Looking Back, August 2024
By Mark Albertson

71^st Anniversary of Army Aviation
50 Years Ago: 11^th Air Assault Division (Test)

This month’s Looking Back is from the February 28, 2013 issue of Army Aviation.[1] It is rewritten as an extended version.

* * * * *

If we are successful, the Air Mobile Concept will be a dynamic advance for the Army.If we are not, we will go back to flying Piper Cubs.If we have that much left, and the Army and the country as a whole will lose one of the things that . . . can mean the difference between victory and defeat in future land combat. Colonel George P. “Phip” Seneff, Jr., 11^th Aviation Group, 11^th Air Assault Division (Test).[2]

* * * * *

On August 20, 1962, the Army’s Tactical Mobility Requirements Board, AKA the Howze Board, released its findings on what would come to be known as the Airmobility Concept.These findings were based on computer wargame simulations[3] and actual field exercises.[4]And the vehicle of choice to carry forward the concept . . . the helicopter.[5]And the living embodiment of the criteria set forth by the Howze Board . . . the 11^th Air Assault Division (Test).

Lieutenant General Hamilton H. Howze urged the conversion of the 82^nd Airborne into the air assault division projected by his committee.He was overruled by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who instead authorized an expansion in Army personnel for fiscal year 1964, from 960,000 to 975,000.

This would enable the new unit to be organized from scratch.And the order for such a force came down on January 7, 1963. And the 11^th Air Assault Division (Test) was activated at Fort Benning, Georgia on February 15, 1963, Brigadier Harry W.O. Kinnard in command.[6]

11^th Air Assault Division (Test) has its unit roots in the 11^th Airborne Division.The “Angels” were activated on February 25, 1943, seeing action in the Philippines at Leyte and Luzon.

With the cessation of hostilities, the 11^th Airborne landed in Japan as part of the post-war army of occupation of the Home Islands. The “Angels” were deactivated on June 30, 1958; reactivated briefly on February 1, 1963, then re-designated 11^th Air Assault Division (Test) on the 15^th.

Among those units attached to the 11^th AAD early on were those of the 3^rd Battalion from the 187^th Infantry Regiment.It “immediately began a series of training exercises to test new concepts and identify new tactical methods.The battalion was fortunate in that the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel J.J. Hennessey, had participated in the limited unit tests of the Howze Board while he was stationed at Fort Bragg.[7]

Hennessey’s battalion began their training in April 1963, with the division having been joined by an aviation battalion, the 227^th Assault Helicopter Battalion.The battalion initially focused at the platoon level, gradually increasing in scope and size through the battalion level.[8]

In addition to the activation of the 11^th AAD, a logistics support unit was organized in the name of the 10^th Air Transport Brigade.[9]

Training focus was on air assault; drilling infantrymen on the new concepts of joining combat and engaging the enemy.Provisional supply bases of fuel and stores were made available and organized to keep pace with helicopter units on a fluid battlefield.

Hence the idea of FARP or the Forward Arming and Re-Fueling Point.[10]

Another innovation was artillery fire support for the landing zones.This included rocket-firing helicopters to support attacks by air-assault troops; bolstered, in part, by experience gleaned from Army Aviation support of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) units in Southeast Asia.[11]

In September 1963, Air Assault I exercises at Fort Stewart in Georgia, saw the Airmobility Concept put through its paces on the battalion level of operations.The following year, October 1964, Air Assault II was conducted and by comparison, an exercise on a far grander scale.

Air Assault II sprawled across two states, the Carolinas, taking in some 4,000,000 acres.Thirty-five thousand troops were committed, with the 11^th AAD squaring off against the 82^nd Airborne Division; the latter engaged in the role of an enemy conventional force as well as that of insurgent opposition.

The first four weeks slated for the exercise was conducted during a hurricane, Isabel.Flying conditions were abysmal; a swirling vortex of wind, rain and fog, leaving many aviators peering through windscreens opaque as a bucket of mud.

Yet 120 helicopters managed to shuttle an infantry brigade 100 miles through the ire of Mother Nature.

General Kinnard summed up the results of the Air Assault thus:

Beyond what I believe to be its capabilities to perform roles normal to other divisions, I am even more impressed by what I feel is its ability to perform in unique ways beyond the abilities of other divisions.

For example, in a low-scale war, I believe it can exert control over a much wider area and with much more speed and flexibility and with much less concern for the problems of interdicted ground communications or of difficult terrain.

In higher scales of war, I see this division an unparalleled reserve or screening force capable of operating over very large frontages.

By properly picking times, places and methods, I believe it can also operate with devastating effect against the rear of the enemy.

Faced with the threat or use of nuclear weapons, I believe it can widely disperse and yet, when required, quickly mass (even over irradiated ground, blown down forests or rubbled cities), strike an enemy, then disperse again.[12]

Kinnard’s men would have a chance to showcase their training in Southeast Asia.Up to 1965, airmobility consisted, for the most part, of Army aviators ferrying South Vietnamese troops into action against the Viet Cong.

But Hanoi was raising the ante.With the Gulf of Tonkin incident, it was certain as sunrise that first string American assault troops would be coming off the bench to spell ARVN’s second eleven.

On July 1, 1965, 11^th Air Assault Division (Test) was re-flagged as the 1^st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) and twenty-seven days later, later President Johnson ordered the airmobile division to Vietnam.[13]

In November, at Ia Drang, 1^st Cavalry air assault forces took their peacetime training into action against North Vietnamese regulars, decisively defeating same in a game-changing demonstration of mobility not seen since Hitler’s panzers steamrollered Poland in September 1939.

A point worthy of remark here is the freshness of American troops, most of who went into action for the first time and against a tough and wily opponent.They came away with a victory, as opposed to similar initial efforts by American troops at places like Bull Run 1861, Kasserine in North Africa 1942 and Osan with Task Force Smith in Korea, 1950.

Despite the fact there was still much to learn, the transition of peacetime development to wartime employment of airmobility seemed on its way.

The advent of the 11^th Air Assault Division (Test) was an important step in the evolution of airmobility.But more than that, it was the attestation of a factor that was not only a prerequisite, but without which the effort of Howze, Williams, Kinnard and Seneff would have come to naught.And that factor was that everyone was basically on the same page—from Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara to Secretary of the Army Elvis Stahr, to General Howze, to General Kinnard and so on down the food chain.Minus this, victory at Ia Drang would not have been possible.

Endnotes

[1]See pages 46-48, “50 Years Ago:11^th Air Assault Division {Test},” Army Aviation, by Mark Albertson, February 28, 2013.

[2]See page 30, The Air Close to the Trees:Evolution and Innovation in U.S. Army Assault Helicopter Units During the Vietnam War, by Adam Thomas Givens,

[3]Computer wargame models for the Howze Board were conducted by Research Analysis Corporation and Technical Operations Incorporated.

[4]Four battle models were chosen to challenge Airmobility:A Warsaw Pact attack on Western Europe; versus Chinese Communist Forces in Asia (obviously the stalemate of the Korean War was still fresh); and, that of blunting threats to Africa as well as Central and South America.

[5]The Army’s attempt to base airmobility on the helicopter during the 1960s was not too unlike the transition of mobility from the horse to the truck and tank during the 1920s and ‘30s.

However an important factor to keep in mind here was that the United States was not the only power wrestling with mobility during the years leading up to the Second World War, sharing the stage with such kibitzers as the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Britain, France, . . .Yet during the 1960s, American practitioners virtually wrote the book.

[6]General Kinnard was among those of the 101^st Airborne Division who were encircled by General Baron Hasso von Manteuffel’s Fifth Panzer Army at Bastogne.He is popularly known to have urged General Anthony McAuliffe to respond to German entreaties for surrender with the eloquent yet steadfast rejection of “Nuts!”

[7]See page 13, “D Training LOMS,” Transforming the Force:The 11^th AirAssault Division (Test), From 1963-1965, by Major Thomas C. Graves, USA.

[8]According to Major Thomas I. McMurray and Major Larry E. Scoggins in the History of the 227^th for the Year of 1965, on February 11, 1963, “the 31^st Transportation Company (Light Helicopter) was re-designated and activated as Company B, 227^th Assault Helicopter Battalion, and brought to the battalion its twenty-two CH-34 helicopters.”Page 2, McMurray & Scoggins.“On February 15, 1963, Company A, 227^th Assault Helicopter Battalion was activated as the second of the battalion’s units.Company A was designated the aerial weapons armed escort company; their UH-1Bs and armament systems arriving in late April 1963.”Page 2, Major McMurray & Major Scoggins.

[9]The 10^th Air TransportBrigade was not organic to the 11^th AAD; rather, a unit of logistics support.

[10]See page 20, Forward Arming and Refueling Points for Mechanized Infantry and Armor Units, Chapter 2, “Review of Literature,” by Captain Jarrold M. Reeves, Jr., USA.“The Vietnam War and its heavy reliance on the helicopter led to the FARE (Forward Area Refueling Equipment) study and caused the research and development of the Forward Area Refueling Point for helicopters, but also for ground equipment.The culmination of the original plan of action was the development of the Forward Arming and Refueling Point Doctrine explained in FM 1-104, Forward Arming and Refueling Points, published in 1985.”See page 3, Captain Jarrold M. Reeves, Jr.

[11] The use of rocket-firing UH-1s in support of air assault units at landing zones was much like the Luftwaffe’s employment of the Junkers Ju-87 dive bomber to support panzer units at the point of the Wehrmacht’s armored thrusts.

[12]The blackened portion of General Kinnard’s observations underlines the ambidextrous nature of airmobility, where the pliability of the concept allows air assault forces to operate as either regular or irregular troops.

General Kinnard’s affirmation, then, coincides with the following practitioners of regular and irregular warfare:“When the situation is serious, the guerrillas must move with the fluidity of water and the ease of blowing wind.Their tactics must deceive, tempt and confuse the enemy.They must lead the enemy to believe that they will attack him from the east and north, and they must then strike him from the west and south.

Guerrilla initiative is expressed in dispersion, concentration and the alert shifting of forces.”See pages 103 and 104, Mao Tse-tung, On Guerrilla Warfare. Translated by Brigadier General Samuel B. Griffith, USMC (Ret.).

“Throughout the Resistance War . . . our strategic line was to extend guerrilla warfare everywhere . . . we chose the positions where the enemy is weak to concentrate our forces there and annihilate his manpower.” See page 139, People’s War, People’s Army, by General Vo Nguyen Giap.

“When the enemy is at ease, be able to weary him; when well fed, to starve him; when at rest, to make him move; appear at places to which he must hasten; move swiftly where he does not expect you.”See page 96, The Art of War, by Sun Tzu, translated by Brigadier General Samuel B. Griffith, USMC (Ret.).

[13]See page 16, Lieutenant General Harold G. Moore (Ret.) and Joseph L. Galloway, We Were Soldiers Once . . . And Young.

Bibliography

Albertson, Mark, “50 Years Ago:11^th Air Assault Division (Test), Army Aviation, Vol. 62, No. 2, Army Aviation Publications, Inc., Monroe, Ct., February 28, 2013.

Giap, General Vo Nguyen, People’s War, People’s Army: The Viet Cong Insurrection Manual for Underdeveloped Countries, A Bantum Book, Published by Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., New York, NY., 1962.

Graves, Major Thomas C., United States Army, School of Advanced Military Studies, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 2000

Howze, Hamilton H., A Cavalryman’s Story:Memoirs of a Twentieth-Century General, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington and London, 1990.

Mao Tse-Tung, On Guerrilla Warfare, Translated by Brigadier General Samuel B. Griffith, USMNC (Ret.), Praeger Publishers, Inc., New York, NY., 1961.

McMurray, Major Thomas I. and Scoggins, Major Larry E., “Company A, 227^th Assault Helicopter Battalion, 1^st Cavalry Division (Airmobile),” Reprinted from an in-country document titled, “History of the 227^th for the Year 1965,” and approved by Lieutenant Colonel Jack Cranford, Commanding.A227ahb.org/History227th1965.html

Moore, Lieutenant General Harold G., (Ret.) and Galloway, Joseph L., We Were Soldiers Once . . . And Young:Ia Drang—the Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam, a Presidio Press Book, Published by The Random House Publishing Group, Inc., New York, 1992.

Reeves, Captain Jarrold M., Jr., USA, “Forward Army and Refueling Points for Mechanized Infantry and Armor Units,” U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, June 1993.

Tzu, Sun, The Art of War, Translated by Samuel B. Griffith, Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 1963.

Williams, Dr. James W., A History of Army Aviation:From its Beginnings to the War on Terror, iUniverse, Inc., Lincoln, Nebraska, 2005.

Looking Back, August 2024
By Mark Albertson

80th Anniversary of World War II:
Army Aviation: France

It was Major Delbert Bristol from First Army who planned the Air Observation Post operations for OVERLORD. His primary task was to get his planes and pilots across the Channel and on to the Continent. He decided against the LST carrier as used at Sicily. The LST could launch but not recover aircraft; therefore was not conducive to continued air operations off shore. There was, of course, the escort carrier. A baby flattop could provide that platform for continued Air Observation Post operations, launching and receiving flivver planes for a long as necessary so as to provide on demand support of the Ground Forces ashore. An interesting concept, but one which will not come to fruition. For the Navy decided not to chance a flattop for such an operation so close to the invasion beachheads.[1]

Many unit air officers opted for their aircraft to enter the Continent loaded aboard 2.5 ton trucks once the landings had been effected. However some planes were piloted across the Channel. The L-5s boasted the fuel capacity to make the crossing; not so the L-4s. Here an oxygen tank pinch-hitting as a reserve fuel tank was strapped to the back seat, with a fuel line running to the main tank, giving the Cub twenty extra gallons of fuel.[2] One such aviator who flew a Cub across the Channel was Lieutenant Norm Goodwin. In an interview at the 2012 Army Aviation Association of America Convention, he told this writer, “I was wearing my Mae West, parachute and a .45. We were told that if we had to ditch, that the Brits would pick us up.” I replied, “Comforting to know that rescue was so close at hand.” He smiled and said with obvious pride at America’s potential as the world’s greatest industrial producer, “Mark, if I had to ditch I never would have hit the water. We had so many ships in the Channel I would have landed on an LST or a Liberty Ship.”

Larger and faster than the Piper L-4 Cub, it was used generally by the AAF in a variety of duties as a cooperation aircraft.

As Allied troops pushed inland, Air OPs flew operations from cow pastures. A hazard quickly manifest itself: Mines. At the same time that the Ground Forces were gaining experience in employing the Air OPs, the Germans were learning, too. And so they began to sow minefields across cow pastures. Aviators began to use pastures still occupied by grazing cows. This proved less hazardous than taking a chance on abandoned fields.

From June 7th to the 17th, the Allies busily secured their beachheads for advances east and south across France; and, west across the Cotentin Peninsula, AKA the Cherbourg Peninsula. This led the GIs into the Bocage or . . . the hellish hedgerows.

“The hedgerow country in the U.S. sector, started about ten miles inland from the Normandy beaches and extended in a wide swath from Caumont on the American left to the western coast of the Cotentin Peninsula. The hedgerows were sturdy embankments, half earth, half hedge. At their base, they resembled dirt parapets and varied in thickness from one to four feet. Growing out of this earthen wall was a hedge that consisted of small trees and tangles of vines and brush. This vegetation had a thickness of between one to three feet and varied in height from three to fifteen feet . . . the military features of the Bocage were obvious. The hedgerows divided the country into tiny compartments . . . provided excellent cover and concealment to the defender and presented a formidable obstacle to the attacker. Numerous adjoining fields could be organized to form a natural defensive position echeloned in depth. The thick vegetation provided excellent camouflage and limited the deployment of units. The hedgerows also restricted observation, making effective use of heavy caliber direct-fire weapons almost impossible and hampered adjustment of artillery fire.” And to add to the footslogger’s dilemma, ‘persistent rains during June and July hampered the efforts of the U.S. Army. The early summer of 1944 was the wettest since 1900.’”[3]

France, winter 1944, a Cub on skis.

Hedgerow combat ate up infantrymen like peanuts. “For the British, it was like fighting in the trenches of the Western Front; for some Americans it was like fighting in the jungles of the Pacific. Troops trained in England for open, mobile warfare had to rethink their tactics quickly.”[4] First Army, during July 1944, incurred 40,000 casualties, 90 percent of whom were infantrymen. “A rifle company after a week of combat often numbered less than one hundred men; sometimes it resembled a reinforced rifle platoon, Casualties among infantry officers in the line companies were particularly high in the hedgerow country, where small-unit initiative and individual, leadership figured so largely.”[5]

The checkered killing zone proved a bane for forward observers, as the endless weave of thickets played havoc with their ability to call in fire on German positions. Air OPs provided that high point to be able to glimpse what was on the other side of the next hedgerow. However, German flak and small arms proved more than just a nuisance. Flights made on the American side of the line had its hazards, too. Field Artillery taking German positions under fire actually shot down an L-4 piloted by 1st Lieutenant Alfred R. Howard of the 90th Infantry Division. Both Howard and his observer, Lieutenant William G. Windler, were killed.[6]

To avoid being shot down by friendly artillery, flights were made over the enemy side of the hedgerows, at altitudes of 1,500 feet, which opened up the L-4s to interception by prowling Luftwaffe fighters. As the campaign wore on, German fighters posed less of a threat. Yet despite the advantage posed by the Air OPs, flivver pilots could not decide the fighting on the ground. Accurate artillery fire notwithstanding, daily advances were sometimes measured in yards per day against the well-dug in Germans. And like their brothers-in-arms on the ground, the artillery pilots incurred losses as well.

According to Major Delbert L. Bristol, between June 1944 to May 1945 First Army field artillery Air OPs lost 176 aircraft, fifty-nine of which were lost during the June-August period, from the Normandy landings through the hedgerow campaign. He also noted that of 81 pilots lost between June 1944 to May 1945, 42 were killed during the first three months of the campaign.[7]

Major Bristol went on to explain that following the hedgerow campaign, “the Air OPs played a vital role in all phases of combat operations as a primary means of observation. In Europe alone, it may be said that Air OPs accounted for better than 75% of all observed fire adjustments conducted,[8] But according to Major Bristol, this was only 34.4% of the missions flown by Army aviators.

Following OVERLORD, artillery was assigned a new task. Close Air Support was becoming more and more important to the ground effort. And as the Luftwaffe lost control of French air space, German flak[9] units became cause for concern.

The Germans boasted one of the most extensive flak commands of the war. On September 1, 1939, Luftwaffe manpower strength approached upwards of a million. Some two-thirds served in flak units. By 1944, of 2,500,000 men and women in the Luftwaffe, half were attached to the flak arm.

The Army and Navy each had its own flak units. But combined, amounted to only 25 percent of the Luftwaffe capability.
Luftwaffe flak units exercised two responsibilities: 1) Defense of the Fatherland against the growing menace of the Allied bomber streams and 2) Provide anti-aircraft defense for the Army field units, and, when necessary, provide artillery support for same.

Allied advance into Germany, encirclement of the Ruhr, by March 1944.

The Luftwaffe’s flak arm fielded an impressive array of weapons, ranging from such smaller calibers such as the 20 mm and 37 mm to larger tubes such as the 105 mm and its largest caliber, 128 mm. And not to be forgotten was the famous or infamous “88.” This superlative weapon was not only used in the anti-aircraft role, but went on to become one of the most effective tank killers on the battlefield during the entire war.

Flak suppression actually began in Italy. L-4s trailing bomber flights, while flying their divisional patrol sectors, would report the coordinates of barking flak batteries to the field artillery. The beneficiaries here were medium bombers flying tactical missions for the ground forces. “Air OPs were successfully used to neutralize enemy flak installations during Air Force bombing attacks in the drive on Cherbourg. Air OPs flying “anti-flak” patrols were able to spot flashes from enemy antiaircraft artillery. It was then a routine matter for the Air OPs to adjust artillery fire which effectively silenced those installations.[10]

Army aviator Hughes Rudd provides a glimpse of flak suppression: “. . . German flak crews were very cautious in shooting at the L-4s but of course there were times when they thought the odds were in their favor and would let fly. Flak came in various calibers, from the big 88s on down to 20 mm rapid-fire cannon, often mounted on half-tracks or flat-bed trucks. The 88s usually fired a ‘ladder’ of six rounds, apparently hoping you’d fly into one of the three pairs, and people sometimes did. But the muzzle flash of the 88 was so large and bright that you couldn’t miss it. In the Vosges in France I was flying near Bitche when six brown bursts appeared off my right wing, not close enough to do any harm. However, I had seen the muzzle flashes from a village across the Rhine, and when I radioed the 93rd’s fire direction center and gave them the coordinates, they poured thirty-six rounds into the village; there were no more ‘ladders’ from that quarter.”[11]

Along the same lines was the “Horsefly” controllers of ground support aircraft. In northern Europe, these fliers were generally AAF pilots assigned to a corps. Observers were drawn from the Ground Forces and fluent with enemy tanks, trucks and other vehicles. Like Air OP operations, Horseflys operated in areas of local air superiority. “The Horsefly technique was used in the European Theater of Operations principally by units of XII Tactical Air Command in cooperation with units of Seventh Army and by XIX Tactical Air Command in cooperation with units of Third Army.”[12]

Germany 1945, Air OPs using a hard surfaced runway known as the autobahn.

Like Ninth Army, Third Army found Air OPs to be of inestimable value. As the campaign proceeded, many Cub pilots eschewed low altitude, flying patrols at 2,500 to 3,000 feet to obtain a broader view for potential targets. Some chose to fly miles inside enemy territory. Even a dawn to dusk presence was created, providing an opportunity for American gunners to not only pound targets of opportunity but to protect American positions from German battery fire.

Air OPs flying route column control for armored units were found to speed the advance. Patrolling several miles ahead of the lead tank, Cubs alerted the mailed fist to enemy strong points, conditions of impending villages, bridges and any road blocks. A rapid advance meant constantly changing landing strips to keep pace with the swiftly moving armor. This caused wear and tear on aircraft, including damage incurred by the use of landing strips not used previously.

When working with the Field Artillery, strips for the Air OPs were located some 500 yards or more from the guns or even nearby towns, villages or crossroads. Anything which presented itself as a target for enemy batteries was given a wide berth.

Showcasing the L-4 Cub with data.

Another problem with regards to airstrips was the terrain of northwest Europe itself, especially during the rainy season. L-4s could actually tear up the soil like a football team. L-5s, because of their greater weight, posed an even greater problem. The answer was the landing mat, especially during the rainy season. Some 900 feet long by twenty feet, the mats reduced the chances for accidents and damage and allowed for unimpeded operations.

According to Third Army findings, fuels and lubricants from motor vehicles did not provide long-term maintenance advantages. 80-octane fuel used for motor transport and used in Air OP aircraft caused noticeable increases in maintenance. Increased servicing and overhauls caused shortages of spare parts, such as spark plugs, valves and rings. . . 80-octane gasoline caused an engine overhaul every forty hours; as opposed to 73-octane aviation fuel, which saw overhauls average every 125 to 150 hours.[13]

* * * * *

Anvil/Dragoon

Operation ANVIL[14] is one of those operations of World War II given minimum regard, sandwiched as it was between the Italian campaign and Normandy. Yet its significance cannot be understated. Prime Minister Winston Churchill was hardly a proponent since he thought the effort drew attention away from the Italian campaign. British General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson, thought the Allied effort would be best served by landing on the “Istrian Peninsula at the head of the Adriatic which was dominated by runs south from the Trieste, there would be attractive prospects of advancing through the Ljubljana Gap into Austria and Hungary and striking at the heart of Germany from another direction.”[15] This, of course, played to Churchill’s preference for the strategy known as the “Soft Underbelly” to get into Central Europe so as to blunt the western momentum of the massive steamroller known as the Red Army. Churchill’s strategy was rooted in the Balance-of-Power formula that had guided European politics and security concerns for centuries.

America, on the other hand, was not so inclined. American strategy did not countenance landings anywhere in the Adriatic nor did it accommodate the major effort to take place in Italy, where the logistics of crossing the Julian Alps certainly did not appeal to the U.S. Army’s preference for mobile warfare, politics notwithstanding. And this leads to one of the major attractions of ANVIL/DRAGOON, the capture of Marseilles, the largest port in France, important since stubborn German troops were still holding out in Antwerp. With its capture, Marseilles would go on “to satisfy over one-third of the Allied logistical needs in northern France.”[16]

ANVIL/DRAGOON provided Eisenhower with a third army group, thereby affording the Supreme Commander the luxury of not having to stretch out or thin his forces as he closed the German border. An additional army group therefore bolstered the Allied front in the face of the later German attack in December which resulted in the battle of the Bulge.

Operation:  DRAGOON (ANVIL), the landings in southern France, August 1944.

August 15, 1944, the U.S. Seventh Army, General Alexander Patch in command, was composed of VI Corps (3rd, 36th and 45th Infantry Divisions), First Airborne Task Force plus five divisions of the Free French Army, assaulted the French coast in the area of St. Tropez and St. Raphael. Patch’s army advanced, reaching the Vosges Mountains by September 11, besides effecting the link up with Allied armies to the north. At the same time, Patton’s Third Army was speeding across France towards the German frontier.

The concerted Allied effort brought with it a wider field of opportunity for the Air OPs. Artillery pilots shuffled command officers; flew route column control for armored units; reconnaissance missions to discern German positions; dusk to dawn patrols along the line. L-4s were also employed to monitor the precious truck convoys feeding the lengthening supply lines for the rapidly advancing armies. Known as the Red Ball Express, these truck convoys wound their way through the French countryside, sometimes having to cope with bypassed German units. Air OPs flew top cover, warning of enemy troops or obstacles, reporting on accidents and dispatching mechanics to service disabled trucks.[17]

Wire laying duties were assigned as well. However the L-4 proved lacking here in comparison to the larger L-5. The former could lay some half mile of wire as opposed to the latter which could lay upwards of five miles at a time.[18]

Yet at this stage, it is important to bring the story of the Air OPs back to where they started, the aerial direction of artillery fire. For by late 1944, they were at the top of their game. And who better to tell this part of the story than William Wallace Ford.

“The light observation airplane (Air OP) as a component of the artillery organization now proved its worth for us, as it had many times before for other divisions. It was particularly effective in conjunction with a new system of fire direction developed at Fort Sill just prior to WWII. Under this procedure an artillery battalion going into position would run a quick but accurate survey locating the base pieces (guns) of several batteries with respect to one another, and at the same time giving a common reference direction for all. After that, the battalion fire direction center could compute, in a matter of seconds, accurate data (direction and range) for all batteries of the battalion.

“Not only that, but division artillery headquarters (my headquarters) would at the same time be running a similar survey to tie four battalions together. Finally, corps artillery supporting us with heavier cannon would tie into us with its survey. Thus, eventually, all artillery that could reach any selected target was tied together by survey, so that now, after any one battery has been adjusted, the whole works could fire for effect with great accuracy, without further expenditure of time and ammunition in adjustment.

It was murderous. It was worse, it was devastating. Fort Sill had also developed a thing called ‘Time on Target (TOT).’ The idea was to have the concerted fire of many batteries land simultaneously on an unsuspecting target, or on a nearby checkpoint from which a transfer of fire could accurately be made. Watches in all fire direction centers would be coordinated to the second. The order to fire and the transmission of firing data would be preceded by the words, ‘Time on Target (as an example) 1106.’ Each battery would be loaded and laid and would fire at 1106 minus the time of flight of projectile from gun position to the target. Thus the projectiles from all batteries participating would land on or near the target at almost exactly 1106. It was shattering to observe one of these, and I’m glad I never had to endure one. At this stage of the war we had several times as much ammunition to fire, as the Germans opposite us.”[19]

Endnotes

[1] See pages 66, 67 and 69, Chapter Fourteen, “D-Day and the Struggle for Normandy: 6th June 1944-24th July 1944,” The Fighting Grasshoppers, by Ken Wakefield. Major Bristol’s idea of using an escort carrier for Air Observation Post missions ashore was one of merit. Consider an escort carrier with 12 to 15 L-4s able to service naval gunfire operations ashore and later missions in support as the ground troops move inland from the beaches; or, supply Cubs for missions ashore once the beaches have been consolidated. Verification of Bristol’s concept at Normandy might have opened up use of same in the Pacific Theater of Operations. A caveat here would have been that such escort carriers could have been targets of the later kamikaze attacks.

[2] See page 93, Chapter Ten, “L-Bird Oddities,” Box Seat Over Hell, by Hardy D. Cannon.

[3] See pages 14 and 15, I. “Normandy: The Context of the Battle,” Busting the Bocage: American Combined Arms Operations in France, 6 June-31 July 1944, by Michael D. Doubler.

[4] See page 42, “The Battle of Normandy,” Normandy 1944, by Stephen Badsey.

[5] See page 175, “The Conclusions,” Breakout and Pursuit, United States Army in World War II, European Theater of Operations, by Martin Blumenson.

[6] See page 208, Chapter 6, “The European Theater of Operations, June 1944-September 1945,” Eyes of Artillery: Origins of Modern U.S. Army Aviation in World War II, by Edgar F. Raines, Jr.

[7] See page 586, “Air OP is Here to Stay,” The Field Artillery Journal, Vol. 36, No. 10, by Major Delbert L. Bristol, FA. Major Bristol provides a number of important figures pertaining to the performance of First Army field artillery Air OPs during the northern European campaign, from June 1944 to May 1945.

[8] See page 586, Major Delbert L. Bristol.

[9] “Flak was an abbreviation for Fliegererabwehrkanonen, or anti-aircraft guns.” See page 230, Chapter 19, “The Flak Arm,” The Luftwaffe Data Book, by Dr. Alfred Price.

[10] See page 12, Section 4, Chapter 1, “Tactical Operation and Control,” Study of Organic Field Artillery Air Observation, The General Board, United States Forces, European Theater, Study Number 66.

[11] See page 7, “When I Landed the War was Over,” American Heritage, Vol. 32, Issue 6, October/November, 1981, by Hughes Rudd.

[12] See page 14, Part Two, Horsefly Control of Fighter-Bombers, Chapter 1, “Employment of Horsefly Technique,” Section 1, The General Board, United States Forces, European Theater, Liaison Aircraft with Ground Forces Units, Study Number 20.

[13] See pages 588 and 589, “Air OP Operations in the Third U.S. Army,” The Field Artillery Journal, Vol. 36, No. 10, October 1946.

[14] Later changed to DRAGOON when it was thought the operation had been compromised.

[15] See page 61, Book 1, Chapter 4, “Attack on the South of France?” The Second World War: Triumph and Tragedy, Vol. 6, by Winston S. Churchill.

[16] See page 3, “Southern France, 15 August-14 September 1944,” Southern France, U.S. Army Campaigns of World War II, prepared by Jeffrey J. Clarke, United States Army Center of Military History.

[17] See page 90, Chapter 4, “Missions and Deployment,” The Development of Organic Light Aviation in the Army Ground Forces in World War II, by Major Robert S. Brown, USA.

[18] See pages 148 and 149, Chapter III, “The War Years: North Africa, Sicily and Italy,” The Army Aviation Story, by Richard K. Tierney with Fred Montgomery.

[19] See pages 135 and 136, Chapter IX, “In Combat,” Wagon Soldier, by William Wallace Ford.

Bibliography

Badsey, Stephen, Normandy 1944: Allied Landings and Breakout, Barnes & Noble Publishing, Inc., by arrangement with Osprey Publishing, Essex, England, 1990.
Blumenson, Martin, Breakout and Pursuit, United States Army in World War II: European Theater of Operations, CMH Pub 7-5-1, Center of Military History, United States Army, Washington, D.C., 1993. Originally published 1961.

Bristol, Major Delbert L, F.A., “Air OP is Here to Stay,” The Field Artillery Journal, Vol. 36, No. 10, The Field Artillery Association, Washington, D.C., October 1946.

Brown, Major Robert S. Brown, USA, The Development of Organic Light Aviation in the Army Ground Forces in World War II, General Studies, Army Command and General Staff College, For Leavenworth, Kansas, 2000

Cannon, Hardy D., Box Seat Over Hell: The True Story of Pilots and America’s Liaison Their Light Planes in World War II, San Antonio, Texas, 1985.

Churchill, Winston S., Vol. 6, The Second World War: Triumph and Tragedy, Houghton Mifflin and Company, Boston, Massachusetts, 1953.

Clarke, Jeffrey J., Southern France, 15 August-14 September 1944, U.S. Army Campaigns of World War II, CMH Pub 72-31, Center of Military History, United States Army, Washington, D.C., 2019.

Doubler, Captain Michael D., Busting the Bocage: American Combined Arms Operations in France, 6 June-31 July, 1944, Combat Studies Institute, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 1988

Ford, William Wallace, Wagon Soldier, Excelsior Printing Company, North Adams, Massachusetts, 1980.

Price, Dr. Alfred, The Luftwaffe Data Book, Greenhill Books, Pennsylvania, 1997

Raines, Edgar F., Jr., Eye of Artillery: The Origins of Modern U.S. Army Aviation in World War II, Army Historical Series, CMH Pub 70-31-1, Center of Military History, United States Army, Washington, D.C., 2000.

Rudd, Hughes, “When I Landed the War was Over,” American Heritage, Vol. 32, No. 6, October/November 1981, www.americanheritage.co/content/when-i-landed-war-was-over

The General Board, “Liaison Aircraft with Ground Forces,” Study No. 20, United States Forces, European Theater, Office of the Chief of Military History, June 17, 1945. Property of U.S. Army, U.S. Army Center of Military History, Library, August 4, 1996.

The General Board, “Report on Study of Organic Field Artillery Air Observation,” Study No. 66, United States Forces, European Theater, June 17, 1945. Office of the Chief of Military History, U.S. Army Center of Military History, Library, August 4, 1996.

Tierney, Richard K. with Montgomery, Fred, The Army Aviation Story, Colonial Press, Northport, Alabama, 1963.

Wakefield, Ken, The Fighting Grasshoppers: US Liaison Aircraft Operations in Europe, 1942-1945, Midland Counties Publications, Leicester, England, 1990.

Looking Back, July 2024
By Mark Albertson

Insight: Soviet VTOL Technology:
What They have Done, What They Are Doing,
And Why, by United Aircraft’s
Sergei Sikorsky[1]

Insight:  Soviet VTOL Technology.

As a fellow member of your association, I appreciate the invitation to address you today in a subject of much interest, not only to me personally but I think to all of us,

There are not going to be any major surprises. Possibly some of the things I have to say may not coincide with what is current thinking among some quarters. I offer them only as points for later discussion. My talk is more an explanation of what the Russians have done (with rotary wing equipment), what they are doing, and why they are doing it the way they are doing it.

VTOL, has a long history in Russia. It started in Russia in 1910 with experiments my father did. He abandoned them because of a lack of technological potential in engines and airframes at that time. However, his actions did inspire a number of other people to continue and in 1922-1925 a machine was put together in Russia.

It was a surprisingly modern configuration which was actually flown about 1932-1933 by the Research Institute in Moscow. Two young engineers cut their eye teeth on this first project. One of them was Nicolai Kamov; the other was a young engineer named Mikhail Mil.

Helicopters didn’t move beyond this first project in Russia for quite some time. Sporadic efforts during the late ‘30’s were in autogyro imitations and helicopters came into action right after WWII. In the fourth Five Year Plan initiated 1946-1950, the Soviet Government decided that it was going to get into the helicopter business. In Russia, there is no such thing as private initiative—anything that is decided is, first of all, decided by the government, and once the government has established a priority for it, the funding is there. Funding is not there on a one-year basis, as it is here in the U.S. It’s there at least through that running Five Year Plan.

The division was made in 1946 and the first helicopter that flew in 1950 was the Mil-1. It has a 575 hp engine; and it is still being very widely used for utility work, whaling, crop-spraying and for helicopter training in the State-run Soviet Aero Clubs. These are scattered throughout Russia and provide flight and mechanic training at ridiculously low prices, and conservatively estimated they train an average of 3,000 to 4,000 helicopter pilots a year.

These aircraft are the basic training aircraft on which Soviet pilots cut their teeth. A lot of them continue current; some go into the military services; some go into Aeroflot; and some go into industrial combines; but the Russians are building up a tremendous backlog of rotary wing trained pilots and mechanics.

In 1953, the Mil-4 was the next aircraft to fly. The Russians jumped the H-19 class of helicopter and went straight to the equivalent of an H-34 class. It had a “bathtub” below the fuselage which was used not only for navigation in marginal weather, but it also could be fitted out with a belly-mounted machine gun. The Mil-4 is a very, very rugged aircraft, and it’s put together more like a truck or a tank than an aircraft.

In the military version, the window is to the side of the heel of the pilot—the windows have rubber plugs in them—and during a troop mission, the soldiers riding in the aircraft can poke the plugs out and stick machine gun muzzles out of the windows. Well over 5,000 of the Mil-4 model have been built by the Russians, Chinese, and other people as well.

The civilian version of the same Mil-4 is being used in Asia, and the satellite countries as a light to medium category of utility helicopter. Aeroflot alone operates several thousand of these helicopters as a sort of liaison service all over Russia.

In 1957, the Mil-6 flew. Although it might not have been a surprise technologically, its sheer size was a distinct surprise. It has two 5,500 hp gas turbine engines, a gross weight of roughly 93,000 t0 94,000 pounds; and can carry, roughly, the equivalent of 65 to 90 armed troops in its large cabin. The significant point I’d like to bring home is that it took the Russians seven short years from the time they built the little Mil-1 to the time they fielded the very large, very sophisticated aircraft. This is one of the points I’d like to leave with you—the speed with which these people can assimilate their own knowhow and blend it with imported and observed technology, and then come up with hardware.

Among the Soviet helicopters discussed by Mr. Sikorsky was the Mil-6 helicopter, which served as a model for future designs.

These aircraft, I have reason to believe, are being put together in fairly large quantities. I estimate conservatively that there are probably 350 to 400 of these Mil-6 machines operational today and I have grounds to believe that the initial production lot was 500.

The next machine using components of the Mil-6 was the Mil-10, the Flying Crane. It first flew in 1960. Again, three years after they flew the Mil-6, they had the dynamic components down, under control and developed, and were able to put this Flying Crane together. This aircraft had a capacity to straddle large lumber stacks and it could carry large bulky objects below its fuselage. The cargo might include a bus, a lightweight cylindrical object, and possibly even intercontinental missiles from factories to on-site silos.

This same crane was followed very shortly afterwards by short-legged versions of the same machine. We’re beginning to see it used in increasing industrial operations taking place in the Russian boondocks.

In 1965, the venerable Mil-4 was slowly replaced by the Mil-8. The latter first flew in’65 and had two 1,500 hp engines. To save time the prototypes were built using Mil-4 hardware. Mil-4 main rotor blades (they went from four to five blades on the rotor head); the intermediate and the tail gear box, I was told on best authority, were taken directly from the Mil-4; and even though they have developed slightly higher powered transmissions systems in the meantime, this aircraft, in case of an emergency, can be flown today by using standard old Mil-4 blades and Mil-4 tail rotors. They can be ferried out under light gross weights to a repair base and either be scrapped or put back into operation. These same aircraft are being given away in fairly large quantities, and some have fairly sophisticated VIP interiors.

Helicopter operations in Russia form a half crescent located roughly from the Urals down around the Afghanistan-Mongolian-Chinese border. They are highly seasonal in nature, but are becoming more around-the-clock operations. From these central bases which are, generally speaking, in the southern part of Russia, helicopters move out in the spring as the thaws start and operate in the Russian tundra and far into the north.

As soon as the spring comes, their helicopters go out shuttling geological crews and industrial teams all over the Siberian peninsula. These same helicopters are increasing their operations through the winter and they’re beginning to establish permanent villages and cities, permanent geological stations, etc. throughout Siberia. They’re beginning to develop the know how of operating these helicopters in the Siberian winter, which means living with temperatures that go down to -35 and -40 degrees. I’ve talked to pilots who’ve told me they’re operating helicopters at -65 and -70 degrees.

In addition to supplying half the world’s gold, and having more forest reserves in Siberia alone than the total acreage than Western Europe, we’re now beginning to realize that Siberia is almost literally floating on an ocean of gas and oil. Russia has what a lot of people consider to be the largest known reserves of oil and gas in the world. This has catalyzed a tremendous expansion in Soviet helicopter operations, and Siberia is unique because there is no place where they are not starting from square 1. They are going across tundra with pilots and mechanics where it would cost sometimes as much as half a million dollars to build a mile of road, and these roads would have to be rebuilt extensively every spring after the snow and ice had melted.

It Costs Less to Fly

When you have to do these jobs and you have to supply these cities and you begin to develop other—and sometimes very impressive ways of doing it, and this brings in the helicopter. It is more cost efficient to do it by air than to build the roads.

One Russian told me that they’ve run cost-efficient studies that indicate to service a 1,000 kilometer road, to keep it open and repaired, and to channel over this road 1,000 tons per year from Point A to Point B requires about 2,000 maintenance people just to keep the road open. By air they could do the same job with about 25% less people. They’re run these estimates and realize that if they put a small airstrip ay Points A and B they can get by with about 1,500 people.

Adding to the unique problems of Siberia are some of these nutty places where, for example, in the Central Siberian lowlands, swamps do not freeze, and are not even in the bitterest Siberian cold. Saturated with peat which is decomposing, they generate so much heat that the ground and the water remain unfrozen all year. Radio navigation aids, as a result are very, very marginal off the runways. There are certain airways that go generally east-west, and the Russians are just starting to develop north-south chains. They usually locate radio aids at the intersection points, but there a very, very large areas—and some of them of tremendous importance geologically and technologically—that are not covered by radio aids.

Telephone Pole Navigation

To overcome this, they are developing all kinds of interesting techniques. I’ve heard fascinating rumors about helicopter airways that are marked in the same way we used to run the airmail in the States. They put telephone poles every 3-4 miles apart that are high enough to stay clear of the winter snow. They require no maintenance. Their cross arms have chaff (radar tinsel) on them. These poles are used by Russian pilots visually or by onboard radar. Maintenance is by a tractor or dogsled team that goes down the line and repairs the tinsel. And there you have a passive but very effective radio aid.

Consequently, eyeball navigation is important in this area of Russia, and this is the reason why most of the helicopters are very, very well equipped as far as windows go. The Mil-8 cockpit is typical—plenty of windows. On the larger helicopters, such as the Mil-6, and you’ll notice that there is a navigator station in the nose of the machine. The Russians always grin when someone accuses them of putting a bombardier station in the nose of the Mil-6 because they say that this helicopter as a bomber is an awfully expendable piece of hardware. But a navigator in marginal weather in Siberia is a must, and consequently they do it by putting him up in the nose to give him the visibility.

Bump on Top

On the much larger aircraft, such as the Mil-12, they have right on top—on the floor above the pilot’s cabin—a bump that is a fairly well-equipped navigator station. He has his own cabin, his own ground-mapping radar, and very adequate visibility to look downwards and forwards.

Medical services in Siberia are expanding as the population grows and they’re using the Mil-4’s and Mil-6’s, and I’ve already heard that they’re equipping the interiors of helicopters with a complete dentist’s office. Including a dentist’s chair, and flying out to isolated communities and furnishing medical and dental services inside of the helicopter.

I’ve reviewed all of this to give you some feel for the in depth strength of the Soviet military operations, because Aeroflot is a part and parcel of the total overall military potential that the Soviet Government has. All of these pilots and all of these aircraft, in case of an emergency, can be diverted to back up actual front line military operations and, was done during World War II, actually do become a part of the Soviet Air Force as soon as the balloon goes up.

Increasing numbers of helicopters are being used not only here in the industrial applications, but the same aircraft are being used, such as the Mil-6, in military operations. For instance, in recent military maneuvers on which we’ve been given some information, they’ve been used in coordination with Soviet armor. They carry the troops and by carrying troops by air you keep the roads open for armor and do not clutter them up with APCs and with other troop-carrying trucks. The helicopters stay behind the front-moving tanks but remain close enough to be called in to provide heavy troop support, when and if needed.

New families of weapons are being developed. They are, to a large degree, self-propelled weapons because the Russians know when they move into a beachhead or into an airhead they may not have enough manpower to lug this stuff around. But these light anti-tank and possibly anti-aircraft cannon can be moved under their own power and can ride around for about 5-6 kilometers on their own fuel before they finally get into the position they want to reach.

In Response to Government

The helicopters developed in Russia are developed in response to a specific government requirement. This requirement is either to support military operations or to support massive construction projects in the Soviet Union. Once the requirement has been established, they enjoy a definite, given priority and can be manufactured in any one of a half a dozen factories. Even though helicopter manufacturing is specialized in one or two spots, these helicopters are purposely designed somewhat more simply and certainly more ruggedly than ours are.

The designs move into hardware very quickly. They do this by using a mixture of in-house knowhow and experience, which they have built up since their first machines in 1950, and a very, very professional and an almost overnight evaluations of American and European designs. This allows them to provide surprising jumps in technology at very, very quick speed.

These rugged, simple designs also allow much easier farming out of the design from the central design bureau to any one of a half dozen production plants. It also allows far quicker transfer of technology from the design office to any one of their satellite factories, once these are designated to build that particular type of helicopter. Obviously, all of this reduces maintenance requirements in the field.

General speaking, after five to ten prototypes are built, these aircraft are put into limited operational work and are flown and debugged. Once debugged, production starts and is committed to a definite Five-Year Plan, and therefore, they are able to commit three to five times as many numbers into production as we ever do.

We live with this annual review, Annual Budget: Quantities are increased and decreased; unfortunately, most of the time they seem to be decreased every year that a program keeps on going. In Russia, you do not have any of this. A definite plan is laid out and they work in blocks of 100, 500 or a thousand aircraft, depending on the quantity and the type of aircraft. One good example, the new Antonov crop-spraying biplane just developed by the Antonov group in Kiev. Fairly simple and rugged, it’s been given to the Czechs to build. Right off the bat, Aeroflot ordered 3,000 copies.

Now, obviously, when a factory gets an order laid down that says, “You deliver 3,000 copies,” it can run off forgings and heavy fittings and frames, and it can manufacture engines because it knows that it will be doing it for a production run of 3,000. Hence, you have a totally different economic picture.

These huge production runs result in significantly lower costs, and this further stimulates production by the fact that you can get a lot more of that hardware for a reasonably low price per unit.

Recent emphasis indicates the Russians want to go into an all-weather capability. They’ve already been operational with electrically-heated anti-icing of main and tail rotor blades for six to seven years. They’re already developing full IFR capability, and on the Mil-6 and Mil-8 they have a simple, rugged, and entirely workable autopilot. I’ve been told by good authority by the Russians that they now have a standard requirement that all aircraft that have been in production for the last five years have to be capable of IFR operations; all have anti-icing, and all must be capable of operating from Siberian to Mongolian temperatures, which means from -35 to-40 degrees up to +110 to +120 degrees.

Trade Anything for Survival

Their domestic and military requirements will continue to generate very, very large production runs. The (design) trend will continue to be, in my mind, devoted to fairly rugged, fairly unsophisticated helicopters. This will be done knowingly while accepting a penalty of perhaps 10% less payload per aircraft compared to our European and American designs, it’s going to be done knowing that they’ll cruise at 5 to 10 knots less airspeed, but it’s also going to be possible to maintain this aircraft in the field for 500 to 1,000 flying hours with a quarter of the manpower that our equivalent machines require. This advantage, both in their boondocks and in case of a military operation, is something that all of us should take a look at. What I’m trying to say, in concluding this very brief review of Soviet helicopter design philosophy, is that the Russians sometimes take a look at a problem and solve it, not with the maximum of expenditure, and they are willing to trade off performance, payload, cruise speeds and a number of other things in order to arrive at a machine with which they can live in this very, very difficult and demanding Siberian environment.

Editor’s Note

Sergei Sikorsky’s effort denotes a continuum of, not merely that of Soviet weaponry, but Russian. Or as George Kennan once observed, that in the end it does not matter if it is Czarist Russia, Stalin’s Russia, Khruschev’s Soviet Union, Brezhnev’s Soviet Union or Putin’s Russia, Russia is Russia. And that includes the production of weaponry. By Western standards, Russian equipment, overall, is of a simpler design. During 1941-1945, for instance, on the Eastern Front—the decisive land campaign of the war—the simplicity of Russian designs helped to dominate the battlefield in the end.

Sergei Sikorsky, son of Igor Sikorsky, addresses the 1973 AAAA National Convention in Washington, D.C.  Topic was the state of Soviet VTOL Technology.

To start with, much of the population were peasants and workers. What do they know about Cadillacs and Dusenbergs. Vehicles and aircraft were developed along these lines. Take the T-34. Fit and finish might not be up to so-called Western standards, but unlike poorly designed British and American types, the T-34 boasted of sloped armor so as enemy shells could bounce off, a diesel power plant to cut down on the fire hazard, 19-inch tracks that enabled it to go through terrain other tanks could not traverse. It could take a punch and with a pair of pliers and a wrench set, you could keep it running for twenty years. And it was the most produced Allied tank of the war at 54,550 copies.[2]

The Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmovik,[3] is another example of ruggedness, simplicity, cheap to manufacture and which could be considered crude by Western standards. Built first in just piloted versions, a rear gunner was added for further protection. Extremely well armored, the Il-2 was a niche aircraft; that is, it was for ground support of troops as well as busting enemy armor. Arguably, it was the best of such type of aircraft produced by any of the combatants during the war; that is, in the opinion of Eddie Rickenbacker who witnessed demonstrations when in the Soviet Union.

The Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmovik, most produced combat plane in history at 36,163 copies.  The Il-2 is arguably the greatest ground support/tank busting aircraft of World War II.

What made the Il-2 so fearsome was its cocktail of armament such as, machine gun and cannon fire, plus bombs and/or rockets it could unleash upon enemy troops, trucks, tanks, pill boxes and other strong points. And it was built to operate at low levels, at altitudes of 30 feet to 2,000.

Such weaponry of simplicity and ruggedness, as well as being produced in massive numbers[4], helped to make the Soviet Army, by 1944, the world’s greatest killing machine on land.

Yet honorable mention, though, must go to a plane built by the United States. That being the L-4 Piper Cub. As a low-speed put-put, of simple design, rugged, easy to maintain, and cost efficient (about $2,000 per copy), the Cub was arguably the most powerful single-engine aircraft in the U.S. arsenal. For it could direct tons of ordnance onto a single target without hoisting same, by the expediency of the aerial direction of artillery fire. The L-4 served in most theaters of the war and, was the most produced U.S. Army co-operation aircraft of World War II at 5,671 copies.[5]

Endnotes

[1] See pages 16-18, 20, Army Aviation, Vol. 23, No. 1, Army Aviation Publications, Inc., Westport, Ct., January 7, 1974.

[2] When first encountered In 1941, the T-34, as did the KV-1 heavy tank, proved a shock to the Germans; that sub-human Slavs were capable of producing such first-rate armored fighting vehicles was an indication that the Wehrmacht would be engaging an enemy in 1941 who would prove to be a much more worthy antagonist as opposed to the hapless French the summer before.

{3] The term ‘Shturmovik’ “is a general application for all ground-attack types, and the its application to the IL-2 specifically is comparable to the use of the name Stuka for the Junkers Ju-87.” See page 2, “Ilyushin Il-2,” Aircraft Profile No. 88, by Witold Liss.

[4] The Il-2 is the most produced combat plane in aviation history at 36,163 copies. See pages 2418 and 2419, “Shturmovik, Ilyushin Il-2,” Illustrated Encyclopedia of 20th Century Weapons and Warfare, 1978.

[5] See page 43, “70th Anniversary of Army Aviation: Fixed Wing Aircraft of World War II,” Army Aviation, February 28, 2012, by Mark Albertson.

Bibliography

Albertson, Mark, “70th Anniversary of Army Aviation: Fixed Wing Aircraft in World War II,” Army Aviation, Vol. 61, No. 2, Army Aviation Publications, Inc., Monroe, Ct., February 29, 2012.

Illustrated Encyclopedia of 20th Century of Weapons and Warfare, Vol. 22, Skyray.T-34, .Phoebus Publishing Company, /BPC Publishing Ltd., 1978.

Liss, Witold, “The Ilyushin Il-2,” Aircraft Profile, No. 88, Profile Books Limitied, Berkshire, England, March 1982.

Munson, Kenneth, Aircraft of World War II, Doubleday & Company, Inc., printed by Crampton & Sons, Ltd., Sawston, Cambridge, UK., 1968.

Sikorsky, Sergei, “Insight: Soviet VTOL Technology,” Army Aviation, Vol. 23, No. 1, Army Aviation Publications, Inc., Westport, Ct., January 7, 1974.

Zalaga, Steven and Sarson, Peter, T-34/76 Medium Tank, 1941-1945, Osprey Military, London, UK., 1994.

Looking Back, June 2024
By Mark Albertson

80 Years Ago:
Operation: OVERLORD

“D-Day has come. Early this morning the Allies began the assault on the northwestern face of Hitler’s European fortress. The first official news came just after half-past nine, when Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force issued Communique Number One. This said: Under the command of General Eisenhower, Allied naval forces, supported by strong air forces, began landing Allied armies this morning on the northern coast of France. This is the BBC Home Service—and here is a special bulletin read by John Snagge.”[1]

* * * * *

The strategic significance of Overlord is greater than the standard popular narrative of the Longest Day; that of serving the vulgar Austrian corporal his eviction notice from France and the Low Countries so as to bring to a speedier conclusion Man’s greatest industrialized global conflict. For what transpired on June 6, 1944, as well as on December 4-5, 1941, followed two days later at Pearl Harbor, and August 6 and 9, 1945, are among those decisive military developments underscoring the changing nature of the global dynamics of power. For Man’s greatest industrialized war, Total War, did not commence on December 1, 1939; rather, by August 4, 1914.[2]

Map of the D-Day, June 6, 1944.

But Overlord, too, was a product of history: Spring 1862, General George McClellan was to land a huge Union Army on the Virginia Peninsula. According to the Assistant Secretary of War, John Tucker, “121,500 men, 14,592 animals, 1,150 wagons, 44 batteries, 74 ambulances, pontoon bridges, telegraph materials, and an enormous quantity of equipage, . . .

“In his account, McClellan’s quartermaster reflected Tucker’s report on the scale of the effort when he listed the craft utilized in the move to the peninsula: ’71 side-wheeler steamers, 57 propellers (craft equipped with propellers), 187 schooners, brigs and barks, 90 barges, making in all 405 vessels, of a tonnage of 86,278 tons.’”[3] Included, too, was a pair of balloons from Thaddeus Lowe’s Balloon Corps, providing McClellan with air superiority of a type. A monumental effort considering the time, perhaps, but, which only ended in failure. President Lincoln was seeking a knockout blow: Get to Richmond, the Confederate capital and end the war. Then, perhaps, be in a better position to enforce the Monroe Doctrine and evict the French from Mexico.[4]

The Peninsular Campaign was a failure, owing, in part, to a lack of intelligence as to an accurate strength of Confederate forces and the fact that General McClellan was a cautious plodder. This will enable the Confederates to concentrate the forces necessary under the command of Robert E. Lee and cause the evacuation of Union forces. The war would continue another three years.

April 25, 1915, a D-Day prior to Normandy will take place, on the Turkish peninsula, Gallipoli. This amphibious operation on the southern flank of the Triple Alliance was to accomplish a number of things: Circumvent the stalemate of the trenches on the Western Front and attempt a war of movement. Two, knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war and free up the Middle East. Three, persuade Greece, Rumania and Bulgaria to side with the Triple Entente. Four, open a needed artery into Czarist Russia and supply this ally on the Eastern Front and perhaps draw off German troops from the Western Front. Churchill even considered that some Turkish soldiers might agree to serve as mercenaries against their former German and Austro-Hungarian allies. Five, a naval control of the Sea of Marmara might well effect a combined effort by the Royal Navy and Russian Navy for an attack on the Danube.[5]

Ill-fated amphibious operation by the Allies against Turkey and Gallipoli, 1915.

The ill-fated British attempt to alter the course of the war failed. Like the Western Front, the campaign on the Turkish peninsula degenerated into a stalemate. Precious resources were squandered and men used up. And by early January 1916 the last of the invasion force was evacuated from Cape Helles, the most remarkable success achieved under the noses of the defending Turkish troops. The cost was some 256,000 Allied troops. The strategic cost can be seen with Czarist Russia. Failure to open up the artery of supply and gain control of the Black Sea will help to bring on the collapse of Czarist Russia as an Entente power and lead to the Russian Revolution of 1917. The Bulgarians, seeing to the failure of the Allies in the Dardanelles and the decisive Austro-German victory over the Russians at Gorlice-Tarnow, May 1915, threw their lot with the Central Powers. Same will see to an Austro-German-Bulgarian campaign against little Serbia.

The political fallout shook the Asquith Government in Britain. Conservatives seeking equality in running the war resulted in Lord Balfour replacing Winston Churchill as head of the Admiralty. Lord Kitchener, now sporting a big political black eye, remained in the War Office, yet his control of munitions was transferred to a new ministry under the control of Lloyd George. And of course, British prestige was shaken with the withdrawal from Gallipoli.

Though OVERLORD occurred in 1944, political and military concerns of a significant magnitude were as real as they had been in 1862 and 1915 and play a role in the weighty decisions of the period in question. And the part played by D-Day in these weighty decisions of the period in question can be better appreciated by remarks made by FDR in January 1940. For the Good Neighbor Policy with Central and South America not only jumpstarted U.S. trade in this American sphere-of-influence, but at the expense of Axis Powers attempting to make inroads in America’s backyard. But what about Britain? Well in the words of President Roosevelt, January 1940, during a press conference concerning Britain’s plight, he speculated on the prospects of the United States: “As you know, the British need money in this war. They own lots of things all over the world . . . such as tramways and electric light companies. Well, in carrying on this war, the British may have to part with that control and we, perhaps, can step in or arrange—make financial arrangements for eventual local ownership. It is a terribly interesting thing and one of the most important things for our future trade is study it in that light.”[6]

President Franklin D. Roosevelt was cognizant of the changing nature of the global dynamics of power. After centuries of global political, economic and military dominance, the downward trend of the Europeans was hastening to its inevitable conclusion. And December 1941 was the turning point of Man’s greatest industrialized war.

* * * * *

On June 22, 1941, Hitler hurled 3,300,000 troops against the Stalin’s Russia. On the first day, the Luftwaffe destroyed 1,400 Soviet aircraft, 600 the next. In 48 hours, the frontline strength of the world’s largest air force was eradicated. On the first day, Hitler’s spearheads annihilated three Soviet infantry divisions and cut five others to pieces. 100,000 Soviet troops were off the board. In a week, Heinz Guderian, in command of Panzergruppe II, was already one-third the way to Moscow, some 200 miles deep inside the Soviet hinterland. In two weeks, the Soviets have more dead than the United States will lose over the entire conflict. In a month, the Germans have captured an area twice the size of their own country.

But the Russians were not the French. And, Stalin was certainly not another Edouard Daladier or Paul Reynaud. And by geographic comparison, France in Europe has two time zones, compared to eleven in Stalin’s Russia. And, of course, Russia has an ally, ever faithful to Russia be it Czarist or Stalinist, General Winter. And he will rise to the challenge to defend the Motherland in the Great Patriotic War against Hitler.

Turning Point

December 1941 was the turning point. Beginning on the night of December 4-5, 1941, with lead German spearheads no less than 15 miles from the Kremlin, General Georgi Zhukov launched a devastating counterattack in temperatures forty degrees below zero. Two days later, Japanese naval air attacks crippled the United States Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. Now it was truly a global conflict. A protracted clash of arms which both Nazi Germany and Fascist Japan could not afford to wage. Pearl Harbor was a defeat, yes. But it was a tactical defeat. But strategically it proved a boon to what will follow by 1945. For America and Americans will come together in a giant community scene not witnessed again since 1945.[7] But what had commenced in 1898, the Spanish-American War, the transformation of Manifest Destiny from an agenda of continental expansion to that of a program for globalism, had been achieved by 1945. Indeed, by 1942, the two nations that will eventually win the Great War were beginning to take control of it. For instance, the Soviet Union.

In 1941, losses in the face of the initial German onslaught were staggering: 3,137,673 killed and missing; 1,336,147 wounded and sick for a total of 4,473,820 casualties.[8] Yet despite such losses, the Soviets were slowly taking control of the land war by attrition. Take 1942, Germany produced 5,997 tanks and assault guns.[9] By comparison, the Soviets will produce—without assistance from its Western Allies—24,668 tanks and assault guns (including 13,500 T-34s, the best Allied tank produced).[10] After all, Chelyabinsk and the Urals was the world’s greatest tank producing combine, not Detroit.

Yet it is America that is the Arsenal of Democracy. An economic dynamo that will out-produce all comers in almost every category, except tanks and artillery pieces, again these categories go to the Soviets. However overwhelming American superiority is seen with warship production. An astounding 71,062 vessels were produced, from landing craft to aircraft carriers. As well as over 295,000 combat aircraft. And to add to an already weighty advantage, the United States and the Soviet Union were swimming in that one resource that is a requirement to wage and win mass industrialized war, . . . OIL. Or as Lord Beaverbrook (Baron Max Aiken) observed, The Kingdom of Heaven runs on righteousness; the Kingdom of Earth runs on oil. . .

1942 saw the United States beginning to change the course of the Pacific War, at Coral Sea and Midway. Then on August 7, the First Marine Division hit the beaches on Guadalcanal, Tulagi and Gavutu-Tanambogo in the Solomons, America’s first offensive land action of the war. That same month, on the Eastern Front, the epic battle of Stalingrad began. Both Stalingrad and Guadalcanal were battles of attrition that Germany and Japan could not afford to wage. By February 1943, the Germans had suffered a devastating defeat, losing enough war materiel to equip one-quarter of the German Army. While by the same time in the Solomons, both the United States and Japan each lost 24 men-of-war in those horrendous naval battles for Iron Bottom Sound. To which, of course, Japan lacked the industrial capacity to replace such losses compared to the United States, as well as trained crews.

1943, the Soviets will defeat the German Army in history’s greatest air-land battle, Kursk. More than 3,200,000 troops fitted out the orders of battle for both sides. This monumental Soviet victory charted the land campaign for the rest of the war. Meanwhile, the Western Allies had won in North Africa, taken Sicily and by September were on the Italian Boot. And, the Allied navies had decided which side would win the battle of the Atlantic, insuring the lifeline of supply to Britain.

The Tehran Conference, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin met, November 28-December 2, 1943. Among the many issues discussed was that of the Allied invasion of northwest France. “The Big Three agreed on the Anglo-American plan to mount the second front between May (the preferred date) and early July, 1944.”[11] Two weeks afterwards, Stalin would launch an offensive on the Eastern Front.

June 6, 1944, 156,000 Allied troops dropped by parachute, crash landed by glider and hit the beaches on a front some 50 to 60 miles across along the Normandy coast. Thousands of ships and thousands of aircraft supported the landings in the greatest amphibious invasion in history. The Germans were now facing two Allied armies in Western Europe, in France and in Italy. And in concert with the bombing campaign against the Reich, Germany’s resources and ability to wage war was being ground down by the unremitting attrition by an economically superior coalition. Yet the bad news continued for Hitler and, certainly did not allow for any respite.

June 22, on the third anniversary of Operation: BARBAROSSA, Stalin launched Operation: BAGRATION, the largest Allied land offensive thus far in the war. Four Soviet armies struck on a front 450 miles across, later broadened to 650 miles.

Operation: BAGRATION, June 22, 1944, the largest Allied land offensive in thus far in World War II. Lead Soviet units will be on the Vistula River, on the approach to Warsaw. Stalin’s troops were only 350 miles from Berlin.

German Army Group Center had been a force of 52 divisions totaling 800,000 men, 553 tanks and assault guns, 9,500 artillery pieces and mortars and 839 combat aircraft. For their attack, the Soviets had an array of 118 infantry divisions, eight tank and mechanized corps, six cavalry divisions, 13 artillery divisions, upwards of 2,500,000 men, 4,070 tanks and assault guns, upwards of 28,000 artillery pieces and mortars and over 6,000 combat aircraft.[12]

On June 22, 1944, a thunderous barrage opened up the massive Soviet onslaught. And in eight weeks, some 28 German divisions were destroyed and upwards of half the manpower lost. German Army Group Center no longer existed. Not only was Belorussia liberated, but the Red Army was on the Vistula River, just outside Warsaw. Soviet tank armies were only 350 miles from Berlin. This was the prelude to overrunning Eastern Europe including Poland and then to taking Prague and Berlin.[13] And such was the object of the exercise.

In episode 25, The World at War, narrated by Sir Lawrence Olivier, showcased U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Averell Harriman. Harriman referenced a conversation he had had with Stalin following the defeat of Nazi Germany:

“Marshal, this must be a great satisfaction to you, after all the trials you’ve been through, the tragedy you’ve been through, to be here in Berlin.” The generalissimo eyed Harriman with a face as bland as the floor and replied, “Czar Alexander got to Paris.” Referencing, of course, Czar Alexander following the defeat of Napoleon.[14]

Despite the fact that agreements that had been rendered delineated where the armies would eventually halt, owing to the Nature of Man, none of what was agreed to mattered since it all depended, in the end, on to how long the struggling German armies could hold out. So landing troops at Normandy followed by the subsequent drive across the Continent into Germany assured that Western Europe would remain in the Allied camp in the postwar period. For France had a sizable Communist Party. Italy had a sizable Communist Party. Spain, despite Franco, had a Communist Party. Picture, if you will for a moment, how the Cold War would have looked with T-34s sitting on the Pas de Calais. Those men who risked life and limb at Normandy not only ended Fascist tyranny in Western Europe, they won the first big battle of the Cold War.

For it is as Joe Stalin observed, when in conversation with Joseph Tito and Milovan Djilas, “. . . whoever occupies territory also imposes on it his own social system. Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach. It cannot be otherwise.”[15]

Endnotes

[1] See page 9, “Introduction,” D-Day: ‘Neptune,’ ‘Overlord,’ and the Battle of Normandy, by John Falconer.

[2] There is no World War I or World War II, only the Great War, 1914-1922; 1931-1945. Armistice Day, November 11, 1918 and the Versailles Treaty, June 28, 1919, bought merely a respite from conflict in Western Europe. However in Central Europe, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, conflagration and war still raged.

Otto von Bismarck’s once vaunted Teutonic Corporate State was in its death throes in 1919, what with the Rightist Freikorps on the streets combatting the Communists, while at the same time fighting vengeful Czechs and Poles on Germany’s eastern frontiers. The Russian Revolution had degenerated into civil war, 1918-1921. Newly-minted Poland, a short-term experiment of the horse-trading carried on at Versailles, desired more territory and invaded Ukraine, slaughtering Jewish people in a spreading pogrom as its army moved east; a preview, to be sure, of Himmler’s Einsatzgruppen in 1941 The Poles will be thrown back at Kiev by Trotsky’s Red Army. The vanquished Ottoman Empire saw its former holdings carved up and parceled out between the exploitive British and French, producing such colonies as Lebanon, Syria, Transjordan (Jordan), Palestine, and Iraq. Syrians rose up in 1919 to eject the French, but were crushed by 1920. Sunnis, Shias and Kurds in newly-minted Iraq rose up to throw out the British in 1920. They, too, were utterly defeated by 1921. Anatolia had been divided up by the greedy Italians, Greeks, British and French in a 20 th century crusade that will inflame the Muslim Turks. And in the 1919-1922 Turkish War for Independence, Kemal Ataturk and his army will kick out the Greeks, Italians, British and French and eliminate such colonial satrapies as Kurdestan and Armenia. And for good measure, the Afghans saw to the eviction of the British in 1922. 1923, the Treaty of Lausanne will fashion much of what we see today as the modern Middle East.

But it is the Japanese who will jumpstart the second chapter of the Great War with their invasion of Manchuria, September 7, 1931. Hitler assumed the Chancellorship of Germany, so as to become the ultimate heir to the Kaiser, January 30, 1933. 1935, Italy’s Sawdust Caesar, Benito Mussolini, invaded Ethiopia. That same year Hitler expanded the German Navy with the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, June 15, 1935 and, announced the Luftwaffe and expansion of the army, in violation of the Versailles Treaty. March 7, 1936, Hitler occupied the Rhineland, in violation of the Versailles Treaty. And in 1936, the Spanish Civil War, a tune up for 1939. 1937, Japan invaded China, precipitating an eight-year war that would kill some 15,000,000 Chinese. 1938, Hitler was able to absorb Austria and the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia into his expanding Reich. Then in March 1939, he dismembered the rest of the Czech state. Then on September 1, 1939, Hitler—with Stalin’s connivance—invaded Poland. And the second chapter of Man’s grandest industrialized war unfolded, enabling Levee en Masse to blossom, as if on steroids.

It was a conflict which transformed the global dynamics of power. No longer were the White Christian colonial powers of Europe able to dominate the globe. Only two nations were able to wage industrialized war, on the size and scope upon which Total War could be waged, the United States and the Soviet Union. For it will be the Soviet Union which will win the land war by crushing the German Army. Leaving the United States to virtually do almost everything else. To which a new balance of power will be created. Many who lived the era of this new balance of power called it the Cold War.

[3] See page 24, “A Talent for Logistics: McClellan and Grant Sustaining the Army of the Potomac in 1862 and 1864,” Leavenworth Papers No. 25, by Curtis S. King, Ph.D.

[4] The situation with the French will not be addressed until following the defeat of the Confederacy. President Andrew Johnson will send 50,000 battle-hardened troops down to the Texas border, under the command of Phil Sheridan. But events in Europe will prevent war between France and the United States. In 1866, Otto von Bismarck’s war against Austria to unite the German states under Prussia’s tutelage proved successful. Napoleon III knew now he had a united Germany on his eastern frontier. He evacuated troops from Mexico so as to bolster his army at home. And the French satrap, Emperor Maximilian, will fall to Don Benito Juarez.

[5] See pages 134 and 135, Chapter 7, “Stalemate and the Search for Breakthroughs,” The First World War, by Martin Gilbert.

[6] See page 311, Chapter 14, “The War Before the War (I),” The Forging of the American Empire, by Sydney Lens, 1974.

[7] Per the VA, total number of American service members, 1941-1945, amounted to 16,112,566. 405,399 would be killed. See page 1, “America’s Wars,” Department of Veterans Fact Sheet.

[8] See page 164, Chapter 9, “Conclusion,” Stalin’s Keys to Victory, by Walter S. Dunn, Jr. And these figures do not include civilian dead.

[9] See page 212, “Appendix 4: Production Statistics 1939-44,” German Tanks of World War II, by F.M. von Senger und Etterlin.

[10] See page 180, “Soviet AFV Production,” Russian Tanks, 1900-1970, by John Milsom.

[11] See page 31, Chapter 3, “The Road to Tehran,” Such a Peace, by C.L. Sulzberger.

[12] See pages 22-33, “The Opposing Armies,” Bagration 1944, by Steven Zaloga.

[13] It cost the Red Army 100,000 dead and 200,000 wounded to subdue the seat of Nazi gangsterdom. A major inducement for Churchill and Roosevelt so as not to risk the lives of Anglo-American troops.

[14] See episode 25, The World at War, narrated by Sir Lawrence Olivier.

[15] See page 114, II, “Doubts,” Conversations With Stalin, by Milovan Djilas.

Bibliography

“America’s Wars,” Department of Veterans Affairs Fact Sheet, Office of Public Affairs, Washington, D.C.

Badsey, Stephen, The D-Day Invasion: Normandy 1944: Allied Landings and Breakout, Barnes & Noble, Inc., in arrangement with Osprey Publishing Ltd., New Yok, 2000.

Blizard, Derek, The Normandy Landings, D-Day: The Invasion of Europe, June 6, 1944, Bounty Books, imprint of Octopus Publishing Ltd., London2004.

Department of Veterans Affairs, “America’s Wars,” Office of Public Affairs, Washington, D.C.

Djilas, Milovan Conversations With Stalin, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., New York, 1962.

Dunn, Walter S., Jr., Stalin’s Keys to Victory: The Rebirth of the Red Army in WWII, Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, 2006.

Etterlin, F.M. von Senger und, German Tanks of World War II: The Complete Illustrated History of German Armoured Fighting Vehicles, 1926-1945, Lionel Leventhal Ltd., J.F. Kehmanns Verlag, Munich, Germany, 1968.

Falconer, Jonathan, D-Day: ‘Neptune,’ ‘Overlord,’ and the Battle of Normandy: Operations Manual, J.H. Haynes & Co., Ltd., Somerset, UK.

Gilbert, Martin, The First World War: A Complete History, Henry Holt & Company, Inc., New York, NY., 1994.

Keegan, John, The First World War, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 1998.

Kimball, Warren M., Forged in War: Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Second World War, William Morrow Company, Inc., New York, NY., 1997.

King, Curtis, Ph.D., “A Talent for Logistics: McClellan and Grant Sustaining the Army of the Potomac in 1862 and 1864,” Leavenworth Papers No. 25, Combat Studies Institute Press, United States Army Combined Arms Center, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, August 2002.

Lens, Sydney, The Forging of the American Empire, Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York, 1974.

MacDonald, Lyn, 1915: The Death of Innocence, Henry Holt and Company7, Inc., New York, NY., 1993.

Marshall, S.L.A., Brigadier General, U.S. Army Reserves (Ret.), The American Heritage History of World War I, Dell Publishing Company, Inc., New York, NY., 1966. Originally published by American Heritage Publishing, Inc., 1964.

Milsom, John, Russian Tanks, 1900-1970: The Complete Illustrated History of Soviet Armoured Theory and Design, Galahad Books, New York, NY., 1970.

Sulzberger, C.L., Such a Peace: The Roots and Ashes of Yalta, The Continuum Publishing Company, New York, NY., 1982.

Zaloga, Steven, Bagration 1944: The Destruction of Army Group Centre, Campaign Series 42, Osprey Military, Oxford, United Kingdom, 1996.

Looking Back, May 2024
By Mark Albertson

“Jackie”

Her date of birth seems to be an open question, ranging anywhere from 1906 to 1911[1]  Date of death is fixed, though, as of August 10, 1980.  So is the place of origin, a small mill town in Florida, Muscogee.  And so was the name she was born with, Bessie Lee Pittman.

The Pittman family was mired in poverty.  Mr. Pittman, a journeyman worker, moved his family of seven from town to town throughout Florida and Georgia.

However Bessie, by the time she was eight, was working in a cotton mill, “where by the age of nine, she supervised the other children and earned five dollars a week.”[2]

By the age of ten, Bessie had quit school and, commenced working at a beauty shop that was family owned; to which her employers owned several such establishments.  And so while Bessie’s family moved back to Florida, she remained in Georgia learning the rudiments of the beauty trade.

Bessie moved to Montgomery, Alabama and, found employment in a department store beauty salon.  By fourteen she was married to a Robert Cochran, and within three months had a son, Robert, Jr.  But in need of money, Bessie quickly returned to work, with her son being taken care of by her family in Florida.  But Robert, Jr. died four years later.  Then her marriage to Robert Cochran came to an end.  So, with no immediate family ties to service, Bessie decided to change her life.

* * * * *

Bessie boarded a train bound for New York, arriving at Grand Central Station.  In a new city, she divorced herself from her brief but past life.  The new biography was that of an orphan, a stray who found her name in a phone book.  Her “foster family name” was not really hers at all.  It was a story Bessie stuck with for the rest of her days.  Indeed, for the most part, she never acknowledged her family.[3]  Thus, Jacqueline Cochran had been born.

Jackie found employment with Saks Fifth Avenue and, was soon splitting her time between New York City and winters in Miami.  With a good business sense, she built up a book of clients and contacts.  It was during this time that she met her future husband, Floyd Odlum, a successful venture capitalist who managed to preserve his wealth during the depths of The Depression.  And it was he who planted that seed about flying.  Air travel would open up the field of clients and contacts.

Jackie decided that she wanted to do more than just fly, how about becoming a pilot?  Having little in the way of formal schooling, Jackie enlisted the assistance of a friend who helped sharpen her reading and writing skills.  A willing student, Jackie accomplished in three weeks in what was normally a three month program of flight training.  She was now a licensed pilot as of August 17, 1932.

Jackie found her niche with air racing.  In 1938, she won the Bendix Trophy Race and was twice accorded the Harmon Trophy.  And by 1939, she was rated the top female flyer in the country.  And, with her own cosmetics lines, the enterprising Jackie marketed her products by flying creating, “Wings to Beauty.”[4]

But the resumption of the Great War was gathering momentum.  Beginning in 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria; Italy attacked Ethiopia, 1935; the Spanish Civil War, 1936, which proved a tune up for 1939; Japan invaded China, 1937; Germany absorbed Austria into the Reich, 1938; followed by the Sudeten Crisis, 1938; German break up of Czechoslovakia, March 1939 and finally, September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded western Poland, while the Soviet Army crashed into eastern Poland on September 17.

Jacqueline Cochran in the cockpit of a P-40 Warhawk, World War II.

Back in the United States, Jacqueline Cochran had been presented with the Aviatrix trophy by the International League of Aviators for the third year in a row.  But following the combined Nazi-Soviet elimination of Poland as an independent state, America’s premier aviatrix wrote to the First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, in which she urged that women pilots will be required to take up the slack in a national emergency.

“In the field of aviation, the real bottleneck in the long run is likely to be trained pilots.  Women could be used effectively in all sorts of helpful back of the lines work, as for instance, in flying ambulance planes, courier planes, and commercial and transport planes, thereby releasing male pilots for combat duty.

“This required organization and not at the time of emergency but in advance.  We have about 650 licensed women pilots in this country.  Most of them would be little used today, but most of them could be of great use a few months hence if properly trained and organized.  And if they had some official standing or patriotic objective (rather than just around an airport occasionally for fun) there would be thousands more women pilots then there are now.

“Ms. Cochran noted that Germany, Russia, England and France had already begun to use women pilots in their air forces.  As for the United States, she did not believe that it was ‘public opinion that must be touched, but rather official Washington,’ particularly Army and Navy officials.”[5]

Early skepticism eventually gave way to serious concern and interest in the use of women pilots.  Indeed, Jacqueline Cochran participated in the flight of a Lockheed Hudson bomber to Britain; and once there, engaged in research as to the role of women in aviation in Britain.  She shared her experiences in Britain during a luncheon at Hyde Park with the First Lady.  And soon Jackie was assigned to the office of Colonel Robert Olds, commander of the Air Corps Ferrying Command.  Jackie was billed as the “tactical consultant,” and was assisting Ferrying Command in “collecting necessary data on which to base recommendations . . . relative to the feasibility of forming a corps of women pilots to ferrying military training type aircraft in the continental United States to relieve combat pilots for essential gunnery and bombing training.”[6]

The result will be two organizations:  Women’s Auxiliary Ferry Squadron or WAFS, directed by Nancy Love and the Women’s Flying Training Detachment or WFTD, directed by Jacqueline Cochran.  Then on July 5, 1943, the groups will be combined to form the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots, directed by Jacqueline Cochran.  It will be disbanded on October 1, 1944.

Though Jackie never stopped flying, she finished the war as a correspondent.  Her husband, Floyd Odlum, purchased Liberty magazine.  And with use of this literary platform, she traveled the Pacific covering the war.  In Europe, she went to Buchenwald for a better understanding of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man.  She covered the Trial of the Century at Nuremberg.  But for her service during the war, she was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal.[7]

In 1946, she was back racing, her mount was a surplus North American P-51 Mustang.  That year she finished second in the Bendix Race.  She also set a new women’s speed record of 428.828 mph.

Jackie proved an ardent supporter for a separate air force, which will become a reality with the National Security Act of 1947.  In 1948, she was a commissioned lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserves (seen as a consultant, for women will not be allowed to fly in the Air Force until 1976).

In 1952, Jackie was beginning to pilot jet aircraft.  She readied herself to become the first woman to break the sound barrier.  And her trainer, the man who broke the sound barrier in 1947, Chuck Yeager.  And he schooled her on flying the F-86 Sabre jet.

Jacqueline Cochran, standing on the wing of an F-86 Sabre jet, talking with Chuck Yeager and Canadair chief test pilot, Bill Longhurst.

“On May 18, 1953, Jackie and Yeager took off, each in an F-86.  As Jackie began to near Mach 1 (the speed necessary to break the sound barrier), she saw shock waves roll off of the canopy of her aircraft.  As she hit Mach 1, two sonic booms shook the ground beneath her while the air around her fell silent.  When she landed, Jackie learned the men in the tower had not heard the sonic booms to confirm her feat.  Undeterred, she took to the sky that afternoon and reached Mach 1 again.  That same day, Jackie set another world speed record for a 100-kilometer course.  Jackie was not done with setting records, and with limited time left to use the Sabre, she broke several more records over the next week.  When the week was over, she held all but one principal world speed record at the age of 47.”[8]

In 1964, she “went on to set a world speed record of 1,429 mph.[9]  She also received her helicopter pilot’s license at age 61.  But by the end of the 1960s her long and exciting career was over.  She also retired from the Air Force Reserves in 1970 as a colonel.

In 1976, her husband of many years, Floyd Odlum, died.  Jackie will follow on August 10, 1980.

Endnotes

[1]  Interesting commonality she shares with another famous lady, the Oscar-winning actress, Joan Crawford.  However, different sources have different dates as to Bessie’s birth:

1. The Florida Division of Historical Resources has her born May 11, 1906.
2. National Army Museum, United States Army, shows May 11, 1910, based on Air Force records.
3. The Dwight D. Eisenhower Library and Museum has the date fixed in 1906.
4. Yet according to the U.S.A.F. Fact Sheet:  “Jacqueline Cochran,” birth date ranges from 1905-1908.

[2]  See page 2, Profile:  “Wings to Beauty:  Aviation Pioneer Jacqueline Cochran,” The National WWII Museum, New Orleans, March 25, 2021.

[3]  At the same time, she kept in touch with her family and provided for them financially.  Apparently the professional career was kept separate from her family roots.

[4]  The Bendix Trophy Race, a long distance competition from Los Angeles to  Cleveland, was won by Jacqueline Cochran in 1937, to which she covered the distance in eight hours.  See page 4, “Women with Wings:  Legacy of WASP,” National Air & Space Museum, Smithsonian, August 5, 2018.

[5]  See page 2, Chapter 1, “Institution of the Program,” Women Pilots With the AAF, 1941-1944, AAF Historical Office, Headquarters, Army Air Forces, March 1946.

[6]  See page 6, Women Pilots With the AAF, 1941-1944.

[7]  See Fact Sheet, “Jacqueline Cochran,” United States Air Force, www.af.mil/iformation/heritage/person.asp?dec=&pid=123006481

[8]  See page 7, Profile:  “Wings to Beauty:  Aviation Pioneer Jacqueline Cochran,” The National WWII Museum, New Orleans, March 25, 2021.

[9]  See Fact Sheet, ”Jacqueline Cochran,” United States Air Force, www.af.mil/information/heritage/person.asp?dec=&pid=123006481

Bibliography

Cochrane, Dorothy, “Flying on the Homefront:  Women Airforce Service Pilots [WASP],” 75^th Anniversary of World War II, National Air & Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., May 20, 2020.  airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/flying-home…

Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum & Boyhood Home, “Jacqueline Cochran and the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs), www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/researchonline

Fact Sheet, “Jacqueline Cochran,” United States Air Force, www.af.mil/information/heritage/person.asp?dec=&pid=123006481

Florida Division of Historical Resources, “Jacqueline Cochran,” dos.fl.gov/…/women-in-history/jacqueline-cochran

Johnson, Caroline, “Women with Wings:  The Legacy of the WASP,” 75^th Anniversary of World War II, National Air & Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., August 5, 2018.  airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/women-wings…

National Army Museum, United States Army, Biographies:  Jacqueline “Jackie” Cochran, www.themusa.org/…/jacqueline-jackie-cochran

Profile:  “Wings to Beauty:  Aviation Pioneer Jacqueline Cochran,” The National WWII Museum, New Orleans, March 26, 2021, www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/aviation

Women Pilots with the AAF, 1941-1944, Army Air Forces Historical Studies:  No. 55, AAF Historical Office, Headquarters, Army Air Forces, Washington, D.C., March 1946.  Air Force Historical Research Agency, Chennault Circle, Maxwell AFB, Alabama.

Looking Back, March 2024
By Mark Albertson

Parochial Thinking / Seeds of Contention

On June 4, 1920, the National Defense Act was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson. The Act saw fit to organize the United States Army as an aggregate of three subdivisions: The Regular Army, National Guard and the organized reserves of civilians or Officers’ and Enlisted Reserve Corps. The Regular Army was to have a manpower strength of 17,726 officers and 280,000 enlisted. Of course, this was dependent upon Congress and whether it appropriated enough money for a ground force of even this size. And this is precisely what the august body did not do, as pointed out by Rebecca Robin Raines in her study of the Signal Corps, Getting the Message Through:

“Despite a booming economy, the Army did not prosper during the ‘Roaring Twenties.’ Budget-minded Congresses limited the Regular Army to 12,000 commissioned officers and 125,000 enlisted men, only slightly more than had been in uniform when the United States entered World War I. Eventually Congress reduced enlisted strength to 118,000, where it remained until the late 1930s. Army appropriations, meanwhile, stabilized at around $300 million, about half the projected cost of the defense act if fully implemented. The Army remained composed of skeleton organizations with most of its divisions little more than ‘paper tigers.’”[1][2]

The General Staff lost much of its authority to the Bureau Chiefs again. “Specifically, the General Staff was to prepare plans for mobilization and war, ‘to investigate and report on the efficiency and preparedness of the Army,’ and to ‘render professional aid and assistance to the Chief of Staff and the Secretary of War.’ It was not to assume or engage in of an administrative nature that pertains to the established bureaus of offices of the War Department which might imperil [their] responsibility or initiative, impair their efficiency, or unnecessarily duplicate their work.”[3]

General of the Army, John J. Pershing.  As Chief of Staff, he felt frustrated that his authority was blunted by the Bureau Chiefs, stifling innovation in the U.S. Army following World War I.

The Chief of Staff was not merely demoted in stature, he shared power with the Bureau Chiefs who exercised prerogatives with regards to departmental budgets, and who could and did run to Congress when their turf was “threatened.” General Pershing, who was Chief of Staff following World War I and who was used to wielding his authority as an overall commander, felt frustrated at having his authority compromised by the Bureau Chiefs.

The National Defense Act saw the Chemical Warfare Service added to the masthead of Army branches. This was a reflection of the importance chemical weapons came to enjoy during the Great War. Ditto the Air Service, which became an Army branch with a manpower strength slated for 1,514 officers and 16,000 enlisted. In fact, the growing importance of airpower can be seen in 1926 with the advent of the U.S. Army Air Corps. However a lack of understanding of the importance of Combined Arms Warfare became clearly evident with the demise of the Tank Corps.

Dwight Eisenhower, future Commander-in-Chief of Allied armies in Europe, was threatened with court-martial for his written and verbal support of a greater use of the tank in 1920.

The fledgling Tank Corps was the result of the promise offered by the tank as a medium of mobile warfare. But with the National Defense Act of 1920, the Tank Corps was consigned to the Infantry.[4] This retarded the potential of the tank as a viable component of an American Combined Arms Team. Much of the postwar outlook on armor in the United States was based on experience garnered from the battlefields in France. The U.S. Army, like the French Army, came to view the tank as an infantry support weapon. This line of thinking was based upon the unreliable pot-bellied stoves which literally crawled across the churned up French landscape. Battlefields pockmarked with thousands of water-filled shell craters which, at times, were traversed more quickly by the infantry than the tanks which had been sent to support the advance.[5] Indeed, American thinking was so parochial, that Dwight Eisenhower, in 1920, “was rebuked by the U.S. Army’s Chief of Infantry after having advocated a stronger tank force for infantry divisions and then was threatened with a court-martial if he continued publishing in that vein.”[6]

The Germans, having lost the war as well as being on the receiving end of a weapon that helped to breach their defenses, came to a different conclusion. Officers such as Ernst Volkheim, Oswald Lutz and Alfred von Vollard-Bockelberg gave serious thought to the possibilities of the tank as a spearhead in a new form of mobile warfare that was to become known as Blitzkrieg. Aircraft, artillery and infantry would blast a hole in the enemy’s front. The breach would be exploited by the swift-moving panzer columns, taking the war to the enemy’s rear. This new mailed fist would not be equipped with the battlefield plodders of the previous conflict; rather, speedy, radio-equipped armored fighting vehicles able to attain speeds of 25 to 30 mph. This meant supporting infantry had to be motorized to keep pace with the advance. And the armored spearheads would enjoy Close Air Support provided by Goering’s Luftwaffe.

Some Soviet theorists drew lessons not to unlike those of the Germans. Lessons they would share with their former enemy as a result of the 1922 Treaty of Rapallo. Soviet Deep Operations called for deep thrusts into the enemy’s front. And the Soviets would eventually latch on to the tank as the vehicle for advance. One of those who championed mechanization was Mikhail Tuchachevsky, veteran of World War I, the Civil War and later marshal in the Red Army. But just how advanced Soviet thinking was in comparison to America can be seen in their view of the tank.

According to Eddie Rickenbacker, the Shturmovik was the best ground support/tank busting aircraft of World War II.  Owing to the prominence of  strategic aviation in the U.S. Army Air Corps/Army Air Forces, such a plane of similar effort would not be entertained.  The Il-2 went on to become the most produced combat aircraft in history at 36,183 copies.

During the later 1920s and early 1930s, American designer J. Walter Christie was designing light and medium armored fighting vehicles which were miles ahead of the battlefield plodders of the Great War. The War Department evinced little interest, unlike the Soviets. The Russians bought copies of Christie’s designs and during the 1930s, produced a string of models that would eventually evolve into the superlative T-34. This medium tank was without a doubt the best armored fighting vehicle produced on the Allied side during World War II. And when mated with the IL-2 Shturmovik—arguably the best ground support plane of the Second World War—gave the Soviets a formidable battlefield punch.[7]

The American lack of foresight in tank design, coupled with the lack of appreciation offered by the potential of armor, was unveiled for all to see with the new reality of mobile warfare on September 1, 1939. The Wehrmacht’s crushing of western Poland was a wake up call; a view of the new reality of modern war that was bolstered by the fall of France in June 1940. The latter is of particular importance because the U.S. Army came to view the tank just like the French Army, as an infantry support weapon. And despite the fact that tanks like the French Char B could take more punishment and dish it out in comparison to German types, the vaunted French Army went down in decisive defeat. And this despite the fact the Germans operated at a deficit of some 900 tanks versus the Allies, they massed their armor at those points chosen for their armored spearheads. This local superiority backed by Close Air Support aviation burst out if its tactical confines to produce a strategic victory . . . the humbling of France and the Low Countries. And to add insult to injury, the British Army had been kicked off the Continent barely a month after the start of the campaign. A vindication, to be sure, of an earlier prognostication by Hitler. “The next war would not be fought like the last war.” In this the Fuhrer was proved correct; for unlike the French, Hitler was fighting to the timetable of 1940 not 1914.

Hitler’s lightning victories in 1939 and 1940 were a vindication of Billy Mitchell’s ideas of air supremacy. Luftwaffe fighters swept the skies of enemy pursuits while bombers and ground support squadrons worked over enemy airfields, supply columns, troop concentrations, rail lines and rolling stock. Ju-87 (Stuka) dive-bombers and German artillery worked to blast the way open for the swift-moving panzer columns. Airpower, infantry, armor and artillery working together to produce victory. In other words, modern Combined Arms Warfare.

* * * * *

Air Corps Act of 1926

With the Air Corps Act of 1926, the Air Service attained a level of enfranchisement not previously enjoyed. For the evolution towards an independent air force can be seen with the progression of Army airpower since it early days:

• Aeronautical Division of the Signal Corps.
• Aviation Section of the Signal Corps.
• Division of Military Aeronautics.
• Air Service.
• U.S. Army Air Corps.
• U.S. Army Air Forces.
• U.S. Air Force.

Free of its second-fiddle status within the Signal Corps, through its sojourn as the Air Service, the name Air Corps came to denote the next step towards autonomy. And it is important not to lose sight of this concept. For Army airpower had come from being an insignificant afterthought—featuring Ben Foulois holding the fort as the Army’s sole pilot flying the Army’s only aircraft in 1910—to an air contingent that was to have representation on the General Staff and see to the reappointment of an Assistant Secretary of War for Air, such as there had been during the World War. In addition, the Air Corps Act called for Congress to fund an air fleet of 1,800 aircraft within five years. Indeed, since 1910, Army airpower had come a long way by 1926.

America’s aviators enjoyed a decisive advantage in their quest for autonomy: Military aviation came to be considered state-of-the-art technology. And what the battleship did for the Navy aircraft will do for the Army Air Corps. And the expression emblematic for the idea of an independent air force was the strategic bomber.

The round-the-world cruise of the Great White Fleet, 1907-1909, was seen to have justified the monies spent on the battle fleet.[8] The success of this demonstration of American sea power helped to sell the Navy to the public and cemented its image as America’s first line of defense. And the cornerstone of the sales pitch was the battleship. The battleship was the crowning achievement in weaponry of the Industrial Revolution up to that time; affixing the image in the collective mind of a floating steel fortress able to hurl tons of ordnance out to as far as the eye could see. Cutting-edge technology indicative of the Nation’s quest to see its burgeoning economic and military power able to forge its rightful place on the world stage.

Aircraft came to be viewed in a like manner. Airmen in bombers winging their way unassailably to rain down death and destruction upon an enemy’s potential to wage war was considered top-shelf technology. Airpower, like naval power, came to be seen as a way of keeping enemy forces distant. Indeed some of the champions of strategic airpower saw the Air Corps as a challenger for the mantle held by the Navy, that of the Nation’s first line of defense.

Conversely the Ground Forces enjoyed no such esteem.[9] Edgar Raines, in his Eyes of Artillery, sums up the plight of the Ground Forces pretty well: “During the years between the wars, responsibility for the organization, doctrine and training of combat arms rested in the first instance with their respective branch chiefs. They achieved their goals in these areas in part by shepherding funding requests for their branches through the War Department, Bureau of the Budget and Congress. The equipment category of the War Department budget provides eloquent testimony to the Air Corps’ favored status. In 1931, one of the few years for which detailed figures survive, the Air Corps received $35,823,473. By way of contrast the Infantry received $65,623, the Field Artillery $20,610 and the Cavalry $26,685. This was not autonomy—the Air Corps’ portion of the budget was still subject to General Staff control—but its size in comparison to the other branches did represent a substantial measure of power within the narrow confines of the War Department.[10]

The new Air Corps was to have 1,514 officers—spanning the ranks from lieutenant to colonel—and 16,000 enlisted. The aforementioned Assistant Secretary of War for Air was resuscitated to represent Army airpower needs.[11] The Air Corps Act established a commander known as the Chief of the Air Corps, with the rank of major general. He would have three brigadiers as assistants, two of which were flying officers. The budget was to be controlled by the Office of the Secretary of War.

Unlike Eisenhower, ardent proponent of an independent air force, Billy Mitchell, will be court-martialed in 1925.  He will incur another setback in 1933, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt will not choose Mitchell as Secretary of War for Air.

As might be expected, the Air Corps Act did not go far enough to appease some of the ardent practitioners of airpower. One such was Billy Mitchell, by then a civilian.[12] He “intimated that in some nations, ‘air, land and water are under separate ministries,’” Obviously the Air Corps Act did not go far enough for the champion of airpower. Unlike General Mason Patrick, who observed it was “a long step in the right direction.”[13]

There is an old saying, “What‘s in a name?” Well with regards to this discussion, everything. As mentioned in the preceding pages, the name Air Corps itself denoted a certain air of independence. The march towards an independent air force during the 1930s should have been obvious. For Mitchell’s idea of an air force was to take the fight to the enemy . . . offense. This meant going beyond the battlefront to take the fight to the enemy’s territory . . . to his homeland itself. To strike at his means for waging war. To paralyze and even destroy his ability to not only produce the implements of war, but to transport them as well. This was the essence of strategic airpower. And the emphasis on strategic airpower would increase exponentially by the beginning of America’s entry into the Second World War.

Interest in strategic bombing caused a corresponding shift in Close Support-type aircraft. Single-engine types gave way to twin-engine light and medium bomber aircraft, such as the Douglas A-20. The affect of the Spanish Civil War cannot be understated here. For this tune up to the main event in 1939 instilled the belief that CAS should target airfields and anti-aircraft artillery to support strategic bombing in lieu of supporting infantry and artillery. This rationale certainly retarded the Air Corps’ development of CAS. For the United States Army Air Corps/Army Air Forces will never field a ground support/tank busting aircraft of a similar effort to the Soviet IL-2 Shturmovik. Question here is, where did that leave the foot slogger and breech loader?

Well on the heels of the first chapter of the Great War, the performance of the Field Artillery was reviewed. Major General William J. Snow, Chief of the Field Artillery (1918-1927), convened three boards: The Westervelt Board, so-named for Brigadier General William I. Westervelt, chair of the board which reviewed gun types and calibers, ammunition and transport of the Field Artillery. For the short duration America was engaged in the conflict, Yankee artillerymen relied heavily on field pieces largely of French manufacture. This was not to be in the second chapter of the Great War. For most of the recommendations on gun types and calibers put forth by the Westervelt Board were adopted by the Army.

A second board, too, chaired by Brigadier General Westervelt was the Trench Artillery Board. Like the previous effort, this commission was put together to study the affects of mortars in the Great War and to offer recommendations for the future. Among the findings was that there must be a greater reliance on light and medium calibers of mortars. Another was that the Army should make use of tubes of 160 mm and 240 mm in support of the Field Artillery; and there should be an independent Trench Artillery Branch in the Army. However in an era of military downsizing and too few dollars, little if anything was done to act upon the recommendations of the Trench Artillery Board.

Forerunner of those such as William Wallace Ford.  As chair of the 1919 Hero Board, General Hero urged that organic aerial observation assets be applied to Field Artillery units.

The last of the trio of panels was the Hero Board, so-named for its chairman, Brigadier General Andrew Hero, Jr. This commission shared some of the same concerns as those of the Westervelt Board such as gun types and calibers, training, ammunition, supply, communications and transport. But this board also brought out the necessity of aerial artillery spotters of the organic variety.

Organic aerial artillery spotters would solve the problem inherent with the observers of 1917-1918. Here aerial observers and pilots were spotting for the field artillery as well as being assigned to other duties; hence the lack of continuity which affected their performance as spotters. Instead of rotated personnel, organic aerial artillery spotters would perform no other function but that of adjusting artillery fire. Here, it is plain to see, that a recognition of the evolution of the specialization of tasks in modern, industrialized war is taking place.

In addition, the Hero Board went a step further by recommending that artillery commanders should maintain control over their observation assets. That each division should have an observation squadron attached to it. Aerial artillery spotters should come from the ranks of the Field Artillery; same with pilots, who would train with the units to which they were to be attached. Note, though, the configuration of the Board’s recommendations: The committee’s suggestion was that the Air Observation Posts of the Field Artillery would remain two-man affairs. The Hero Board still saw things based on experience from the Great War. Understandable when one considers that the staffers of the Board were products of the era. But the fact remains that the spotter planes would be flown by two-man crews.

Undoubtedly many of the Hero Board’s recommendations were a decided step forward in the evolution of that process that would produce William Wallace Ford’s Air Observation Post, and to which Army Aviation would be the eventual result. But it also sowed the seeds for that contention between the breech loaders and airmen for control of the Air Observation Post with America’s entry into war, 1941. A political contest over roles and missions between the Army and the Air Force that would last for decades to come. . .

Endnotes

[1]  See page 218, Chapter 6, “Between the Wars,” Getting the Message Through:  A Branch History of the U.S. Army Signal Corps, by Rebecca Robin Raines.  Also see page 408, Chapter 19, “Between the World Wars,” American Military History, by Maurice Matloff.

[2]  See page 16, Chapter 11, “Prewar Settlement and Its Effect on the Army,” U.S. Army in World War II, The War Department, Chief of Staff:  Prewar Plans & Preparations, by Mark Skinner Watson.  Watson basically agrees with Raines.  In 1923, the U.S. Army totaled 131,959 men.  For virtually all of the interwar period, American manpower strength in the Army never approached the 297,726 men specified (17,726 officers and 280,000) enlisted.  In 1940, U.S. Army strength was at 267,767.  It jumped in 1941 to 1,460,998 with the growing threat of war.

[3]  See pages 50 and 51, Chapter 1, Special Studies:  From Root to McNamara, Army Organization and Administration, by James E. Hewes, Jr.

[4]  See page 409, Chapter 19, “Between the World Wars,” American Military History, by Maurice Matloff.

[5]  In an effort to defend the tank’s value by expounding on its wartime use, George Patton published an article in the Infantry Journal, May 1920.  In pleading the Tank Arm’s cause, he  showcased the tank as supporting infantry in overcoming or circumventing the stalemate of trench warfare.  He did not, however, elaborate on the tank as the vehicle of battlefield mobility as it would come to be used in World War II.  This was hardly an appreciation of the view held by J.F.C. Fuller of Britain.  His “Plan 1919” saw masses of armor striking deep into the enemy’s rear as a way of sowing mobility on the battlefield.

[6]  See page 141, Chapter Six,” The Development of German Armor Doctrine,” The Roots of Blitzkrieg, by James S. Corum.

[7]  Famed American World War I ace, Eddie Rickenbacker, observed the Shturmovik and stated, “that it was the best aircraft of its type in the world.”  Stalin chimed in with, “Our Army needs the IL-2 as much as it needs bread, as much as it needs the air it breathes.”  See pages 12 and 13, The Ilyushin IL-2, by Witold Liss, Profile Aircraft No. 88, Profile Books Limited, UK, March 1982.

[8]  Refer to They’ll Have to Follow You!  The Triumph of the Great White Fleet, by Mark Albertson.

[9]  The Army’s image was negatively impacted during the summer of 1932, with the suppression of the “Bonus Marchers.”  See pages 412 and 413, Chapter 19, “Between World Wars,” American Military History, edited by Maurice Matloff.  “The most notable domestic use of Regular troops in the twenty years of peace happened in the nation’s capital in the summer of 1932.  Some thousands of ‘Bonus Marchers’ remained in Washington after the adjournment of Congress dashed their hopes for immediate payment of a bonus for military service in World War I.  On July 28, when marshals and police tried to evict one group encamped near the Capital, a riot with some bloodshed occurred.  Thereupon President Herbert C. Hoover called upon the Army to intervene.  A force of about 600—cavalrymen and infantrymen with a few tanks—advanced to the scene under the leadership of Chief of Staff MacArthur in person, two other generals, and, among junior officers, two whose names would in due course become much more familiar, Majors Dwight D. Eisenhower and George S. Patton, Jr.  The troops cleaned up the situation near the Capital without firing a shot, and then proceeded with equal efficiency to clear out all of the marchers from the District of Columbia.  From a military point of view the Army had performed an unpleasant task in exemplary fashion, and with a few minor injuries to participants; but the use of military force against civilians, most of them veterans, tarnished the Army’s public image and helped to defeat the administration in the forthcoming election.”

[10]  See page 15, “Prologue,” Eyes of Artillery:  Origins of Modern U.S. Army Aviation in World War II, by Edgar F. Raines.

However the reader is cautioned not to construe the situation in the early 1930s as a one-way street for the Air Corps.  Despite the budget numbers reported by Raines, the Air Corps did not yet have the bombers to wage a strategic campaign.  Far from it.  But even more  important, the examples of Mussolini’s air force in Abyssinnia, the Japanese in China, German and Italian bombers in Spain were as yet to occur.  Such events in a few years would bolster the arguments posed by the practitioners of bombing; that is, carrying war to the enemy’s homeland.

[11]  The position of Assistant Secretary of War for Air did not give the new Air Corps the hoped for latitude within the War Department.  For as explained on page 79, Chapter III, “Creation of the Army Air Corps,” Organization of Military Aeronautics, Army Air Forces Historical Studies No. 25, “The Air Corps was to be under the immediate supervision of the Secretary of War in spite of the fact that the air faction had repeatedly requested administrative freedom from War Department dictation.  True, an additional Assistant Secretary of War to be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, was provided for in the bill; the implication was that he, instead of the Secretary of War, should have the direction of the new corps, but since his duties were not specifically outlined, his power was necessarily restricted to that which might be delegated to him by his superior.  The budget also was to be managed entirely from the office of the Secretary of War.”

[12]  Billy Mitchell resigned from the Army on January 27, 1926, following his court martial on December 17, 1925.  However a potential for righting this blow against Mitchell has been put forth by Roger Burlingame with reference to Mitchell entering government as a representative of airpower:

“In 1932 he had high hopes of a position in which he could work actively for airpower in the government.  As a result of his repeated testimony certain concessions had been made.  The Air Service had been made the Army Air Corps and given more autonomy, or changes to operate on its own.  It had been permitted high-ranking officers—even generals such as the enthusiastic air-minded Frank Maxwell Andrews.  But most important to Mitchell, a new office had been created in the War Department called Secretary of Air.  When the overthrow of the Republicans came in November, Mitchell believed that he would be given the job.  He was, after all, a Democrat by inheritance and faith; he had not fared well in Republican hands.

“Naturally [he wrote his friend General Fechet] I will have something to say in the councils of the Democratic Party.  As soon as Franklin Roosevelt is relieved from his job as Governor of New York, I am going to take up the whole matter of national defense with him. . .   I have plans already worked out for these things and when they are made public, they will certainly make some people jump.

“What followed was perhaps the greatest disappointment of Mitchell’s life.  Everywhere during 1933, the rumor ran that the post of Assistant Secretary of Air would surely be given him as compensation for what he had suffered and to bring about real reform in air defense.

“If the job is offered you [wrote his old flying friend] for God’s sake accept it and take out the Air Corps . . . and Civil Aviation that our broken bodies has made possible out of the hands of politicians. . . .

“When the new President came into the White House, the Mitchells were invited to lunch.  Mitchell went by himself for several interviews.  Mr. Roosevelt was always cordial.  Mitchell’s visits were reported to the press.  It was repeatedly stated that the job was practically in his pocket.  Influential members of Congress and advisors to the President recommended his appointment.  Yet it was never made.

“Several theories about it have been advanced.  It is said that Roosevelt was so strongly under the influence of the Navy that he could never bring himself to favor Mitchell.  Plausible explanation perhaps; yet, the President proved air-minded in the end:  for 1941 and 1942 the sky became black with planes under his urging; he advocated unity of command in the field and independent strategic air missions in World War II.  But in 1933 he was still in love with ships.  His desk and the walls of his White House office were covered with pictures and models of them; there were no airplanes there in 1933.”  See pages 137 and 138, Chapter 15, “Vision of the World,” General Billy Mitchell, by Roger Burlingame.

Going beyond Burlingame’s analysis, one is certainly left with the possibility here, that FDR understood his predicament.  The Army and Navy were institutions, reactionary institutions; institutions whose importance had been inflated by the World War.  By 1933, Hitler had attained power in a resurging Germany.  The Japanese had invaded Manchuria two years before.  Mussolini and his Fascists had taken control of Italy.  Stalin was taking the Soviet Union through the hellish episode of Collectivization and Forced Industrialization.

At this early period in his presidency, FDR needed the support of the Army and Navy.  So FDR was not going to put into government a strong-willed individual ready to ostracize such pillars of power and perhaps publicly flaunt their shortcomings.  Such transgressions were not to be rewarded with a seat at the table of power.

[13]  See page 60, Autonomy of the Air Arm, by R. Earl McClendon.

Bibliography

Albertson, Mark, They’ll Have to Follow You!  The Triumph of the Great White Fleet, Tate Publishing & Enterprises, LLC, Mustang, Oklahoma, 2007.

Army Air Forces Historical Studies:  No. 25, Organization of Military Aeronautics, 1907-1935, Prepared by the Assistant Chief of Air Staff Intelligence, Historical Division, Air Force Historical Research Agency, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, Report Date, December 1944.

Burlingame, Roger, General Billy Mitchell, Champion of Air Defense, Signet Press, 1956.

Corum, James S., The Roots of Blitzkrieg:  Hans von Seeckt and German Military Reform, University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, 1992.

Hewes, James, E., Jr., Special Studies:  From Root to McNamara, Army Organization and Administration, CMH Pub 40-1, Center of Military History, United States Army, Washington, D.C., 1975.

Kirkpatrick, Charles E., Writing the Victory Plan of 1941:  An Unknown Future and a Doubtful Present, World War II 50^th Anniversary Commemorative Edition, CMH Pub 93-10, Center of Military History, United States Army, Washington, D.C., 1992.

Liss, Witold, The Ilyushin IL-2, Aircraft Profile No. 88, Profile Books Limited, Berkshire, England, March 1982.

Matloff, Maurice, General Editor, American Military History, Army Historical Series, Office of the Chief of Military History, United States Army, Washington, D.C., 1969.

Messenger, Charles, The Blitzkrieg Story, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1976.

Miller, Donald L., Masters of the Air, Simon and Schuster, Inc., New York, NY., 2006.

Munson, Kenneth, Aircraft of World War II, Doubleday and Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, 1968.

Raines, Edgar F., Jr., Eyes of Artillery:  The Origins of Modern U.S. Army Aviation in World War II, Army Historical Series, CMH Pub 70-31-1, Center of Military History, United States Army, Washington, D.C., 2000.

Watson, Mark Skinner, The War Department, Chief of Staff:  Prewar Plans and Preparations, CMH Pub 1-1, U.S. Army in World War II, Center of Military History, United States Army, Washington, D.C., 1991.  First published in 1950.

Looking Back, February 2024
By Mark Albertson

Air Defense Tactics of Soviet Airborne Units

By Thomas M. Salisbury, III
Edited by Mark Albertson

[Thomas M. Salisbury, III, an Intelligence Analyst with the Red Team, Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, HQDA, attended the Virginia Military Institute and served in the U.S. Army Security Agency from 1966 to 1970.]

* Army Aviation, pages 49-52, Vol. 29, No. 11, Army Aviation Publications, Inc., Westport, Ct., November 30, 1980.

* * * * *

Soviet military journals categorize the primary threat to parachute and heliborne assault forces on landing to be an immediate attack by armored units or attack helicopters.[1]

Since the adoption of the forward defense strategy by the U.S. Army in Central Europe, the attack helicopter unit’s quick reaction time, mobility, firepower, and availability to the commander make it the most likely asset for immediate response to Soviet airborne battalion or regimental parachute landings in the corps rear area. Therefore, the air defense tactics and weapons of Soviet airborne units warrant the attention of both air cavalry scouts and our attack helicopter crews.

Background

Recent major Soviet exercises such as BEREZINZA, held in the Belorussian military district in 1978, and NEMAN, held in the Baltic military district in 1979, indicate an intent to use airborne battalions and regiments, equipped with the BMD airborne combat vehicle, to carry out parachute assault landings within the tactical zone of defense.[2]

BMD Vehicle

These assaults would probably occur beyond the 50 kilometers from the forward edge of the battle area (FEBA) advocated by the Soviets for heliborne landings of motorized rifle units[3] but considerably short of the 300 kilometer depth advocated for division size operational landings.[4]

A Soviet landing force does not normally drop and hold an objective in static defense until link-up; rather it conducts an offensive battle of maneuver in the rear area.

In addition to initial objectives, the Soviet landing force may raid targets of opportunity (usually nuclear missile, command and control, or air defense related targets) along the route of maneuver to a final objective or area many kilometers from the original landing area.[5] The direction of maneuver in the enemy rear area is usually oriented towards friendly ground formations carrying out the offensive in the enemy main battle area.

Organic Support

SA-7 Launcher

A Soviet airborne battalion has one man-portable SA-7 surface-to-air missile (SAM) squad,[6] probably three launchers,[7] organic to each airborne company for a total of nine SA-7 launchers in each battalion. Thus, a minimum of 27 SA-7 launchers would be organic to a Soviet airborne regiment. In addition to other organic light automatic weapons, each BMD is capable of providing short range air defense fire from a turret mounted 7.62 mm machine gun.

ZU-23-2 23 mm Mount

One air defense battery of six towed ZU-23-2 twin-barreled 23 mm anti-aircraft guns (each weapon providing a combined rate of fire of 2,000 rounds per minute) is organic to the Soviet airborne regiment.[8] Altogether, a Soviet airborne defense is credited with 200 SA-7 and 36 ZU-23-2 air defense systems in its table of organizations.[9]

Other Support

Although this low-level air defense umbrella only provides effective coverage out to about 3,000 meters, or a maximum of 7,000 meters, air defense weapons not organic to airborne divisions have at times been associated with Soviet airborne troops.

For example, SA-4 GANEF SAM launchers with airborne markings were displayed offloading from AN-22 transports at the July 1967 air show in Moscow.[10] Also, one Soviet airborne battalion as described as having been reinforced during a recent exercise with unidentified mobile SAM launchers (which could be interpreted to suggest a platoon of SA-9 GASKIN missiles).[11]

Neither of the above systems is known nor likely to become organic to the Soviet airborne division. However, special tailoring of a combat force with attached weapons should never be ruled out. Soviet authors have consistently pointed out since the 1960s that airborne forces will be reinforced by air-landing whatever weapons, equipment, or non-airborne personnel are deemed necessary to carry out specific missions successfully.[12]

Additional support is provided by frontal aviation fighters which escort the airborne transports to the landing area and may provide limited air cover during the course of rear area operations by the airborne unit.[13] Advancing Soviet units that begin to close with the airborne troops also bring an increasing number of army and front level SAM’s into range to extend air defense coverage over the airborne unit prior to link-up.[14]

Tactics

During the maneuver in the rear area the Soviet airborne unit takes these basic air defense measures:

• Routes of movement are used which offer tree cover or masking terrain for concealment.
• Folds in terrain are used to assist in breaking up low level anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) fires delivered from long range.
• Security on the flanks, rear, and front of the column give advance warning of the approach of scout or attack helicopters.
• One SA-7 gunner is usually attached to each group of patrol vehicles deployed in a column security role.[15]
• All-around observation is conducted by designated personnel in the column.
• Scout helicopters may not be engaged if the column or security elements have reached concealed positions before discovery. If a delay in movement is not feasible, scout helicopters will be engaged on order of the commander.[16]
• All fires, including small arms, are used to engage helicopters.

If a decision is made to move to cover when helicopters are engaged during the march, SA-7 gunners may dismount and cover their BMDs until the vehicles take position and their 7.62 mm fires to the engagement.[17] During an attack, SA-7 gunners cover tactical command posts and the main enveloping platoons of the companies in the attack.[18]

ZU-23-2 (23 mm) firing platoons have the mission of covering the main body of the airborne regiment during the march or in the attack. When the regiment is in march column the ZU-23-2 firing battery marches between the two battalions of the regimental main body.[19]

During the attack, ZU-23-2 platoons deploy in positions to cover the main attack of the regiment or, more often, are attached to those battalions attacking separate objectives that are of the most importance to the regiment’s mission.

Some Words of Caution

The 3,000 meter effective range of the airborne battalion or regiment’s air defense barely reaches maximum standoff ranges of current U.S. Army attack helicopters, yet some tactical methods and other factors increase the lethality of this short range Soviet air defense.

In Central Europe masking terrain not only shields the approach of attack helicopters—it will also make engagement at maximum standoff range difficult.

Soviet parachute assault training, as described in their military journals, indicates that wartime jumps will be carried out mostly at night or in low ceiling/poor weather conditions. These factors, combined with the airborne unit’s ground mobility and its tactical intention to move and maneuver during most of the operation, make the early fixing, engagement at maximum range, and destruction or containment of the airborne force before it can accomplish its missions a difficult task.

Unconventional Tactics

Soviet airborne troops can be expected to employ some unconventional tactics to defeat attack helicopters. The Chief of Staff of Soviet Airborne Troops, General Lieutenant P. Pavlenko, recently stated that airborne units had experimented with using BMD 73 mm main guns and anti-tank guided missiles against helicopters.[20] Although no details were given, such experimentation indicates the degree of attention being given to defending airborne troops from attack helicopters.

Although the main body of a Soviet airborne regiment or battalion will be a lucrative target for attack helicopters while in march column—caution should be exercised. While the scout may escape untouched by ground fires to report and guide in the attack helicopter flight, attack helicopters may be ambushed while approaching at nap-of-the-earth altitudes by undetected SA-7 and BMD 7.62 mm fires from security elements deployed well out from the main body.

Finally, unlike heliborne insertions of motorized rifle companies and battalions stripped of their usual air defense umbrella provided by regimental ZSU-23-4 and SA-9 systems, Soviet airborne operations in the rear area will be well covered by air defense systems.

These systems are a threat at the low altitudes and varying ranges at which attack helicopters would be forced to engage in Central Europe. Soviet airborne unit organization, air defense tactics, and training all reflect an awareness of U.S. Army attack helicopter tactics and the measures necessary to counter them.

Figure 1. Air Defense Weapons Organic to Soviet
Airborne Battalions or Regiments

NOTE: Data is based on the USAITAC Report IAG-13-U-78, Soviet Army Operations, 1978; Understanding Soviet Military Developments, OACSI, 1977; Artillery of the World, C.F. Foss, 1974; FM 30-40, HQDA, 1975; and Soviet Tactical Air Defense, DDB-1140-6-80, Defense Intelligence Agency, 1980.

Endnotes

[1] Colonel I. Kabachevskiy, et al, “The Anti-Air Defense of Airborne Landings,” Voyennaya Mysl, USSR, No. 8, 1968, pages 42-49.

[2] Lieutenant Colonel I. Dynin, et al, “A Front Line Tradition,” Krylya Rodiny, Moscow, No. 10, 1979, pages 16-17, and “The Chords of Combat,” Sovietskaya Rossiya, Moscow, 11 February 1978, page 4.

[3] Soviet Army Operations, IAG-13-U-78, USAITAC, 1978, page 7.

[4] ibid, page 7.

[5] This emphasis on maneuver and raid by parachute units has intensified in Soviet open-source military journals since about 1974. Maneuver in the rear area instead of static defense has been part of Soviet airborne tactics for some time, but it is the BMD that makes this tactic a reality.

[6] Lieutenant Colonel V. Sinoshenko, “When a Landing is Attacked by Helicopters,” Voyenniy Vestnik, No. 10, 1978, pages 43-44.

[7] The Soviet Motorized Rifle Battalion, DDB-1100-197-78, DIA, 1978, page 31.

[8] USAITAC, op. cit., pages 2-18.

[9] Soviet Tactical Air Defense, DDB-1140-6-80, DIA, 1980, page 9.

[10] General-Lieutenant I.I. Lisov, Parachutists: Airborne Landing, (translation) USAFSTC, 1969, page 274.

[11] General-Lieutenant P. Chaplygin, et al, “If an Assault is Attacked by Helicopters,” Voyenniy Vestnik, No. 10, 1974, pages 51-54.

[12] Colonel Kabachevskiy, and Lieutenant Colonel Dynin, op. cit.

[13] Lieutenant Colonel Dynin, ibid.

[14] Colonel Kabachevskiy, op. cit.

[15] General-Lieutenant Chaplygin, op. cit.

[16] Lieutenant Colonel Sinoshenko, op. cit.

[17] Sr. Lt. O. Oleynik, “Behind Aggressor Lines,” Krasnaya Zveszda, 23 May 1979, page 1.

[18] Lieutenant Colonel Sinoshenko, op. cit.

[19] Colonel M. Muslimov, “A Battalion Captures a Mountain Pass at Night,” Voyennly Vestnik, No. 5, 1979, pages 39-43.

[20] General-Lieutenant P. Pavlenko, “The Great Patriotic War and Postwar Period,” Voyenno-Istoriccheskly Zhurnal, No. 1, 1980, page 9.

Looking Back, December 2023
By Mark Albertson

Philosophy of Command

By Brigadier General George P. Seneff, Jr.

General George P. Seneff, page 38, Army Aviation, January 31, 1999 issue.

The following was written by Brigadier General George P. Seneff, Jr. in 1966, while he was commanding the 1st Aviation Brigade in Vietnam.

* * * * *

A World War I division commander whom I knew fairly well, and who was a great gentleman and fine commander, said to me one evening in 1945, “I have finally come to realize that the only way to be a good commander in wartime is to be a first-class SOB.”

I have thought this statement over many times in the past 20 years because it has had very special lessons for me. I know, thanks to excellent hindsight, that he was voicing his disappointment with others whom he had led—and who were not as high principled and devoted to duty as he was—had let him down, and unnecessary cost in life and with damage to the furtherance of the effort.

Nicholas Monsarrat, in his superb accounting of human relationships on wartime, “The Cruel Sea,” traces the development of the same philosophy in the words of a British corvette command: “At the beginning, there was time for all sorts of things–making allowances for people like sensitive human beings, and wondering whether they were happy, whether they liked you or not—but now—the war has squeezed out everything except the essentials. You can’t make any allowances now, you can’t forgive a mistake. The price may be too high. It’s too serious now for anything except a 100 percent effort—a 100 percent toughness.”

This is a point in the philosophy of leadership with which successful combat leaders have always had to come to grips: You can’t afford to be a ‘nice guy’ if this means letting standards of training and performance slip, because in a combat situation slippage means death.

Now the point of all this, as far as we aviators are concerned, is that we are always in a combat situation—because we are always fighting the sky; which with great impartiality as we all know, can be intensely beautiful and serene one moment, but which can kill you (and the people you’re responsible for) deader than a mackerel the next.

I’ve personally investigated a lot of accidents in the past few years and I’ve read the reports on a lot of others. In 90 percent of the really nasty ones I’ve seen—where people were killed or maimed or burned—regardless of the immediate cause of the accident, command supervision had a lot to do with allowing it to become a nasty one as opposed in just resulting in bent equipment. The guy’s emergency procedures weren’t good enough, or he tied it up, or he just wasn’t sufficiently well trained to cope with the situation that confronted him.

Practice Often Avoided

There is a tremendous tendency in this business to avoid practicing the hairier aspects of our operations, such as short-field work, night-and-day formation work, night confined area operations and living at low altitude. This is a natural tendency because, in itself, practicing means exposure can lead to what we are trying to avoid. It can build up accident rates which, when they become high, reflect poorly upon command.

Nonetheless, it is only through diligent and unceasing practice of these aspects of the game that our people become good enough at them to perform them safely, or at least with minimum risk. Good aviation organizations, just like good organizations of any other sort, have proven time and again that they can do it safely and effectively. They gained this capability by increasingly diligent practice and training.

Intelligent Planning Needed

I must emphasize that they didn’t get this way overnight, nor did they start off tackling the most difficult facets of operations on a large scale on the first day. They built up to it gradually by making sure first that their people as individuals were trained and standardized and that they knew what they were doing, leading them very gradually up the stairs of difficulty, in balance with demonstrated capability.

For example, you teach people how to avoid wires by having them fly low and learning to recognize the signatures that indicate wires, but you don’t let them leap into this without looking. You work your way into it gradually by having an experienced instructor pilot aboard, by working down to low altitude from a somewhat higher altitude (say 50 to 100 feet), by the use of carefully surveyed courses which the IP has taken the precaution to fly at reasonable altitude on any given morning before taking students out, to insure that some knucklehead hasn’t strung new wire up between a couple of trees during the night. In short, you teach this by taking an intelligently planned approach.

But the big thing is that you make the approach, and you make your people do it and you make them practice. You drill them on emergency procedures and teach them all the tricks that your older hands can give you until you can tell yourself truthfully that your people are trained and are capable of coping with any situation that is likely to confront them. On emergency procedures, a good tip an Air Force friend passed to me was that of having the approved emergency procedure for one of the likely emergencies for the aircraft owned by the unit thoroughly reviewed by a different member of the organization every morning at the preflight briefing.

The challenge lies with you. If, after an accident, you can tell yourself, “I have done everything within my power in training, in maintenance and in discipline to prevent this,” then you are a good commander. If you can’t, you aren’t. One word about who is a commander—we all are. We have battalion commanders, platoon leaders, and section and team leaders. We also have aircraft commanders. If you are the lowest-ranking guy in this business, you are still, if you’re commanding an aircraft, responsible for the airplane and the lives of other people who might happen to be aboard.

Finally, a word about the first paragraph of this dissertation: Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think you really have to be an SOB in order to accomplish the desired results. You have to lead—preferably by example. Precisely how you do it is a matter of your personality, the organization and the situation. Some of the best leaders I have known have been very pleasant people, but they very pleasantly insisted on extremely high standards. How you achieve them is secondary. Just make sure you do—you are preparing your people for combat in a dangerous game.

Source: See pages 38 and 39, Army Aviation, Army Aviation Publications, Inc., Westport, Ct., January 31, 1999.

* * * * *

An Alternative View on the Philosophy of Command

There is more than just a single philosophy of command. General Seneff’s is the result of his being a product of American society, typically Middle Class, with a different perspective towards war. But then again, what type of war. This can most certainly make a difference. And that leads us to the perspective of a gentleman named, T.E. Lawrence or the famous Lawrence of Arabia.

T.E. Lawrence or Lawrence of Arabia.  Courtesy of Wikipedia Commons, Public Domain image.

He led a revolt, an Arab revolt. For he joined battle not merely to defeat Ottoman forces in league with the Triple Alliance, Imperial Germany, Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire, but for the rise, perhaps, of an Arab nation, as perceived with the Damascus Protocol. Arguably Lawrence was one of the last of the romantic warriors in the modern era.

Below is T.E. Lawrence, from, The Evolution of a Revolt:

“My own personal duty was to command, and I began to unravel command and analyze it, both from the point of view of strategy, the aim in war, the synoptic regard which sees everything by the standard of the whole, and from the point of view called tactics, the means towards the strategic end, the steps of its staircase.

“In each I found the same elements, one algebraical, one biological, a third psychological. The first seemed a pure science, subject to the law of mathematics, without humanity. It dealt with known invariables, fixed conditions, space and time, inorganic things like hills and climates and railways, with mankind in type—masses too great for individual variety, with all artificial aids, and the extensions given to our faculties by mechanical intervention. It was essentially formulable. . . .

“The second factor was biological, the breaking-point, life and death, or better, wear and tear. Bionomics seemed a good name for it. The war-philosophers had properly made it an art, and had elevated one item in it, ‘effusion of blood,’ to the height of a principle. It became humanity in battle, an art touching every side of our corporal being, and very warm. There was a line of variability (man) running through all its estimates. Its components were sensitive and illogical, and generals guarded themselves by the device of a reserve, the significant medium of their art. . . .

“Nine-tenths of tactics are certain and taught in books: but the irrational tenth is like the kingfisher flashing across the pool, and that is the test of generals. It can only be ensued by instinct, sharpened by thought practicing the stroke so often that at the crisis it is as natural as a reflex. . . .

“The third factor in command seemed to be psychological, that science (Xenophon called it diathetic) of which our propaganda is a strained and ignoble part. . . . The printing press is the greatest weapon in the armory of the modern commander, and we, being amateurs in the art of command, began our war in the atmosphere of the twentieth century, and thought of our weapons without prejudice, not distinguishing one from another socially. The regular officer has the tradition of forty generations of serving soldiers behind him, and to him the old weapons are the most honored. We had seldom to concern ourselves with what our men did, but much with what they thought, and to us the diathetic was more than half command. In Europe it was set a little aside and entrusted to men outside the General Staff. In Asia we were so weak physically that we could not let the metaphysical weapon rust unused. We had won a province when we had taught the civilians in it to die for our ideal freedom: the presence or absence of the enemy was a secondary matter. . . .

“Napoleon had said it was rare to find generals willing to fight battles. The curse of this war was that so few could do anything else. Napoleon had spoken in angry reaction against the excessive finesse of the eighteenth century, when men almost forgot that war gave them license to murder. We had been swinging out on his dictum for a hundred years and it was time to get back a bit again. . . . Our cards were speed and time, not hitting power, and these gave us strategical rather than tactical strength. Range is more to strategy than force. The invention of bully-beef has modified land-war more profoundly than the invention of gun-powder.

“My chiefs did not follow all these arguments, but gave me leave to try my hand after my own fashion. We went off first to Akaba, and took it easily. Then we took Tafilah and the Dead Sea: then Azrak and Deraa, and finally Damascus, all in successive stages worked out consciously on these sick-bed theories. . . .

“In character these operations were more like warfare than ordinary land operations, in their mobility, their ubiquity, their independence of bases and communications, their lack of ground features, of strategic areas, of fixed directions, of fixed points. ‘He who commands the sea is at great liberty, and may take as much or as little of the war as he will’: he who commands the desert is equally fortunate.”

Source: See pages 285 and 286, “T.E. Lawrence: From: ‘The Evolution of a Revolt,’” The Sword and the Pen: Selections from the World’s Greatest Military Writings, by Sir Basil Liddell Hart, Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York, 1976. Edited by Adrian Liddell Hart.

Looking Back, October 2023
By Mark Albertson

“Which Way Did He Go? Up!”

By Lieutenant Colonel Jack W. Hemingway
Army War College
Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania
Edited by Mark Albertson

Source: Pages 228, 250-252, Army Aviation, Vol. 7, No. 6, Army Aviation Publications,
Westport, Ct., June 22, 1959.

* * * * *

Lieutenant Colonel Jack W. Hemingway, received his commission in 1942 by way of the Citizens Military Training Program. Following his assignment to the 35 th Infantry Division, he joined the 78 th and fought with that division on the European Theater of Operations. A unit commander at Camp McCoy, Wisconsin after 1945, he was later transferred to Japan and assigned to GHQ, SCAP. Next he was sent to Camp Carson, where he served as a company commander and later as battalion S3 with the 14 th Regimental Combat Team before he was reassigned to Fifth Army Headquarters. In Korea, he was assistant G3 of the 40 th Infantry Division, and battalion commander and executive officer of the 223 rd Infantry Regiment. Upon return to the United States, he served on Third Army HQ, followed by duty with the Command and Staff Department at the Infantry School. At the time of this article, Lieutenant Colonel Hemingway was attending the Army War College.

* * * * *

Thirty-five years ago Dr. Bothezaat broke the world’s helicopter record at McCook Field, Dayton, Ohio, by remaining in the air two minutes and forty-five seconds at a height of fifteen feet. It seems strange that a vehicle developed at such an early date would not come into prominent usage until some twenty-seven years later in the Korean War. Why?

It is an irrefutable law that demand will pace progress. In 1923, the helicopter was ahead of its time. There was still room for improvement in surface mobility and in fixed wing aviation. Improved power plants, fuels, suspension systems, hydraulics, terrestrial and aquatic flotation and advances in metallurgy provided man with the means to move faster and with greater freedom using the simple vehicles he then possessed.

Factors Affecting Development

The helicopter has come into its own since World War II. What, then, has occurred to create the demand required to convert an inventor’s dream into a practical aerial vehicle? Two factors influenced this development more than all others: the limitations of the fixed wing aircraft and the atomic weapon.[1]

The first of these is most influential as it pertains to both civilian and military applications of the helicopter. During the period starting in the late thirties and continuing today, America has taken to the air like toads to hopping. The mass acceptance of air travel paved the way for its integration into all enterprises.

Militarily, the air machine proved an able troop and supply vehicle as well as an effective weapon of destruction.

Yet, both militarily and commercially, there was need for a maneuverable aerial vehicle which was not tied to highly developed landing facilities. Oil and ore exploration, feeder and connecting air lines in congested areas, reconnaissance of vast timber, cattle or agricultural acreages are but a few of the many commercial applications of the helicopter for which fixed wing aircraft was not well suited. In this same vein the first military applications of the helicopter were in the command and evacuation fields.

Dispersion and Speed All-Important

The second, and militarily the most significant, factor influencing the development of the helicopter has been the introduction of the atomic weapon into the arsenal of war. The atomic weapon has placed a premium on dispersion and speed. The best insurance against atomic destruction is to keep concentrations of any tools of war below the levels which are militarily and economically lucrative for the employment of atomic weapons.

Yet, to be effective it is necessary at the proper moment to mass men and material quickly and then with equal rapidity to disperse below the level of danger. Ground contact vehicles were reaching their practical limits in speed and flexibility. It was necessary to look elsewhere. The answer was in the air. The fixed wing aircraft did not offer the freedom of action and versatility necessary for tactical mobility. The rotary wing aircraft was a vehicle in being which offered great potential. Its vertical takeoff and landing characteristics freed it from the restraints of prepared landing strips or roadways; its freedom from support by the earth permitted it to leap over territorial obstacles; and its speed and maneuverability equipped it to achieve surprise.

Applications to Atomic Battlefield

What are some of the applications of the helicopter to the atomic battlefield? General William G. Wyman in an address to the Air War College stated that the Army “. . . must have tactical aerial vehicles that will permit us to:

• One: Move patrols and assault forces up to battle group size to seize critical terrain and exploit tactical atomic blows.
• Two: Move reinforcing elements in depth or laterally to meet or counter an enemy threat or create one of our own.
• Three: Effect rapid shifting of weapons with crews and other combat equipment within the battle area—particularly across natural or manmade obstacles.”

General Wyman’s classification of the needs of the Army for tactical vehicles recognized the already accepted use of these craft in logistical, medical evacuation, reconnaissance, fire direction, command and communication roles. He has only listed requirements beyond these.

In the first category established by General Wyman are those missions primarily offensive in nature. The atomic weapon is not a cure-all to the problems of attack. To realize the most from firepower it is imperative that it be exploited by ground oriented action. In order not to telegraph an offensive blow, to provide protection to friendly forces from atomic weapons effects or to capitalize on an unforeseen tactical development, atomic or other fires may be massed in an area distant from forces planned for their exploitation. Troop-cargo vehicles with vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) characteristics must be used to realize the most from these situations.

The medium and heavy helicopters are vehicles in being which are well suited for the delivery of troops, weapons, supplies and minimum transportation in a quick offensive thrust, irrespective of terrain barriers, to prevent an atomic shattered enemy force from reorganizing or to seize a critical locality to prevent withdrawal of enemy units. The tremendous powers of the atomic weapon offer great bonuses in surprise, destruction and disorganization of the enemy to a commander who is prepared to move rapidly into the atomic created vacuum. The VTOL air vehicle gives unfettered mobility to offensive forces so necessary for success on the atomic battlefield.

Defensive Tactics Enhanced

The second category delineated by General Wyman related primarily to defensive actions. This field suggests that the commander can increase the potential of his reserve by mounting it in VTOL aircraft. Such mobility will permit greater dispersion of reserves as passive protection from atomic weapons.

Yet this dispersion does not invite defeat in detail because of the speed of the carriers in massing the elements of the reserve. Where the size of an area may be such as to require a surface mobile force of a given size to ensure that time and space factors would permit accomplishment of its mission, it is possible that a VTOL vehicle transported force of half this size could handle the entire area. Of course, this force is smaller in size and could not meet on even terms a force of, say, twice its size. However, through its great mobility it may be able to defeat a force of a much larger size by achieving surprise or by catching the enemy near prostrate and in the throes of reorganization after an attack or being struck by friendly fires. A slower moving force would find a recovered enemy, possibly one too strong for it to defeat.

The VTOL carrier is also suited for the movement of forces disposed along or near the forward edge of the battle area. These forces can be moved by air in limited and controlled withdrawals in setting the trap for penetrating enemy forces. These aircraft similarly may be used to shift forces from one forward position to another in order to assist in canalizing an enemy, to reinforce another unit or a part of a master scheme of deception to deny the enemy current information of the location of friendly forces.

In delaying actions the VTOL carrier will be of inestimable value. It will permit forces to execute maximum delay before being whisked away as the enemy closes on the delaying position. Psychologically, the will of delaying forces to fight will be greatly enhanced by the knowledge that their withdrawal can be effected even if surrounded.

These carriers, coupled with firepower, will give the delaying commander a potent counter punch allowing him to conduct an aggressive delaying action. Enemy atomic delivery systems, supply installations or other critical points can be destroyed or neutralized by VTOL carrier delivered forces or by stay-behind units which are recovered by VTOL carriers. Again, the present helicopters offer as vehicles in being the means for achieving to a degree the mobility needed in defensive and retrograde operations on the atomic battlefield.

Finally, in the third category established by General Wyman we find the VTOL aircraft employed as a weapons carrier. The General’s statement of requirement emphasizes the concept of VTOL transport aircraft moving weapons and crews about the battlefield with the implication that they will be used in a ground role. This does not restrict the eventual use of the VTOL aerial vehicle as a mobile gun platform. The initial plans for employment of VTOL aircraft as purely transport vehicles to lift a combat ready force from one location to another to allow it to fight in a conventional manner are only the initial step in this field. As aircraft improve in their technical characteristics, become more available and eventually reach a numerical frequency rivaling that of the jeep, the low, slow flying gun platform must become part of the air mobile ground force. The ever present requirement for fire support with the same characteristics of mobility as the supported forces will demand their development.

Zero Ground Pressure Vehicle

It is obvious that the helicopter is not the ultimate vehicle. What is needed is a device best described as a “zero ground pressure” vehicle, one which can fly or hover a foot or two above the earth or soar to a few hundred feet. This vehicle must be easily operable. It is required in several sizes: small ones for light weapons platforms, command and reconnaissance, and messengers; larger one for small unit transports (squad or platoon), cargo vehicles, command posts and mobile medical installations. These vehicles must have great reliability and durability, be resistant to the effects of firepower, be simple to maintain and economical in the consumption of fuel.

Such vehicles are somewhat removed from the realities of today. We are, however, standing on the threshold of transition of battlefield mobility from the earth supported vehicle to that of the zero ground pressure vehicle. We will see comparatively small improvement in surface mobility while mobility in the air will make great strides. When the zero ground pressure vehicle becomes available, then the surface vehicle as well know it today will disappear. In the meantime we must be ever alert to utilize the means we have for improving our air mobility, the Army aircraft. Development is paced by ideas. Don’t be bound by convention. Keep the inventor’s horizon pushed ever farther away by progressive thought. Make the most of what is at hand and be mentally prepared to accept the developments of the future.

Endnotes

[1] The appearance of the Atomic Bomb in 1945 was an enticement most decisive in motivating the Army and Marine Corps towards the development of the helicopter and airmobility. Such is what Major General James M. Gavin and Lieutenant General Roy S. Geiger, USMC, saw very early on following Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The editor.

Looking Back, September 2023
By Mark Albertson

80th Anniversary of World War II
Army Aviation: Italian Campaign

September 3, 1943, the main weight of the British Eighth Army on Sicily crossed the Straits of Messina to establish a toehold on the Italian mainland. On September 9, elements of Eighth Army and 1st Airborne Division landed at the port of Taranto. That same day, General Mark Clark’s Fifth Army landed up the coast at Salerno.

Opening phases of the Italian campaign, featuring the invasion routes by Anglo-American forces.

“Fifth Army air artillery officer, Major John T. Walker, organized the Fifth Army Air Observation Post Section into two subsections: one dealing with operations, initially under Captain Gillespie [Eugene p.], and second with maintenance and supply, under Lieutenant Strok.”[1] The latter choice brings to mind the supply problems which existed during the North African campaign, with spare parts at a premium and a supply situation being less than desirable since it was the Army’s first major campaign of the war. Michael J. Strok, who for want of a better description can be viewed as a “scrounge,” organized Fifth Army’s Artillery Air Depot (Provisional). Strok’s efforts at “Keepin’ ‘em Flyin’” made up for the lack of support from the Army Air Forces, which was playing catch up as well. Strok not only organized maintenance schedules, but provided such services as safety bulletins and registering aircraft losses. Strok was able to acquire a few L-5s—in direct contravention to the Army Air Forces’ restriction limiting the Air OP to the L-4 Cub.

The work horse for the Air Observation Post, the ubiquitous L-4 Cub.

Paul De Witt observed that the primary task of the Air OPs at Salerno was to provide artillery fire direction. He also noted that early on in the operation, field commanders determined their front lines by using Cub pilots for reconnaissance. Five L-4s were sent aloft daily, at first light, to reconnoiter assigned sectors.

Later when crossing the Volturno River, Air OPs were employed to pinpoint German forward elements, which were then mapped for later pounding by the Field Artillery. Tank destroyer units and reconnaissance battalions would borrow Cubs from their division’s artillery and use them for recon purposes. The importance of Army aviation to combat operations was becoming readily apparent.[2]

On January 22, 1944, Operation: SHINGLE, an Anglo-American force stormed the beaches at Anzio in an effort to flank General Albert Kesselring’s defense line. The Germans held the high ground, an advantage countered by the Air OPs flying reconnaissance for the assault units.[3]

Regardless, the slugfest on the hotly contested beachheads caused heavy casualties among the assault forces. Blood was desperately needed for the wounded. Cub pilots, Lieutenants Paynee O. Lysne and Richard W. Blake, flew in 50 pints of blood to the Anzio beachhead. “In less than 24 hours after the plea had been sent, life-giving blood was being administered.[4]

As Allied troops fought hard to expand their beachhead and move inland, Army aviators helped to fend off German counterattacks. Captain Willian H. McKay, of Fifth Army, spotted a German force moving towards the beaches. Some 2,400 troops, backed by tanks, were suddenly bludgeoned by a 5,000 round downpour of American ordnance. A German officer, later captured, offered that casualties were upwards of fifty percent as a result of the lethal cooperation between McKay and the Field Artillery.[5]

Lieutenant Frank A. Perkins and his observer flew artillery missions at Anzio. The observer directed coordinated gunfire for American and British artillery and warships lying offshore. Two Italian towns, Littoria and Adria were reduced to rubble. These efforts extended to the nocturnal adjustment of artillery fire, from Anzio up to Cassino. At Anzio, Captain John W. Oswalt, 1st Armored Division Air Officer, focused 370 guns on a single target. Included here was naval gunfire from several cruisers, USS Brooklyn, HMS Dido and HMS Orion.[6]

Moonlight sometimes brought Cubs out like vampires. Distinct features betrayed themselves to the aviators, such as towns, rivers, coasts and road bends, which enabled the Air OPs to sharpen nocturnal bombardments. Returning Cubs were directed earthward by those on the ground armed with flashlights, who illuminated otherwise invisible strips.

A customer of the Air OPs, a 155 mm Long Tom in action, Nettuno area, February 1944.

German ground forces urged the Luftwaffe to hurry the eradication of the troublesome Cubs. The dilemma proved problematic. From the time a Cub had already completed its mission and had returned to base, or was on its way to another sector, it had already vacated the area in which it had been operating in. However because of the low operational altitude of the Cubs and the attendant anti-aircraft protection, enemy fighters had to be piloted by airmen of skill and daring so as to be able to down the elusive Cubs. The Luftwaffe even resorted to bogus messages of fighter direction to prompt Cub pilots to vacate patrol areas.

Air OPs pushed the envelope by flying deep into enemy territory. This drew fire from anti-aircraft batteries and even ground troops. To avoid damage aviators would push over to the deck and hedgehop their way to safety; or, simply zigzag out of harm’s way.[7]

Another German countermeasure was to locate the lairs of the pint-sized pests and bomb them; or, if possible, shell them. Like ground troops, Air OP personnel had to make sure that slit trenches and fox holes were dug. Planes were dispersed and camouflaged. And, if need be, contour flying on and off strips to prevent their location by the Germans.

A perspective on German efforts to counter the Cubs is offered by Howard Rudd, a veteran news correspondent and former Air OP aviator, reflecting on German fighter tactics. “German fighters in daytime were not a serious problem after North Africa, where the Luftwaffe lost air superiority forever. Some German fighter units did develop tactics to cope with L-4s: Two fighters attacked straight on, two from above and two from below. This usually brought down the L-4, but there were never enough German fighters available on the Western Front to make the technique widespread. The fact that it was used at all, tying up six scarce and valuable fighters against feeble, eight hundred dollar L-4s, is an indication of how the L-4s hurt the Germans.[8]

The Luftwaffe apparently concurred, showing how the cost outweighed the benefits. Fifteen Bf-109s were lost, resulting in seven pilots killed in exchange for eight Air OPs downed, not a very good swap.[9]

* * * * *

June 4, 1944, General Mark Clark made his triumphal entry into Rome. However, two days later, the spotlight focused on France with the Normandy invasion. This did nothing, though, to alleviate the fact that the Italian campaign was still a slugging match. Yet Anglo-American forces battling on the Boot were consuming German divisions that would have been employed elsewhere, such as in France or the Eastern Front.

The mountainous terrain made Close Air Support a problem, to the extent of producing friendly fire incidents. 1st Armored Division commander, Major General Ernest N. Harmon, threatened to shoot down Army Air Forces aircraft. However a solution presented itself.

An enterprising Captain John Oswalt, managed to acquire several L-5s. AAF pilots flew these aircraft which were equipped with VHF radios. Colored wing tops, Red, Yellow, Blue, etc., distinguished the liaison planes. The idea was to employ the Stinsons to direct fighter-bombers onto targets stalling the ground advance. Known as the Horsefly, “Flying Jeeps,” would perform the same function as the “Rover Joe” system of ground-based observers, mobile teams of radio-equipped Jeeps providing direction for fighter-bombers onto targets of opportunity. The ground-based observers were fighter-bomber pilots.

The Stinson L-5, the plane the Army Air Forces did not want the Air OPs to have.  Yet despite advantages of range, altitude, power and speed, the L-4 Cub proved the heart and soul of Ground Forces’ organic aviation; and, set the stage for the Army Aviation branch to come.

In the mountainous Italian terrain, the slow-flying liaison aircraft provided an advantage. Besides directing fighter-bombers onto ground targets, Horsefly assets determined friendly from enemy units for both air and ground forces. Continuous Horsefly patrols provided daily updates on targets of opportunity; kept advancing units apprised of natural obstacles and impediments affecting the line of march; much like the Air OPs, Horsefly missions were also found to deter German artillery fire for fear of revealing positions to American counterbattery fire.

Drawbacks included a vulnerability to enemy flak and fighters, so air superiority was a prerequisite. And repeated use of Horsefly provided that indication of impediments to fighter-bomber activity.[10]

Of greater significance, here, was the prospect of L-5s operating under the control of Army aviators. Beginning in North Africa, with light aircraft beginning to show real promise in Ground Forces operations, requests began to filter in for the L-5s, since the more powerful engine enabled the Stinson to operate in higher climes than the L-4, which in comparison was underpowered. Both the War Department and the Army Air Forces conspired to prevent the Air OPs from attaining an aircraft of higher performance.

Fort Sill was training Air OP pilots with the L-4. And since this was so, it was considered expedient to deploy aviators in the same aircraft under combat conditions. There were also production concerns, since the Army Air Forces needed the Stinsons to equip their liaison squadrons. And lastly, the War Department frowned on the Ground Forces’ upgrade since the L-5 needed more runway for landings and takeoffs; and, was less adept at avoiding enemy fighters as opposed to the Cub.

Another issue affecting the Ground Forces was that of photo reconnaissance. Ground Forces units resorted to L-4s for terrain photography; since the Army Air Forces efforts with this tactical chore had fallen short. 1st Infantry Division urged that photographic equipment be made available to the Air OP. The Field Artillery Board tested photographic equipment aboard

Cub aircraft and solicited the War Department to attach photographic capabilities to the Field Artillery Headquarters and batteries. The Army Air Forces disagreed.

Photoreconnaissance was among the duties within the tactical responsibilities of the Army Air Forces. The War Department turned down the Ground Forces’ request. The Air OP’s raison d’etre was the direction of artillery fire; while snapping pictures and seeking aircraft of greater sophistication and performance was moving beyond the original intent of Ground Forces aviation.

The status of the Italian campaign, September 1944.

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Sky-Jumping Cubs

By December 1944, Fifth Army was north of the Arno River, occupying mountains south of the Po Valley. The mountainous terrain presented difficulties for Fifth Army commander, General Lucian Truscott,[11] and so persuaded him to address the issue. Truscott ordered Captain Jack Marinelli, air officer of the Fifth Army, to build a strip close to the CP. The ground settled on provides an intriguing piece of engineering.

The strip was laid out on a mountainside, with a downhill slope for takeoffs and an uphill run for landings. The runway stretched 735 feet by 30 feet; and, was 97 feet higher on the upside than on the cliff side, which featured a ski jump, the lip of which overlooked a valley some 2,000 feet below.

“The interesting feature,” according to Colonel Marinelli, “was that we had to use full throttle to taxi to the top of the strip and landing. But you could also take off down the strip without power.”[12]

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Endnotes

[1] See page 166, Chapter 5, “Initial Deployment and Combat in the North African and Mediterranean Theaters,” Eyes of Artillery: The Origins of Modern U.S. Army Aviation in World War II, by Edgar F. Raines, Jr.

[2] See pages 38 and 39, “The Air OP of the Armored Artillery,” Military Review, Vol. XXIV, No. 6, September 1944, by 1st Lieutenant Paul DeWitt, instructor in Department of Air Training, Field Artillery School, Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

[3] See page 48, Chapter 4, “Air Observation Posts,” A History of Innovation: U.S. Army Adaptation in War and Peace, U.S. Army Center of Military History, by Jon T. Hoffman, General Editor.

[4] See page 43, “The Army Aviation Story,” Part VI, The War Years: North Africa, Sicily, Italy, U.S. Army Aviation Digest, 1962, by Richard K. Tierney.

[5] See page 106, “The Most Lethal Plane in the World,” Mr. Piper and His Cubs, by Devon Francis.

[6] See page 84, Richard K. Tierney.

[7] See page 276, “Air OPs . . . ,” The Field Artillery Journal, Vol. 34, No. 5, May 1944, by Major Edward A. Raymond, FA.

[8] See page 4, “When I Landed the War Was Over,” American Heritage, Vol. 32, Issue 6, October/November 1981, by Hughes Rudd.

[9] See page 271, “Air OP Causes Trouble: Extract From the History of the German Fighter Force in Italy,” The Field Artillery Journal, Vol. 36, No. 5, 5 May 1946.

[10] See pages 14-17, Part Two, “Horsefly Control of Fighter-Bombers,” Liaison Aircraft With Ground Forces Units, United States Forces, European Theater, Study N. 20, 1945, U.S. Army Center of Military History, August 4, 1998.

[11] On November 25, 1944, General Mark Clark was ordered to relinquish command of Fifth Army and take over 15 th Army Group; which meant command of Allied armies in Italy. General Lucian Truscott assumed command of Fifth Army. See page 170, Chapter Nine, “Starving Time: The Failed Advance and the Second Winter,” Flawed, but Essential: Mark W. Clark and the Italian Campaign in World War II, by Jon Mikolashek.

[12] See page 138, “The War Years: North Africa, Sicily and Italy,” The Army Aviation Story, by Richard K. Tierney with Fred Montgomery.

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Bibliography

“Air AP Causes Trouble,” The Field Artillery Journal, Vol. 36, No. 5, U.S. Field Artillery Association, Washington, D.C., May 1946.

DeWitt, Lieutenant Paul A., “The Air OP of the Armored Artillery,” Military Review, Vol. XXIV, No. 6, Command and General Staff School, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, September 1944.

Francis, Devon, Mr. Piper And His Cubs, The Iowa State University Press, Ames, Iowa, 1973.

Greenfield, Colonel Kent-Roberts, Inf. Res., Chapter VII, “Practical Steps Toward Air-Ground Cooperation,” Army Ground Forces and the Air-Ground Battle Team, Including Organic Light Aviation, Study No. 35, Historical Section, Army Ground Forces, Department of the Army, Fort Monroe, Virginia, 1948.

Headquarters, 34 th Infantry Division, APO 34, U.S. Army, Italy, “Lessons Learned in Combat, November 7-8, 1942 to September 1944—Algiers, Fondouk, Cassino, Anzio, Rome, Hill 609, Benevento, Civitavecchia, Volturno River, Cecina, Rosignano, Mt. Pantano, Livorno,” September 1944. Source: Charles L. Bolte papers, Box 6, U.S. Army Military History Institute Library, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania.

Raines, Edgar F., Jr., Eyes of Artillery: The Origins of Modern U.S. Army Aviation in World War II, Army Historical Series, Center of Military History, United States Army, Washington, D.C., 2000.

Raymond, Major Edward A., FA, “Air OPs . . . “ The Field Artillery Journal, Vol. 34, No. 5, U.S. Field Artillery Association, Washington, D.C., May 1944.

Rudd, Hughes, “When I Landed The War was Over,” American Heritage, Vol. 32, Issue 6, October/November, 1981, www.americanheritage.com/when-i-landed-war-was-over

Tierney, Richard, with Montgomery, Fred, The Army Aviation Story, Colonial Press, Northport, Alabama, 1963. Introduction by, General Mark W. Clark.

Tierney, Richard K., 20 th Anniversary of Army Aviation: Part VI, “The Army Aviation Story,” U.S. Army Aviation Digest, Fort Rucker, Alabama, November 1962.

Vance, William E., “History of Army Aviation,” U.S. Army Aviation Digest, Vol. 3, No. 6, U.S. Army Aviation School, Fort Rucker, Alabama, June 1957.