Looking Back, January 2025
By Mark Albertson

Putting the House in Order
Part III: Picking up the Pieces

To win the hearts and the minds of the Home Front, the military had to recreate itself.  One of the first ports of call was dispensing with the draft, and replacing same with a Total Force Policy.

“Following the experience of fighting in an unpopular war in Vietnam, the 1973 Total Force Policy was designed to involve a large portion of the American public by mobilizing the National Guard from its thousands of locations throughout the United States when needed.  The Total Force Policy required that all active and reserve military organizations of the United States be treated as a single integrated force.  A related benefit of the approach was to permit elected officials to have a better sense of public support or opposition to any major military operation.  This policy was construed as one that echoed the original intentions of the Founding Fathers for a small standing army complemented by citizen-soldiers.”[1]

The reality here was that the citizen-soldier concept as offered in 1973 was not the same citizen-soldier concept as defined by the 1792 Militia Act, where the governors controlled ninety percent of the American military effort; which in essence, was a People’s Army.  What is being proclaimed in 1971 is not a People’s Army; which in essence, was not the citizen-soldier concept as originally defined by the Founding Generation.  For the reality was, that in 1973, America was long beyond being a colonial backwater, as opposed to being what it actually was, a global power.  Hence the citizen-soldier concept had to be redefined in 1973 so as to conform to the social-political-military reality as it existed in then, the present.

Professor George J. Stein, observed:  “. . . the federalization of the entire Arkansas National Guard by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1957, ended forever any lingering states’ rights mythology on the role of the Guard as defenders of the liberties of the states against federal interference.  The role of the Guard in civil disturbances during the civil rights and Vietnam eras and the ultimate folly at the Kent State University did little to improve the image of the Guard with either the general public or General Staff.  Something had to be done with what many critics, both military and civilian, were calling an obsolete hangover.

That ‘something’ that was done to incorporate and modernize the role of the National Guard in the nation’s defense program was the development of the Total Force doctrine.  Unlike the earlier ‘New Look’ doctrine which seemed to set the Guard and Reserve in competition and replaced the Guard as the chief manpower pool, the Total Force doctrine met most of the demands made by the NGB and the Guard lobby—the National Guard Association—for the increased federal role.

“In 1972, Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird established the essentials of the Total Force doctrine in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee.  The Guard would be ‘the initial and primary force of augmentation of the Active Forces during a contingency.’  No longer was the Guard a mere pool of manpower for a strategic reserve.  The Guard was to become part of a force in being.  The Guard is now part of the Total Force.  Consequently, the federal government and the Department of the Army have become the main source of Guard training, equipment support and, more importantly, control.  In 1933, for example, the states still paid one-third of the costs of the National Guard.  Today, the states pay less than 5 percent.”[2]

A significant development of the Total Force policy was the inclusion of women.  For in 1973, the year of the formal establishment of the all-volunteer army, “recruiters were initially able to fill only 68.5 percent of their quota for enlisting the first-term male soldiers . . . the Army ended fiscal year 1973, that last year of the draft, understrength by almost 14,000.”[3]

“The changes in the role of women in the Army proceeded slowly but inexorably as the talent, skill, and dedication women brought to the task made believers out of a somewhat conservative male Army leadership.  The numbers of women recruited went from 10,900 a year to 25,130 a year in just five years.  By 1978, there were 53,000 women in the Army, growing to around 80,000 by the end of fiscal year 1983.  The Army could not have made its recruiting quotas without this dramatic expansion of the number of women who willingly joined the service.”[4]

But the Total Force policy was but a segment of the military makeover with which the United States was set to engage, with that concerted effort to prepare the armed forces for the post-Second Indochina War period.  And this entailed regaining that focus on a more conventional warfare approach.  Especially true since the United States had been embroiled in Southeast Asia for more than a decade and the Soviets had vastly improved both their nuclear and conventional capabilities.  For by 1977, the comparison in Europe was as follows:

	NATO	Warsaw Pact
Divisions:	45	140-150
Tanks:	10,000-11,000	27,000
Artillery pieces:	6,000	8,000 to 9,000
Men under arms:	1,200,000	1,240,000

“Although the manpower under arms is approximately equal, the Warsaw Pact capacity for very rapid mobilization would give them a 3 to 1 superiority in fighting troops after three weeks of mobilization.  NATO could only close the gap after a further month had elapsed.

“To what extent the Soviet Union’s Warsaw Pact allies can be relied upon depends, of course, on the political situation in which the conflict occurs.  The startling improvement in quality and quantity of equipment with which the USSR has equipped the non-Soviet Warsaw Pact countries since 1970 would seem to indicate that these countries are increasingly being considered by the USSR as quite reliable allies.  The German and Bulgarian armies have particularly benefited from this trend.  The Poles, Czechs, and Hungarian armies in addition use good quality domestically produced equipment.  Only the Rumanian Army has failed to show a marked improvement since 1970.  Presumably due to Rumania being the least controllable regime politically[5] and having the least important position strategically, her army is accorded the lowest priority of resupply by the USSR.[6]

“. . . however, American intelligence agencies in the early 1970s noted an increase of five Soviet armored divisions in Europe, the continued re-stationing of Soviet Army divisions farther to the west, and a major improvement in equipment, with T-62 and T-72 tanks[7] replacing older models and with a corresponding modernization of other classes of weapons.  If general war had come to Europe during the 1970s, the U.S. Army and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies would have confronted Warsaw Pact armies that were both numerically and qualitatively superior.  Indeed, with the Army having been mired down in Vietnam and with modernization postponed, this was a very sobering prospect.”[8]

General Donn Starry had analyzed much of the above as he prepared to help refurbish the Army in the 1970s:  “Resources necessary to sustain a reasonable rate of force modernization had been consumed by operational need of the Vietnam War.  New doctrine and subsequent development of equipment, organizations, and training and education for soldiers and leaders—noncommissioned and commissioned—had stood still for nearly 10 years.  This process—doctrine, development of equipment, organization, and training consistent with the doctrine—lies at the heart of an Army; without it an Army stagnates.[9]

“Mobilization on a scale necessary to support, first, large forces deployed in Europe, then to Vietnam as well, was denied by President Lyndon Johnson, determined that nothing—not even the war—should interfere with progress toward his Great Society.  It was necessary therefore to use the entire Army, the Army deployed in Europe and the Army stationed in the United States, as the rotation base for Vietnam.  Further aggravated by a one-year tour length in Vietnam, this effectively increased personnel turbulence in units far above the level at which unit proficiency could be achieved and sustained.

“Both the militant revolt against all authority that characterized the generation of the young in the 1960s and growth of a substantial drug culture in the nation, especially in that same generation, were reflected in the nation’s armed forces.  Military jails were full.  The drug culture pervaded all but the best units, and there were very few best units.

“Largely because of this situation, conscription was shut down in 1972, a full year ahead of the expiration of the draft law, without much real confidence that the Army could recruit sufficient volunteers to fill its structure, but finally acknowledging that the draft law as implemented had become totally dysfunctional.

“Army soldiers and leaders returned, many of them several times, from a war in which they had all won their battles, only to find that, while they were away, the nation had lost the war.  The result was a crisis of confidence—soldier confidence in leaders, leader confidence in themselves, in units, in the Army, most importantly in the political leadership of the nation.

“Longer-range planning for the future was beset by complex problems . . .”[10]

To solve the complex problems that beset the Army, efforts were set in motion to chart a new course.  Late in 1972, General Creighton W. Abrams was named Army Chief of Staff.  The summer of 1973, the reorganization of the Army command structure followed.  CONARC or the Continental Army Command, was subdivided into a pair of sub-commands:  FORSCOM or Forces Command and TRADOC or Training and Doctrine Command.  The former oversaw the command of Army forces in the United States as well as the Army Reserve.  The latter was tasked with the fostering of Army doctrine and, with the development of Army equipment and service organization, education and training.

As the Army began its process of reorganization, the fourth major Arab-Israeli war broke out in October.  “The TRADOC commander, General William DePuy, sent his armor commandant, Major General Donn Starry, and the XM1 tank program director, Brigadier General Bob Baer, to visit Israel and report on the war’s implications.  This marked the beginning of a long and in-depth series of U.S. Army visits intended to extract lessons from the war and the start of personal relationships between Starry and some of his Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) colleagues, which would have a great deal of impact on the U.S. Army in the coming years.”[11]  Indeed . . .

. . . “Fundamentally, his [Starry’s] experience in surveying the battlefields in the Sinai and Golan served to both reinforce and enhance his thinking on modern warfare.  The initial, most basic lesson centered on the relationship between mass and victory.  Sheer weight of numbers concerning men and equipment clearly influence battles and may portend its outcome, but such factors remain indeterminate when forces remain within parameters of six to one or even ten to one.  The Israeli Defense Force conclusively demonstrated the possibility of fighting outnumbered and winning on the modern battlefield, a battlefield of relative technological parity and large numerical superiority on part of the adversary, in this case, the Egyptians and Syrians.”[12]

“Both generals Starry and Baer met with such Israeli commanders as General Moshe Paled, commander of the Israeli Armor Corps and the victor of the Golan Heights battle, and, General Israel Tal, founder of the Merkava tank program,”[13]  They biked the battlefields of the Golan in the north and the Sinai in the south.  The Israelis opened up to their American visitors, sharing some of their findings and analyses of the war.  And this was followed by other visits, which resulted in an exchange of weaponry and methods of training.

“For example, when the U.S. Army Infantry School commandant and his deputy visited in December 1976 and February 1977, respectively, both met with IDF Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Mordecai “Motta” Gur.  Gur’s willingness to meet one-and two-star generals to discuss antitank weapons systems, mechanized infantry training methods , and the appropriate number of soldiers in an infantry squad demonstrated the priority that the two armies placed on both institutional army concerns and bilateral cooperation. The IDF offered not only the higher levels of engagement but also surprisingly low ones, such as inviting the U.S. Army infantry School deputy commandant to observe an armor company’s live-fire exercise in its entirety.  Visits to brigade-level during tactical operations, allowing U.S. Army visitors to write exhaustive reports on IDF tactics, techniques and procedures.  The level of detail recorded says much about the U.S. Army’s appetite for reforming its own training methods, equipment, and doctrine, and its enthusiasm for those of an allied army that had recently fought a mid-intensity war.”[14]

* * * * *

Less is More

The Total Force Policy germinated from President Richard Nixon’s policy of victimization; whereby, responsibility for the war in Southeast Asia would pass from the hands of the U.S. Army to that of the South Vietnamese Army.  By 1973, the United States Army had been, for the most part, removed.  Reductions in the Defense budget was the inevitable result, owing in part to the antiwar and antimilitary atmosphere in many blocks of the electorate and Congress.

Secretary of Defense, Melvin Laird, August 1971, announced that he was going to shrink the size of the active duty forces, which would italicize the importance of the reserve elements, both those of the combat variety and supporting units, a policy continued by Mr. Laird’s successor, James P. Schlesinger.  Thus, the Total Force Policy was to become institutionalized, courtesy of the debacle of the Second Indochina War, where the political victors of the conflict, residing in Hanoi, successfully helped to choreograph the alteration of the political, economic and indeed, the philosophical doctrines of the military policy of the United States.

Hence the increased reliance on reserve units to assume the role of support force responsibilities; thereby, reducing such functions performed by active-duty forces, saving precious dollars.  Such budgetary considerations, then, did, in part, dictate policy.

In fiscal year, 1968, the Army boasted of some 1,570,000 men.  By 1974, 785,000.  Yet America was in the world of 1974, not 1945.  The United States was no longer the only game in town.  The globe was catching up, eroding American dominance.  Western Europe and Japan comprised modern states that were hardly the economic, political and social wrecks of 1945.  And, as alluded to earlier, Vietnam was emblematic of a post-colonial satrap seeking to determine its own fate, and doing so by wielding a vibrant doctrine of revolutionary nationalism to hand the world’s ranking superpower an unmitigated political defeat.  And so in an increasingly multi-polar world, the American military was now going to have to do more with less.  Indeed, in 1973, General Creighton Abrams petitioned Secretary of Defense, Melvin Laird, and received the go ahead to do so, and expand the Army to sixteen divisions, without increasing manpower strength.

Both the Table of Distribution and Table of Organization and Equipment were altered . . . units, assigning reserve component ‘round out’ brigades as integral units in late-deploying active divisions and moving combat service support (CSS) functions to the reserve components.  By the end of fiscal year 1973, 66 percent of CS/CSS was in reserve components.[15]

“As the Army implemented its new Total Force Policy, the National Guard and Army Reserve recovered from the Second Indochina War and the immediate post-Vietnam doldrums to gain new heights for readiness.  Each component was reduced in size throughout the 1970s but rebounded by the end of the 1980s.  The National Guard, at an authorized strength of 402,175 in 1971, was down to only 368,254 soldiers a decade later, only to increase to 456,960 by 1989.  The Army Ready Force end strength was only 263,299 in 1971, and fell with the end of the draft to 202,627 by 1980.  However, it had recovered to the level of 312,825 soldiers by 1989.  By the eve of Operation:  DESERT SHIELD/STORM in 1990, the Guard and the Army Reserve would be, like their active duty counterparts, as strong and well trained as they ever had been in their nation’s history.”[16]

From the perspective of material acquisition, the Less is More approach to revamp the armed forces was fraught with the most hair-pulling of challenges.  Doing with less troops meant relying more on America’s technological advantage; yet, at the same time, austerity had to be observed.  For the rising cost of weaponry is to be understood with the growing sophistication of weaponry.  Take the McDonnell-Douglas F-4 Phantom, designed as it was in the 1950s, cost some $4 million a copy.  But as Albert W. Blackburn observed:  “The Grumman Corporation’s F-14 Tomcat . . . a supersonic, swing-wing, carrier-based interceptor, will bottom out at less than $13 million a plane.

“Although the Phantom first flew in 1958, both aircraft have nearly the same performance characteristics in terms of maximum speed and altitude, maneuvering stresses and the like.  The Tomcat is the subject of continuing controversy between its builder and the Navy.”[17] And the author added that such occurrences were hardly exclusive.

In 1972, Congress canceled the MBT-70 main battle tank, offered by General Motors owing, in part, to the AFV’s[18] production cost, some $1 million per machine; as opposed to Chrysler’s M-60 which weighed in at $373,000 per copy.[19]

“Estimates for the Navy’s new Spruance-class destroyers, being built by Litton Industries, now exceed $100 million a ship.  As recently as 1969, the Navy estimated that a Spruance would cost $60 million.  The last destroyer delivered to the fleet cost less than $40 million.”[20]

Too. Mr. Blackburn brought forth the notion of the computer and ability to use same to enhance the process of weapons development and procurement.  High-speed computer programs streamlined data production associated not only with weapons, but ‘weapons systems,’ a terminology befitting Madison Avenue mumbo-jumbo for inflating costs to be paid for by the taxpayer.

“Contracts were broadened to give total responsibility for a weapon system to a single contractor.  To win these multibillion dollar contracts, the magic words of systems management had to be used in the proposals.  A single copy weighed more than a ton.”[21]

Again Mr. Blackburn brought forth that not only was the military acclimating itself to the environment of austerity, but so were its industry partners.  Meanwhile fiscal year 1971-1972, was the same year General William DePuy “helped to plan the STEADFAST Reorganization of the Army.”[22]  He witnessed the termination of two major procurement programs, one for the Cheyenne advanced attack helicopter and the other the MBT-70 main battle tank.  Although Army leaders saw both weapons systems as critical to the Army’s long overdue modernization program, they were unable to convince the Department of Defense and Congress of a need for these weapons systems commensurate with the costs.  While the Army’s procurement agency, the U.S. Army Material Command, began solving the problem of cost overruns by improving its contracting procedures, General DePuy hoped to help the Army express its material needs more persuasively by integrating the combat functions of TRADOC.[23]

General DePuy also oversaw the writing of the Army’s first doctrinal study in the post-Second Indochina War era, Field Manual FM 100-5, which set the stage for the Army to operate in an increasingly technological approach to conventional war.  For the Industrial Revolution was giving way to the Technology Revolution.  And the 1976 FM 100-5 was a literary attempt to help prepare the way, culminating eventually in the AirLand Battle concept; this together with the Army’s desire to better digest the lessons from the recent Yom Kippur War.

* * * * *

Being a NATO member, the United States Army maintains close liaisons with its treaty partners, for example the British and Germans.  Indeed, Washington arranges and fashions military doctrine with its NATO allies.  However in the early 1970s, the armies of NATO lacked combat experience.  The Israeli Defense Forces did not.  The IDF boasted a wealth of conventional warfare experience versus opponents generally equipped with Soviet weaponry and trained by Soviet advisors.  Such experience was sought by the United States Army and, also by its NATO partners.[24]

Beyond the efforts of generals DePuy and Starry, were those of Brigadier General Paul F. Gorman, “who served as TRADOC’s deputy chief of staff for training and later as commandant of the U.S. Army Infantry School, too, part in intense training was the variable that had won the war.[25]  He studied the detailed data that the Israelis had on tank battles and examined Israeli tank commander gunnery training.  However the level of detail went beyond mere exchanges of expertise and included TRADOC obtaining translations of Israeli training manuals, gunnery qualification tables and armor exercise plans from crew to battalion level. (This was more akin to what partner nations receive today from the U.S. Army during foreign military sales—except that these exchanges were free between trusting partners.)

“With this information, Gorman concluded that IDF armor training had not only been the decisive factor in these battles, but also invalidated then fashionable theories about the overriding importance of numbers on the battlefield.  This approach clearly linked operational success on the battlefield, with institutional reforms, which were the ultimate objective of the Army generals’ engagement with their IDF partners.  DePuy wrote that when equally advanced weapons systems clashed on the battlefield, ‘courage, imagination, and the training of the commanders made the difference.’”[26]

Unlike what was encountered in Southeast Asia, the numbers and mix of weapons systems of increasing lethality and carnage, to which:

“We should expect modern tactical battlefields to be dense with large numbers of weapons systems whose effectiveness at range will surpass previous experience by nearly an order of magnitude.  While modern battlefield systems will enjoy greater protection due to increased standoff range and improved armor, it will nonetheless be true that what can be seen can be hit, what can be hit can be killed.  The long-range antitank guided missile—Sagger, TOW, HOT, Milan—will add considerably to lethality at range in the battle at the forward line of troops.  Direct fire lethal battlespace will be expanded more than two, perhaps three, orders of magnitude over corresponding battlespace in World War II and the war in Korea.

“Because of the numbers and the lethality of modern weapons, the direct fire battle will be intense; enormous equipment losses can be expected in a relatively short period of time.  We noted that the total—both sides, of tank losses in the critical six or seven days of the Yom Kippur War exceeded the total U.S. Army tank inventory deployed to U.S. Army, Europe, in units and in war reserves combined.

“In modern battle, regardless of which side outnumbers the other, and regardless of who attacks whom, the outcome of battle at tactical and operational levels will be decided by factors other than who attacks and who defends.  In the end the side that somehow, at some time, somewhere in the course of battle seizes the initiative and holds it to the end will be the side that wins.  More often than not the outcome of battle defies the traditional calculus used to predict such outcomes.  It is strikingly evident that battles are yet won by the courage of soldiers, the character of leaders, and the combat excellence of well-trained units—beginning with crews, platoons, companies, battalions, and squadrons ending with regiments, brigades, divisions and corps.  The best tank on the battlefield is yet the one with the best crew.  The best units on the battlefield are yet those that are well-trained and well led and those who have trained together to a high level of excellence before battle’s onset.

“The air battle over the tactical battlefield will be characterized by large numbers of highly lethal platforms, both fixed and rotary wing, and by large numbers of highly lethal air defense weapons systems.  Although there were no large numbers of armed helicopters employed in the Yom Kippur War, it was difficult to foresee their introduction, postulate their effect on the battle, and analyze their impact on other factors that we could examine first hand.”[27]

While the above provides ample reference as to where the U.S. Army intended on going in the post-Second Indochina War era, the focus of the rest of the narrative will be on Army Aviation, as in this period, leading up to branchhood; for it, too, was not proof from a makeover in the wake of the debacle known as Vietnam.

Endnotes

[1]  See page 3, “Legal Basis of the National Guard,” www.RNG,army.mil/aboutus/history/Pages/ConstitutionalCharteroftheGuard.aspx

The citizen-soldier as depicted in 1973 is not the citizen-soldier concept as defined in the 1792 Militia Act, which bolstered the Second Amendment.  Here all white males, ages 18-45 were considered as part of the militia.  These state armies were controlled by the states, not the federal government or the army; unless, of course, federalized when needed to bolster the regular army in times of national emergency.  Every militiaman bought his own musket, powder, ball, shirt, pants, shoes, . . .   And, according to the 1792 Militia Act, militias could only be federalized for three months in any one year, per Section 4 of the May 2, 1792 Militia Act.  Some ninety percent of the military capability of the United States was controlled by the governors, not the army or the federal government.  For many believed what George Washington proclaimed in his farewell address, September 19, 1796:

“. . . Hence, likewise, they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown Military establishments which under any form of Government are inauspicious to liberty, and which are regarded as particularly hostile to Republican Liberty. . .  “  [By Republican Liberty, Washington is referring to the type of government, not a particular party, since in his Farewell Address, Washington was opposed to parties as instruments of factionalism, where you will always find party people willing to subvert the precepts of the nation for the precepts of the party.  See pages 98-100, “Farewell Address, George Washington, September 19, 1796,” Founding Character:  The Words & Documents That Forged a Nation, edited by Kirk Ward Robinson and Christopher Eaton.]

[2]  See pages 6 and 7, “State Defense Forces,” Military Review, by George J. Stein.

[3]  See page 372, Chapter 12, “Rebuilding the Army, Vietnam to Desert Storm,” American Military History, Volume II, Richard W. Stewart, General Editor.

[4]  See page 373, Richard W. Stewart, General Editor.

[5]  The weak formation of control by the regime of Nicolai Ceausescu, was later inflamed by the austerity program during the 1980s.  Rumania’s surging national debt, some $10-$11,000,000,000 resulted in rationing, falling living standards, many Rumanians becoming food challenged and a rising infant mortality rate.  By December 1989, as the fall of the Soviet Empire accelerated, the Securitate (Rumanian Secret Police) no longer proved able to quell dissent, as even elements of the army joined the people.  When the security organs join the masses, Revolution can succeed.  The 1917 Russian variety being another example.

Ceausescu’s December 21 speech failed to change the now charted course of the masses.  Ceausescu and his wife Elena attempted escape.  Both were captured.  Both were tried, by a flying court, December 24.  Both were convicted for crimes against the state and people.  Both were shot on Christmas Day.  On January 7, 1990, capital punishment was outlawed in Rumania by the succeeding government.

[6]  See page 64, “NATO/Warsaw Pact Forces Located in Europe,” Soviet Ground and Rocket Forces, by Christopher Donnelly, Bill Gunston and Dr. James E. Dornan.

[7]  The T-62 as actually introduced in 1961, as an eventual replacement for the T-54/55, which came out in 1949 as a replacement for the T-34 of Eastern Front fame in World War II.  The T-62 was to become the main Soviet tank in armored divisions and motorized infantry units.  The T-62 featured a 115 mm main armament over the previous T-54/55 which mounted a 100 mm rifle.  The T-72 medium tank, introduced in the early 1970s, featured a V-12 diesel power plant which cranked out 780 horsepower.  It mounted a 125 mm rifle with a rate-of-fire of 6 to 8 rounds-per-minute; this was over and above the 115 mm rifle on the T-62 which could fire 3 to 5 rounds-per-minute.  See pages 5-32, 5-33, 5-35, 5-36, 5-37, 5-40 and 5-41, “Armored Fighting Vehicles,” FM 100 2-3, The Soviet Army.

[8]  See page 377, Richard W. Stewart, General Editor.

[9]  Author’s italics.

[10]  See page 220, “TRADOC’s Analysis of the Yom Kippur War,” Press On! Selected Works of General Donn Starry, Volume 1, edited by Lewis Sarley.

[11]  See page 45, “Not an Intellectual Exercise:  Lessons from U.S.-Israeli Institutional Army Cooperation, 1973-1982,” Military Review, by Major Ethan Orwin, U.S. Army.  www.armypress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/

[12]  See page 45, “Evolution,” Continuity and Evolution:  General Donn A. Starry and Doctrinal Change in the U.S. Army, 1974-1982, by Major Aaron J. Kaufman.

Author’s note and analysis:  The 1973 Yom Kippur War notwithstanding, the post-1945 period saw a number of nations, those of the Third World variety, those emerging from centuries of bondage of imperialism as wielded by the White Christian colonial powers of Europe, organizing as nations that were achieving access to modern weaponry and gaining admirable, and in some cases, skilled proficiency, in wielding same.  Mao’s Red Army and its ability to wage war to a standstill against modern Western mechanized armies in Korea; the Vietminh defeating the American-backed French Army in North Vietnam; the modernization of the Arab armies in their numerous conflicts with Israel; the build-up and modernization of the Shah’s armed forces in Iran. . .

The Arab-Israeli conflicts showcased second-tier or regional powers gaining proficiency and if lacking same, having a willingness to use modern weaponry to effect policy.  This, together with the evolving rise of such powers as China, Japan, India and, the long-term decline of the West, is slowly, but surely, altering the global chessboard.

[13]  See page 47, Major Ethan Orwin, U.S. Army.

[14]   See pages 47 and 48, Major Ethan Orwin, U.S. Army.

[15]  See pages 375 and 376, Richard W. Stewart, General Editor.

[16]  See pages 376 and 377, Richard W. Stewart, General Editor.

[17] See page 28, “Soaring Defense Costs?” Army Aviation, by Albert W. Blackburn, May 1, 1973.

[18]  AFVs or Armored Fighting Vehicles.

[19]  See page 28, Albert W. Blackburn.  According to the Comptroller General of the United States, as of March 1, 1976, cost per unit of the M-60A1 was $385,000.  See page 2, PSAD-76-153, Report of the Comptroller General of the United States, “Increasing Procurement Cost of M60A1 Tanks,” August 6, 1976, U.S. Government General Accounting Office.

[20]  See page 28, Albert W. Blackburn.

[21]  See page 29, Albert W. Blackburn.

[22]  “The Department of the Army established TRADOC on 1 July 1973, at Fort Monroe, Virginia, as part of the major STEADFAST Reorganization of the Army of the United States . . . The STEADFAST initiatives, directed by General Creighton Abrams, Chief of Staff of the Army, attempted to solve difficult command and control problems in the Army establishment evident in the early 1970s”  See page 6, “TRADOC:  A Historical Summary,” Transforming the Army:  TRADOC’s First Thirty Years, Military History Office, United States Army Training and Doctrine Command.

[23]  See page 27, “Assessing the October War, 1973-74,” Deciding Wat is to Done: General William E. DePuy, and the 1976 Edition FM 100-5, Leavenworth Papers, No. 16, by Major Paul H. Herbert.

[24]  Within the period in question, the United States Army was seeking to bone up on its conventional warfare skills following a protracted effort in counterinsurgency. The Israelis, on the other hand, would soon enter a period where, for the most part, the IDF will be engaged in a protracted effort of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism.

[25]  Meaning the Yom Kippur War . . . the author.

[26]  See page 49, “Not an Intellectual Exercise:  Lessons from U.S.-Israeli Institutional Army Cooperation, 1973-1982,” Military Review, by Major Ethan Orwin, U.S. Army.  www.armypress.armyu.mil/Jouirnals/Military-Review/

General Gorman’s view that Israeli prowess with employing armor on the battlefield in numbers less than their counterparts was due to superior leadership and training, was proven earlier on the Eastern front in 1941.  The four panzer groups dispersed among the invading German armies:  Army Group North, Army Group Center and Army Group South, contained 3,106 tanks.  See pages 22 and 23, Chapter 1, “The Opposing Armored Forces in 1941,” Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front, 1941-1942, by Robert Forczyk.  Bryan I. Fugate, in his Operation:  Barbarossa, page 31, offers, “3580 tanks and assault guns.”

The Soviet Army boasted, in 1941, per Bryan I. Fugate, in a letter sent by Stalin to President Roosevelt, July 1941, that the Soviet Union had 24,000 tanks, as opposed to the best estimates giving the Red Army 22,700.  See page 31, Chapter 1, “Prewar Soviet Defense Planning and Strategy,”

But in June 1941, the Germans, though vastly outnumbered, through superior leadership and tactics, including superior tactical air support rendered by Hermann Goering’s Luftwaffe, exacted a terrible toll of Soviet armor.  Estimates range upwards of 17,000 Soviet tanks lost between June 22, 1941 to the beginning of December 1941, just prior to the December 4-5, 1941 counterattack from Moscow by Georgi Zhukov.

[27]  See pages 222 and 223, “TRADOC’s Analyze of the Yom Kippur War,” The Jaffe Center Military Doctrine Joint Conference, Casarea, Israel, 16 March 1999, Press,On! Selected Works of General Donn A. Starry, edited by Lewis Sarley.

Bibliography

Blackburn, Albert W., “Soaring Defense Costs?” Army Aviation, Vo. 22, No. 5, Army Aviation Publications, Inc., Westport, Ct., May 1, 1973.

Donnell, Christopher and Gunston, Bill and Dornan, Dr. James, “Soviet Ground and Rocket Forces,” The Illustrated War Library, Paradise Press, Inc., in association with Salamander Books Limited, London, United Kingdom, 1977.

Field Manual, FM 100-2-3, The Soviet Army:  Troops, Organization and Equipment, Headquarters, Department of the Army, Washington, D.C., 16 July 1984.

Forczyk, Robert, Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front, 1941-1942, Schwerpunkt, Pen & Sword Books, Ltd., Barnsley, South Yorkshire, England, 2016.

Fugate, Bryan I., Operation Barbarossa:  Strategy and Tactics on the Eastern Front, 1941, Presidio Press, Novato, California, 1984.

Handbook on The Soviet Army, Department of the Army Pamphlet No. 30-50-1, Headquarters, Department of the Army, Washington, D.C., 17 March 1961.

Herbert, Major Paul H., Deciding What is to be Done:  General William E. DePuy and the 1976 Edition of FM 100-5 Operations, Leavenworth Papers No. 16, Combat Studies Institute, U.S. Army Command, and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 1988.

Kaufman, Major Aaron J., Continuity and Evolution:  General Donn A. Starry and Doctrinal Change in the U.S. Army, 1974-1982, School of Advanced Studies, United States Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 2012.

Orwin, Major Ethan, U.S. Army, “Not a Military Exercise:  Lessons from U.S.-Israeli Institutional Army Cooperation, 1973-1982,” Military Review, January-February, 2020, www.armyupress.army.mil/…/Orwin-US-Israeli

Report of the Comptroller General of the United States, “Increasing Procurement Cost of M60A1 Tanks, PSAD-76-153, U.S. Government Accounting Office.

Robinson, Kirk Ward and Eaton, Christopher, Founding Character:  The Words & Documents That Forged a Nation, Roan Adler Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 2003.

Sarley, Lewis, Editor, Press On!  Selected Works of General Donn Starry, Combat Studies Institute Press, U.S. Army Combined Arms Center, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 2009.

Soviet Military Power, Fifth Edition, Department of Defense, United States of America, Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., March 1986.

Stewart, Richard W., General Editor, Vol. II, American Military History:  The United States Army in the Global Era, 1917-2008, Army Historical Series, Second Edition, CMH Pub 30-22, Center of Military History, Washington, D.C., 2010.

Stein, George J., “State Defense Forces, the Missing Link in National Security,” Military Review, Vol. LXIV, No. 9, Combined Arms Center, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, September 1984.

TRADOC Historical Studies Series, Transforming the Army:  TRADOC’s First Thirty Years, 1973-2003, TRADOC 30th Anniversary Commemoration, Military History Office, United States Army Training and Doctrine Command, Fort Monroe, Virginia, 2003.

Looking Back, December 2024
By Mark Albertson

Putting the House in Order
Part II: The Israeli Model

Lieutenant General Hamilton H. Howze, in his book, A Cavalryman’s Story, chapter 22, related his experiences in a visit to Israel in 1967.  He offered that he learned a lot about the Six-Day War, June 5-10, 1967:

“I would, with my background also mention the use of maybe a dozen Israeli Air Force light two-seater Bell OH-13 helicopters, made available to the Army.  The Middle East desert, almost everywhere has a roll to it.  Flying only a few feet off the ground these little choppers, with tank commanders aboard, allowed the Israelis to scout the location and formations of opposing Arab tanks, and then path find for the Israeli tanks across the wadis, (deep, dry ditches) and other terrain so that Israelis could catch their Arab opponents by surprise and from an unexpected direction—the flank or rear.  The Arabs had no helos,[1] and without them suffered a towering disadvantage; their tank formations were largely blind.  Israeli tank units knew Arab strength; dispositions, and in what direction they were faced, and therefore could (and did) first surprise them, in directions, timing and clobber them.”[2] Yet the Israeli Ministry of Defense offers further clarification of the IDF’s reliance on the helicopter performing a variety of tasks:

“Helicopters were used to extricate pilots shot down scores of kilometers behind enemy lines, wounded were evacuated from front line dressing stations and parachutists were landed in the very heart of an enemy strongpoint at the height of the battle.

“In several battles, paratroopers were landed in the thick of the fighting by helicopter.  The first time was in the capture of the large Egyptian system of fortifications at Umm-Gataf, on the Nitzana axis.  The paratroopers’ objective was to silence the artillery batteries shelling the armor trying to break through the perimeter.  At Sharm el-Sheikh an advance party of paratroopers was landed by helicopter to see whether it was defended and to prepare the ground for the eventual capture of the camp by an airborne unit.  The next day, a paratroop unit landed by helicopter on Ras Sudr and took possession of the Egyptian positions.

“Helicopter-borne paratroopers were also used in an assault on the southern sector of the Golan Heights.

“From the first day of the fighting, helicopters were active in rescuing pilots who either had to bail out or forced to land planes damaged in action.  One of the pilots was picked up near the Canal 15 hours after he had been shot down and after he had walked 15 kilometers from where he had bailed out.  One pilot who hit the silk near the Mitla Pass, in the heart of the Peninsula, was accorded a personal air cover to keep off the Bedouins who infested the area until a helicopter could reach him.  In all, 13 downed pilots were rescued during the war, seven of them from enemy territory.

“The helicopter crews, at considerable risk, repeatedly landed in the very thick of the fighting to speed wounded to the nearest field hospital.  Outstanding examples, though far from unique, were in the battle of Rafah, the tank battle north of Jerusalem and the Golan breakthrough.[3]

The Israelis, then, were on the upside of the learning curve with their use of the helicopter.  This education process had commenced in May 1951, when the Israelis began using the helicopter for such tasks as observation and reconnaissance, obtaining intelligence, a rotary wing taxi for brass.

During the War of Attrition, that period of unease between the conclusion of the 1967 war to the outbreak of the Yom Kippur or, if you will, the Ramadan War October 1973, the Israelis seemed to follow the American model in Vietnam.  Lift helicopters shuttling Israeli Air Cav troop on raids against the Egyptians, Jordanians or Syrians, were being escorted by Bell 205s mounting 7.62 mm machine guns, 30 mm cannon and rockets.[4]  The War of Attrition, then, could be construed as being that “anticipatory counterattack” or a continuation of the preemptive attack that had commenced the 1967 war.  Almost certainly this form of keeping potential enemies off balance caused Washington to frown on “Israeli Belligerence.”

That said, the 1967 preemptive strike by Israel was not allowed to be repeated in 1973.[5]  Especially with the political pressure applied by Washington, faced as it was with defeat in Vietnam and a broken and demoralized army to fix.  Yet the warning signs of an Egyptian continuation of war abounded.  For instance, the CIA’s “Growing Risk of Egyptian Resumption of Hostilities with Israel,” authored by Ray S. Cline,[6] May 31, 1973, in which he wrote:

“A recent National Intelligence Estimate 30-73, May 17, 1973, (copy attached) concludes that ‘substantial Egyptian-Israeli hostilities appear unlikely in the next few weeks,’ but that the danger of resumption of hostilities ‘probably will rise if the UN debates and the summit pass without any results judged useful by Cairo.’

“INR is inclined to state the case on the risk of hostilities for a political purpose with a little more urgency.  If the UN debates of the next week produces no convincing movement in the Israeli-Egyptian impasse, our view is that the resumption of hostilities by autumn will become better than even . . . , and that there is even a slight chance that Cairo may precipitate events before or during the June 10 Nixon-Brezhnev summit.”[7]

Among the steps taken by the Egyptians were those highlighted again by the CIA in a 1975 postwar report:

“Long before the war, the Egyptians had built a series of earth mounds overlooking the Israeli side of the canal (Suez Canal).  They were thought to be no more than observation posts.  On the outbreak of war, however, these mounds sprouted tanks and anti-tank units, the latter armed with Sagger missiles carried by men or BRDM vehicles.  By these means the Egyptians added still more antitank and covering fire to their crossing force.  At the same time, Egyptian artillery spotters on the mounds could look over the 40-to-50 foot sand wall the Israelis had built and call in artillery fire on Israeli installations and reinforcements as much as five kilometers from the canal.

“The Egyptians also built one of the densest and most diversified air defense systems ever erected to provide protection against the Israeli Air Force.  This system consisted of dozens of SA-2, SA-3, SA-6 and SA-7 SAM units, radar-guided anti-aircraft artillery, and conventional AAA heavy machine guns.”[8] The Egyptians commenced the war thus:

“At H-Hour on 6 October, 240 Egyptian aircraft crossed the Canal.  Their mission was to strike three airfields in the Sinai, to hit the Israeli Hawk surface-to-air missile batteries, to bomb three Israeli command posts, plus radar stations, medium artillery positions, the administration centers and the Israeli strongpoint known as “Budapest” on the sandbank east of Port Fouad.  Simultaneously, 2.000 guns opened up along the entire front: field artillery, medium and heavy artillery and medium and heavy mortars.  In the first minute of the attack, 10,500 shells fell on the Israeli positions at a rate of 175 shells per second.  A brigade of FROG surface-to-air missiles launched its weapons, and tanks moved up to the ramps prepared on the same ramparts, depressed their guns and fired point-blank at the Israeli strongpoints.  Over 3,000 tons of concentrated destruction were launched against a handful of Israeli fortifications in a barrage that turned the entire east bank of the Suez Canal into an inferno for 53 minutes.”[9]

On the Northern Front, the Golan, the Syrian attack was announced by heavy aircraft attacks and the liberal use of artillery.  The Syrian host vastly outnumbered Israeli units attempting to block numerically superior forces; to which the Syrians were bolstered by Jordanians, Iraqis and Moroccan contingents.  For instance, at the Rafid Opening, the Israeli 188th Brigade with 57 tanks, had to face a torrent of Syrian armor, some 600 tanks, in addition to the Syrian 5^th and 9^th Infantry Divisions.  But since the reader already knows (or should know) the eventual outcome, the narrative will focus briefly on the pivotal battle for Mount Harmon.

The commanding height known as Mount Harmon provided the occupant with a panoramic view, of not only the entire battlefield, but the roads leading in and out of Damascus.  The Israeli defenses atop this strategically significant peak, had been constructed to withstand aerial bombing and artillery bombardment.  The chink in the armor, though, was the accompanying trench system for the defending garrison, it had not yet been completed.

The Syrian attack on the crest was spearheaded by Air Cav troops lifted by four helicopters.  One crashed.  The remaining three dropped off their charges a mile from the crest.  These Syrian commandos overwhelmed the Israeli defenders and took the summit.

“For the Soviet advisors of the Syrians, who arrived shortly after the fall of the position, the electronic equipment captured there was of singular value.”[10]

“The Syrian 82^nd Commando Battalion took the position on 6 October, killing 25 to 50 Israeli troops.  On 8 October, troops of the Israeli Golan Infantry Brigade tried to recapture the position but failed, losing 50 killed in the attempt.[11]  But on October 11, the Israelis commenced a counteroffensive.

The assault to reassert Israeli control of Mount Harmon began on the night of October 20.  The Golani Brigade was to assault the lower elevations, leaving Israeli paratroopers to be concerned with the heights.  The latter were hoisted by helicopter, together with fighter escort.  A Lieutenant Colonel Hezi and his battalion secured a landing zone, perhaps a half mile from their objective.  Syrian artillery and aircraft attempted to intervene.  The Israeli Air Force neutralized the latter.  And three Syrian helicopters on their way to the slopes were lost.

Lieutenant Colonel Hezi’s paratroopers launched their assault, and by the early morning hours of the 22^nd of October, the Israelis were back in control of the dominating heights.  And, in turn, the strategically significant Golan Heights remained in Israeli hands.[12]  Yet . . .

. . . at its low point in the war, Israel’s material losses generated glum faces, including here in the United States.  But political problems existed in Washington:  President Nixon was under siege from the Watergate investigation; his vice president, Spiro T. Agnew, had had to resign, in addition to the quandary the United States found itself in with an embarrassing political defeat in Southeast Asia; the need to fend off the growing military power of the Soviet competitor in the superpower standoff; and, of course, the growing unpredictability of the Arab states and oil.  But following the pleas of Golda Meir, the decision was made to resupply Israel.  Hence, Operation:  NICKEL GRASS.

Concerned with an oil embargo by the Arab-producing states, many American allies forbid landing rights for aircraft participating in this 1973 version of the Berlin Airlift.  And so Military Airlift Command went to work.  Some 268 C-141s and 77 C-5As were committed.  Between October 12 and November 14, the USAF airlifted “22,395 tons of cargo—145 missions by C-5 Galaxys and 422 missions by C-141 Starlifters.  The C-5s delivered 48 percent of the tonnage but consumed 24 percent less fuel than the C-141s.  Included in the gross cargo tonnage was a total of 2,264.5 tons of ‘outsize’ material equipment that could be delivered only by a C-5.  Among these were M-60 tanks, 155 mm howitzers, ground radar systems, mobile tractor units, CH-53 helicopters and A-4E components.

 

 

“The airlift had been a key to victory.  It had not only brought about the timely resupply of the flagging Israeli force but also provided a series of deadly new weapons put to good use in the latter part of the war.  These included Maverick and TOW anti-tank weapons and extensive new electronic countermeasures equipment that warded off successful attacks on Israeli fighters.  Reflecting on the operation’s vital contribution to the war effort, Reader’s Digest would call it, ‘The Airlift That Saved Israel.’

“Both U.S. transport types distinguished themselves by performing reliably and economically.  The C-5A had an 81 percent reliability while the C-141 registered a 93 percent reliability.  No accidents occurred.  The abort rate of all planned flights came in under 2 percent.

“The airlift taught the Air Force many lessons, large and small.  One was that Lajes was a godsend—one that the U.S. best not take for granted in a future emergency.  The Air Force established an immediate requirement for aerial refueling to become standard practice in MAC so that its airlifters could operate without forward bases, if necessary.  Another lesson was that commercial airlines, on their own, could not be expected to volunteer their services and aircraft.  This meant that access to commercial lift in the future would have to be met by activating the Civil Reserve Fleet, as in fact it was doing during the Gulf War.  Nickle Grass also led to the consolidation of all airlift aircraft under Military Airlift Command and its designation as a specified command, February 1, 1977.

“Finally, the C-5 proved to be the finest military airlift aircraft in history, not the expensive military mistake as it had been portrayed in the media.  Its ability to carry huge amounts of cargo economically, carry outsized pieces of equipment, and refuel in flight justified the expense of the program.”[13]

Operation:  NICKLE GRASS did show something else of a positive nature; that despite the aforementioned myriad of political and military problems facing the United States in 1973, the Republic could galvanize itself with the proper personnel and ample resources to perform in fine fashion.  And not only perform in fine fashion, but make a decisive contribution to the result.  In other words, it was something to build on for the future.

* * * * *

The Future is Now!

Indeed, for the United States, in 1973, the future is now!  For instance, the Egyptians and Syrians, which had jealously husbanded their forces, in addition to learning from their mistakes of the past, sought to profit from this soul-searching by delivering that grievous knockout blow to their antagonist, Israel, and return Palestine to the Arab fold; while at the same time, eliminating what they perceived as that hateful abscess of Western colonialism, Israel, from the Arab realms.  And by resorting to mass conventional mobile war of the Western variety to accomplish same.  In this resulting arena of High-Intensity Conventional Warfare was a wake-up call for the United States.  For the Soviet Union was that Western opponent schooling their Arab clients on the Western way of war.  And since this was so, it was that Soviet Army and their Warsaw Pact[14] allies, which enjoyed the luxury of superior numbers, that was to be faced in Europe by the United States and its NATO allies.

And so after twelve years of fighting in the jungles of Southeast Asia during the Second Indochina War, and against an enemy that could hardly be considered a major industrial power, an enemy that did successfully wage a protracted campaign designed to wear out its economically superior foe, by waging a campaign of attrition intended to erode its will to continue the struggle, therefore relegating to irrelevance such advantages of money, resources, technology, industrial production . . . a pattern repeated starting in 1979, when the Soviets blundered into Afghanistan.

Both countries, the United States and the Soviet Union, reputed to be the superpowers of the world, seemed to be emblematic of societies that no longer had the intestinal fortitude for war.  In the American case, 1968-1973 was not 1941-1945.  “Remember Pearl Harbor!” and this is “Our War!” or “Remember the Bataan Death March!” became “Hell No We Won’t Go!” and this is “The President’s War!”  For victory on the battlefield is based on three fronts:  The Political Front, the Battle Front and the Home Front.  Competent politicians and diplomats are required to staff the Political Front; talented, skilled and trained officers and soldiers are necessary to successfully wage the conflict on the Battle Front.  But the backbone is the Home Front.  Because it is from the Home Front that the political class and army emerge.  And from the Home Front comes the weaponry, equipment, supplies, goods, services and labor to be able to wage a conflict.  Take away any of these cogs, especially the latter, and chances for victory wane.[15]

However years of antiwar sentiments and backlash on the Home Front eventually caused the military to rethink conscription.  Instead, the opposition to the military was not only from large blocks of the citizenry, but from the ranks as well.

Following the TET offensive, January-February 1968, the downward slide of discipline, order and cohesiveness set in as the uniforms in-theater faced and dealt with the ineptitude of the suits stateside.  As offered by Richard W. Stewart, in Chapter 11 of his American Military History, published by the Center of Military History, Washington, D.C.

“Operations on the coastal plain brought uncertain outcomes as well.  Here, the Americal Division fought in an area where the population had long been sympathetic to the Viet Cong.  As in other areas, pacification in Southern I Corps seemed to improve after the 1968 TET offensive, though enemy units still dominated the piedmont and continued to challenge American and South Vietnamese forces on the coast.  Operations against them proved to be slow, frustrating exercises in warding off North Vietnamese and Viet Cong main force units while enduring harassment from local guerrillas and the hostile population.  Except during spasms of intense combat, as in the summer of 1969 when the Americal Division confronted the 1st PAVN Regiment,[16] most U.S. casualties were from snipers, mines and booby traps.  Villages populated by old men, women and children were as dangerous as the elusive enemy main force units.  Operating in such conditions day after day included a climate of fear and hatred among Americans.  The already thin line between civilian and combatant was easily blurred and violated.  In the hamlet of My Lai, elements of the Americal Division killed about two hundred civilians in March 1968.  Although only one member of the division was tried and found guilty of war crimes, the atrocity reverberated throughout the Army. However rare, such acts undid the benefits of countless hours of civic action by Army units and individual soldiers and raised unsettling questions about the conduct of the war.

“War crimes such as My Lai were born of a sense of frustration that also contributed to a host of morale and discipline problems among enlisted men and officers alike.  As American forces were withdrawn by a government eager to escape the war, the lack of a clear military objective contributed to a weakened sense of mission and a slackening of discipline.  The short-timer syndrome, the reluctance to take risks in combat towards the end of a soldier’s one-year tour, was compounded by the last casualty syndrome.  Knowing that all U.S. troops would soon leave Vietnam, no soldier wanted to be the last to die.  Meanwhile, in the United States, harsh criticism of the war, the military, and traditional military values had become widespread.  Heightened individualism, growing permissiveness, and a weakening of traditional bonds of authority pervaded American society and affected the Army’s rank and file.  The Army grappled with problems of drug abuse, racial tensions, weakened discipline, lapses of leadership.  While out right refusals to fight were few in number, incidents of ‘fragging’ (murderous attacks on officers and noncoms)[17] occurred frequently enough to compel commands to institute a host of new security measures within their cantonments.  All these problems were symptoms of larger social and political force and underlines a growing disenchantment with the war among soldiers in the field.[18]

“As the Army prepared to exit Vietnam, lassitude and war weariness at times resulted in tragedy, such as at Firebase MARY ANN in 1971.  There, soldiers of the Americal Division, soon to go home, relaxed their security and were overrun by a North Vietnamese force.  Such incidents reflected a decline in the quality of leadership among both commissioned and noncommissioned officers.  Lowered standards, abbreviated training, and accelerated promotions to meet the high demand for noncommissioned and junior officers often resulted in the assignment of squad, platoon, and company leaders with less combat experience than the troops they led.  Careerism and ticket-punching in officer assignments, false reporting and inflated body counts, and revelations of scandal and corruption all raise disquieting questions about the professional ethics of Army leadership.  Critics indicted the tactics and techniques the Army used in Vietnam, noting that airmobility, for example, tended to distance troops from the population they were sent to protect and that commanders aloft in their command and control helicopters were at psychological and physical distance from the soldiers they were supposed to lead.”[19]

Criticisms proffered above as to Airmobility certainly need to be addressed before moving on.  Depending on the source(s) of such challenges, the concept in question enables conventional troops to move like insurgents, so as to appear at the enemy’s front, rear or flanks.  Indeed, to appear then disappear, then suddenly turn up in another quarter.  This can only be done with the helicopter, which certainly presents obvious advantages over the limitations of competing forms of ground transportation.  In addition to the fact, that the Air Cav commander can be as mobile as his troops.  For instance, Lieutenant Colonel Harold Moore accompanied his command into Landing Zone X-Ray and shared the trials and tribulations of his men.

The disparagement of Airmobility from the perspective that it distanced the troops from the people they were sent to protect is not really a discussion worth entertaining when one understands the political situation.  The reality being that American troops were sent to Vietnam to shore up a government meant to keep that nation out of the Communist orbit and into that of the West.  And that meant defending a government that engendered a widespread unpopularity.  Instead, the only hearts and minds Washington should have endeavored to capture were those that really mattered, the millions on the Home Front.  But following the TET debacle that, too, became an exercise in futility.  Yet, as usual with history, lessons abound here,[20] lessons that will be addressed in Part III.     

Endnotes

[1]  Contrary to General Howze’s observation as to the Arabs having no helicopters, “The combined air forces of Egypt, Syria and Jordan, together with the two Iraqi squadrons which joined the fray, numbered about 600 aircraft on the fifth of June.  About 450 were jet bombers and fighters, and the rest, transports and helicopters.”  See page 30, “The Air Force at War:  The Destruction of the Arab Air Forces,” The Six Days War, Israeli Ministry of Defense, 1967.  In addition to the results of the initial Israeli Air Force attack against the Egyptian aerial threat:

“In less than three hours, nearly 300 Egyptian planes were destroyed.  A breakdown of the types of aircraft knocked out gives some idea of what was in store for Israel if the Egyptians had been able to get them into action against the I.D.F. and the Israeli population.  ‘Confirmed kills’ included 30 Tupolev-16s, 27 Illyushin-28 medium bombers, 12 Sukhoi-7 fighter-bombers (which Egypt had only just received), some 90 Mig-21 interceptors, 20 Mig-19s, Mig-17s and another 32 transports and big MI-6 helicopters.”  See page 32, The Six Days’ War.

[2]  See pages 38 and 39, “The Air Force at War,” The Six Days’ War, Chief Education Officer, Israeli Defense Forces.

[3]  See pages 38 and 39, “The Air Force at War,” The Six Days’ War, Chief Education officer, Israeli Defense Forces.

[4]  See page 3, “The Use of Helicopters Against Guerrillas:  The Israeli Model,” by Dr. Tal Tovy.

[5]   “In the main attack, nineteen Egyptian air bases in the Sinai, in the Nile Delta, the Nile valley and Cairo area were attacked in some 500 sorties, destroying 309 out of 340 serviceable combat aircraft including all 30 long-range Tu-16 bombers, 27 medium-range Illyushin Il-28 bombers, 12 Sukhoi Su-7 fighter-bombers, some 90 Mig-21 fighters, 20 Mig-19 fighters, 25 Mig-17 fighters and a further 32 transport aircraft and helicopters.” See page 161, Book III, The Six Day War, 1967, “Prologue,” The Arab-Israeli Wars, by Chaim Herzog.  Meaning, Mr. Herzog coincides with the Education Officer, Israeli Defense Forces.  Refer to endnote no. 1.

[6]  At the time, Ray S. Cline was INR or Director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research for the Department of State.  He was a long-time member of the intelligence community.

[7]  See page 1, “Growing Risk of Egyptian Resumption of Hostilities with Israel,” INR Ray S. Cline, May 31, 1973, CIA Memo.

[8]  See page 13, “Growing Risk of Egyptian Resumption of Hostilities with Israel,” Intelligence Report:  The 1973 Arab-Israeli War, Directorate of Intelligence, CIA, September 1975.

Chaim Herzog offers some depth to the Egyptian threat, just prior to October 6, 1973:  “The total strength of the Egyptian Army (one of the largest standing armies in the world) included some 800,000 troops, 2,200 tanks, 2,300 artillery pieces, 150 anti-aircraft missile batteries and 550 frontline aircraft.  Deployed along the Canal were five infantry divisions and a number of independent brigades (infantry and armor) backed by three mechanized divisions and two armored divisions.  Each infantry division included a battalion of tanks for every one of the three brigades, making a total of 120 tanks in every infantry division.  The three mechanized divisions included two mechanized brigades and one armored brigade, a total of 160 tanks per division.  The two armored divisions were composed of two armored brigades and one mechanized brigade, out of a total of 250 tanks per division.  There were also independent tank brigades, two paratroop brigades, some 28 battalions of commandos and a marine brigade.”  See page 262, BOOK V, The Yom Kippur War, 1973, Prologue, Chapter 1, “The Southern Front,” The Arab-Israeli Wars, by Chaim Herzog.

[9]  See page 262, Chaim Herzog.

[10]  See pages 318 and 319, Chaim Herzog.

[11]  See page 67, “Intelligence Report:  The 1973 Arab-Israeli War:  Overview and Analysis of the Conflict,” Secret, SR IR 75-16, September 1975.

[12]  See page 340, Chaim Herzog.

The highest point of the Mount Harmon complex of heights is Mitzpe Shlaggim (Snow Lookout), which rises to some 7,336 feet.  It is the home of the Israeli armed forces, security service elements and police units which monitor Syria and Lebanon.

December 14, 1981, the Israeli Knesset, by a majority of 63 to 21 in favor of, adopted the Golan Heights Law; by which the State of Israel would “extend Israeli Law, December 14, 1981,” Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Of particular interest in the Golan Heights for Israel is fresh water.  “Syria is systematically violating water agreements with Lebanon and Turkey (Orontes River), Jordan (Yarmuk River), and Iraq (Euphrates River).  Israel’s average annual water potential is 280 cubic meters per capita, compared to 2,000 cubic meters for Syria and 1,400 cubic meters for the Middle East at large.

“70% percent of Israel’s water resources will not be under its control if it withdraws from the Golan (30%), Judea and Samaria (40%).  There is no precedent for a country giving away water sources . . . “  See page 1, “The Golan Heights, Syria and Water Sources,” Think Israel, by Yoram Ettinger, August 8, 2009.

[13]  See page 59, “Nickel Grass,” Air Force Magazine, by Walter Boyne.

[14]  Joseph Stalin died on March 5, 1953, marking the end of the iron hand of totalitarianism.  Just over two years later, though, and in response to the formation of NATO, May 14, 1955, the pact of Mutual Assistance and Unified Command was signed by representatives of the Soviet Union, Albania, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Rumania, Hungary, Bulgaria and East Germany.  More than a military association, the Warsaw Pact was an actual mechanism to solidify the Soviet Empire in Eastern and Central Europe.  See page 200, Chapter Six, “Military District, Fleets, Border Guards, and MVD Troops,” The Armed Forces of the USSR, by Harriet Fast Scott and William F. Scott.

[15}  “A stranger to our politics, who tried to read our newspapers, at the present juncture, without having previously inspected the plan reported by the Convention, would be naturally led to one of two conclusions:  either that it contained a positive injunction that standing armies should be kept up in time of peace, or that it vested in the EXECUTIVE the whole power of levying troops subjecting his discretion in any shape to the control of the legislature.

“If he came afterwards to peruse the plan itself, he would be surprised to discover that neither the one nor the other as the case—that this legislature was to be a popular body, consisting of the representatives of the people, periodically elected; and that instead of the provision he has supposed in favor of standing armies, there was to be found, in respect to this object, an important qualification even of the legislative discretion, in that clause which forbids the appropriation of money for the support of the army for any longer period of two years; a precaution, which, upon a nearer view of it, will appear to be a great and real security against the keeping of troops without evident necessity.”  See pages 152 and 153, “The Federalist No. 24, December 19, 1787,” by Alexander Hamilton.

Again, the importance of the Home Front is emblematic with Hamilton’s accent on the Legislative Branch, dully elected by the people, to raise armies and the funds for same, as opposed to providing such power in the Chief Executive.  Leading, too, that Congress has the power to Declare War, not the President.  Such speaks volumes as to why the Second Indochina War was an immense political setback for the United States.

[16]  PAVN or People’s Army of Vietnam was the armed wing of the Communist Party in Vietnam.  It was inclusive of the armed forces, People’s Army, People’s Navy and People’s Air Force.  See “People’s Army of Vietnam,” GlobalSecurity.org, www.globalsecurity.org/…/world/vietnam.htm

[17]  “One of the more disturbing aspects of the unpopular war in Vietnam was the practice known as fragging.  Disenchanted soldiers in Vietnam sometimes used fragmentation grenades, popularly known as frags, or other explosives to threaten or kill officers and NCOs they disliked.  The full extent of the problem will never be known; but increased sharply in 1969, 1970 and 1971, when the morale of the troops declined in step with the American role in the fighting.  A total of 370 well-documented cases involving 83 deaths have come to light.  There were doubtless others and probably some instances of fragging that were privately motivated acts of anger that had nothing to do with the war.  Nonetheless, fragging was symptomatic of an Army in turmoil.”  See page 349, Chapter 11, “The U.S. Army in Vietnam:  From TET to the Final Withdrawal, 1968-1975,” American Military History, Vol. II, by Richard W. Stewart.

[18]  The trials and tribulations that had beset the United States Army as a result of Vietnam was certainly not unusual in history.  In 1916, the Czarist Russian Army launched a huge summer offensive on the Eastern Front, inflicting 600,000 casualties on the Austro-Hungarian forces and crippling that army for the balance of World War I.  At the same time, 1,000,000 Russian casualties had been incurred; to which, peasant soldiers had had enough.  Several years of excessive losses, inept military leadership in addition to an ambivalent and incompetent Czar Nikolas II, caused the Russian soldiers to begin to walk off the battlefields and back to the farms.  Revolution was in the wind.  See page 304, Chapter 8, “The Year of the Battles,” The First World War, by John Keegan.  And page 136, Chapter 6, “The Land War in Europe:  Strategy,” Cataclysm, by David Stevenson.

1918, the vaunted German Army launched five major offensives on the Western Front, designed to bring the Allies to their knees and win the war.  At the cost of 500,000 casualties, the Germans failed to reach their objectives.  With American help, the British and French had withstood the Teutonic onslaught.  But German soldiers had had enough.  Like two summers before, German soldiers, like the Russians before them, began to call it quits.  Discipline fractured and unit cohesiveness split and cracked.

1917, fifty-four divisions of the French Army mutinied in the trenches.  They, too had had their fill of subpar food, inept leadership, disregard of their plight by the high command. . .   Courts-martial found 23,000 men guilty, of which 432 were sentenced to death, with 55 actually shot.  General Henri Petain shuttled busily among French divisions to quell the disenchanted Polius.  Still another 400 were consigned to incarceration, some of whom wound up in penal colonies like Devil’s Island in French Guiana.  See pages 279 and 280, Chapter II, “The Spring Battles in the West,” The Great War, by Cyril Falls.

1780 to March 15, 1783, mutinies and revolts plagued the Continental Army, due to lack of food, lack of new uniforms, pay, indeed, the officers had been promised a half-pay pension for life.  With the colonies some $40 million in debt, where was that money coming from?  For instance, 1781, elements of a New Jersey regiment rose up.  General George Washington not only had quelled the unpleasantness, but ordered the malcontents to pick their ringleaders.  He then had two of them shot.  See pages 413 and 414, General George Washington’s order, “To Robert Howe,” commander of the West Point detachment, to march on the offending New Jersey regiment, and, execute a few of the most active and most incendiary leaders.  George Washington:  Writings.

[19]  See pages 349 and 350, Richard W. Stewart.

[20]  The unstated notion, and one that has a basis of historical substance and precedent, was that of the Domino Theory.  It was started here in the United States with Korea, then Vietnam; that if either fell to the Communists, Southeast Asia, perhaps the Philippines and even Japan might eventually fall to the Reds.  But most important was Indonesia, owing to its more than ample reserves of crude.  And the precedent was 1941-1942.

The primary target for Japan, December 1941, was not Pearl Harbor but the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), since in 1941 this cluster of islands was the globe’s fourth largest producer of crude.  In addition to the fact that as of July 26, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, by Presidential Executive Order, cut off Japan from American oil exports.  This left the Imperial Japanese Navy with 18 months of oil.

The Domino Theory here saw not only Pearl Harbor attacked, but the Dutch East Indies taken, Guam, Wake, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Burma, the Philippines, New Guinea, the Solomons, . . .  All and more fell like dominos to the rampaging Japanese.    

Bibliography

Boyne, Walter, “Nickle Grass,” Air Force Magazine, December 1998, www.airandspaceforces.com/PDF/MaragazineArchive…

Cline, INR Ray S., “Growing Risk of Egyptian Resumption of Hostilities With Israel,” CIA Memo, May 31, 1973.  Declassified, March 14, 2000.

Ettinger, Yoram, “The Golan Heights, Syria and Water,” Think Israel, August 8, 2009.  Mr. Ettinger was a consultant on U.S. Israeli relations, prior to which he was the Minister for Congressional Affairs to the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C.  www.think-israel.org/ettinger.golanheightswater.html

Falls, Cyril, The Great War, G.P. Putnam’s & Sons, New York, 1959.

Hezog, Chaim, The Arab-Israeli Wars:  War and Peace in the Middle East:  From the War of Independence Through Lebanon, Random House, Inc., New York, NY., 1982.

Howze, Hamilton H., A Cavalryman’s Story:  Memoirs of a Twentieth Century General, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington and London, 1996.

Intelligence Report:  The 1973 Arab-Israeli War:  Overview and Analysis of the Conflict, Secret SR IR 75-16, Copy No. 56, Central Intelligence Agency, Directorate of Intelligence, September 1975.  Approved for release, August 29, 2012.

Jay, John; Hamilton, Alexander and Madison, James, The Federalist, edited with Introduction and Notes by Jacob E. Cooke, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 1961.  Eighty-five efforts of remarkable political literature were penned by three representatives of the most dynamic political generation in American history, spanning the post Constitutional Convention debates, October 27-1787 to May 28, 1788.  As a book form, the first appeared in 1788, then 1802 followed by 1819.  It ranks with Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Social Contact, John Locke’s, Of Civil Government, . . . as one of the notable political treatises ever penned.   

Keegan, John, The First World War, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 1999.

“People’s Army of Vietnam,” GlobalSecurity.org, www.goobalsecurity.org/…/world/vietnam.htm

Scott, Harriet Fast and Scott, William F., The Armed Forces of the USSR, Westview Press, Inc., Boulder, Colorado, 1979.

Simpson, Keith, History of the German Army, The Military Press, Bison Books Corp., Greenwich, Ct., 1985.

Stevenson, David, Cataclysm:  The First World War as Political Tragedy, Basic Books, New York, NY., 2004.

Stewart, Richard W., General Editor, Vol. II, American Military History:  The United States Army in a Global Era, 1917-2008, Army Historical Series, CMH Pub 30-22, Second Edition, Center of Military History, Washington, D.C., 2010.

The Israel Ministry of Defense, The Six Days’ War, The Israeli Press, Ltd., 1967.

The Library of America, George Washington:  Writings, Literary Classics of the United States, New York, NY., 1997.

Tovy, Dr. Tal, “The Use of Helicopters Against Guerrillas:  The Israeli Model,” Journal of European, Middle Eastern & African Affairs, Air University, August 2020, www.airuniversity.af.edu/JEMAA/D   

Van Creveld, Martin; Canby, Steven and Brower, Kenneth S., Air Power and Maneuver Warfare, for the Air War College, Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, 1994.

Looking Back, November 2024
By Mark Albertson

Putting the House in Order
Part I: Less is More

To establish a tradition, therefore, which will prove effective, if only a threat of what is to follow afterwards is displayed, the Air Force must, if called upon to administer punishment, do it with all its might and in the proper manner. One objective must be selected—preferably the most accessible village of the most prominent tribe which it is desired to punish. All available aircraft must be collected. . . . The attack with bombs and machine guns must be relentless and unremitting and carried on continuously by day and night, on houses, inhabitants, crops and cattle. . . . This sounds brutal, I know, but it must be made brutal to start with. The threat alone in the future will prove efficacious if the lesson is once properly learnt. . . .[1]

* * * * *

After January 1973, with the American chapter in the Second Indochina War drawing to a close, Army Aviation found itself in a situation not too unlike that faced by the fledgling RAF after the Versailles Treaty of 1919:Establish justification for its continued existence.Though by 1973, Army Aviation was on surer political footing, perhaps, when compared to the RAF in 1919.This is significant from the perspective that airpower itself had, by 1973, masses of adherents as opposed to 1919, when the practitioners of this developing weapons system known as the heavier-than-aircraft had to compete for a seat at the postwar budget table with the Establishment . . . in this case, the British Army and the Royal Navy.Yet, the historical comparison can still be applied and with some merit.

For instance, Sir Hugh “Boom” Trenchard[2] was deeply concerned that with the conclusion of the 1914-1918 conflict, from the perspective that well-trained RAF personnel would be mustered out and much of its aircraft would be scrapped.But of overriding concern was that much of what had been gleaned from combat experience might be consigned to the shelves to collect dust; and therefore, disregarded or even forgotten.[3]For budgets in the postwar era are going to be slashed, leaving the newly-minted RAF to vie with the established services for a financially secure future.A future that was going to have to be created to justify the future existence of the RAF, especially as a standalone service.

Trenchard certainly understood Britain’s growing economic dilemma.For as a result of the 1914-1918 industrialized war, Britain, like France, needed to retain access to those resources and manpower pools that had been supplied from their empires.Yet at the same time, Revolutionary Nationalism was given a decided boost as a result of the internecine conflict among the colonial overseers; indeed, the 1914-1918 struggle accelerated the precipitous decline of European colonial domination, the demise of which can be seen in 1945 with the victory in a war that did not start in 1939, but rather 1914:And those victors were the United States and the Soviet Union.A new political-strategic course had been charted: Hence, the Cold War.

Trenchard understood that as a result of the 1914-1918 war the adverse economic changes wrought made it costly to station troops throughout the empire; in addition to the fact, that after four years of horrendous bloodletting, loved ones wanted their fathers and sons to come home.[4]

To the British Government, Trenchard pitched the idea of troop reductions in some of the colonies.Air squadrons, then, would take up the slack, especially since the indigenous populations in question did not have aircraft and lacked the sophisticated anti-aircraft weaponry with which to defend themselves.And Trenchard offered an example to bolster his case . . . Somaliland.

“Since the 1890s, Mohamad bin Abdullah Hassan, a charismatic tribal leader known as ‘the Mad Mullah,’ had caused trouble in the British protectorate by raiding tribes friendly to the British.From 1900 to 1904, the British mounted several punitive expeditions against him and took fairly heavy losses.In 1904 they finally brought the Mad Mullah’s main force to battle, defeated it, and drove him out of British territory.However the trouble did not end.In 1909, Abdullah started raiding again, and in 1913 his forces shot up a unit of British constabulary.During World War I, the British ignored the problems in Somaliland, but after the war, the British government decided to reinforce the protectorate with an RAF squadron of DH-9 reconnaissance/light bomber aircraft.Eight aircraft arrived by January 1920, and the British set to work with surprise bombing raids on Abdullah Hassan’s forts.The army field force—consisting of detachments from the King’s African Rifles, Somaliland Camel Corps and Indian Army—moved in pursuit of the Mullah’s force.Over the next three weeks, the RAF reverted to supporting the ground force by reconnaissance and bombing.The Mullah escaped and took his remaining forces over the border into Ethiopia, where he died the next year.For the astoundingly low price of 80,000 pounds, airpower had played a central role in defeating a force that had irritated the colony for many years.”[5]

In March 1921, at the Cairo Conference on Mideast Affairs, Winston Churchill, chairman of the proceedings, fielded Trenchard’s application of allowing the RAF to take control of military efforts in subduing the rambunctious Iraqis; this, of course, in the wake of the bargain basement approach to the use of airpower in Somaliland.And “on October 22, 1922, the Air Ministry officially took control of the country.[6]Over the next ten years, the punitive use of airpower helped to subdue recalcitrant tribesmen, such as the autonomous-minded Kurds, marsh Arabs, bombed raiding Wahhabis causing disturbances in southern Iraq.And in other policing efforts, bombed an illegal dam erected by a sheikh who cut off his neighbors from badly needed water and who refused to pay his taxes.By the end of the decade, at a fraction of the cost of committing large numbers of troops, the RAF, together with colonial ground detachments, had largely subdued Iraq, at a human cost to itself of 14 killed and 84 wounded.[7]

But man has a tendency to acclimate himself to a given situation; and the indigenous on the receiving end of British bombs and machine gun fire attempted to cope.One such were the rebellious Kurds.Kurds in the mountains upon hearing the drone of approaching British aircraft, would light fires, creating smoke which indicated to the villagers of the impending airborne threat.

Such air policing efforts throughout the empire by the RAF helped to stimulate that culture, already evolving on the Western Front by 1918; that of Douhet’s theory of bombing civilians behind the lines.Mussolini’s Regia Aeronautica would perform this function during the 1935-1937 Italo-Abyssinian War; German and Italian bombers in support of fellow Fascist, Francisco Franco, bombed Spanish cities during the tune up to 1939, the Spanish Civil War; as well as the Japanese bombing of Shanghai and other Chinese cities starting in 1937.Followed, of course, by British Bomber Command, joined later by the United States Eighth Army Air Forces, in a concerted strategic bombing campaign waged against Nazi Germany.

But air policing/counterinsurgency/disciplining recalcitrant populations, showcased the RAF’s ability to acclimate itself to the changing strategic as well as tactical states of affairs following 1918.Such is the situation Army Aviation found itself after January 1973.

* * * * *

           Major General Allen M. Burdett, Jr., Director of Army Aviation in 1970, alluded to the post-Vietnam War course for Army Aviation during the decade of the 1970s.He outlined this path in a speech to the National Capitol Chapter of the Air Force Association, to which he said, “At the outset, I want to make clear that we seek no changes in service roles and missions, nor a grab for a disproportionate share of a relatively smaller defense budget.[8]All that we ‘Green Suiters’ want is to improve through innovation and technology our effectiveness in doing a better job for the Nation.Our job, our mission—as we all know—is to control, with coercion when necessary, the activities of people within a land area.’”[9] To which he added:

“This mission today is more challenging than ever before.Confronted by threats ranging from the nuclear through tank-intense, mechanized forces, to large numbers of small guerrilla bands—and even to domestic rioters,[10] somehow we must find ways to increase our capabilities even as personnel and dollar resources are being reduced.[11]

General Burdett’s references to limited access to money and manpower forecast the reality of the coming times . . . austerity.And his rationale of “increasing our capabilities” in an attempt to cope with the impeding reductions in money and manpower, underscores that the armed forces will have to operate from the mindset that less is more.However . . .

. . . the post-Vietnam period was marked, perhaps, by a thoughtful analysis put forth by Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, USN, with regards to airmobility, which he viewed as a concept that would be a requirement for an army that would shrink in size following the end of the war:

“This is a concept comparable in significance to the airborne and armor concepts which reached their maturity in World War II,” the admiral adding, “The Joint Chiefs of Staff were unanimous in accepting airmobility as a sound concept in the low-intensity environment of Vietnam.”

He added, “It is possible for some combination of airmobility and, for example, armor, may prove more suitable in certain future situations than either capability used alone.

“If so,” he said, “the Army might considerably increase its versatility by such a marriage of capabilities.This is the sort of thinking going on in the Army today to get more performance out of a smaller force.”[12]

* * * * *

Yet with the abundance of funds or the scarcity of funds, the reality of the world applies:Man cannot co-exist peacefully for an extended period of time.[13]For whether a “brushfire war” such as in Vietnam or potential large conventional war, the larger picture still existed.The global competition with the Soviet contender.Army Aviation, then, would be required to readjust; readjust, that is, back to what it was training for in the 1950s.

* * * * *

Limited War Rules

July 25, 1969, President Richard Nixon, as the growing reality of the Vietnam debacle was rapidly becoming apparent, announced this Nation’s commitment in keeping its treaty obligations with its Asian allies, such as SEATO.[14]This was sustained on February 18, 1970, when the President reiterated this Nation’s willingness to abide by its treaty obligations and to provide and maintain that nuclear shield to those nations allied to the United States.This became known as the Nixon Doctrine.[15]

Yet a situation developed in one of the most oil-soaked regions of the globe that could not be ignored despite America’s commitment to Southeast Asia.For in January 1968, growing financial constraints forced the Labor Government in Britain to formally announce the withdrawal of British forces from the Persian Gulf by the end of 1971.

“At the time of the announcement, the British presence involved about 6,000 ground troops, as well as naval forces and air support units, costing around 12 million pounds a year (about $29 million at the exchange rate of the time).The rulers of the Persian Gulf received the British announcement with dismay and offered to meet Britain’s expenses out of their mounting oil revenues.Defense Secretary Denis Healy poured scorn on the suggestion that the British become ‘mercenaries’ for people who like to have British troops around,’ and the Labor Government considered it politically unwise to maintain its military presence east of Suez.It signaled its retreat from empire by applying for membership in the European Economic Community.[16]

This posed an issue for Washington.For the British signified that token representation of Western colonial interests.For sure the United States could not perform such a strategic function, owing to its massive exposure in Southeast Asia, troop obligations on the Korean peninsula in the wake of the 1950-1953 war and, its manpower and equipment commitment to NATO in Europe.And, there was the anti-military backlash in the streets at home.Despite having the best military in the Middle East, Israel was not politically palatable.So the Shah of Iran, long a Western client, was chosen to be the caretaker of Western concerns in the Middle East; to which he was lavished with weapons and equipment, a proxy that would prove, like many of them do in the end, disastrous.[17]

At the same time, President Richard Nixon rendered political overtures to China.The split in the Communist world was evident and had been so for many years.And with the Soviets expanding their military capabilities, the Nixon/Kissenger effort sought to open relations with the gold standard of Peasant Revolution versus the practitioner of the Proletarian Revolution and broaden even further the political crevice within the Communist ranks; a difference of opinion evident with the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia to end the brutal Pol Pot regime, a client of Peking, with Moscow backing Hanoi.[18]

As alluded to in note 18, the Chinese, as a result of its costly campaign into the territory of its feisty neighbor to the south, will begin a progression of military modernization, and away from its peasant origins.The United States, too, was undergoing a transformation militarily.Yet both giants had violated Clausewitz’s cardinal rule of, “Accordingly, war can never be separated from political intercourse, and if, in the consideration of the matter, this is done in any way, all the threads of the different relations are, to a certain extent, broken, and we have before us a senseless thing without an object.”[19]

In both cases, Washington and Peking had limited war objectives, without recourse to Total Victory.Therefore their entries into conflict proved fruitless.Peking, of course, was not going to consult the average Chinaman as to his or her stakes in a war with its truculent neighbor.Washington, too, in the end, ostracized the American public from the Second Indochina War, setting up the country for a decisive political defeat.At the same time, though, Airmobility was proved, on the tactical battlefield, underscoring what Major General James M. Gavin wrote in 1947:

“The future of our armed forces is in the air.All fighting men and everything they need to fight with in the future and live on as they fight must be capable of movement by air.Only through flight can we wage a future war in accordance with the principles of surprise, mass and economy of means.Only by exploiting to its utmost the great potential of flight can we complete dispersion in the defense with the facility of rapidly massing for counterattack which today’s and tomorrow’s army must possess.Even without the power and use of atomic energy for war these things would be true.With the use of atomic energy they become axiomatic.”[20]

What General Gavin put forth in his book could be applied in either environment of limited or unlimited war.The U.S. Army proved this in Vietnam.Yet big power ineptness will continue; for the Soviets will blunder into Afghanistan, repeating America’s mistake of 1961.Again, a big power will go down to ignominious defeat to a nation, which by comparison, was backward, lacking an industrial and technological infrastructure and in the case of Afghanistan, was devoid of a functioning system of central government.Or as Roger Trinquier noted in his A French View of Counterinsurgency:

“Warfare is now an interlocking system of actions—political, economic, psychological, military—that aims at the overthrow of the established authority and its replacement by another regime.To achieve this end, the aggressor tries to exploit the internal tensions of the country attacked—ideological, social, religious, economic—any conflict liable to have profound influence on the population to be conquered.Moreover, in view of the present day interdependence of nations, any residual grievance within the population, no matter however localized and lacking in scope will surely be brought by determined adversaries into the framework of the greater world conflict.From a localized conflict of secondary origin and importance, they will always attempt sooner or later to bring about a generalized conflict.”[21]

For America, what Trinquier was expressing was tantamount to a cultural change.For up to November 25-26, 1950, the conventional or Total War doctrine of the United States was based on the destruction of the enemy’s army so as to bring the foe to the conference table or, unconditional surrender.The popular notion of same was effected towards the defeat of the Axis Powers.

January 1943, Casablanca Conference, featuring President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill, where unconditional surrender was announced.Earlier in the war, Churchill had proclaimed, “Victory at all Costs!”At the same time, FDR, during a fireside chat, September 29, 1940, stated, “’A nation can have peace with the Nazis only at the price of total surrender . . . such a dictated peace would be no peace at all.It would only be another armistice, leading to the most devastating trade war in history.’Nevertheless he adopted this hypothetical Nazi policy, and, as we shall see, its results were identical to those he foretold.[22]But what about the American Civil War or, what it actually was, the Revolt of the Planters, since the Confederacy was a revolution from the Right.However whatever label is applied, it was the first war in which America engaged in industrialized, corporatized war.

Commander-in-Chief of the Union or United States Army, General Winfield Scott, showcased a basic understanding of economic warfare:Close off Southern ports; control the Mississippi River and cut off the eastern portion of the Confederacy from its western frontier.Despite this, the Confederacy was able to best, for the most part, the battlefield tactically; that is, of course, until the North got its wartime economy in gear, per Levee en Masse, then the South was doomed.An example of how a nation of farmers was not going to best a nation of wrench-turners in a conventional war during the age of the Industrial Revolution.

Of some of the leading Union generals after Gettysburg, such as Meade, Sheridan and Grant, the one who seemed to have the firmest grip on modern economic warfare was William Tecumseh Sherman.Total defeat of the Southern armies rested on attacking the economy.And during 1864-1865, hearkened back to the Mongol depredations of the 13^th century.Destroy it, so that it would be not available to the enemy tomorrow.Indeed, Sherman acknowledged his policy of terror and destruction:“Until we can repopulate Georgia, it is useless to occupy it; but utter destruction of the road, houses and people will cripple their military resources . . . I can make the march, and make Georgia howl . . . Should I be forced to assault . . . I shall then feel justified in resorting to the hardest measures, and shall make little effort to restrain my army . . . We are not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war . . . The truth is the whole army is burning with an insatiable desire to wreak vengeance on South Carolina.I almost tremble at her fate.”[23] Thus April 9, 1865, Robert E. Lee will sign an armistice, which in reality, was an admission of utter defeat of that four-year experiment known as the Confederacy.At the same time, the Southerners of 1864-1865 must be acknowledged as those Americans, unlike any other generation in the history of this country, who understood the rudiments of modern, industrialized, conventional war . . . Total War, because they were on the receiving end of it and endured it.A lesson of stark significance that is seemingly ignored.Indeed, the blaze in bloody Kansas waged by the likes of John Brown became that firestorm of economic warfare by William Tecumseh Sherman.

1914, the European colonial powers bungled their way into another industrialized conflict; one more horrible and costly than the American tragedy some fifty years earlier.For Man’s talent for innovation, invention and production, financed by Capitalism, would bring on a struggle of global proportions not yet seen in the history of Man.A manmade cataclysm that will spam the years of 1914-1945.

For the United States, which in 1914 was the world’s ranking industrial power going on twenty years, the basic American military doctrine remained unchanged, as understood in the 1914 Field Service Regulations of the United States Army:

“Only by means of an energetic pursuit of the beaten army can the full fruits of victory and decisive results therefrom can be obtained.It is not mere defeat of the enemy’s army, but its destruction, that ends the campaign.[24]The task of the victorious army is less than half performed when it remains satisfied with the mere possession of the battlefield.Pursuit must immediately follow victory, and every effort be made to continue contact with the enemy, day and night, up to the absolute limit of physical endurance of the troops.”[25]

By the summer of 1918, the United States Army, together with the British and French armies, defeated the winded German armies, forcing imperial Germany to an armistice on November 11, 1918, followed by the Versailles Treaty, June 28, 1919.Such was the American approach to war in 1865, 1918 and 1945.

Such was the American military doctrine on June 25, 1950.Following the breakout from the Pusan perimeter, in conjunction with General Douglas MacArthur’s inspired amphibious effort at Inchon, once South Korea had been cleared of invading North Korean troops, President Harry Truman concurred with General MacArthur and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to push across the 38^th parallel, invade North Korea, destroy the North Korean People’s Army and unify the peninsula under the banner of President Syngman Rhee.But as United Nation’s forces closed on the Chinese border, America’s Cold War use of military force would be changed.

Initial Chinese “encroachments” into North Korea served as warnings, indicating that Peking would not tolerate UN armies on the Chinese border.Such warnings were ignored.And so on the night of November 25-26, 1950, 300,000 Chinese “volunteers” from the People’s Liberation Army flooded across the Yalu River.From this date forward, America’s military doctrine was changed.

The Korean War would end where it began, the 38^th parallel.The quest to destroy the North Korean People’s Army and unify the contested peninsula ended in failure.The destruction of the enemy’s army to bring him to the conference table failed.Stalemate brought both sides to the conference table, in a struggle that has come to be representative of every war America would fight from here on in, Limited War.

Limited War dominated the Second Indochina War, bolstered, in part, by concern of another Chinese intervention.Again, November 25-26, 1950 loomed large in the 1960s.Unlike the Korean conflict, which ended as a stalemate, Vietnam proved to be an unmitigated political defeat.The Persian Gulf War, again, a Limited War effort, which in the end, left Saddam in power.Iraq, Afghanistan, Limited War, with the former and the latter both ending in political defeat.

Such was the era the United States Army found itself in immediately following Korea.Yet it was the calamity of Vietnam that would cause a transformation of the ground forces.A period of limited budgets, limited manpower, limited assets, limited support and Limited War.Yet it was expected to prepare for large scale conventional war in Europe.

Airmobility, though, had been proven.The Army would be able to hold on to its tactical aerial assets as well as control of same.In turn, this will lead to Aviation joining the service masthead of branches.It now truly had a seat at the table.

Endnotes

[1]RAF Wing Commander, J.A. Chamier, 1921.See page 5, “The Myth of Air Control,” by Dr. James S. Corum.

[2]Sir High “Boom” Trenchard has come to be known as the noted British practitioner of the strategic use of airpower.And he is considered by the United States Air Force as the godfather of strategic bombing.American air commanders such as Henry “Hap” Arnold and Carl Spaatz saw Trenchard as the “Patron Saint of Airpower.”

[3]Along the lines, perhaps, of the fate of the Union Army Balloon Corps, 1863.

[4]This first chapter of Man’s greatest industrialized, corporatized conflict cost the British 908,371 dead to preserve their empire.Cost the French 1,357,800 to retain their colonial holdings.The big loser here was Germany, which lost 1,773,700 dead and lost her colonies.The competitor that came out of this conflict smelling like a rose was Japan.As an Allied power, Tokyo’s reward for being a dutiful Allied power was to receive many of Germany’s holdings in the Pacific . . . at a cost of only 300 to 400 dead.

[5]See page 2, James S. Corum.

[6]See page 4, “British Air Control,” by Captain Davis Willard Parsons, USAF.

[7]See page 5, Captain Davis Willard Parsons.

[8]Italics belong to the author.

[9]See page 9, “The Army Aviation Requirements for the ‘70s,” Army Aviation, by Major General Allen M. Burdett, Jr., March 31, 1970.

[10]The rambunctious nature of the Civil Rights and Anti-War movements is obvious here.Of course, the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act renders the employment of regular troops on America streets, generally, as unlawful.Or as found in 6 USC 466:Sense of Congress reaffirming the continued importance of applicability of the Posse Comitatus Act,” text contains those laws in effect on October 18, 2024:

1)Section 1385, of title 18 (commonly known as the “Posse Comitatus Act”) prohibits the use of the Armed Forces as a posse comitatus to execute the laws except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress.

2)Enacted in 1878, the Posse Comitatus Act was expressly intended to prevent United States Marshals, on their own initiative, from calling on the Army for assistance in enforcing Federal law.

4) Nevertheless, by its expressed terms, the Posse Comitatus Act is not a complete barrier to the use of the Armed Forces for a range of domestic purposes, including law enforcement functions, when the use of the Armed Forces is required to fulfill the President’s obligations under the Constitution to respond promptly in time of war, insurrection, or other serious emergency.In addition . . .

. . . Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Forces as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both . . .    Title 18, U.S. Code, Section 1385.

[11]Major General Burdett is warning of the similar situation faced by Air Marshal Trenchard in 1918-1919; as well as for the United States Army following 1945 and again after 1953.Italics are the author’s.

[12]See page 5, “How to do More Things Better With a Given Size Force,” Army Aviation, by Brigadier General William J. Maddox, February 15, 1971.

[13]“Unfortunately, we have not yet attained the idealistic goal wherein nations can live in harmony with each other with little likelihood of aggression.As Sir John Winthrop Hacket has stated:A society of men in which no resort to forces is possible, either for the common good or against it, is inconceivable, so long as man remains what he is.”See page 6, “Aviation in the ‘70s,” an address by Lieutenant General George I. Forsythe, August 1970.

[14]Southeast Asia Treaty Organization was founded in September 1954.Founding members were the United States, Great Britain, New Zealand, Australia, the Philippines, Thailand and Pakistan.Most of the signers were not of the region; though the agreement was an attempt to stop the spread of Communism in the area in question.“Beyond its activities, the SEATO charter was also vitally important to the American rationale for the Vietnam War.The United States used the organization as its justification for refusing to go forward with the 1956 elections intended to reunify Vietnam, instead maintaining the divide between Communist North Vietnam and South Vietnam at the 17^th parallel.As the conflict in Vietnam unfolded, the inclusion of Vietnam as a territory under SEATO protection gave the United States the legal framework for its continued involvement there.”See Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), 1954,” 2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/lw/88315.htm

[15]See pages 116 and 117, Chapter 5, “The Nixon Presidency,” American Presidents and the Middle East, by George Lenczowski.

[16]See page 35, Chapter 2, “Succeeding John Bull,” War and Peace in the Middle East, by Avi Shlaim.It must be understood that this period of 1968-1971 is a quarter century beyond the actual collapse of the British Empire, 1945.The changing of the guard was already in full-blown progression, with European dominance over and the new balance of power that had arisen from the ashes of history’s greatest industrialized, corporatized war, the Great War, 1914-1945; indeed, Levee en Masse personified:That is the United States and the Soviet Union.

[17]A fateful decision that would help lead to the Iranian Revolution in 1978.

[18]Hanoi completed the unification of Vietnam by April 30, 1975.The Vietnamese will invade Cambodia, December 25, 1978 to rid their neighbor of the murderous Khmer Rouge.It is important to understand that Pol Pot had evicted Vietnamese settlers from Cambodia and back into Vietnam as refugees; in addition, to Vietnamese concerns of the large Chinese minority (the Hoas) in South Vietnam, seen as potential fifth columnists, a realistic outlook when one understands, too, the 20^th century relationship of enmity and discord between the Vietnamese and their huge neighbor to the north.

Chinese troops flooded across the Sino-Vietnamese border in the north so as to punish their fellow Communists.Some 250,000 Chinese troops were earmarked for this campaign.Hanoi arranged some 150,000 militia to engage the invaders, keeping in reserve, upwards of seven NVA regular divisions in defense of Hanoi.The Border Militia did most of the fighting and, were hardly second stringers.

The Vietnamese gave ground, acceding provincial capitals Lao Cai, Cao Bang, Dong Dang and Lang Son.But the short, sharp war cost the People’s Liberation Army dearly.“General Wu Xiuquan, the Chinese Deputy Chief of the General Staff told a delegation from the Institute of Higher Studies for National Defense, France (led by General Andre Marte) that the Chinese Army suffered 20,000 killed and wounded in this four-week war.”See page 7, “The Sino-Vietnam War-1979:Case Studies in Limited Wars,” Bharat Rakshak, Monitor, Vol. 3, November-December 2000, by Colonel G.D. Bakshi, VSM.

The 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War was seen by Deng Xiao Peng as justifying his concerns as to the modernization long necessary to bring the People’s Liberation Army up to contemporary standards of modern war.While at the same time, the United States committed itself to refurbish the American armed forces in the post-Vietnam War era.

Addendum:Reported, too, by intelligence sources of the Vietnamese use of chemical weapons to turn back the Chinese incursion, including the use of Botulin bacteria or toxin, supplied, of course, by the Soviet Union.Author Sterling Seagrave wrote in his book Yellow Rain, interviewing American diplomats who related that “a number of terse, cryptic Chinese army radio transmissions, from unit to unit, mentioning coming under chemical attack.”See page 214, Chapter 11, “Dig Tunnels Deep,” Yellow Rain, by Sterling Seagrave.

[19]See page 402, Book Four, “Plan of War,” Chapter VI, (A) “Influence of the Political Object on the Military Object,” On War, by Carl von Clausewitz.

[20See page 140, Chapter 6, “Airborne Armies of the Future,” Airborne Warfare, by Major General James M. Gavin.

[21]See page 5, “Modern World Defined,” A French View of Counterinsurgency, by Roger Trinquier.

[22]See page 278, Chapter XIII, “The Conduct of World War II,” The Conduct of War, 1789-1961, by J.F.C. Fuller.

[23]See pages 108 and 109, Chapter VI, “The American Civil War, 1861-1865,” The Conduct of War, 1789-1961, by J.F.C. Fuller.

[24]To be added here as well, to destroy the enemy’s capability to wage war . . . attack and destroy the enemy’s economy.

[25]See page 87, Article V, “Combat:The Pursuit,” Field Service Regulations, United States Army, 1914.

Bibliography

6 USC 466:Sense of Congress Reaffirming the Continued Importance and Applicability of the Posse Comitatus Act, Text Contains Those Laws in Effect on October 18, 2024, uscode.house.gov/view.xtmi?req=(title:6secton…

Baker, Bonnie, “The Origins of the Posse Comitatus,” www.airuniversity.af.edu/portals/10/ASPJ/joirnals/Chronicles/baker1.pdf

Bakshi, Colonel G.D., VSM, “The Sino-Vietnamese War—1979:Case Studies in Limited Wars,” Bharat Rakshak Monitor, Vol. 3 (3), November 2000.Republished with permission by Lancer Publications, Indian Defense Review, Vol. 14 (2), July-September 2000.

Burdett, Major General Allen M., Jr., “The Army Aviation Requirements for the ‘70s,” Army Aviation, Army Aviation Publications, Inc., Westport, Ct., March 31, 1970.

Clausewitz, Carl von, On War, Penguin Books, Middlesex, England, 1968.Originally published 1832, Vom Kriege.

Corum, Dr. James S., “The Myth of Air Control, Reassessing the History,” Aerospace Power Journal, Winter 2000.www.airpower.au.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj00/win00/corum.htm

Forsythe, Lieutenant General George I., “Aviation in the ‘70s,” Army Aviation, Vol. 19, No. 8, Army Aviation Publications, Inc., Westport, Ct., August 1970.

Fuller, J.F.C., The Conduct of War, 1789-1961, Da Capo Press, New York, NY., 1961.

Gavin, Major General James M., Airborne Warfare, The Battery Press, Inc., Nashville, Tennessee, 1980.

Lenczowski, George, American Presidents And the Middle East, Duke University Press, Durham and London, 1990.

Maddox, Brigadier General William J., Jr., Director of Army Aviation, OACSFOR, DA, Army Aviation, Vol. 20, No. 2, Army Aviation Publications, Inc., Westport, Ct., February 15, 1971.

Parsons, Captain David Willard, USAF, “British Air Control:A Model Application of Air Power in Low-Intensity Conflict?” Airpower Journal, Summer 1994.www.airpower.au.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj94/sum94/parsons.html

Posse Comitatus Act, 1878, Title 18, U.S. Code, Section 1385, liveman.sdsu.edu/docs/1878PosseComitatusAct.pdf

Seagrave, Sterling, Yellow Rain:A Journey Through the Terror of Chemical Warfare, M. Evans and Company, Inc., New York, New York, 1981.

Shlaim, Avi, War and Peace in the Middle East, Penguin Books, New York, New York, 1995.

Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), 1954, 2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/lw/88315.htm

Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), 1954, Milestones:1953-1960, Office of the Historian, Department of State, United States of America, history.state.gov/milestones/1953-1960’seato

“The Pursuit,” Field Regulations, United States Army, 1914, Changes No. 7, The Collegiate Press, George Banta Publishing Company, Menasha, Wisconsin, August 18, 1917.

Trinquier, Roger, Modern Warfare:A French View of Counterinsurgency, Combat Studies Institute, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 1985.Originally published in Great Britain, 1964, Pall Mall Ltd., London, England.

Looking Back, October 2024
By Mark Albertson

Remembering the Air Observation Post Fliers

October 1978, Air Observation Post fliers held a reunion at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. During World War II, it was the Air OPs who planted that seed for what would later become Army Aviation.

Commander was Colonel (later brigadier general) William Wallace Ford. An artilleryman who became a flier, Ford was the first Director of Air Training and formed the Army’s first Air Observation Post for the Field Artillery. He will be inducted into the Army Aviation Hall of Fame in 1975, as being representative of the Pre-1942 Period. He will be followed into the Hall of Fame by other members of the Air Observation Post.

Resurrected from the May 31, 1979 issue of Army Aviation, is a roster of photos of the Air OPs, at Fort Sill, 1942. Such is a living record of the origins of Army Aviation. Click on a photo to enlarge.

 

Sources:

• Pages 25, 27, 29, 30, 31 & 33, Army Aviation, Vol. 28, No. 5, May 31, 1979.
• Army Aviation Hall of Fame, “Inductees,” William Wallace Ford.

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.

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