especially in sieges and times of blockade. Was indiscriminate starvation any better than indiscriminate bombardment?

Deep ethical and moral issues emerged from the growth in capability and theory concerning aerial bombardment and industrial war. Attacks on military centres, even if this resulted in “collateral civilian casualties”, were acceptable, but crossing the Rubicon came when the notion of targeting civilians themselves was developed. During the First World War, bombing strategy, although primarily aimed at military areas, also accepted that inaccurate bombs would hit and kill civilians and this was acceptable because it would damage enemy morale. Deliberate targeting of civilians declined as a strategy in the 1930s but re-emerged during the Second World War in the RAF once it proved impossible to bomb anything accurately. Although the Allied governments never admitted it openly, from early 1942 onwards first the Royal Air Force and then latterly the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) pursued a policy of area bombing. In effect this was a policy of deliberately destroying urban centres and their populations in an effort to cause disruption and chaos in the enemy state and thus undermine their war effort. This proved to be a less effective way of damaging the enemy state than precision bombing (as undertaken by the USAAF over Europe) but until 1944 it was the only method with which the RAF, flying at night to keep their losses under control, could achieve anything.

The rationale in military terms made sense if it could be proven to be effective. Despite continuing claims to the contrary, strategic bombing in World War II – area bombing included – did make a major contribution to the defeat of the Axis powers (see Chapter Six), but is this in itself enough? Acceptable behaviour in war is largely determined by contemporary attitudes within both the belligerent and neutral societies. The fact that controversy still surrounds the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo, to say nothing of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, implies that western civilization was and is uncomfortable with such actions. In part this may be connected with the persisting belief that area bombing did not work and was unnecessary to defeat Germany and Japan. But it is surely also wrapped up with notions of civilians being non-combatants and therefore not being legitimate targets in war.

However, in large scale industrial war, and the Second World War in particular, such distinctions become very blurred. Why would those organizing and supporting the war effort in Germany be less of a legitimate target than soldiers fighting at the front, especially in an age when most soldiers are conscripts and may have been indifferent supporters of or even hostile to the Nazi regime? Moreover, are those who build and manufacture the weapons of total war any less culpable than those who use them? The argument that such workers are “undefended” surely collapses with the development of anti-aircraft guns, high performance interceptors, night-fighters and radar.

Ultimately, the ethical problems of strategic bombing vary in proportion to perceptions of effectiveness. If it contributed significantly to the defeat of the Axis powers, then it becomes more acceptable; if it did not, then area bombing in particular becomes indefensible. Those states which used such strategies realized that they were travelling a dangerous and perilous moral path. The fact that they sought to conceal the scale and nature of their actions from their own populations reveals much about their self-doubt and how much stomach they believed their own people had for such tactics.⁵

Tactical and operational air power

The emphasis on strategic bombing in the past 50 years has to a degree concealed the impact of air power on the conduct of war in other areas, many of which shaped the outcome of war as much if not more so than strategic bombing. The importance of ground support operations was considerable. Without aerial control, or at least the denial of such power to an enemy, land operations became at the very least hazardous and at worst untenable. The impact of German air power in leading the so-called blitzkrieg of World War II was impressive, as was Soviet and most notably Allied domination of the air over the battlefield in the latter stages of the war. In both world wars, where logistical support was crucial, the surrendering of airspace to the enemy usually led to the interdiction of rear zones, loss of initiative and the curtailment of resupply. Additionally, aerial intelligence gathering and artillery spotting were important elements of ground support that offered considerable advantage, especially if simultaneously denied to the enemy.

The value of airborne troops should also be considered, for although they often played a supportive role to the main ground forces, they were also useful in seizing important areas or denying them to the enemy. The surprise element of such forces was often the key, as in the German offensives on Belgium and the Netherlands in 1940 and the assault on Crete in the following year. The Allies did much the same in Normandy in 1944, and in the failed Rhine crossing, Operation Market Garden. However, the value of such operations was often partial and could only produce a small operational advantage. This was because such forces were lacking in heavy equipment and could not hope to prevail against traditional land forces. Nevertheless, the nature of operations had been changed by the advent of such flexible forces.

Air power was also a key factor in the development of clandestine operations. Resistance groups, intelligence agents and whole guerrilla armies could continue their activities behind enemy lines thanks to resupply from the air. To Tito’s partisans in Yugoslavia, and for British strategy between the middle of 1940 and late 1941, the use of air power to foster underground armies was significant, although in the latter case it was never an entirely realistic means of prosecuting the war.

In maritime operations the impact of air power was perhaps even more notable. Even in the First World War the role of aircraft in providing air cover to convoys was crucial. In the Second World War it was essential. The provision of air escort to merchant shipping across the whole Atlantic by 1943 ended the U-boat offensive. It could have done so much earlier and the debate as to why this did not occur continues.⁶ Naval support in the shape of reconnaissance and gunnery direction was already being developed in the 1914–18 conflict but was to be replaced in importance during the interwar years by direct aerial attack on naval and merchant shipping. The world’s navies fought a rearguard action against air power that was commendable, if ultimately doomed, and which for the most part revolved around the question of whether aircraft could sink modern capital ships. Although many navies claimed that modern battleships were safe from aerial attack, by the Second World War they could only rarely operate without air cover. The Bismarck was crippled and doomed by air attack, the Prince of Wales and the Repulse were helpless in the face of concerted aerial bombing and the two greatest battleships ever built, the Japanese Yamato and Musashi, were sunk by single-engined US naval bombers in the last months of the war.

The importance of air power to the conduct of maritime operations was emphatically demonstrated in the campaigns against Japan. In this theatre, between 1941 and 1945, offensive strategy was effectively dominated by the aeroplane. The island-hopping operations were only viable when air superiority was attained, either by land based or carrier-borne air power. In addition, the projection of force in the Pacific was dictated by aircraft carrier battle groups which rapidly supplanted the battleship as the capital vessel in naval warfare.

Air power and national strategy

Ultimately, the strategic or tactical value and use of air power to any given state relied on a number of crucial factors. In particular, it is essential to note that the development of air power within states was linked to national strategies, although at times the connections seemed to be inappropriate. The creation of state air power was not an end but a means, a method, of prosecuting national policy. Too often historians and others have criticized planners for not having appropriate air policies, the obvious examples being those states which did not develop strategic bombing forces in the 1930s, and those which did not create independent air forces like the RAF. The reality is of course, that the strategic requirements of states dictated their air power needs: what was right for one power was not necessarily appropriate for another.

For example, nations such as Japan and Germany did not develop strategic bombers prior to World War II for a number of reasons, one of which was that such a policy did not suit developing national strategy. There were many other reasons, such as technical difficulties and lack of industrial resources, which resulted in strategic bombing being repeatedly marginalized once the war was underway and Germany seemed to be winning without having to resort to the kind of long and attritional conflict in which heavy city bombing might have played a significant role. Likewise, in World War I on the Western Front, although the Allies sought to maintain the offensive they also aimed to take the air war to German lines and rear zones in an aggressive and usually costly manner. In contrast, the Germans more often preferred to adopt a reactive and defensive doctrine that was better suited to their largely defensive posture for much of the war on the Western Front.

In addition, many powers had only finite resources available and, for the continental states, armies and ground forces were the primary concern. For France in the interwar era, a large army and its much vaunted Maginot Line were of more importance than strategic air forces in keeping the Wehrmacht at bay. Indeed, it may well have been the case that the dabbling of the French air force with the theories of Douhet and its own struggle for independence contributed to the disaster of 1940, though this is by no means clear.⁷ Likewise, the Soviet Union, embroiled as it was with internal and border affairs, had only a limited role for strategic air power in national strategy. This, along with the experience of the Spanish Civil War, and because of the purges in the late 1930s, resulted in the end of heavy bomber forces in the USSR. Too often the question of national air strategies has been posed incorrectly – it was not a question of why the rest of the world did not adopt strategic bombing, but why Britain and the USA persevered with it?⁸ In both cases strategic bombing fitted neatly into national strategy. For Britain, it was an excellent way of trying to avoid having to fight on the continent as they had in World War I. Whereas in the past the British Royal Navy had provided the means of avoiding the continental commitment, so now the prospect of bringing wars to dramatic finales within weeks of beginning strategic air campaigns seemed to offer the way of evading the creation of great armies of the sort that had been ultimately necessary to defeat Napoleon and also Imperial Germany in World War I. For the USA, bombing of industrial centres was a vital precursor to ground operations in Europe and the Far East. The USA’s productivist approach to war, which symbolized total war more than any other, recognized the need to disable the enemy’s industrial output prior to, or in conjunction with, ground assault.

However, while British and US air power strategy may have converged on aerial bombing, they differed radically on the value of an independent air force. For the USA, like Japan, tactical maritime air power was crucial to the conduct of operations in the Pacific and for this a specific naval air arm was considered essential. For Britain, carrier operations were not of the same order of importance. Although the navy viewed its interwar imperial duties very seriously, national strategic requirements resulted in the subjugating of dedicated maritime a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Glossary
• Chapter One: Air power in the age of total war
• Chapter Two: The birth of air power
• Chapter Three: The First World War, 1914–18
• Chapter Four: The development of air power doctrine and theory, 1918–39
• Chapter Five: Global air power, 1918–39
• Chapter Six: The war in Europe, 1939–45
• Chapter Seven: The war in the Far East, 1937–45
• Chapter Eight: Air power and the post-war world
• Chapter Nine: Conclusions
• Notes
• Select bibliography