Looking Back, May 2025
By Mark Albertson

80th Anniversary of World War II:
Army Aviation: The Pacific Theater

Combat conditions in the Pacific Theater of Operations differed from those in the European Theater.  From the start, the war in the West was, for the most part, of a conventional type:  Infantry, artillery, armor, used on a scale not seen in the Pacific.  From the North African Desert, onto Sicily, up the Italian boot and across the French countryside into Germany, armies were employed on a level conducive to the precepts of maneuver and mobility, combining ground power with airpower as the Allied advance rolled up the outnumbered German armies.

          In the Pacific it was a different story.  The Allied strategy was based on naval power.  As the United States Navy recovered and rebounded from the debacle at Pearl Harbor, Allied fortunes rose, spurring success after success.  In other words, the Island-Hopping Campaign.  Unlike the more conventional approach to war in the ETO, the Allied approach to war in the PTO amounted to a modern version of Siege Warfare.  As the U.S. Pacific Fleet wrested control of the world’s largest ocean from the Imperial Japanese Navy, control of the seas reduced Japanese island bastions to hopeless positions of encirclement, condemning ill-fated garrisons to the dismal prospects of starvation when bypassed or certain destruction when Allied troops stormed ashore.

          Early stages of the Island-Hopping Campaign did not see the mass employment of troops as compared to the ETO.  For instance, the fall of 1944 there were forty U.S. Army divisions in the ETO as opposed to 21 in the Pacific, plus six Marine Corps divisions.  Twenty-four divisions of the U.S. Army formed a strategic reserve.[1]  It was really not until the latter stages of the campaign that an ETO equivalent of troops was committed in the Pacific, such as in the Philippines and Okinawa.[2]

          In the PTO, many of the combat environments were jungle infested.  This rendered difficult the employment of artillery.  For instance, “In the initial island-to-island warfare, where difficult jungle terrain was often encountered, flash ranging was found impractical and was not attempted . . . On the other hand, sound ranging provided an excellent means of locating Japanese artillery and the adjusting of our artillery.”[3]

          An example of operating in a dense jungle environment was New Guinea.  So thick was the tangled jungle canopy, that it was not uncommon to find forward observers better able to direct artillery fire.  Still intruding Cubs proved enough of a nuisance to garner the attention of prowling Zeros; for the Air OPs quickly became associated with the accuracy of the Field Artillery.

          But uses for Cubs were found beyond that of their original intent.  Being a rain forest, roads in New Guinea were rare and those that existed quickly became quagmires following  heavy rains.  Cubs were pressed into service as air taxis, hauling brass, delivering messages, moving supplies, transporting wounded in addition to reconnaissance and patrols.

          Air OPs were employed to direct counterbattery fire onto Japanese gunners shelling American barges moving supplies along the coast; and, conversely directing American artillery onto Japanese barges.

          Needless to say that in this jungle nightmare, there was always something for the Cub pilots to do.  Captain Edwin Leer, a December 1942 graduate of Fort Sill, commanded a group of five L-4B Cubs, four sergeant pilots and himself.  In the course of 2.5 months in the New Guinea jungle, Leer and his fliers logged 956 hours.[4]

          A projected use of the Cub was flying “top cover” for an amphibious landing.  “Just as the Lae show was getting under way it was found that the Jap might have evacuated Salamaua.  No one was sure, however.  (If you do not know Jap fire discipline and camouflage, such a situation may be hard to visualize.)  Our forces slowly pushed in toward the town while 3 barges with assault troops were dispatched for a diversionary landing on the beach in front of the town itself.  The barge-borne outfit would need plenty of help if the Jap was waiting, so it was decided to use a Cub for ‘top cover’—our artillery being registered on a base point near the beach, the Cub would fly in with the barges and direct fire in case of opposition.  Undoubtedly the idea would have worked, but no opposition was encountered.”[5]

          In the Philippines, spring 1945, from Loacan air strip, near Baguio, Air OPs of the 33^rd Infantry Division, operated off an air strip some 4,000 feet up in the rugged mountains of Luzon.  The aviators did more than fly artillery fire direction missions; they developed their own photographic section, scrounging equipment wherever possible.  So successful was this effort in initiative that the Sixth Army artillery officer suggested that the practice be carried out in other divisions.

          The forbidding terrain compromised close air support for the troops battling the stubborn Japanese.  Cubs were thrown into action as pathfinders for bombing attack, dropping smoke grenades to mark targets for destruction.  In 40 air strikes, this aerial combination resulted in no friendly fire incidents.  Likewise Cubs were employed to lead C-47 pilots to their proper drop zones in the mountains so as to resupply troops on the advance.  This enabled the supply planes to better navigate the mountainous terrain and deal with the hazardous air currents.[6]

          But Leyte was more than just rugged mountains with hazardous air currents.  Like New Guinea it was home to the ubiquitous jungle.  And this is where the 11^th Airborne Division found itself, slogging its way through the rainy, muddy, disease-ridden wallow to root out the entrenched Japanese.  Liaison pilots found themselves supporting their comrades-in-arms in this fetid wasteland.  As noted by Major Edward M. Flanagan, Jr., F.A., it “is the story of the overworked artillery air fleet doing a steam shovel’s job with a spoon.”[7]

          To move supplies through the jungle, logs were used to cover the mud-caked roads.  This did not always work, the logs sometimes sinking into the morass from the weight of the trucks.  The Carabao, the indigenous pack animal used in the jungle, proved limited on the steep mountain tracks, which sometimes proved little better than inclined stream beds during torrential downpours.  The troops themselves could not carry much in this unforgiving environment.  Aircraft, though, proved invaluable.

          The impenetrable Leyte jungle restricted drop zones or clearings for C-47s to adequately supply the troops.  Not so the flivver planes.  At Manarawat, a field dug out of the jungle was able to handle Cubs.  Aviators flew in sections of a portable hospital which was then constructed.  Doctors saved the lives of many wounded, sometimes operating under flashlights.  Some of the wounded were delivered to doctor’s care by Cubs, thereby avoiding time-consuming treks through the jungle.

          From the division artillery air fleet, some nine Cubs and 7 L-5s were put to work, delivering arms, ammunition and supplies to troops advancing in the Leyte jungles.  At one point, the flivver planes delivered 21 tons a day, in a performance that would herald the work of rotary wing aircraft and crews in Korea and Vietnam.

          Perhaps the last words are from a mortar platoon leader, when he wrote, “The liaison plane performed an outstanding job of resupplying the advance elements in the mountains.  The difficulty of locating units in their small areas and the continuous bad weather made the liaison plane very effective.  Their slow speed and maneuverability made them much more effective than higher performance aircraft.’[8]

China-Burma-India Theater

          In the often referred to “Forgotten Theater” of war, the Army Air Forces was the primary employer of light aircraft.  For instance L-4s and L-5s were used to fly engineers in an out of construction sites during the building of the Ledo Road—through northern Burma for the link up with the Burma Road from Lashio to Kunming—the epic supply route to the hard pressed Chinese Nationalist forces.[9]

          The L-1 or O-49 was found to be useful in the rugged Asian continent.  While the C-47 proved invaluable for its trips over the Hump, delivering supplies and evacuating wounded, the L-1 proved invaluable in local evacuations, its power plant able to hoist it above much of the area’s mountainous terrain.  Conversely, liaison pilots braved the hazards posed by the lower altitudes to airlift supplies, facing violent air currents which could send a flivver plane cascading out of control into a sheer mountain face or spiraling into the jungle floor below.

          Transporting of wounded became virtually a matter of life or death in the impenetrable jungle.  Backwater hospitals were linked by light planes making repeated runs to and from combat zones, airlifting foot sloggers in need of doctor’s care.  The rudiment of the later Dustoff squadron in Vietnam can be found in the CBI.  And examples abound:

          “In response to a desperate plea for help from a big British force trapped in the Arakon area of southern Burma, seven light planes and nineteen sergeant pilots in fifteen days evacuated seven hundred casualties—with British Spitfires flying cover.[10]

          OSS member, Richard Dunlop, related a rescue of a B-25 crew that had crashed into a swamp some 20 miles north of Myitkyina, ” . . . and Dennis Francis and a party of Kachins hurried to the scene from Arang.  They found the crew alive but in terrible condition.  There was no possibility that they could survive a trip by surface over the Mogaung Valley’s precipitous trails, so Francis and the Kachins hastily leveled a meager three-hundred-foot-long airfield in the patties . . . and a liaison pilot named Anderson flew his two-seater L-1 in from Myitkyina to pick up the injured fliers.  He made five trips, a trip for each man, bringing them all out to Myitkyina from where they could be flown to the hospital in Ledo.[11]

          Yet whether in or out of the CBI, it was not all doom and gloom in the PTO; there was a lighter side, even in that giant whirlpool of war.  “General Joseph ‘Vinegar Joe’ Stilwell, Commander of Tenth Army, used Cubs extensively during operations in the Pacific.  He enjoyed riding with the Air OPs with the windows open.  On one occasion he was being flown by SSgt. Lyle W. White on a mission off Okinawa.  A gust of wind blew through the Cub’s cockpit and the general’s battered campaign hat that he had worn for over 20 years, blew out the window.

          “General Stilwell sadly watched his hat float down and plop into the sea.  He remarked, ‘I’d sure like to go down there and rescue my old friend.’  Upon landing, Stilwell offered $25 to anyone who recovered the hat; much to his delight, it was returned to him 4 hours later.”[12]

Postscript

          This is the sixth and final chapter of the “80^th Anniversary of Army Aviation in World War II —or what it really was, the Air Observation Post.  Reference to the entire series can be found rostered in endnote number 13.[13]

          On December 8^th, 1941, the Air OP’s sole reason for existence was for the aerial direction of artillery fire.  And the platform of choice was the L-4 Piper Cub, an aircraft which appears in the annals of Army Aviation and, which can be construed as having changed the course of the history of the tactical air branch of the United States Army.  The first being the gas bags of the Balloon Corps followed by the Cub; succeeded by the UH-1 Huey, which in turn will be followed by the AH-64 Apache.  Each is emblematic of the distinct phases which mark the Saga of Army Aviation.

          The gas bags of the Balloon Corps marked the Army’s first organized attempt into the realm of airpower, predominately for the purposes of aerial reconnaissance followed by modest attempts at the aerial direction of artillery fire.  But the tethered balloon embodied the lack of mobility during the first half of the War Between the States; precisely the factor which would justify the comeback of the static balloon some fifty years later on the Western Front.  But with the advent of mobility returning to the battlefield in 1863, Union generals steeped in the Napoleonic-Jomini tradition of arms relied on swift moving cavalry formations to conduct reconnaissance as well as maneuver warfare.

          The L-4 Cub, though, provided that mode of mobility needed for the Field Artillery to effect the aerial direction of artillery fire within the confines of modern conventional warfare.  Easy to maintain and cheap to manufacture, the Cub represented that vehicle of mobility that would form the basis for a tactical air capability for the Ground Forces, a giant step forward.  For it was almost certain as sunrise that with the advent of the U.S. Army Air Forces in 1941, and the wider field of opportunity that was provided for the strategic employment of airpower during World War II, that a separate branch known as the United States Air Force was a foregone conclusion.

          So to for the Ground Forces.  The Air OPs proved their worth to the extent that other branches of the Army desired their services or clamored for their own capabilities, such as the Infantry and Armor.  For besides directing artillery fire, Air OPs conduced aerial observation, aerial photography, route-column control, cabbie service for brass, medical evacuation, courier service, light conveyance of supplies, as well as directing attack aircraft and fighter-bombers in strikes against ground targets.  “’The effectiveness of air-ground cooperation is still in its infancy.  Air and ground commanders must be constantly on the alert to devise, and use, new methods of cooperation.’  These words, written by General George S. Patton, Jr., in 1945 and published in his book, War as I Knew it, are still worth our attention.”[14]

          Yet a major contributor to the future course of Army Aviation were those actions taken by those inspired to arm their Cubs for combat.  Enterprising individuals looking to turn their putt-putts into war machines . . . that is, of a sort, firing .45s out of the cockpit or affixing bazookas and even missiles to the wings.  In Italy, for instance, Cubs from the Fifth Army were prepped to launch a bombing raid.  “With all systems go, the attacking L-4s putt-putted up to the green Auscente Valley in their usual lackadaisical manner, then suddenly they shifted direction and raced, with what for them was phenomenal speed, over the target area.  Each pilot carried a five-gallon tin can of gasoline mixed with oil on his wing strut and at the precise moment, he shoved it off with his foot.  Most of the ‘bombs’ landed well outside the target area.”[15]

          The arming of Cubs for action against the enemy amounted to little better than mosquitoes attacking an elephant.  But such episodes of individual initiative were hardly examples of comic relief; rather, these efforts were examples of Yankee ingenuity and independent thinking (usually frowned upon by reactionary types).  For in the end, perhaps the arming of Cubs displayed a deep-seated distrust of the Air Force agenda.  And for those ready to disparage such thoughts need to be mindful of the actions taken by “Vanderpool’s Fools,” 11 or 12 years down the road.  This, then, should make it obvious that not only were the airmen in the Army Air Forces looking to create an independent service, but the seeds were being planted for an autonomous aviation branch within the Army to take its place alongside the Infantry, Armor, Signal Corps, etc.  The first attempt to create something resembling autonomy for airpower was in 1914, with the actions of Lieutenant Paul Beck and Congressman James Hay; though it was reaching critical mass by 1945.[16]  And by 1947, with the National Security Act, the U.S. Air Force took it place alongside the Army and Navy as a separate service.  But differences of opinion concerning roles and missions would not end with the divorce from the Army.  And as with many broken marriages, disagreements continued for years.  Hence the use of Cubs for the evacuation of wounded or to pick up and drop off personnel, which accurately forecast the Army’s use of the Huey to perform the same tasks on a more massive scale in Vietnam; as did the arming of the Cubs showcase the future employment of the AH-64 Apache by the Army to handle its version of close air support of the foot soldier.  Classic examples of how history repeats; of course, the repetition is never exact, but it does repeat.  Or if you are a disciple of Mark Twain, history rhymes.

          It is undeniable that the actions of the Air OPs to competently perform tasks other than that of the aerial direction of artillery fire broadened the appeal of Army Aviation; an appeal that would serve to bolster the post-World War II fortunes of Army Aviation . . . an appeal that would be advanced by the helicopter.

          We begin with the Sikorsky VS-316, a platform based off the VS-300 prototype.  A contract was signed with the Army Air Corps on January 10, 1941.  And the VS-316, better known as the R-4, became acknowledged as the world’s first production helicopter.

          On May 13, 1942, test pilot Les Morris took off from Bridgeport, Connecticut for a long distance flight to Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio.  “The trip took five days and covered 761 miles.  The elapsed time was 16 hours and 10 minutes in a series of 16 separate flights.  A ‘chase’ vehicle (a sedan with 4 passengers) . . . with a large yellow circle painted on the roof accompanied the XR-4.  Igor Sikorsky flew with . . . Les Morris from Cleveland to Mansfield, Ohio and the final leg from Springfield to Dayton, Ohio.  The XR-4 arrived in Dayton on May 17, 1942 and was accepted by the Government on May 30, 1942.  During the trip two unofficial records wee set:  A distance record of 92 miles (Mansfield to Springfield) and an endurance record of one hour and 50 minutes.”[17]

          Captain Frank Gregory, USAAF, who was responsible for helicopter development for the Army, conducted shipboard tests from the tanker, Bunker Hill, in Long Island Sound off Stratford, Connecticut.  Twenty successful liftoffs by Captain Gregory showcased the potential maritime utility of rotary wing aircraft.[18]

          The first actual combat rescue mission was flown by 2^nd Lieutenant Carter Harmon, USAAF, April 26-27, 1944.  Behind enemy lines in Burma, were three wounded British commandos and the USAAF pilot sent to effect their rescue, all left stranded when their L-1 had gone down in the jungle.  Liaison planes kept the men supplied for four nights.  Harmon, meanwhile, had removed the co-pilot’s seat from his YR-4 so as to accommodate four Jerry cans for another 21 gallons of fuel.  He took off from Lalagat, India, flying a route which included scaling a 6,000 foot mountain range.  He made four trips to extract those trapped.[19]

          The shades of Vietnam here are unmistakable.  And the actions of such groups as the 71^st Liaison Squadron and the 1^st Air Commando Group commanded by Colonels Phil Cochran and         

John Alison, forecast the Army’s performance in Southeast Asia twenty years hence.  But instead of the flivver plane, it would be the helicopter that would carry the ball for the Army.  The old saying is that you have to crawl before you can walk.  Well in World War II, the helicopter was crawling; in Korea, it walked.  But in Vietnam, the helicopter ran—fast . . . proving a concept that would revolutionize warfare, the Airmobility Concept; a game-changing notion akin to the Wehrmacht’s use of the armored warfare fighting vehicle in a Combined Arms Warfare package that ensured the quick destruction of Germany’s enemies; AKA Blitzkrieg, which proved a vindication of the interwar understanding of the ghastly stalemate of the trenches during 1914-1918, by such theorists as Hans von Seeckt.  Likewise, the Airmobility Concept was a vindication of lessons learned during the bloody impasse on the Korean Peninsula.

          But it behooves those intimately affiliated with Army Aviation to not only understand their history at this stage, but to thoroughly comprehend it.  For Army Aviation is not only a branch of the Army—a one-dimensional exercise in reflection practiced by those who are but of a narrow-minded variety.  Rather Army Aviation is an experience, an emotion.  We need to celebrate those stalwart types who emerged from World War II and Korea to weather a storm of criticism based on a stigma accepted by short-sighted brother soldiers who chided them for sticking with a segment of the Service which was viewed as nothing more than a dead end.  Talk to a few Cub pilots and early helicopter jockeys and that is exactly what they will tell you.  The success of Army Aviation, then, was built on those who refused to capitulate to such reactionary thinking and antagonisms.  This, then, makes Army Aviation not merely a branch of the United States Army, but . . . a Movement.  A movement like the 19^th century Carbonari who were wedded to the Il Risorgimento or Unification of Italy.  Like the Vietminh led by Ho Chi Minh who fought and later won the unification of Vietnam.  Like the United States Marine Corps.  Leathernecks, it seems, are not just Veterans or active duty people.  They are part of a tradition that is a Brotherhood, one which goes back to the American Revolution, with each generation adding and building that tradition.  The Royal Navy can be viewed along similar lines.  And that is how Army Aviation must be viewed by its veterans and supporters, such as those of the Army Aviation Association of America.  A poverty of such attitude and Army Aviation will not be long for this world.  And it is with this idea in mind that this series is dedicated to those early aviators in both Cubs and helicopters, together with their ground crews and all those others who organized the Air Observation Post and its evolution into what is today’s Army Aviation.  For without their steadfast perseverance, Army Aviation never would have become that indispensable vehicle of support of the Foot Soldier.         

Endnotes

[1]  See page 467, Chapter 21, “Grand Strategy and the Washington High Command,” American Military History, edited by Maurice Matloff.

[2]  For the invasion of Leyte, October 1944, Lieutenant General Walter Krueger had 202,500 troops in his Sixth Army.  See page 10, “Operations,” Leyte, The U.S. Army Campaigns of World War II, United States Army Center of Military History, by Charles R. Anderson.

       For the invasion of Okinawa, April 1, 1945, Lieutenant General Simon B. Buckner, in command of Tenth Army, had 183,000 soldiers and marines.  See pages 21-28, Chapter 1, “Operation Iceberg,” Okinawa:  The Last Battle, by Roy E. Appleman, James M. Burns, Russell A. Gugeler and John Stevens.

[3]  See page 253, “The Field Artillery Observation Battalion,” Prepared in the Department of Observation, the Artillery School, The Field Artillery Journal, Vol. 38, No. 6. December 1948.

[4]  See page 279, “Air OPs . . . in New Guinea,” The Field Artillery Journal, Vol. 34, No. 5, May 1944, by Captain Robert M. White, II, F.A.

[5]  See page 280, Captain Robert M. White, II, F.A.

[6]  See pages 614-616, “Artillery Cubs in Mountain Operations:  33^rd Inf. Div. in Northern Luzon,” The Field Artillery Journal, Vol. 35, No. 10, October 1945, by Colonel Ralph MacDonald, F.A.

[7]  See page 73, “Biscuit Bombers (Leyte Style),” The Field Artillery Journal, Vol. 38, No. 2, March-April, 1948, by Major Edward M. Flanagan, Jr., F.A.

[8]  “The Operations of the 3^rd Battalion, 511^th Parachute Infantry (11^th Airborne Division) in the Advance Through the Mohonag-Anas Pass to the West Coast of Leyte, 27 November-25 December 1944,” 1^st Lieutenant Richard V. Barnum, Advanced Infantry Officers Class No. II, Fort Benning, GA.

[9]  See page 93, Chapter 4, “Employment,” The Development of Organic Light Aviation in the Army Ground Forces in World War II, by Major Robert S. Brown, USA.

[10]  See page 115, “The Most Lethal Plane in the World,” Mr. Piper and His Cubs, by Devon Francis.

[11]  See pages 308 and 309, “The Airport,” Behind the Lines:  With the OSS in Burma, by Richard Dunlop.

[12]  See page 170, Chapter IV, “The War Years:  Europe, Pacific and Korea,” The Army Aviation Story, by Richard K. Tierney with Fred Montgomery.

[13]  Below is a listing of the six articles chronicling the Air Observation Post in World War II:

         1)  “80^th Anniversary of Army Aviation:  Reflections in North Africa,” Looking Back column, August 2022.

         2)  “80^th Anniversary of Army Aviation:  Combat Debut:  Operation:  TORCH,” Looking Back column, November 2022.

         3:  “80^th Anniversary of Army Aviation:  Operation:  TORCH:  Grasshoppers Earn Their Wings,” Looking Back column, December 2022.

         4)  “80^th Anniversary of World War II:  Army Aviation:  Italian Campaign,” Looking Back column, September 2023.

         5)  “80^th Anniversary of World War II:  Army Aviation:  France,” Looking Back column, August 2024.

         6)  “80^th Anniversary of World War II:  Army Aviation:  The Pacific Theater,” Looking Back column, May 2025.

[14]  See page 169, “Artillery in Air-Ground Cooperation,” The Field Artillery Journal, Vol. 38, No. 4,  July-August 1948, by Lieutenant Colonel Edward S. Berry, F.A.

[15]  See page 66 and 69, Chapter Seven, “Sunny Italy,” Box Seat Over Hell, by Hardy D. Cannon.

[16]  Pages 18 and 19, Chapter Two, “Needle-Point Air Force,” Sky Soldiers:  The Saga of Army Aviation, Vol. 1, by Mark Albertson.  Unpublished manuscript.

[17]  See page 5, “S-47/VS-316A Helicopter,” Sikorsky Product History, prepared by Vinny Devine.

[18]  See pages 6 and 7, “The Development of the Helicopter,” Sikorsky Historical Archives, www.sikorskyarchives.com/tdoth.html

[19]  See page 9, Vinny Devine.  Consult, too, “Saga of the Eggbeater,” by Mark Albertson, World War II History, pages 8-11, 74, October 2016.

Bibliography

Albertson, Mark, “Saga of the Eggbeater,” World War II History, Sovereign Media, McLean, Virginia, October 2016.

Albertson, Mark, unpublished manuscript, Vol. 1, Sky Soldiers:  The Saga of Army Aviation.

Anderson, Charles R., Leyte, 17 October 1944 to 1 July 1945, U.S. Army Campaigns of World War II, Center of Military History, United States Army, CMH Pub 72-27, Washington, D.C., 1994.

Appleman, Roy E.; Burns, James M.; Gugeler, Russell A. and Stevens, John, Okinawa:  The Last Battle, World War II, 50^th Commemorative Edition, Center of Military History, United States Army, CMH Pub 5-11-1, Washington, D.C., 1993.  First published 1948.

Barnum, 1^st Lieutenant Richard V., Advanced Officers Class No. 11, Fort Benning, Georgia, “The Operations of the 3^rd Battalion, 511^th Parachute Infantry (11^th Airborne Division), in the Advance Through the Mohonag-Anas Pass to the West Coast of Leyte, 27 November-25 December 1944.”

Berry, Lieutenant Colonel Edward S., F.A., “Artillery in Air-Ground Cooperation,” The Field Artillery Journal, Vol. 38, No. 4, The United States Field Artillery Association, Washington, D.C., July-August, 1948.

Brown, Major, Robert S., The Development of Organic Light Aviation in the Army Ground Forces in World War II, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, June 2, 2000.

Cannon, Hardy D., Box Seat Over Hell, Hardy Cannon, San Antonio, Texas, 1985.

Department of Observation, The Artillery School, “The Field Artillery Observation Battalion,” Vol. 38, No. 6, The Field Artillery Journal, The United States Field Artillery Association, Washington, D.C., December, 1948.

Devine, Vinny, “S-47/VS-316A Helicopter,” Sikorsky Product History, Igor I. Sikorsky Archives, sikorskyarchives.com/home/sikorsky-product

Dunlop, Richard, Behind the Lines:  With the OSS in Burma, Rand McNally & Company, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, 1979.

Flanagan, Major Edward M., Jr., F.A., “Biscuit Bombers (Leyte Style),” Vol. 38, No. 2, The Field Artillery Journal, The United States Field Artillery Association, Washington, D.C., March-April, 1948.

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

MacDonald, Colonel Ralph, F.A., “Artillery Cubs in Mountain Operations:  33^rd Inf. Div. in Northern Luzon,” Vol. 35, No. 10, The Field Artillery Journal, The United States Field Artillery Association, Washington, D.C., October 1945.

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

“The Development of the Helicopter,” Sikorsky Product History, Igor I. Sikorsky Archives, www.sikorskyarchives.com/tdoth.html

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

White, Captain Robert M., F.A., “Air OPs . . . in New Guinea,” Vol. 34, No. 5, The Field Artillery Journal, The United States Field Artillery Association, Washington, D.C., May, 1944.

Looking Back, April 2025
By Mark Albertson

Operation: KIKUSUI

* * * * *

“We are 16 warriors manning the bombers.  May our death be as sudden as the shattering of glass, . . . from the letter of a Kamikaze pilot.”[2]

* * * * *

It was 80 years ago, April 1, 1945, that Operation:  ICEBERG commenced.  GIs and marines waded ashore to nary the expected opposition, unlike at Tarawa, Saipan, Guam, Peleliu and a half a hundred other places.  The marines struck out for the northern half of the island, encountering light resistance; while the Army, moving south, too, faced light resistance.  Suddenly the Army ran up against a wall of fanatical Japanese who were well dug in.  Casualties mounted quickly.  Up north, the leathernecks reversed course and hurried south to assist their brother soldiers.  They, too, began to incur heavy losses on the Shuri Line.

Soon the battle of Okinawa, the final major battle of World War II would, in just eight weeks, become the third costliest battle in American history.[3]

Yet while the marines and soldiers ashore waged the bitter struggle against the seemingly impregnable Shuri Line, the Navy trying to command the seas around the embattled island will incur its worst losses of the war.  For the Japanese will unleash its most frightening weapon of the conflict, the Devine Wind or Kamikaze.  The origins of which are steeped in history.

“A hurricane swept the invasion fleet of Kublai Khan to disaster off the Japanese coast in 1281.  That ‘devine wind’ saved the Japanese people from foreign domination.  In the last years of World War II, with the tide of Imperial Japanese expansion beaten back, a similar intervention was needed to save Japan from subjection.”[4]

By well into 1943, when it was apparent the tide was turning in the Pacific Theater, the Japanese began to consider approaches other than those of the standard varieties of waging war in an attempt to halt the growing American juggernaut.  Ramming attacks (taiatari) were employed against American aircraft.  Origins here go back to the Bougainville campaign, November 1943, when ramming was used by frustrated Navy pilots.[5]

An example of the above was that of Lieutenant Naoshi Kanno, 306^th Fighter Squadron, 201st Air Group, 1944, based on Yap.  Kanno took on a B-24.  He made a head-on approach, only to find his guns were jammed.  He rapidly closed his quarry, only to sheer away at the last moment, nearly brushing the bomber, only to use his propeller to cut up one on the B-24’s vertical stabilizers.  The Liberator plunged into the sea.  Kanno, meanwhile, nursed his sputtering Zero back to Yap.[6]

But ramming enemy aircraft was hardly a war-winning tactic.  Besides, there was certainly the chance that to bring down an enemy aircraft by ramming could cost a Japanese aircraft and perhaps even the pilot.  Something, then, of greater impact was called for.  Something that could cause the enemy such grievous losses, while at the same time reverse Japanese fortunes.

* * * * *

One of the early supporters of suicide as a military tactic was Captain Eiichiro Jyo, commander of the light carrier Chiyoda.  In the wake of the American victory in the Philippine Sea, Captain Jyo observed, “No longer can we hope to sink the numerically superior enemy aircraft carriers through ordinary attack methods.  I urge the immediate organization of special attack units to carry out crash-dive tactics, and I ask to be placed in command of them.”[7]

Yet the Japanese were fully aware that the United States was going to invade the Philippines and, with the ever growing might of American naval power, extraordinary alternatives to successfully challenge said threat had to be considered.

October 17, 1944, Vice Admiral Takajiro Ohnishi arrived in Manila to take command of First Air Fleet.  He convened a meeting in Mabalacat, headquarters of the 201^st Air Group.  Addressing a small collection of air officers, he spoke of the upcoming naval battle for the Philippines and the Imperial Japanese Navy’s growing disparity against the material advantage enjoyed by its Occidental opponent.

“In my opinion,” he continued, “there is only one way of assuring that our meager strength will be effective to a maximum degree.  That is to organize suicide attack units composed of Zero fighters armed with 250 kilogram bombs, with each plane to crash-dive into enemy carriers, . . . what do you think?[8]

After a round of discussions as to how effective such a drastic action might be, Commander Assaichi Tamai was ordered to form, what would become the first squadron of the Kamikaze Special Attack Corps.  The pilot assigned to lead the first attack was Lieutenant Yukio Seki.  Admiral Ohnishi will sign an announcement for the new Attack Corps on October 20, 1944.

“The 201^st Air Group will organize a special attack corps and will destroy or disable, if possible by 25 October, the enemy carrier forces in the waters east of the Philippines.

“The corps will be called the Shimpu Attack Unit.  It will consist of 26 fighter planes, of which half will be assigned to crash-diving missions, and the remainder to escort, and will be divided into four sections, designated as follows:  Shikishima, Yamato, Asahi and Yamazakura.”[9]

* * * * *

As the Kamikazes were readying themselves for devine self-immolation, history’s greatest naval battle, Leyte Gulf, had already commenced.  This was the last major attempt by the Imperial Japanese Navy’s Combined Fleet to change the momentum of the naval war and turn back the American threat to Japan’s inner defense ring.  The basic Japanese plan saw Southern Force, commanded by Vice Admiral Shojo Nishimura with 2 battleships, 3 heavy cruisers, 1 light cruiser and 7 destroyers come up from the south of Leyte Gulf from the Mindanao Sea through the Surigau Strait to attack the American landing forces of light carriers, destroyers and support vessels; and then from the north, Vice Admiral Takao Kurita, with 5 battleships, 10 heavy cruisers, 2 light cruisers and 15 destroyers would slip through the San Bernadino Strait, round Samar, then attack the light American landing forces at Leyte from the north.  Japanese carriers north of the Philippines had successfully drew Admiral William Halsey’s covering force of carriers and battleships north, leaving the light amphibious forces off Leyte without protection.

Admiral Jessie Oldendorf’s task force of old battleships backed by cruisers devastated Nishimura’s southern force in the confined waters of the Surigao Strait, denying the Japanese their southern pincer in their attempt to wipe out the American landing forces.  However, Admiral Kurita did round Samar to keep his appointment.

The American naval response consisting of destroyers and destroyer escorts against the big boys of the IJN became one of the stirring acts of heroism of the entire war in the Pacific, sometimes referred to as their Death Ride; in addition to which the pilots of the beleaguered escort carriers attacked like angry hornets against battleships and cruisers, even to the dropping of depth charges in lieu of bombs.  Kurita will fail in his mission and eventually withdrawal.  This threat will subside; but it will give way to an even greater threat, the Devine Wind.

* * * * *

October 21, 1944, Lieutenant Seki led his flight from Mabalacat to search for the reported American escort carriers off the Philippine coast.  No trace was found and the flight returned to base.  Then more flights, October 22, 23, and 24, again resulted in no-shows.  On the 25^th, though, they struck pay dirt.

Nine Zeros, four of which were escorts, had flown 3 hours and 25 minutes before they found the American escort carriers off Samar.  They had made their approach as Admiral Ohnishi had suggested:  Low, wave-hopping, so as to approach below the Americans’ radar.  Then they climbed to their attack altitude so as to take their final plunge.

Shikishima flight of five suicide planes pushed over into attack.  Flight leader Yukio Seki dove for the St Lo.  Through a hail of anti-aircraft fire he plunged, undaunted.  As he closed the flattop, he released his 550-pound bomb.  It immediately pierced the flight deck, into the hanger deck and there exploded, cascading the elevator upwards and sending up a geyser of planes and parts; into which Seki’s Zero piled into the fiery carnage.   Eight explosions ensued, tearing the baby flattop apart.  An hour later St. Lo took the plunge.

Another suicide pilot closed the Kitkun Bay, strafing as he bore in.  His target was the bridge, missed, zoomed over, caught the catwalk then crashed into the sea.  His 550-pound bomb detonated, showering the Kitkun Bay with fragments, wounding and maiming bluejackets.

Then a pair of Kamikazes targeted Fanshaw Bay, only to be splashed by the carrier’s hot gunners.

Shikishima flight died to a man.  But this did not mark the end of the attacks, for 15 dive-bombers pushed over into their death-dives.  Fighters that had harried Kurita’s fleet now were vectored in to defend the carriers from this new threat.  The aforementioned Kitkun Bay threw up two more fighters as well.  The carrier had survived Kurita, but now came a new threat.

A Val dove for the flattop, aiming for the flight deck.  The carrier’s gunners threw up withering fire.  The wings of the plane came off, leaving the fuselage to pile into the sea, narrowly missing the carrier, showering her deck with fragments and plane parts.

Kalinin Bay was not so fortunate.  A Kamikaze, seemingly impervious to the flattop’s gunnery crashed into the flight deck, doing grievous damage here and causing many casualties.  But carrier’s plight continued as a second suicide pilot crashed into the after smokestack.  Kalinin Bay, though punch drunk, survived.[10]

The four escorting Zeros of Shikishima flight-losing one after tangling with American fighters—returned to base to report the results.  One American escort carrier sunk, with at least five others damaged.[11]  The Kamikaze had proven itself on the field of battle.  It was here to stay.

* * * * *

The Kamikaze was accepted as a tactic in response to a daunting reality:  The standard methods of naval air warfare such a dive-bombing and torpedo attacks were no longer successful.  This, owing in part, to the superiority of the newer American fighter planes such as the F6F Hellcat, F4U Corsair and the P-51 Mustang.  In addition to the fact of superior American production, with earlier losses in warships not only replaced, but providing the United States with an unchallengeable two-ocean navy.

In the face of the above, Japanese aircraft such as the Aichi D3 Val dive-bomber with its fixed landing gear, the B3N Kate torpedo bomber had seen better days and had lost their superiority to the American Helldiver and Avenger torpedo plane.  The famous Zero fighter, though still speedy and nimble, had lost its superiority to the new American fighter types.  Yet it was still regarded as that plane best able to breech American defenses and cause that carnage necessary to reverse Japan’s fortunes.

Dated March 1945, an 88-page manual had been prepared by the Shimoshizu Air Unit, Chiba Prefecture, not far from Tokyo.  Bearing the name of the unit commander, a Major Hayashino, it was a how-to for Kamikaze pilots.  Actual title, Basic Instruction to To-Go Flyers. (To-Go was the codename for Special Attack Corps.)[12]

“Where to Crash, the Enemy’s Fatal Spots”

“Where should you aim?  When diving and crashing onto a ship, aim for a point between the bridge tower and the smoke stack(s).  Entering the stack is also effective.  Avoid hitting the bridge tower or a gun turret.  In the case of an aircraft carrier, aim at the elevators.  Or if that is difficult, hit the flight deck at the ship’s stern.  For a low horizontal attack, aim at the middle of the vessel, slightly higher than the waterline.  If that is difficult, in the case of an aircraft carrier, aim at the entrance to the aircraft hangar or the bottom of the stack.  For all other vessels, aim close to the aft engine room.”[13]

“You Are Now 30 Meters From the Target.”

“You will sense that your speed will suddenly and abruptly increase.  You feel that the speed has increased by a few thousand fold.  It is the long shot movie suddenly turning into a close-up and the sense expands in your face.”

“The Moment of the Crash”

“You are two or three meters from the target.  You can see clearly the muzzles of the enemy’s guns.  You feel that you are suddenly floating in the air.  At that moment, you see your mother’s face.  She is not smiling or crying.  It is her usual face.”[14]

* * * * *

“The nature of the threat was self-evident, need for what was called ‘special’ measures of the highest degree of sacrifice was clear.  The Chief of Staff informed the Emperor about the provisions for Kamikaze operations, which had already begun in a preliminary way, against the American fleet engaged in the bombardment (at Okinawa).  The Emperor urged Admiral Koshiro Oikawa to ‘leave nothing to be desired’ in executing those plans ‘with a hard struggle by all our forces, since [they] will decide the fate of our Empire.’  Oikawa’s assurance that two thousand planes were available for suicide attacks left Hirohito clearly concerned.  ‘Was that all?’ he asked, in his reedy, high-pitched voice.  The admiral’s hasty reply that the Army would contribute an additional fifteen hundred aircraft did not dispel His Majesty’s puzzlement.  ‘But where is the Navy?’ he asked, his tone putting an edge to the question.  ‘Are there no more ships?  No surface forces?’”[15]  This exchange occurred in March 1945.

Thus far, since the Kamikazes had been employed, beginning with the actions off Samar to the attacks on the U.S. fleet in the Lingayen Gulf:  “Between October 25, 1944, when the Kamikaze pilots made their first successful attack, and January 25, 1945, we estimated that our suicide pilots inflicted from light to severe damage to at least fifty American vessels of all types.  These included six large aircraft carriers, four of which were identified as the Intrepid, Franklin, Essex and Lexington; the two small aircraft carriers Belleau Wood and Independence; and the escort carrier St. Lo.  It was impossible at the time, of course, to determine specifically the names of these carriers our planes had struck such as the Santee, Suwannee, etc., until corroboration could be received through American reports.  Confirmation by our escorting Zero fighters was at best a questionable affair, because of the speed of the attacks, the fierce fighter and anti-aircraft defenses, and the abort period over the target area.”[16]

January 18, 1945, the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War made official government policy of, Admiral Ohnishi’s Special Attack Corps.  “The Council decided to ‘concentrate on converting all armament production to special attack weapons of a few major types.’  The available weapons systems were reduced to a suicide arsenal that included special submarines of the Koryu and Kaiyu class, high-speed small boats of the Shinyo class which exploded upon contact with enemy ships, and the Kaiten human torpedo.  The army’s contribution was a human bomb:  a soldier wrapped in explosives who hurled himself against an enemy tank, blowing it and himself to bits.  A military psychology insensitive to human life, to the individual’s right to survive, conceived the Special Attack idea.  The same mentality underlay the policy of requiring Japanese soldiers taken prisoner, even if they managed to return to friendly lines, to commit suicide.”[17]

Okinawa

Special Attack Corps operations were unleashed against the 5^th Fleet supporting the marines and GIs ashore.  355 Kikusuis swarmed 5^th Fleet, in addition to conventional dive-bombing and torpedo attacks.  In two days, April 6 and 7, 19 ships were damaged.

Again the optimum targets were the carriers, especially with disabling same by crashing into the elevators.  A flattop unable to utilize its air complement was little better than a target.  Other targets of opportunity were support vessels, supply ships, troop transports, . . .  On April 1, a Kamikaze struck the transport Alpine, killing 16 and wounding 27.  Another transport, Achernar, was both bombed and crashed by a Kamikaze, leaving 8 killed and 41 wounded.[18]

Undamaged cargos were unloaded leaving both ships to retire from the scene for repairs.

On April 3, the escort carrier, Wake Island, faced off with five planes coming in from her starboard quarter.  Two diving for her missed, splashing near the flattop.  The second, though, exploded, tearing a hole 18 by 45 feet into Wake Island’s hull.  It was back to Guam for repairs.

To shield 5th Fleet from attack and act as an early warning system, destroyers were assigned, along the lines of Britain’s radar stations that acted as that early warning system for RAF squadrons during the battle of Britain.  Yet despite the mobility of the American system, these picket destroyers and the bluejackets who manned them must be remembered for their courage and heroism for their part in the Plight of the Pickets.

Plight of the Pickets

March 24, 1945, USS Mannert L. Abele (DD-733), an Allen M. Sumner-class destroyer, began the campaign with the preliminary bombardments of Okinawa.  By April 12, DD-733 was on picket duty, Station No.  4, some 70 miles northwest of Okinawa.

At 1445 hours, a trio of dive-bombers popped out of the clouds.  Pilots pushed over into their death dives.  Ablele’s gunners threw up a cloud of A.A.  Two of the intruders were flamed.  The third, too, was hit, then plunged into the sea.

Then, three more, this time Zeros.  Two were quickly splashed.  The third Zeke, bracketed by 40 mm and 20 mm and the 5-inch main batteries, was soon hit.  Pieces flew back into the slipstream.  Flames and black smoke marked the pilot’s path to imperial heaven.

But the gunners could not prevent the Zero’s appointed rendezvous and it crashed into the starboard side, just aft of Abele’s no. 2 stack.  The Zero’s bomb pierced the main deck, exploded in the after engine room, rupturing the can’s keel, wrecking the propeller shaft, killing nine men.

Then, in quick succession, skimming the sea, sped a Baka Bomb. The piloted cigar tube was closing the can at upwards of 500 mph.  Gunners furiously targeted the missile, but to no avail, as it knifed into the forward fireroom, killing and wounding bluejackets, violently shaking the ship and breaking the keel yet again.

The stricken DD began to settle.  Commander A.E. Parker ordered the crew to the boats.  Eighty-two of his crew were dead, 32 more were wounded.  All together 336 were rescued.

The Abele broke in two, then disappeared beneath the waves.

* * * * *

April 16, 1945:  Radar Picket Station No. 1, off Okinawa

On duty here was USS Laffey (DD-724), another Allen M. Sumner-class destroyer.  Skipper was Commander Frederick J. Becton.  Laffey will go down in American history as one of the most damaged of warships, certainly of destroyers and, . . .  fortunately, Becton and many of his crew will live to tell the tale.

In concert with DD-724 was a pair of Landing Craft Support vessels, LCS-51 and LCS-116.  These “were adaptations of Landing Craft Infantry armed with .50-caliber, 20 mm and 40 mm guns.  Slow—a top speed of 16 knots—shallow-bottomed and squat—160 feet long, with a 23-foot beam—the ungainly LCS’s chief merit was versatility.

“Two high-capacity pumps enabled the gunboat to double as a fireboat.  Young LCS skippers like the 51’s Lieutenant Howell D. Chickering and the 116’s Lieutenant A.J. Wierzbicki had few illusions about their purpose.  After suicide attacks, they would be dousing fires, removing casualties, and recovering survivors.”[19]    

0827, the radar operator’s screen was aglow with fifty enemy aircraft, all approaching from the north.  The stage was now set for the next eighty minutes, the battle for survival began.

Laffey’s fire direction officer urged the area’s combat air patrol to steer clear of the can’s anti-aircraft fire.

On closing the Laffey, Kamikazes came in from every point on the compass.  The aim was to not only split the gunnery, but overwhelm it.  Indeed, officers aboard Laffey will note 22 attacks.

The battle began when four Aichi D3A Val dive-bombers targeted Laffey.  Two bore in from the starboard bow.

Captain Becton barked, “Hard left rudder!”  The DD, at flank speed, came round hard.

Gunners splashed the Vals coming in to starboard.  A third Val, wave-hopping, was hit by 20 mm fire.  Its fixed landing gear caught a wave, then pitched into the sea.  The fourth Val, off the port quarter, was hit and splashed by gunners from Laffey and LCS-51.

Four up, four down.  But the action continued.  A pair of speedier Yokosuka D4 Judy dive-bombers came in, one to port, the other to starboard.  Gunners blasted the threat to starboard.  The second Judy roared in from the port quarter, strafing, was hit by 40 mm and 20 mm fire, then crashed into the sea.  The bomb it was carrying detonated, spraying the port side with fragments, wounding several gunners and, knocked out the SG surface search/low-altitude aircraft and fire control radar antenna, as well as a radio antenna.[20]

Then in came another Val from the port beam.  Every 5-inch gun opened up, with lesser calibers joining in the symphony of gunfire.  The onrushing pilot brushed the 5-inch turret aft, killing one of the gun crew, then plunged into the sea.  Then came another Judy to starboard.  40 mm and 20 mm set the gas tank alight, turning the Yokosuka into a torch, then it crashed into the sea.

A ninth attacker, another Judy, from the port beam.  40 mm and 20 mm gunners hit the plane repeatedly, to no avail as the intruder struck the Laffey, taking out a whaleboat before piling into a pair of 20 mm gun mounts and starting a roaring fire abaft the second stack.  Two 40 mm mounts atop the deck house were now besieged by flames.  Ready rounds began to explode.  Sailors rushed to toss unexploded rounds overboard.  This attack severed communications with the forward engine room.

Two minutes later, another Val, skimming the sea from astern, raking the deck with machine gun fire, slammed into the DD and exploded.  A river of flaming gasoline spread across the fantail.  A second Val dropped its bomb, which hit abaft the after 5-inch gun turret, to which the plane struck the turret, killing six men inside.

Then another plane dropped a bomb which struck Laffey astern, severing the hydraulic lines to the steering gear, jamming her rudder to port, leaving DD-724 circling.

The tortured can by now had lost two 40 mm and five 20 mm mounts; a vulnerability compounded by the fires being fought by her crew.  And, there was still the air threat.

Two more attackers made a beeline for the stricken can.  Every gun that could opened up.  From the port quarter, the first plane, a Val, crashed into the after deckhouse, spilling gasoline and starting another fire; followed by a Judy which crashed into the same spot, killing four men.  The after deckhouse was now an inferno.

Then a fighter plane, an Oscar, came screaming in, aiming at the forecastle.  On its tail, pilot braving the ship’s A.A., was a Corsair, its guns chattering.  The intruder narrowly cleared the bridge, taking out the portside yardarm as he crashed into the sea.  The pursing Corsair collided with the air-search radar antenna, damaging the plane.  The pilot was able to gain altitude, then bailed out.  He was later picked up by LCS-51.[21]

Tom McCarthy, a signalman, seeing that the Oscar had taken out the yardarm, grabbed another battle ensign.  He affixed same to the mast.

A more detailed combat air patrol arrived.  Corsairs from Intrepid (CV-11) and Hellcats from the light carrier San Jacinto (CVL-30).  But the battle was over.

Laffey’s situation was extremely critical.  Flooded compartments aft left her low astern in the water.  Fires aft still raged and, her steering gear was jammed.  Air search and surface search radars were destroyed.  And with much of the electrical power having been knocked out, many of her guns were on manual.  Surprisingly though she was still afloat after taking six Kamikazes and four bombs.  Then again, maybe not so surprisingly.  For there was her valiant crew, who had leaped to their ship’s defense.

Laffey was accorded a Presidential Unit Citation.  Commander Frederick Julian Becton, a Navy Cross.  Lieutenant Howell D. Chickering, c.o. of LCS-51, a Navy Cross.  Ensign Robert Clarence Thomsen, a posthumous Navy Cross.  Other crewmen on the Laffey:  six Silver Stars, 18 Bronze Stars and a Navy Letter of Commendation.

And the Laffey?  She would be repaired and returned to the fleet.  She would later serve during the Korean War and, be accorded two more Battle Stars.

* * * * *

Postscript

In Volume XIV of his epic rendition of the naval war in World War II, Samuel Eliot Morison offered a pertinent analysis of the events at Okinawa:

“Thus, as the war against japan drew to its close, Okinawa became a giant air and naval base which was destined to play a major role in the Cold War that followed the war with Japan.  For it we paid a heavy price.  Thirty-two naval ships and craft had been sunk, mostly by Kamikaze attack and 368 ships and craft had been damaged.  The fleet lost 763 aircraft.  Over 4,900 sailors were killed or went missing in action, and an additional 4,824 were wounded.  This was by far the heaviest loss incurred in any naval campaign in the war.  Tenth Army also suffered heavy casualties:  7,613 killed or missing in cation, 31,807 wounded and more than 26,000 non-battle casualties.”[22]

The final word of the story belongs to Winston Churchill, who observed in a communication to President Harry Truman, June 12, 1945:  “The strength of willpower, devotion and technical resources applied by the United States to this task, joined with the death struggle of the enemy, . . . places this battle among the most intense and famous in military history. . . .  We make our salute to all your troops and their commanders engaged.”[23]

Endnotes

[1]  Kikusui or Floating Chrysanthemums was the name of an operation conducted by the Japanese against the U.S. fleet supporting the marines and GIs at Okinawa, April 6 to June 22, 1945.  See page 142, Chapter 16, “Homeland Special Attack Units, April 1945-June 1945,” The Devine Wind, by Captain Rikihei Inoguchi and Commander Tadashi Nakajima, Former Imperial Japanese Navy with Roger Pineau.

[2]  See page VI, “Forward,” The Devine Wind, by Captain Rikihei Inoguchi and Commander Tadashi Nakajima, Former Imperial Japanese Navy with Roger Pineau.

[3] Three costliest battles in American history:  The Meuse-Argonne, 1918; Battle of the Bulge, 1944 and Okinawa, 1945.

[4]  See page 1, “Under-Sea Kamikaze,” by Richard O’Neill, War Monthly, Issue No. 9,  December 1974.  See, too, pages 40 and 41, A History of Japan, by Richard Storry, who highlights 1274 and 1281.  With the prior attempt, “The armada began by attacking two islands, Tsushima and Ikim that lie between Kyushu and Korea.  The small garrisons on these islands fought to the death—a tradition observed in 1945 on other islands guarding the approaches to Japan.  The Mongols then made a landing in Kyushu and a stubborn battle took place.  However, a severe storm threatened the ships as they lay offshore; and the Mongol force embarked and withdrew.  The elements were to intervene even more effectively on the side of Japan in 1281.  On this occasion, after landing in Kyushu, the Mongols fought, in the small bridgehead they had seized, a campaign that lasted without interruption for fifty-three days.  Then on 14 August 1281 a typhoon descended upon the Mongol fleet and virtually wiped it out.  This typhoon the Japanese had every right to regard as providential.  In shrines and temples throughout the land prayers had been offered for deliverance from the invaders.  The typhoon, then, was called “The Devine Wind,” the Japanese name for which is Kamikaze.

Also, per Thomas Cutler, The Battle of Leyte Gulf, pages 265 and 266, offers the god of wind.  “Years of dissention and internal wars had weakened the Japanese and they were in no shape to repel the Mongol invaders.  Having resigned themselves to either death or slavery, the fortuitous appearances of the typhoons were hailed as an intervention by Ise, the wind god.  A legend was born that would carry over the centuries, strengthening the Japanese belief that they were a divinely protected people, convincing them that their destiny had been ordained by the gods and that they had been saved by what they called the “devine wind”—Kamikaze in Japanese.”     

[5]  See page 27, Chapter Two, “Organizing for Death,” The Kamikazes, by Edwin P. Hoyt.

[6]  See page 53, Edwin P. Hoyt.

[7]  See page 25, “Marianas Aftermath,” The Devine Wind, by Captain Rikihei Inoguchi and Commander Tadashi Nakajima, Former Imperial Japanese Navy with Roger Pineau.

[8]  See pages 6 and 7, Captain Rikihei Inoguchi and Commander Tadashi Nakajima, Former Imperial Japanese Navy with Roger Pineau.

[9]  See pages 11 and 12, Captain Rikihei Inoguchi and Commander Tadashi Nakajima, Former Imperial Japanese Navy, with Roger Pineau.

Shikishima—Poetic name of Japan; Yamato—Ancient name of Japan; Asahi—Morning sun and, Yamazakura—Cherry blossoms.

[10]  See pages 78 and 79, Chapter Seven, “A-Operation Day,” The Kamikazes, by Edwin P. Hoyt.

[11]  The five damaged carriers were as followed:  Santee, Suwanee, Kitkun Bay, Kalinin Bay, and White Plains.  See pages 306 and 307, Chapter Nineteen, “The Lost Chance,” The Battle of Leyte Gulf, by Edwin P. Hoyt.

[12]  See page 77, Chapter 6, “The Suicide Manual,” Kamikaze:  Japan’s Suicide Gods, by Albert Axell and Hideaki Kase.

[13]  See pages 80 and 81, “Page 37:  Chapter 6, ‘Suicide Manual,’” Albert Axell and Hideaki Kase.

[14]  See page 81, “Page 39:  Chapter 6, ‘Suicide Manual,’” Albert Axell and Hideaki Kase.

[15]  See page 8, Chapter 1, “Operation Heaven Number One,” Tennozan, by George Feifer.

[16]  See page 250, Chapter 24, “The Kamikaze Suicidal Attacks,” ZERO!, by Masatake Okumiya and Jiro Horikashi with Martin Caiden.

[17]  See pages 183 and 184, Chapter 9, “The Horrors of War,” The Pacific War, by Saburo Ienaga.

[18]  The attention paid to transport vessels made perfect logistical sense.  No ability to resupply the landing forces means no successful campaign ashore.  Historical parallel here was the night of August 8-9, 1942, when Admiral Guichi Mikawa surprised and defeated the American naval support forces at Savo Island, sinking three American and one Australian heavy cruisers.  But Mikawa, concerned with being caught by American aircraft the following morning as he withdrew up the Solomon Islands chain, did not attack the American transports supporting the Marines ashore on Guadalcanal.

[19]  See page 7, “Battered Beyond Belief:  The Story of the Destroyer Laffey,” by David Sears, www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/06/07/…

[20]  See page 4, “H-045-1:  The Ship That Wouldn’t Die(2)—USS Laffey (DD-724) 16 April 1945,” www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/about…

[21]  The presence of an Oscar fighter, which is an Army plane, perhaps shows Army-Navy cooperation in this attack.

[22]  See page 282, Chapter XVIII, “Okinawa Secured, June-September 1945,” Victory in the Pacific, Volume XIV, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, by Samuel Eliot Morison.

[23]  See pace 282, Samuel Eliot Morison.  Quote originally published in the New Time Times, June 23, 1945.

Bibliography

Axell, Albert and Kase, Hideaki, Kamikaze:  Japan’s Suicide Gods, Pearson Education Limited, Edinburgh and London, Great Britain, 2002.

Cutler, Thomas J., The Battle of Leyte Gulf, 23-26 October 1944, HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., New York, NY., 1994.

Feifer, George, Tennozan:  The Battle of Okinawa and the Atomic Bomb, Ticknor & Fields, New York, NY., 1992.

“H-045-1:  The Ship That Wouldn’t Die (2)—USS Laffey (DD-724), 16 April 1945,” www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/about …

Hoyt, Edwin P., Closing the Circle:  War in the Pacific, 1945, Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, Inc., New York, NY., 1982.

Hoyt, Edwin P., The Battle of Leyte Gulf:  The Death Knell of the Japanese Fleet, Weybright and Talley, New York, NY, 1971.

Hoyt, Edwin P., The Kamikazes:  Suicide Squadrons of World War II, Burford Books, Inc., Short Hills, New Jersey, 1983.

Ienaga, Saburo, The Pacific War, Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, 1978.

Inoguchi, Captain Rikihei and Nakajima, Commander Tadashi, Former Imperial Japanese Navy with Roger Pineau, The Devine Wind, Bantam Books, Inc., New York, NY., 1978.  Originally published by the United States Naval Institute, 1958.

Ireland, Bernard, with Gerrard, Howard, Leyte Gulf 1944:  The World’s Greatest Sea Battle, Osprey Publishing, Oxford, United Kingdom, 2006.

Mikesh, Robert C., ZERO, a Warbird History, Motorbooks International Books & Wholesalers, Osceola, Wisconsin, 1994.  Forward to this selection was written by legendary Zero ace, Saburo Sakai.

Morison, Samuel Eliot, Victory in the Pacific, Volume XIV, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Castle Books, Edison, New Jersey, 2001.  Originally published 1960.

Munson, Kenneth, Aircraft of World War II, Doubleday & Company, Inc., printed by Crampton & Sons, Ltd., Sawston, Cambridge, Great Britain, 1968.  Originally published by Ian Allen, 1962.

Okumiya, Masatake and Horikoshi, Jiro, with Caiden, Martin, ZERO!  The Story of Japan’s Air War in the Pacific:  1941-1945, Ballantine Books, Inc., New York, NY., 1956.

O’Neill, Richard, “Under-Sea kamikaze,” War Monthly, Issue No. 9, Marshall Cavandish, Ltd., London, England, December 1974.

Parkin, Robert Sinclair, Blood on the Sea:  American Destroyers Lost in World War II, Da Capo Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2001.

Sears, David, World War II Magazine, “Battered Beyond Belief:  The Story of the destroyer Laffey,” Navy Times, June 7, 2019, www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/06/07/…

Storry, Richard, A History of Modern Japan, Penguin Books, Ltd., Middlesex, England, 1975.  Originally published, 1960.

Whitley, M.J., Destroyers of World War II:  An International Encyclopedia, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland, 2000.  First published 1988, Arms & Armour Press, London.

Looking Back, March 2025
By Mark Albertson

Putting the House in Order
Part V: TRENDS AIRPOWER

“Close Air Support:  Experience of three decades has changed the concept and practice of close air support.  In some advanced forces, including those of the U.S. aircraft are dedicated to the support of the maneuver arms in recognition of the fact that the battlefield will provide an abundance of targets that can be destroyed by close air support.

“US tactical aircraft are far more powerful than those of 1945.  The USAAF P-47 of WWII, for instance, could fly 100 miles to a target, stay for less than half an hour, deliver .50 caliber machine gun fire and two 250 pound bombs, and return to its base.  Today, the USAF A-10 carries 30 times as much ordnance—about 16,000 pounds of cannon ammunition, bombs and missiles.  The A-10 can also fly to a target 250 miles from home base, monitor the target areas for as much as two hours, deliver its ordnance, and return.  In addition, the ordnance itself is far more lethal.  The GAU-8 Gatling Gun in the A-10 for example fires a 1.5 pound projectile capable of destroying tanks, armored personnel carriers, and other armored targets.  The GAU-8 is 7 times more lethal than the conventional 20 mm gun and for the first time combines the accuracy and flexibility of a gun with the true tank-killing capability.

“Modern Air Force tactical aircraft carry a variety of ordnance including guided and unguided bombs and missiles.  Guided bombs, those with electronic steering, and guided missiles, such as the Maverick, can achieve high probability of hit and kill.  Operational tests clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of the most modern fighters against tanks.  Moreover, both guided missiles and guided bombs provide standoff capabilities which combine their greatly increased accuracy with sharply reduced exposure of the attacker to opposing air defenses.

“Modern tactical aircraft with improved ordnance are now considered components of the Army/Air Force combined arms team.  In addition to close air support missions for the ground units, the aircraft today permits rapid development of destructive force beyond the immediate battlefield to deep-lying targets.”

* * * * *

“TRENDS:  ARMY AIRCRAFT”[2]

“Firepower:  The high-mobility and armor-killing capability of attack helicopters makes them unique to the battlefield.  Their weapons systems are capable of defeating the entire spectrum of battlefield targets.  Ongoing development of the advanced attack helicopter (AAH) incudes an advanced fire control system to provide extended range target acquisition and engagement and a laser HELLFIRE missile system which will have commonality with cannon-launched guided munitions and USAF/Navy missiles and bombs.  In addition, product improvement of the existing 2.75-inch aerial rocket and the introduction of the 30 mm cannon will further enhance the staying and killing capability of the attack helicopter.  These improvements will spell greater accuracy against point and area targets on the future battlefield.”

* * * * *

“AERIAL vs. GROUND RANGES”

“Attack helicopters can fire at extended ranges more often than their ground counterparts since they can rise above the mask to increase both target acquisition and firing range.  The difference of only 5 feet in elevation can convert an 800 meter shot on the ground to a 3,000 meter kill from the air.

“Mobility:  Firepower and mobility are inseparable.  By increasing the mobility of ground forces are of influence.  Examples of increased mobility include moving ground firing units and air assaulting maneuver forces.  When speed is essential, distances great, and terrain about the battlefield restrictive, air assault forces make a significant contribution toward winning the battle.

“Intelligence, Command and Control:  To win battles, awareness of enemy capabilities and intentions is a prerequisite.  Intelligence-gathering aircraft, to include air cavalry, provide a source for this essential information.  Observation helicopters can provide commanders an aerial look at terrain on which the battle may take place so that they may more rapidly evaluate and plan the effective use of the combined arms team and directly influence the flow of the battle.

“Combat Service Support:  Modern forces with their unprecedented mobility and complex equipment consume vast quantities of supplies.  Therefore, a highly responsive, yet flexible, system is necessary and is indispensable.  One medium lift helicopter, for example, can carry almost two times the load of a 5-ton truck, five times as fast.  Further, aerial resupply is not affected by road traffic ability or congestion.  Using external loads makes loading and unloading almost instantaneous at the point of need.  Responsive logistics lighten the basic combat loads of maneuver units and increase their mobility.”

* * * * *

Endgame Toward Branchhood

This work consisting of five installments merely scratched the surface in relating that decade of transformation, 1973-1983, as the Nation attempted to bounce back from an embarrassing, yet profound political defeat in Southeast Asia.  Damage control so as to maintain that coveted position as the globe’s ranking power must be pursued with intelligence and purpose.  British defeats at Saratoga in 1777 to an army hardly of world class standards and, again later, early 1942 with the fall of Fortress Singapore to the Japanese, stand as examples of the long-term decline of the British Empire.

In effort to prevent such a protracted decay from occurring, required the Army to shift its focus, from that of counterinsurgency to conventional war; and this necessitated acclimating the ground forces to the resulting political, economic, technological and strategic realities of the period in question.

Officers of the 1970s who sought to prepare the Army for the post-Vietnam War era are to be held in good stead.  To start with, they were not seeking to fight the next war like the last war.  In this they were following in the footsteps of such astute general officers as Lieutenant General Roy S. Geiger of the Marine Corps and Major General James M. Gavin of the United States Army.  They were among those who thoroughly understood the game-changing nature of atomic weaponry following Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Du Puy, Starry and Gorman, then, were among those revisiting the post-Korean War era, to not only maintain the Army’s stock-in-trade, conventional warfare, but in a nuclear environment and doing so with a reduced force; and this required an concerted reliance on the technological advantage that would provide the post-Vietnam army the ability to be mobile, but at the same time, effect grievous damage on any opponent encountered.

Such was the success of Genghis Khan and his Mongol Army:  Effective use of mobility—the Mongols’ stock-in-trade—which was second to none.  Superb generalship; and that talent to adapt to ever-changing situations and use of new or even unfamiliar technologies.  Indeed, this was the U.S. Army in 1973-1983.  For instance, the UH-1 Huey, which proved a workhorse in Southeast Asia, was viewed as lacking in the technologically oriented new Army and was going to be eventually replaced by the UH-60 Black Hawk.  The AH-1 Cobra, the Army’s frontline attack helicopter, would be eventually overtaken by a Cadillac known as the AH-64 Apache.  Weaponry would be updated while new types came off the drawing boards.  Such as the 2.75” rocket which was updated and improved and, the HELLFIRE missile which would provide attack helicopters with a lethal punch, are among the examples offered here.

Like the United States Army itself, Army Aviation had to be transformed for the post-Vietnam War era.  Provides a better understanding of the acceptance of Army Aviation; and this despite the persistence of the doubters and detractors.

But in the analysis, it was not merely an acceptance, but the willingness to utilize the advantages posed by the near limitless expanse of the Third Dimension for success on the battlefield for the infantry, armor, artillery, medical evacuation, observation, reconnaissance, intelligence collection. . .   Though, of course, differences of opinion would abound with regards to organization and control of Army Aviation and its assets, both human and material.

Same argument evolved during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s.  Those in the Army Air Corps and later the Army Air Forces who saw strategic bombing as that ticket to independence from the Army as opposed to the Army Ground Forces who wished to maintain control for that assurance of support for the foot soldier.  But airpower was becoming too sophisticated for the ground force officers.  Airpower was becoming a specialty that only those involved in its implementation could fully comprehend and control.  So, following World War II, National Security Act 1947 saw to the divorce of airpower from the Army which became the United States Air Force.

What happened in 1947 has an historical parallel in 1983.  Army Aviation became a separate entity within the United States Army’s masthead of branches.  A result any savvy individual could have made book on, when in viewing that seed planted by William Wallace Ford in 1942 known as the Air Observation Post.  For in forty-one years, Army Aviation developed within a progression both fascinating and innovative, and both in peacetime and in war.  From the L-4 Cub to the AH-64 Apache, from directing artillery fire to becoming the tactical air branch of the United States Army, such was the path to branchhood emblematic and required with the continuing technological evolution and sophistication in war.  And owing to Man’s penchant for conflict, the aforementioned progression was both certain and perpetual.

Endnotes

[1]  See pages 2-20 and 2-21, Operations, FM 100-5.

[2]  See pages 2-21 and 2-22, Operations, FM 100-5.

Bibliography

[1]  Army Aviation:  Cub to Comanche, Army Aviation Publications, Inc., Westport, Ct., 1992.

[2]  Duval, Geoff, Republic P-47 Thunderbolt, Described, Part I, Series I, No. 8, Technical Manual, Kookaburra Technical Publications, Dandenong, Victoria, Australia, 1969.

[3]  Munson, Kenneth, Aircraft of World War II, Doubleday & Company, Inc., and prited in Great Britain by Crampton & Sons, Ltd., Sawston, Cambridge, 1968.  First published by Ian Allen, 1962.

[4]  Operations, FM 100-5, Headquarters, Department of the Army, Washington, D.C., 1 July 1976.

[5]  U.S. Air Force Fact Sheet Display, “A-10C Thunderbolt,” www.af,mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article…

Looking Back, February 2025
By Mark Albertson

Putting the House in Order
Part IV: The Helicopter and Conventional War

The makeover of Army Aviation in the wake of the Second Indochina War was actually a continuation of a process that had been ongoing during the 1950s; when the U.S. Army, seeking to make itself useful on the nuclear battlefield of Europe, attempted the use of light aircraft and helicopters to shuttle ground troops to and from various quarters of the battlefield; along the lines of the Marine Corps with the Vertical Assault Concept, but which unlike the Army, was acclimating amphibious warfare to the nuclear age.

But the Army’s effort in Europe was interrupted by President John F. Kennedy’s military doctrine of Flexible Response; to which was sought a more balanced military response to pursuing the Nation’s national interests.  So for twelve years the Army was focused on a counterinsurgency/jungle warfare effort in Southeast Asia.  Then by 1973, the Army had to do a 180-degree turn, back to conventional warfare following Vietnam.  In addition to the fact that Army Aviation, like the rest of the armed forces, were now going to have to pay for the political failures of Vietnam and learn to operate in a fiscal environment of, Less is More.

But with the focus on the conventional mode of warfare, aircraft that perhaps proved effective in Vietnam would have to be replaced; and/or, new tactics and modes of operation so as to operate in environments other than the jungle.  And for this, the Army will again consult the lessons available from the Yom Kippur War.  For instance, the Sinai front in the south, . . .

“. . . the Egyptians began the war with three armies of which the Second and Third Armies would be deployed for the operation.  Under the command of Lieutenant General Saad El Shazli, the Egyptian Army forces which were employed in the crossing included 5 infantry divisions, 2 mechanized and 2 armored divisions and 9 separate brigades.  Altogether, the Egyptian Army had approximately 1,500 tanks committed to the operation.  In addition, having experienced the ability of the Israeli Air Force to provide overwhelming close air support and battle interdiction, the Egyptians assembled over 200 batteries of SA-2, SA-3 and SA-6 surface-to-air missiles to provide an integrated air defense umbrella over the theater.  The ADA umbrella was intended to deny the Israeli Air Force (IAF) the air supremacy which had been a critical element of Israeli victory in the 1967 war; and which the Egyptians had identified as the single greatest threat to a surprise crossing of the canal.”[1]

General Hamilton H. Howze referred to the above with his viewpoints on Army Aviation, as it prepared to continue its existence in the post-Second Indochina War era:

“Right after the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, General Paled, the Chief-of-Staff of the Israeli Air Force, was quoted by unbelievers[2] as saying that the helicopter could not be employed at the forward edge of the battle of the Suez Canal.  No doubt he was right—neither could any kind of aircraft, including fighters.  In the extremely intense anti-aircraft environment that prevailed on that very short front, but which would not have prevailed had the front been moved a few miles to the east or west, as it was about to do when the ceasefire came.

“Shortly after the war, General Paled came to the United States.  Why?  To buy helicopters, particularly, Cobras, for the Israeli Air Force.”[3}

For the United States, though, “The extensive combat experience of Vietnam does not ‘prove’ the effectiveness of the weapons helo in Europe.  The biggest area of doubt, of course, is vulnerability.  This being so, it is probably a good idea to face up to the matter at once.”[4] To which he continues . . .

. . . “In Vietnam the prime threat to the helicopter, armed or unarmed, was the fire of enemy small arms, and this I think would be true in Europe.  Undoubtedly, some helicopters will fall prey to larger enemy weapons, but proper helo tactics will keep machines very low in the nap of the earth, beneath enemy radar, and in the field of view of very few gunners at any given time.  And since the helicopter will usually operate only against the outside edges of the enemy array of forces, it will not be visible to the crews of the heavier aircraft weapons.”[5]

Howze offered as well the maneuverability of the helicopter, its ability to operate close to the ground, fire and move.  The helicopter, then, can provide a challenging target for enemy gunners.  And he states, “The proximity timer fuse won’t work in flat trajectory direct fire, for it will explode the projectile prematurely.”[6] But the helicopter in Europe would be working in concert with the tank.

“There is nothing abnormal in any army fighting vehicle which does not, in ones and twos, penetrate an enemy position.  Even tanks penetrate only in quantity, and not in the course of penetration police up the area as they move through.  In a sense, therefore, the tank, even in exploitation, shoots from friendly territory (which the tanks just made friendly by overrunning it) into enemy territory.  So too will the armed helicopter which will incidentally, be the most valuable companion to the exploiting tank.”[7]

General Howze added that helicopters, whether troop-carriers or attack types, would never be able to violate enemy territory which, as he states, actually depends on the fluidity of the battlefield; in addition to that, the functionality of the helicopter, let alone its survivability, depends in part with its coordination with other weapons systems, such as artillery, mortars and tanks, and even heavy machine guns, as well as missiles and jet aircraft such as fighter-bombers.

With regards to the survivability of the helicopter, it presents a target hard to hit owing to its svelte signature, in comparison to fighters and bombers.  Indeed, nocturnal operations would increase the survival rate of helicopters; though missiles could prove an issue.  Such could require frequent base changes near the front lines to insure continued availability.  Reminiscent of the L-4 Cub in World War II, the helicopter can operate on soft ground as opposed to fighter-bombers and many other fixed wing types which require hard-surfaced strips.

And the atomic battlefield?  Can the helicopter survive?  Again Howze brings up the point, that within range of the blast, the helicopters would be destroyed, as will mortars, machine guns, trucks, buildings, fighter-bombers, communications, . . .   This revisits, of course, the 1950s, where the Army was seeking to insure continued employment within the defense establishment—in what was seen by some experts, as a nuclear-dominated military environment—in which the Army experimented with light planes and helicopters so as to shuttle troops around a nuclear battlefield in Europe.

But, if a massive conventional conflict broke out in Europe, would a nuclear exchange be the result?  Such is not what resulted in World War II; to which, of course, here we are not referring to atomic ordnance, but chemical weapons, and quite specifically, nerve gas.  For the Germans had the monopoly unlike the Allies.  In fact, the Allies did not know that such a capability even existed.  Yet, the Germans, who had many thousands of tons of this breakthrough in chemical weaponry never employed same, even in the darkest hours.[8]

In western Poland, at a place known as Dyhernfurth, construction of a plant unique, thus far in the war, commenced in January 1940.  Its lot in life was the production of nerve gas, 1,000 tons of Tabun per month, with a capacity three times that number.  Some 3,000 workers labored at the plant, all Germans.  Since the Allies were not cognizant of the existence of nerve gas, they therefore, had no defense.  Yet when Germany’s fortunes fell into decline, “three of the most fanatical Nazi leaders, Martin Bormann, Joseph Goebbels and Robert Ley, repeatedly urged Hitler to unleash nerve gas.  Goebbels wanted to bathe British cities in revenge for the destruction of Dresden.  Albert Speer, Minister of Armaments in the Third Reich, recalled a secret conversation with labor leader, Robert Ley, who by profession, was a chemist, held in a special railroad car.  Ley’s increased stammering betrayed his agitation:  ‘You know we have this new poison gas—I’ve heard about.  The Fuhrer must do it.  He must use it, now he has to do it.  What else!’”[9]

Obvious question here is, why didn’t Hitler resort to his nerve gas?  “The reason he failed to do so probably had much to do with a conversation at the Wolf’s Lair, his headquarters in East Prussia, back in May 1943.  After the collapse at Stalingrad, both Speer and his chemical warfare expert, Otto Ambros, were summoned to a special conference by Hitler to discuss using gas to stem the Russian advance.  Ambros began by saying that the Allies could out-produce Germany in chemical weapons.  Hitler interrupted to say that he understood that might be true of the conventional gases—‘but Germany has a special gas, Tabun, in this case we have the monopoly.’

“Ambros shook his head.  ‘I have justified reason to assume that Tabun, too, is known abroad (which it was not—author).  According to Ambros, the essential nature of Tabun and Sarin had been disclosed in technical journals as long ago as 1902, and like many German scientists he could not believe that the chemical warfare experts at Parton Down and Edgehill Arsenal had failed to develop them.[10]  Whether Ambros genuinely believed that the Allies had nerve gases, or if he was trying to put Hitler off from resorting to these lethal poisons, the result was the same:  Hitler turned on his heels and abruptly left the meeting.”[11]

In a trick of fortune, perhaps, a forlorn Hitler never did resort to his monopoly.  Yet  contemplate for a moment the carnage that might have been inflicted upon the British citizenry as the result of Tabun and Sarin in the warheads of V-1s and V-2s.  Consider, too, the vulnerability of the Allied landing force, paratroopers and glider-borne troops with the mass employment of these gases at Normandy on June 6, 1944; to which must be added the said exposure of the defenseless French populace inhabiting this battlefield environment.

The above does give rise to the lesson offered by Marine Corps Lieutenant General Roy S. Geiger, after he had witnessed the atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll, July 1946; and that of Major General James M. Gavin, with his movement of troops in the Third Dimension with light planes and helicopters.  Perhaps bolstered here, too, by General Hamilton H. Howze, was quite with bringing up the German example; that is, Hitler’s dilemma of not being sure as to whether  he had the chemical warfare monopoly or not.

But in the 1970s and 1980s, with a “parity” existing between the superpowers, with regards to nuclear weaponry, one needs to consider whether such an option would have been employed, depending, of course, on what was happening on the conventional battlefield.  But unlike 1944, the ability to move troops over wider vistas and in a shorter period of time now existed in the 1970s.  This certainly makes the helicopter, both transport and attack types, certainly relevant.

Yet General Howze goes on to clarify, that the helicopter “is in no sense a competitor with the fighter-bomber or the fighter recon aircraft . . . “[12]

That the helicopter is a ground fighter’s weapon and taxi, provides that potential for striking the enemy’s front, rear and flanks; while at the same time accomplishing same in finer fashion than competing ground-tied mediums of mobility and transportation by overcoming such impediments as rivers, hills, blown bridges and minefields.  “It is enough to say that the armed helicopter platoon (three or four aircraft) may be attached to armored cavalry, tank and infantry battalions and brigades, and will aid those units materially in the performance of their assigned missions.”[13]

“In defense against tank attack, one common helicopter tactic (by two or three ships as a rule) will be simple ambush.  Even at the beginning of an enemy armored attack, when his tanks are moving generally abreast on a wide front, normal terrain found in Europe provides countless positions in which helicopters can lurk against the moment at which they can rise to attack, usually flanking fire against advancing tanks.  The aircraft can position themselves in small woods or clearings, in villages, behind streams, or in rough ground and other terrain impassable for tanks. . .

“One might contend that enemy infantry may force helos from these positions.  This, of course, is possible, but if a general Soviet assault can be slowed to the pace of infantry combing all the forests and by-ways, then the shooting helo would be justified by that accomplishment alone.  The very rapid armored sweeps by the Germans in 1940 and 1941 and by the Allies in 1944 and 1945, were confined mostly to the roads—enemy infantry in the woods and fields were by-passed in the interests of speed.  The helo would put a stop to that tactic.”[14]

Howze also brought up the factor of mines, alluding to the time factor of perhaps weeks required to plant anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, and in quantities sufficient to adversely impact a massive offensive.  Here, though, the helicopter(s) could prove that medium of delaying an enemy thrust by saturating suspected avenues of attack with mines.  Mine-laying rotary wing aircraft, quite possibly, could channel the enemy thrust into areas of a front more agreeable to the defender, in addition to inflicting losses on the attacker with the AT and AP mines.

Attack helicopters, operating close to the front (and perhaps operating off cow pasture type fields like L-4 Cubs in World War II), provide that quick reaction force unlike fighter-bombers operating off hard-surfaced strips.  But at the same time, control of the air by the Air Force, could only accentuate the potential of the attack helicopter in helping to break up an armored attack.

However a rosier picture was presented from a different quarter.  In his “Aviation is the key,” General George S. Blanchard, Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Army in Europe, expressed how excited he was about the future of Army Aviation in Europe and in the Army itself.  He did relay the feelings of Army Aviators, when he first arrived in Europe, of their disappointment and even dejection, that after all they had accomplished in Southeast Asia, that they were no longer needed, a lament shared by warrant offices and down through the enlisted and maintenance personnel.  That their presence in Europe, as well as in NATO, was no longer required.

Five years later, the turning point had been reached, according to General Blanchard.  “The Battalion and Brigade Commanders came to recognize that Army Aviation is a force multiplier of very major proportions, and in the process of the build up we’re at the point of having some 1,100 aircraft in all the battalions of the command.  Some 230 of these were Cobras, and our tank-killing capability, both from the standpoint of actual capability of the aircraft and the weapons system and the people who fly, has increased tremendously.

“All of our Divisions have Combat Aviation Battalions, including 42 TOW Cobras each.  Our ACRs have two Aviation Troops, including 21 TOW Cobras each.  This provides 12 more attack aircraft in the 4^th.”[15]

He noted, too, that Army Aviation would operate in conjunction with A-10s, F4s and other U.S. Air Force elements to deal with, as he calls it, “the very dangerous air defense envelope in which Soviet forces practice and plan to use their forces.”[16]  To which he added . . . the multi-national effort of the British, Germans, Dutch and Belgians provide, both ground and air, accentuating NATO’s ability in destroying Warsaw Pact armor.  The united effort, he suggests, is required because we cannot go it alone.  A reality that not only transcends military requirements solely, but economic as well, understanding as General Blanchard does, apparently, the imposition bloated military budgets have on the civilian economy.  Noting, too, as he does that the Soviets spend “forty percent or more in dollars, or equivalent, into their (defense) programs for total Army, Navy and Air Force equipment hardware.”[17] Hence the reliance on the multinational approach.[18]

But General Blanchard noted, too, a development that would send practitioners of airmobility into apoplexy.  “We have to give up our Air Cav Troop in the process, and we can discuss this at a later time because I am sure there is great interest in what we’re going to do for the future.  We’re going to reinstate Air Cav, perhaps in a different configuration somewhat as time goes by, and we hope to get it moving by 1985 at a minimum, or hopefully before then.”[19]

General Howze leveled criticism at just this sort of development the previous year in Army Aviation.  “We ended the Vietnam War with two airmobile divisions; we now have one, and that faces major cuts in strength.  We have only one so-called air cavalry combat brigade, which is really not air cavalry, but an aerial tank-destroying force.  It has considerable capability in that role, but along with the airmobile division it may also feel the chop.

“I recently had access to the Army’s new operations manual, FM 100-5.  There is periodic acknowledgment therein the usefulness of light aircraft, but it is a patch job, with paragraphs apparently being added to an earlier but recent version.  Quite obviously Army Aviation is not contemplated in the manual as a basic tool—as strong, added, available and sometimes decisive capability, as it emphatically should be.”[20]

And to add insult to injury, General Howze infers, “And a few months ago I talked to a number of young officers who were just graduating from the Advanced Class at the Artillery School.  I asked the group what the course had included about the techniques of artillery support of airmobile operations.  The answer:  Nothing.

“I am guessing now, but I venture to say that Fort Sill has developed no special technique for the purpose.  I am not guessing when I say that such a technique will be different from the normal, will require special training, and will be very applicable to winning battles.”[21]

General Howze goes on to make the argument that Army enthusiasm for airmobility had chilled and seemed more enamored with “ground mechanization of practically everything.”  To which he added, that the Army was committing a monumental error in judgment.  Yet, at this stage, when reading General Howze’s criticisms, which, too, are to be considered legitimate concerns, there is the reality alluded to, not many pages back.  That the Army went from 1,570,000 in 1958 to 784,000 in 1974. And that it was more than thirty years beyond America being the only game in town.[22]

Again, returning to the burgeoning American-Israeli relationship following the Yom Kippur War, was not merely based on rapport, but the fact that the Israeli armed forces had enjoyed a measure of success which could no longer be ignored. From 1948, which by comparison was a military establishment which made do with hand-me-downs and the goodwill approach to gathering arms and equipment, to learning, honing and employment of a military doctrine of mobile warfare which, by the 1967 and 1973 wars, showcased the IDF as one of the globe’s most professional of military forces.  So, from the American perspective, why not?

Yet while resorting to the wealth of data available to be sifted, a constant needed to be understood:  That despite the fact that the Arab forces used Soviet weaponry and adopted Soviet training, they were not Soviet formations; had not waged war in Europe and, had not the long-term benefit of having fought against the likes of Heinz Guderian, Erich von Manstein, Ewald von Kliest and Hasso von Manteuffel on the Eastern Front, like the Soviets had.

In returning to generals Starry and DePuy, both believed that concerns about the tank’s obsolescence were overblown and that the tank simply needed adequate combined arms support to enable its continued preeminence in ground combat.[23]

General DePuy, in his report, “Implications of the Middle East War on U.S. Army Tactics, Doctrines and Systems,” included analysis of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.  A chart was “included depicting the tank’s continued centrality with air defense, mechanized infantry, close air support, and field artillery in support.  This represented four of what would become the ‘Big Five’:  The Abrams main battle tank, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the Apache Attack Helicopter and the Patriot air defense system.  The unmentioned fifth capability, the Black Hawk helicopter, reflected Starry’s views about rapid transport of troops around and between close and deep areas.”[24]

“Historians have criticized Starry and other officers for a selective and overly rosy portrayal of the IDF’s performance in the war.  For one thing, Starry focused heavily on the theater of war in the Golan Heights while paying less attention to the decisive front in the Sinai Peninsula.  More broadly, the American generals’ reports on the war’s lessons paid scant attention to the IDF’s many errors, including suffering surprise at its outset.  But this was a strategic failure, and TRADOC’s interest in the war was not about strategy but rather tactics, campaigning, and modernization.  What may look like a selective or dishonest analysis to a trained historian was, from Starry’s perspective, a focus on what was important to the U.S. Army of the 1970s.”[25]

Major of the Infantry, Paul H. Herbert, in his 1988 study of General William E. DePuy and his version of FM 100-5, intimated that as a result of the Vietnam War that “This erosion of the Army’s physical strength coincided with a major reassessment of U.S. strategic policy with profound implications for the Army.  The conclusion drawn in the early 1970s was that the American capacity to repel or deter aggression anywhere in the world was limited and that, therefore, the American means to resist must be allocated to regions of the world according to the priority of U.S. security interests.  As a result, many Third World nations resisting aggression would have to handle their own security, with only indirect U.S. assistance and perhaps assistance from major U.S. allied nations within the region.  Therefore, in paring down the defense establishment and budget, the United States assumed a ‘1.5 war’ contingency instead of the ‘2.5 war’ contingency that had prevailed in the 1960s.[26]  This meant that the United States would be prepared to fight one general war and one minor war, but it would not fight two general wars simultaneously.  This interpretation of U.S. security interests, first enunciated as the Nixon and Guam Doctrine in 1969, and later called the ‘strategy of realistic deterrence,” required that strategic planners shift their attention from, Asia to NATO Europe, with a ½ war glance at the Middle East, especially the security of Israel and the access routes to Persian Gulf oil.”[27]

Major Herbert continues his analysis by the degree of change in 1976.  Indeed, “Because these earlier editions of FM 100-5 were not agents of change, they shared the quality of anonymous authorship.  Not so within the 1976 edition.  No officer on active duty in 1976 could fail to identify its author as General William E. DePuy.  As the nineteenth century drill manuals tended to bear the authors’ names (Henry W. Halleck, William J. Hardee, Silas Casey, Emory Upton), so too would the 1976 edition be known as the DePuy manual.  This is because the DePuy manual was an attempt to change the thinking, not the organization, of the entire United States Army.

“Published in striking, camouflage-patterned covers and thoroughly illustrated with colored charts and realistic depictions of Army units in combat, the new manuals were to effect a break with the past—especially the Vietnam War—and to prepare the Army doctrinally to win the next war, not the last.”[28]

Major Herbert, in his analysis, bolsters General Starry’s view on the tank.  “According to the manual, the U.S. Army must be prepared to fight outnumbered and win and to win the first battle, points that the author acknowledged were not part of the Army’s historical tradition.[29]  Also emphasized was that the tank was the ‘decisive weapon’ of ground combat, but that it could not survive on a ‘modern battlefield’ except as a part of a ‘combined arms team’ that included all the other branches of the Army and tactical air forces.’  FM 100-5 accepted ‘force ratios’ as a primary determinant in battle and specified that successful defense required a 6-to-1 superiority.  The manual stressed that cover (protection from enemy fire), concealment (protection from enemy observation), suppression (disruption of the enemy’s fire with one’s own fire), and teamwork (cooperation between the branches of the Army and between the Army and Air Force) were essential to victory on the battlefield.”[30]

Added to the discussion is the reality that weapons have increased in lethality owing to advances in technology.  And so while basic military doctrine may remain consistent—concentration of force, mobility, supply and training. . .—the helicopter did not exist in World War II as a decisive presence as it did in Vietnam and afterwards.  “Consistent with this focus on weapons systems, FM 100-5 recognized emerging technological capabilities such as remotely controlled drones for collecting intelligence and identifying targets; special sights and goggles expected to give the Army full night vision capability; and the soon-to-be fielded M1 main battle tank, the M2 mechanized infantry combat vehicle, and an advanced attack helicopter.  It attempted to present concepts and techniques that could be implemented using equipment currently on hand but that would allow the Army to practice a style of warfare consistent with the possession of new equipment.[31]  Again Major Herbert, with his analysis, observed FM 100-5’s emphasis on armored warfare, Soviet weapons systems, emerging technology, and U.S. numerical inferiority all reflected its deliberate focus on the defense of NATO Europe.  The manual even included a chapter each on fighting alongside NATO allies and fighting in cities, both contributed by U.S. Army, Europe.  It stated that the defense of NATO Europe was the U.S. Army’s most important and most dangerous contingency and that an army prepared to fight Warsaw Pact forces in Europe could probably fight successfully in other areas of the world against other enemies with little modification to its doctrine.  FM 100-5 relied heavily on the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War to assert that contingency missions outside NATO were likely to pit the Army against enemies organized, trained and equipped in the Soviet style in any case.[32]

“. . . the 1976 edition of FM 100-5 introduced the term “Air-Land Battle’ for the first time.  The chapter titled ‘Air-Land Battle’ only described the joint procedures agreed to by the Air Force and Army for cooperating in areas of mutual interest, such as airspace management, air logistics, aerial reconnaissance, and electronic warfare.  The use of this term and the dedication of a chapter to its discussion signaled the Army’s strong interest in a new concept of theater warfare that recognized the total interdependency of the Army and Air Force and that sought to describe their activities within the theater in a single, unified battle.[33]

“In each of these particulars, the 1976 edition of FM 100-5 was distinctly different from its predecessors.  It was a deliberate attempt to change the way the U.S. Army thought about and prepared for war.”[34]

Much of the aforementioned analysis by Major Ethan Orwin and Major Paul H. Herbert is borne out by what is actually written in FM 100-5.  For instance:

“The war in the Middle East in 1973 might well portend the nature of modern battle.  Arabs and Israelis were armed with the latest weapons, and the conflict approached a destructiveness once attributed to nuclear arms.  Use of aircraft for close support of advancing armor, in the fashion generally practiced since 1940, was greatly reduced by advancing surface-to-air missiles and air defense guns.  In clashes of massed armor such as the world has not witnessed for 30 years, both sides sustained devastating losses, approaching 50 percent in less than two weeks of combat.  These statistics are of serious import for U.S. Army commanders.”  And . . .

. . . “All great armies of the world rest their land combat power upon the tank.  The armies of the Warsaw Pact, fashioned on the Soviet model, incorporate masses of tanks, backed by an impressive industrial base producing large numbers of quality armored fighting vehicles.  Warsaw Pact doctrine anticipates use of nuclear weapons in the future war, but teaches preparedness to fight without them.  For both conditions, it emphasizes heavy concentrations of armor.”[35]

The significance of and reliance on the tank is clearly evident in FM 100-05, as intimated earlier in the narrative, was bolstered, too, by such support units as modern anti-aircraft artillery and ground-launched anti-aircraft missiles.  Both armor and A.A. defensive armaments were produced in aggregate quantities and quality that required the appropriate response.  Hence the notion of the helicopter and its significance as a mobile platform in modern conventional warfare.

Endnotes

[1]  See pages 6 and 7, Chapter 2, “Overview of the Sinai Campaign:  6 Oct. 1973-24 Oct. 1973,” Yom Kippur 1973:  An Operational Analysis of the Sinai Campaign, by Arthur B. Loefstedt, III, Major, U.S. Army.

[2]  Referring to those critical of using the helicopter on the conventional-nuclear battlefield.

[3]  See page 55, “Airmobility, A New Board on Army Aviation is Fourteen Years Overdue.” By General Hamilton H. Howze, Army Aviation, August-September 1977.  And, in addition, . . .

       . . . “After the war was over, the IDF sought to learn its lessons and overcome its shortcomings by proceeding on a parallel three-track approach.  First, it was necessary to replace war losses.  Next, the size and quality of its force structure was considerably improved by the purchase of modern F-15 and F-16 fighter aircraft as well as Cobra attack helicopters armed with tube-launched, especially tracked, wire-guided (TOW) missiles.  Finally, a concerted attempt was made to develop technological and tactical responses to Arab anti-armor and anti-aircraft capability, partly by purchasing avionics from the United States and partly by pushing indigenous solutions,” see page 185, Chapter 6, “Israel:  Maneuver Warfare, Air Power, and Logistics,” Air Power and Maneuver Warfare, by Martin van Creveld with Steven L. Canby and Kenneth S, Brower.

[4]  See page 9, “Combat Operations:  The Armed Copter in the Defense of Europe,” by Hamilton H. Howze, Army Aviation, July 30, 1977.

[5]  See page 10, General Hamilton H. Howze.

[6]  See page 10, General Hamilton H. Howze.

[7]  See page 10, General Hamilton H. Howze.

[8]  Tabun, the initial version of nerve gas, was invented by Dr. Gerhard Schrader in 1936, followed four years later by Sarin.  Soman followed in 1944.

[9]  See page 68, Chapter Three, “Hitler’s Secret Weapon,” A Higher Form of Killing, by Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxman.

[10]  The British, by 1943-1944, had developed the N-Bomb, an anthrax weapon, testing same on Gruinard Island off the coast of Scotland.

[11]  See page 69, Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxman.

[12]  See page 12, General Hamilton H. Howze.

[13]  See page 12, General Hamilton H. Howze.

[14]  See page 14, General Hamilton H. Howze.

[15]  See pages 17 and 18, “Army Aviation on the Horizon:  Aviation is the Key,” Army Aviation, by General George S. Blanchard, December 31, 1978.

[16]  See page 19, General George R. Blanchard.

[17]  See page 18, General George R. Blanchard.

[18]  The point can be made here that an economy focused on military spending versus the civilian economy will eventually collapse or foster a popular backlash or both.  Especially from the civilian perspective, that the military the people are wasting hard-earned money on cannot seem to win wars, at least within the parameters of how victory had been previously viewed and charted.  In the Soviet case, the situation became acute in the wake of the debacle in Afghanistan.  To which must be added, that the Muslims fought and won the last battlefield action of the Cold War and, played no small part in humbling the Soviet Union and bringing same down, a contribution to the effort that is virtually ignored by news pundits and foreign policy analysts in either public pronouncements or print.  An effort, too, that cost the Muslims north of 1,000,000 souls.

[19]  See page 18, General George R. Blanchard.

[20]  See page 53, “Airmobility:  A New Board on Army Aviation is Fourteen Years Overdue,” Army Aviation, by General Hamilton H, Howze, (Ret.), August-September 1977.

[21]  See pages 53 and 54, General Hamilton H. Howze.

[22]  The inference here is that unlike 1945, when the United States was economically peerless, in the world today, and at this writing, according to the Federal Reserve, third quarter, 2024, the GNP is, $29,384.064 trillion; GDP, $29,374.9 trillion; national debt:  $35.46 trillion.  And this is a multipolar world of more kibitzers vying for position and the growing impact of the de-dollarization movement.

[23]  See page 49, “Not an Intellectual Exercise:  Lessons from the U.S.-Israeli Institutional Army Cooperation, 1973-1982,” Military Review, by Major Ethan Orwin, U.S. Army.

[24]  See pages 49 and 50, Major Ethan Orwin.

[25]  See page 50, Major Ethan Orwin.

[26]  An historical parallel here is 1941-1942, the Eastern Front.  Hitler’s ambitious plan, Operation:  BARBAROSSA, some 3,300,000 German soldiers in three large army groups invaded the Soviet Union.  But by March 1942, with upwards of 1,000,000 casualties and large material losses (in only nine months), in addition to the growing Desert War in North Africa, Hitler no longer had the capability for such an expansive offensive in 1942.  He consigned his attacks in Ukraine and the Caucasus, resulting in the epic battle of attrition known as Stalingrad.

[27]  See page 5, Chapter 1, “Of Doctrines and Manuals,” Deciding What Has to be Done:  General William E. DePuy and the 1976 Edition of FM 100-5, Operations, by Major Paul H. Herbert.

Worth a read here as to the Nixon Doctrine, is that written by Colonel Richard M. Jennings, U.S. Army, “The Thrust of the Nixon Doctrine,” Army University Press, February 1972.   www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/military…     

[28]  See page 7, Major Paul H. Herbert.

[29]  Grant, for instance, enlisted complaints from representatives and senators that had to be fielded by President Lincoln during the Civil War.  “He takes too many casualties.”  Lincoln:  “But he wins.”  General Grant knew about manpower advantage, resources, productive capacity and, of course, the financial backing of a superior financial structure, with which to wage America’s first industrialized war, Total War.  Vietnam, however, was not an industrialized Total War, for the United States.  After 1965-1966, it did for North Vietnam, favoring Levee en Masse, organizing the population and all its capabilities for war.  America did not, and if anything, divorced the masses from the conflict.  Hence, America went down to an embarrassing and even predictable defeat.

[30]  See pages 7 and 8, Major Paul H. Herbert.

[31]  See pages 8 and 9, Major Paul H. Herbert.

[32]  With regards to taking on enemies outside Europe, equipped with Soviet weaponry, bolstered by the lessons of the October 1973 War, “with little modification of doctrine,” perhaps the 1991 short-lived Persian Gulf War comes to mind here.  Evident was the use of powerful armored spearheads backed by interdiction-style and close air support by aircraft.  And most important, first asserting absolute control of the air.  Of course, though . . .

. . . following the collapse of the Soviet Union, America reverted to counterinsurgency forms of warfare, in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Again a defeat in Iraq and defeat at the hands of the Taliban in Afghanistan showcased the repetition of history here by the United States.

This historian’s method of historical study, Horizontal Determinism, again had been vindicated by rostering the years of 1973-2021.  The repeat of history is never exact; but, the basic repetition is undeniable.

[33]  Here, perhaps, we see a return to the Schwerpunckt, the massing of armor at the point of attack, backed by the tactical use of aircraft in close cooperation with the armor.  Schwerpunckt, then, is that “weight of effort.”  Consult Milan Vego, Ph.D., “Clausewitz’s SCHWERPUNCKT,” Military Review, January-February 2007.

[34]  See page 9, Major Paul H. Herbert.

[35]  See page 2-2, Chapter 2, “Modern Weapons on the Modern Battlefield,” Operations, FM 100-05, 1 July 1976.

Bibliography

Blanchard, General George S., Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Army, Europe, “Army Aviation on the Horizon:  Aviation is the Key,” Army Aviation, Vol. 27, No. 12, Westport, Ct., December 31, 1978.

Clarke, Robin, The Silent Weapons, David McKay Company, Inc., New York, 1968.

Creveld, Martin van with Canby, Steven L. and Brower, Kenneth S., Air Power and Maneuver Warfare, Air University Press, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, 1994.

FM 100-5, Operations, C-1 FM 100-5, Headquarters, Department of the Army, Washington, D.C., 29 April 1977.

Harris, Robert and Paxman, Jeremy, A Higher Form of Killing:  The Secret History of Chemical and Biological Warfare, Hill & Wang, A Division of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York, 1982.

Herbert, Major Paul H., U.S. Army, Deciding What was to be Done:  General William 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.

Howze, General Hamilton H., (Ret.), “Airmobility:  A New Board is Fourteen Years Overdue,” Army Aviation, Vol. 25, Nos. 8 & 9, Westport, Ct., August-September 1977.

Howze, General Hamilton H., (Ret.), “Combat Operations:  The Armed Copter in Defense of Europe,” Army Aviation, Vol. 25, No. 7, Westport, Ct., July 30, 1977.

Jennings, Colonel Richard M., U.S. Army, “The Thrust of the Nixon Doctrine,” Army University Press, February 1972.  www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/military…

Loefstedt, Major Arthur B., III, U.S. Army, Yom Kippur War 1973:  An Operational Analysis of the Sinai Campaign, 19960501 247, Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island, February 12, 1996.

Orwin, Major Ethan, U.S. Army, “Not a Intellectual Exercise:  Lessons from the U.S.-Israeli Institutional Army Cooperation, 1973-1982,” Military Review, January-February 2020.

www.armyupress.army,mil/,,,/Orwin-US-Israeli

Tucker, Jonathan B., War of Nerves:  Chemical Warfare From World War I to Al-Qaeda, Pantheon Books, New York, 2006.

Vego, Milan, Ph.D., “Clausewitz’s SCHWERPUNKT:  Mistranslated from German—Misunderstood in English,” Military Review, January-February 2007.  www.armyupress.army,mil/Portals/7/military…

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.