Why Air Forces Fail

The Anatomy of Defeat

Robin Higham, Stephen J. Harris

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9780813137674
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

According to Robin Higham and Stephen J. Harris, "Flight has been part of the human dream for aeons, and its military application has likely been the dark side of that dream for almost as long." In the twentieth century, this dream and its dark side unfolded as the air forces of the world went to war, bringing destruction and reassessment with each failure. Why Air Forces Fail examines the complex, often deep-seated, reasons for the catastrophic failures of the air forces of various nations. Higham and Harris divide the air forces into three categories of defeat: forces that never had a chance to win, such as Poland and France; forces that started out victorious but were ultimately defeated, such as Germany and Japan; and finally, those that were defeated in their early efforts yet rose to victory, such as the air forces of Britain and the United States.

The contributing authors examine the complex causes of defeats of the Russian, Polish, French, British, Italian, German, Argentine, and American air services. In all cases, the failures stemmed from deep, usually prewar factors that were shaped by the political, economic, military, and social circumstances in the countries. Defeat also stemmed from the anticipation of future wars, early wartime actions, and the precarious relationship between the doctrine of the military leadership and its execution in the field.

Anthony Christopher Cain's chapter on France's air force, l'Armée de l'Air, attributes France's loss to Germany in June 1940 to a lack of preparation and investment in the air force. One major problem was the failure to centralize planning or coordinate a strategy between land and air forces, which was compounded by aborted alliances between France and countries in eastern Europe, especially Poland and Czechoslovakia. In addition, the lack of incentives for design innovation in air technologies led to clashes between airplane manufacturers, laborers, and the government, a struggle that resulted in France's airplanes' being outnumbered by Germany's more than three to one by 1940.

Complemented by reading lists and suggestions for further research, Why Air Forces Fail provides groundbreaking studies of the causes of air force defeats.

CHAPTER ONE

Poland’s Military Aviation,
September 1939

It Never Had a Chance

Michael Alfred Peszke

The short interwar (1918–1939) history of Poland’s Military Aviation (Lotnictwo Wojskowe) is a paradigm for the history of Poland’s efforts to ensure its security. The problems that confronted the Poles were two disgruntled neighbors, Germany and the Soviet Union, unhappy with territorial losses and seeking revindication; close to indefensible boundaries, particularly those with Germany; and a disastrous economic situation.

Poland embarked on independence in 1918 with industrial output at 20 percent of its 1913 production. This was primarily due to the fact that partitioned Poland had been the battleground of World War I military operations between the Russians and the Central powers. The loss of Polish industry in that period was estimated at 73 billion French francs. Furthermore, the worldwide crisis of 1929 hit Poland severely, with every fourth Polish worker being unemployed. Poland’s per capita annual income was 610 zlotys, compared with the Western average of 2,490.

The military disaster that the Poles suffered in September 1939 is well characterized by the words of German historian Horst Rohde: “The inadequacy of Polish political judgment was reflected in the belief of effective support from Britain and France and in the neutrality of the Soviet Union.” Although these comments are true in retrospect and reflected the reality of September 1939, Poland’s interwar foreign policy was based on nonaggression treaties with its neighbors, reinforced by concrete military alliances with the French (February 1921) and Romanians. The most assiduously sought alliance—with the British—was partially achieved in March 1939 and solidified in August by a treaty of mutual assistance. The British government had agonized about the choice between the Soviets and the Poles for its eastern “front” and finally assessed the situation as follows: “it was better to fight with Poland as an ally than without her.”

Historical Provenance

Poland’s Military Aviation in 1919 was an ad hoc creation, and most Polish pilots were veterans of the First World War who had flown for other countries. The Polish fliers were augmented by a significant number of French and Italian pilots and even some Americans who formed the Kosciuszko Squadron. They flew a motley collection of abandoned German planes, surplus aircraft from the French and Italians, and even a gift from King George V of Britain. But the various Polish squadrons performed a heroic task of providing valuable reconnaissance and even support to the Polish ground forces during the border war with Russia. The ground commanders were enchanted by the depth added to their defensive and offensive capabilities by the aviation service, primitive as it was. They wanted more of the same. At the war’s end in 1920, there were a total of sixty serviceable aircraft, but once the French, Italians, and Americans went home, the number of skilled Polish personnel was limited. With Polish–French relations being especially cordial at this time, the French provided a loan for the purchase of military equipment, and French general Francois-Leon Leveque was appointed to command the Polish aviation service.

Early Operational Doctrine

The aviation service was a constituent element of the army, with an identical administrative structure; the six aviation regiments, like infantry or artillery regiments, were major administrative bases, responsible to the local army corps commanders and ultimately to the minister of military affairs. The aviation regiments were responsible for the maintenance of equipment, the induction and training of conscripts, and general quartermaster services. Each regiment had a mixture of fighter, army cooperation, light or medium bomber, and tactical support aircraft. For a short time, the all-fighter regiment at Lida was an exception to this general rule.

Leveque’s plan called for 575 aircraft divided into eight “line” wings, eight fighter wings, and one bomber wing. Using 400 million francs of the French loan, the Poles purchased French Potez 15s, Hanriot HD 14s, and four flying boats and procured licenses for the construction of some French aircraft in Poland. Leveque’s goal was to make the air force an auxiliary weapon cooperating closely with the army, and he was the author of the first thorough regulations defining the mission of the service.

General Zagorski replaced Leveque and undertook an ambitious development program. New air bases were created, existing ones were improved, and underground storage depots were constructed. It was at this time that the aviation service’s officer academy was initiated (corresponding to the academies for the infantry, artillery, and other service specialties); it was eventually based at Deblin and was known proudly all over Poland as the “Eagle’s Nest.” Under Zagorski, the Polish air industry received licenses to build French planes. To initiate this buildup, Zagorski purchased 600 mostly obsolescent planes from France, including 300 Spads 51 and 61, 250 Breguets, and 32 Farman Goliath bombers, for which there were no crews or hangars.

Zagorski’s plan (never realized) called for a force four times greater than that originally planned by Leveque. Poland’s Military Aviation was to consist of five types of units: army cooperation, bomber, fighter, pursuit, and tactical (i.e., bomber-reconnaissance). Bomber and pursuit squadrons were to be centralized under the command of the commander in chief; the rest would be allocated for army cooperation and support. The commitment of so much capital for the acquisition of planes for which there were insufficient trained personnel (the existing seventeen squadrons had only about half the necessary officers and pilots), no hangars, and inadequate operational doctrine did not find support in the Polish General Staff.

Zagorski resigned in March 1926. He was a controversial figure, admired by some as an aviation visionary and condemned by others for his alleged close ties to the scandal-ridden French venture company Francopol, which served to enrich many French contractors. Francopol was liquidated in 1927 after having produced only two engines.

Colonel Ludomil Rayski assumed command of the aviation service and single-mindedly pursued the development of a Polish aircraft industry to ensure self-sufficiency. But because the prior contractual agreements with the French had to be honored, the aviation service continued to be the recipient of obsolescent and badly designed French planes. In the words of Belcarz and Peczkowski, “flying Spads threatened rapid annihilation of the entire (Polish) fighter pilot force.”

In 1926 General Joseph Pilsudski staged a coup. At the time, there were both internal domestic problems and a deterioration of the international situation owing to the Treaty of Locarno (1925), which regularized German western boundaries but failed to do so for the east. Poland felt betrayed and protested, but to no avail; the French alliance was crippled, and trust was impaired.

Dual Command Structure

Pilsudski established a new dual command structure. The general administration of the military (and thus the aviation service) was under the minister of military affairs, who was a member of the cabinet. The new post of inspector general was also created, a post unencumbered by administrative issues and confined to being a planning staff for war. A number of senior generals (inspectors) reporting to the inspector general were responsible for assessing whether the units and their equipment met the necessary criteria. The theoretical underpinning for this dual command structure was that the inspectorate proposed, while the ministry executed. In retrospect, it is impossible to find any redeeming features in this arrangement. One can only speculate that it was a political move to allow Pilsudski to control the military without ministerial accountability, as he held both posts until his death.

In 1926 Pilsudski issued his one and only order regarding the aviation service: it was to address the excess of planes and the inadequate personnel and garrisons and to confine its activities to reconnaissance and communications. Thus, in the continued polemics, that order reflected either his ultimate ignorance or his pragmatic recognition of Polish reality. The debate continues.

Polish Aviation Industry

Most of the Polish military industry, including aircraft production, was nationalized by 1935. The major aircraft manufacturer, Panstwowe Zaklady Lotnicze (PZL), became state owned. This coincided with Rayski’s policy of equipping the service with Polish-made planes—a policy that, on the surface, progressed in a satisfactory manner. The Polish fighter squadrons were the first in the world to be equipped with all-metal monoplanes designed and built in Poland. However, all were powered by foreign (British Bristol Company) engines, most of which were built in Poland under license. The crucial factor that hampered an indigenous aviation industry continued to be economic. Engineers had to be recruited and trained, and to ensure an adequate supply of young, skilled professionals, polytechnic departments had to be initiated. The new sciences of metallurgy, precision lathe machining, and engine manufacturing all had to be started from scratch. There was a major shortage of investment capital in Poland, and the military constantly competed with other state needs for its share of inflation-ridden and economically depressed budgets. Still, by 1939, the eight aircraft manufacturing factories employed 12,400 workers and had built 1,127 planes under license and 2,458 of Polish design; they had produced 3,550 engines, but only 150 of strictly Polish design.

Evolving Operational Doctrine

In addition to promoting an indigenous aviation industry, the operational doctrine of the service was undergoing continual evaluation and evolution. The army corps commanders (accountable to the minister of military affairs) and army inspectors (accountable to the inspector general) had formal administrative authority and inspection jurisdiction, respectively, over the aviation regiments in their districts. Some were disinterested and left Rayski to manage as best as he could, but there were exceptions. In 1927 army inspector Edward Smigly-Rydz (in 1939, he would be commander in chief of the Polish forces in the September campaign) expressed his views that aviation planning could not extend beyond three years because of the rapidity of technological changes and that more attention needed to be given to fighter defenses. He was also instrumental in calling for an active review of the aviation service regulations. In 1929 the General Staff formed an expert commission to address specific aviation problems; its members included two senior aviation officers, Stanislaw Kuzminski and Stanislaw Ujejski. This commission recommended that, due to its small size, the aviation service be centralized and equipped with multipurpose aircraft. Shortly thereafter a second, larger commission was convened that included a number of distinguished aviation officers and two famous Polish aviation theoreticians—Abzoltowski and Romeyko. The group worked for three years before its report—the Regulamin Lotnictwa (aviation regulations)—was finally completed in 1931. This was the first doctrine that spelled out the need for supporting services and called for four types of aircraft: bomber, fighter, tactical, and army cooperation (at the time, the concept of pursuit squadrons was omitted but was added later in the decade). Bomber squadrons were to be equipped with the LWS 4 Zubr, and fighters with the continually updated PZL 11. Tactical squadrons were to be equipped with planes providing tactical reconnaissance for army commanders with some capability for bombing; this led to specifications that gave rise to the PZL 23 Karas. Army cooperation aircraft were to be the proverbial dogsbodies, and those specifications eventually led to the LWS Mewa.

These regulations, with a number of relatively minor modifications, were the operational doctrine under which the Poles went to war in September 1939. But it should be noted that Rayski was on record as urging the integration of the command of all military aviation and antiaircraft defenses. This was eventually implemented in 1937, but the position was given to General Jozef Zajac. Rayski also had his own vision of the importance of his service, which he saw through the fashionable prism of the Douhetian doctrine. So as early as the late 1920s, there were seeds of potential discord between the staff and its commissions, reflecting a rather conservative point of view in which the aviation service’s role was seen as auxiliary, and Rayski, who wanted a strategic bomber strike force.

In 1936 Polish Military Aviation was very much a product of Rayski’s procurement policies and consisted of 318 planes in thirty-three squadrons: seventeen light bomber-reconnaissance squadrons (equipped with Polish-built Potez 25s and Breguet 19s, soon to be replaced by the Polish PZL 23 Karas), thirteen fighter squadrons (PZL 7s and 11s), and three bomber squadrons (Polish-built Fokker FVIIs, eventually replaced by the unsuccessful LWS 4 Zubr.) In addition, there were thirty-three flights of army cooperation planes with little combat potential (R-XIIIs, Czaplas, and RWD 8s.) The big Goliaths were never entered into combat service and were left out in the open in all kinds of weather. Some were used for parachute training.

Changes in Command Structure

In many ways, 1936 was a watershed year. After Pilsudski’s death, General Smigly-Rydz assumed the mantle of inspector general, and General Tadeusz Kasprzycki became the minister of military affairs.

In the mid-1930s there were signs of major change in the aviation service. The uniform color was changed to steel blue, beginning the process of building up its own identity. An aviation staff academy was formed, and in 1937 an aviation service staff was created as part of the General Staff of the Inspector General. A seminal and, ultimately, destructive step was the creation of an inspector of aviation and antiaircraft defenses, which resulted in the aviation service being led by three independent planning nuclei.

These three authorities, largely autonomous and even competing, were directed, respectively, by the commanding officer of the service (Rayski), reporting to the minister of military affairs; the inspector of the aviation service (Zajac, appointed 5 January 1937), reporting to the inspector general; and the head of the aviation staff (Ujejski), which was part of the General Staff. The formal relationships among these positions were not clarified and had egregious shortcomings, since the inspector of aviation (the wartime general officer, commanding) had neither a staff nor procurement authority and did not participate in meetings of the aviation staff. General Zajac, in addition to being inspector of military aviation and antiaircraft defenses, was the commanding officer of all antiaircraft defenses, which placed all planning and command functions with one individual.

Germany’s 1936 entry into the so-called demilitarized region west of the Rhine, contrary to the Treaty of Versailles, led to alarm in France and an almost immediate invitation to Smigly-Rydz to visit France. This breathed new life into the old alliance, and Poland obtained a significant four-year loan for military industrial development and for the purchase of military material in France. This loan led to the creation of the Centralny Okreg Przemyslowy, sited in central Poland, and to the reactivation of a standing committee, the Komitet do Spraw Uzbrojenia i Sprzetu (KSUS), chaired by General Sosnkowski, whose function was to allocate the funds among the various competing demands.

In 1936, as part of the rethinking of Polish strategic plans, a section of the General Staff submitted a plan for the operational use of the aviation service. It was based on the experiences of the annual air maneuvers and the Douhetian theory that a bomber would always get through and that a powerful bomber force could determine the outcome of any war. The plan called for a bomber force sufficient to interdict all German military movements east of the Oder River. Such a strategic intervention would require a bomber force of 378 planes in sixty-three squadrons augmented by 360 tactical planes (the old concept of bomber-reconnaissance) modified for dive-bombing.

Concurrently, Rayski proposed a plan (which would have been completed by 1942) calling for a total of 886 planes broken down as follows: a central independent force under the commander in chief of thirty bomber and thirty-two tactical squadrons, and a tactical force assigned to field army commands of eight fighter, eight reconnaissance, and eighteen army cooperation squadrons. The cost of such a plan was estimated at 1.153 billion zlotys, exceeding the entire amount of the four-year loan being negotiated with France. On 7 July 1936 Rayski was advised that the costs were prohibitive, and KSUS scaled down the growth of the service to 252 bombers and 336 tactical dive-bombers.

Rayski persisted with his strategic goal but agreed to reduce the total bomber strength from 886 to 708 (compared with the KSUS proposal for 252 bombers), reallocating the money saved by reducing the number of fighter and tactical squadrons. Thus the aviation budget was reduced to 1 billion zlotys to be spent over the next eight years. This amounted to 20 percent of the whole rearmament budget, which came from the following sources: French loan, state bonds, voluntary contributions, and the export of Polish-produced military hardware (which in 1938 alone came to 186 million zlotys). The sale of bonds was also successful, particularly the antiaircraft defense bonds, which were intended to raise 100 million zlotys and actually realized 390 million.

Aviation Maneuvers and War Games

In the 1930s Poland’s aviation service participated in a number of major maneuvers. In 1934 a total of 232 planes took part in exercises that addressed the problem of the movement of air units and their supporting ground units and the necessary combat concentration of planes in the air. A similar exercise took place in 1936, again with more than 200 planes participating.

In 1937 the antiaircraft defenses ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Poland’s Military Aviation, September 1939: It Never Had a Chance
• 2. L’Armée de l’Air, 1933–1940: Drifting toward Defeat
• 3. The Arab Air Forces
• 4. Defeat of the German and Austro-Hungarian Air Forces in the Great War, 1909–1918
• 5. Downfall of the Regia Aeronautica, 1933–1943
• 6. The Imperial Japanese Air Forces
• 7. Defeat of the Luftwaffe, 1935–1945
• 8. The Argentine Air Force versus Britain in the Falkland Islands, 1982
• 9. From Disaster to Recovery: Russia’s Air Forces in the Two World Wars
• 10. The United States in the Pacific
• 11. Defeats of the Royal Air Force: Norway, France, Greece, and Malaya, 1940–1942
• Conclusion
• List of Contributors
• Index