Victory Is in the Air
I
THE nature of an Axis attack has been blueprinted for us ever since Hitler’s invasion of Poland. The prescription for each success has followed the same clearcut formula. The formula insists that initial Striking Power devolve primarily on the air units instead of, as heretofore, on naval and military units. Norway, Crete, Britain, Manila, Malaya — each attack began with a bolt from the blue.
To lose this war, we have but to carry on the World War I formula of using Air Power as an auxiliary agency. To win this war, we must make up our minds to use Air Power not in its obsolete sense, not even as it was used a year ago, but with the realization that new and immense Air Power must be the very spearhead of our attack upon the enemy.
The final objective of every war is the destruction of the enemy’s nerve centre, his inner citadel.
In the present, war, the enemy’s citadels are those small zones in which are concentrated the complicated machinery and high-powered assembly lines and factories of modern machine production. They work forever under strain. Their output is never enough for the incessant demand.
The citadel of the Nazis is the small zone that lies roughly between South and Central Germany. The citadel of Japan is an even smaller zone, chiefly on the island of Honshu, which contains Yokohama, Tokyo, Kobe, Osaka — the heavy industries. The strain upon these citadels is increased by every victory as well as by every defeat. The further the advance from the citadel, the greater becomes the strain. We are now witnessing a series of great hammer blows throughout the Pacific — in the Philippines, Malaya, China, the East Indies, and Australia; but all these activities increase Japan’s area of insufficiency in machine power. Every hammer blow has its genesis in that one small area in Japan, from which must come every plane, every spare engine, every spare tread for a tank, every torpedo, shell, and bomb.
Nazi Germany supported the strain so long as her conquests were geographically within easy range of her citadel — that is, so long as they included only France, Norway, and Denmark. Since she has lunged into the remote distances of Libya and Russia, the strain upon the Nazi citadel has become terrific, and it becomes greater every week.
Between them, the two Axis citadels are trying to support a world conquest. The fact remains, however, that no matter how far-flung their temporary gains, a knockout blow against these citadels must bring inevitable collapse, just as a house of cards collapses when the base cards are removed. In the past, destruction of the citadel has had to be accomplished by crushing the enemy from the outside, driving toward the centre, using a battering ram of human flesh. We have had a series of long and bloody battles, the slow crippling and exhaustion of the enemy’s Armies and Navies and the destruction of his reserves; finally there came the collapse of his unprotected citadel.
Hitler has enormously accelerated this process. Air Power is his spearhead, and for his battering ram he has used tanks instead of unprotected flesh. To blast his way into the inner citadel, he has still relied upon his surface forces.
Wherever Hitler has relied only on his Air Power, notably in the Battle of Britain, he has drawn negative results; therefore, argue the die-hards, Air Power, by itself, may be dismissed as inconclusive. To demonstrate the fallacy of this view we have only to examine the facts.
The essence of Hitler’s failure to smash the British citadel was not that he lacked sufficient planes, but that he lacked sufficient aerial Striking Power. Numerous as were his bombers, there is no doubt whatever that he miscalculated the weight of explosives an average town is able to withstand. Instead of smashing British industrial centres, the medium-weight German bombs have succeeded at most in temporarily crippling them; not even in the cases of Birmingham and Coventry has bombing decisively affected British armament production. This is not the fault of Air Power. This is the result of having used the wrong kind of aerial Striking Power, of having attempted to do a specific job without the proper tools.
The heaviest German attacks on London used a maximum of 300 to 400 tons of medium bombs a night. The attacks were rarely continued for more than three or four nights in straight succession. The raid on Birmingham used about 400 tons during a single night; the raid on Coventry used a maximum of 400 tons for two nights in succession. The factor that has emerged in largescale bombing operations — miscalculation of which must in the end cost Hitler the war — is what one might term the shock-absorbing or rallying factor of communities: that is, the ability of targets, whether civilian or land targets, to withstand explosive impacts of major extent, to pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and keep right on going. The small Nazi bombs, the 300 to 400 tons of bombs per night routine, came fortunately within this limit of resistance. However, had the Midland raids been continued for two additional nights the cities could not have been rebuilt: the debris of tens of thousands of houses would have been so great that it would have been easier to rebuild the cities on new sites. A limit there is, and must be, for even the stoutest hearts. Raids involving bombs of 4000 pounds, raids that release from 3000 to 5000 tons of bombs a night, mean that any target in the world is finished.
II
It is frequently remarked that America was asleep at the switch before our entry into World War II. This criticism cannot be applied to our bomber design. Quick to figure out the key reason for Hitler’s failure to demolish Britain, and disregarding opposition, delay, and lack of authority, our designers took it squarely on themselves to overcome the problem that had stumped the Axis. Their answer was a deadly one. In 1941, on a test flight over Germany, an experimental American-built bomber carrying enormous bombs leveled an entire city block with the impact of a single bomb and became a legend to the dumfounded RAF.
We have to thank our designers for the fact that the United States now has under construction the proper instruments for the destruction of the Axis citadels. Thanks to them, we have in production a long-range Striking Power — planes unprecedented in size, destructive power, range, and, above all, in numbers. These heavy bombers can fly well over 1000 miles, do their job, and return without refueling. They can speed 300 miles an hour. They can carry two to four tons of heavy bombs apiece, depending on the distance of their target — heavier bombs than any the world has yet known. For the production of these planes we have already constructed plants greater in size than those of the entire automotive industry of the United States. Construction of these arsenals of Striking Power has naturally taken time; that is why only the first shadow of our new air armada is now beginning to emerge. By 1943 we shall produce these great four-engine bombers at the rate of more than 500 per month, and also a much larger number of long-range medium bombers. This is an Air Striking Power as different from that of Hitler as Niagara is different from a fire hose.
In this difference lies our opportunity for victory — in the difference between their 300 tons of bombs and our 3000 tons; between their intermittent bombing and our potential power to maintain for months uninterrupted bombing that will reach into the very heart of Southern Germany and Japan. Last but not least is the significant fact that this frightful tonnage of missiles will not fall upon a people possessing the deep reserves of the British, but upon a people who have been promised immunity from bombing; on factories manned by a population that for years has been underfed, underclothed, and overworked.
III
Extremists have inferred that the great surface forces — the navies, the armies, the battleships, the armored tanks — are now no longer of vital importance. This is plainly untrue. Air Power I have likened to a spearhead, but it is only a part of the whole attack. In itself it is as impotent as a bullet without a gun. It cannot act alone; to be effective it must be integrated and sustained. For instance, the Navy urgently needs the blasting powder of the Air Corps heavy bombers. The Air Corps needs the Navy to help it locate and recognize the enemy on the high seas. Later on, the Air Corps will need huge-scale coöperation from the Navy in transporting the ground material for a vast air offensive. It will need the Army to protect its bases. In time of peace, each has kept the other at arm’s length; now they have tremendous need of each other, in every theatre of war, every day and every night. It is not too much to say that victory depends not only upon the full use of Air Power as a primary weapon, but upon a genuine and intimate coöperation between Air Power and the surface forces. Hitherto, this coöperation has not existed. There is nothing to prevent it. It can and must be effected.
First of all, we must have forward bases from which to operate. The reason the Axis cannot effectively bomb the United States today is that it has no forward bases. The United States, on the other hand, can bomb Germany because we can use England as a forward base. Across the Pacific our bases still have to be established, as close to Japan as England is to Southern Germany.
For the destruction of the Japanese citadel, it has been estimated that we shall require more than 1000 heavy bombers, operating from bases 700 to 1000 miles from their objective. These bases must contain all the maintenance and repair facilities essential to the task of keeping 1000 great planes in the air. (To get some idea of these gigantic requirements, it may be noted that the entire commercial air system of the United States consists of not more than 350 medium planes.) For these bases, equipment must be constructed. Cargo ships must be reserved, naval convoys planned; huge supplies of gasoline, lubricating oil, bombs, spare engines, and spare parts must be assembled. It will take months before the cumbersome ground paraphernalia of a great Striking Force can be moved to a battle station overseas. On top of this, we must transport the trained men, the mechanics, radio operators, electricians, and engineers. Finally, and equally important, we must transport the soldiers, tanks, guns, long-range pursuit planes, and powerful anti-aircraft batteries essential to protect each base from destruction or capture. Only when all this is done can the spearhead of big bombers be flown overseas and the signal for attack be given. This whole scheme obviously represents an undertaking of the greatest magnitude. Costly as it may be, however, it will not be a fraction of the cost in lives or dollars involved in one great sea battle; and unlike one sea battle, it will be conclusive.
Across the Atlantic, there is already established a great forward base in the fortress that is England. Here there are facilities; but for our air armada in the making, they are still not big enough. For the war against Germany, additional bases will have to be built. This means another procession of ships carrying fuel, bombs, spares, and all the sinews of the Striking Force, before our bombers can be massed in England for the final blow. Bases for 5000 heavy bombers would enable us to use up to 3000 bombers at a time over Germany. They could deliver against the Nazi citadel 12,000 tons of bombs a night.
No flesh and blood, no Nazi will-power, no air defenses, no patriotic exhortations, can possibly withstand such fury. It can produce only one answer — the collapse of Nazi Germany.
For us, time is the paramount factor. The strongest, words in the language are inadequate to describe its importance. At present we have our golden opportunity, while Hitler’s citadel strains to supply the Russian front. If we delay, if Hitler can build his Striking Power first, England will be knocked out of the war. If England is conquered, Hitler’s Air Power will be available in enormous quantities to Japan, and the United States might lose the war. What we can do to others, others may do to us. The headlong speed of Air Power makes all depend on time.
IV
Knowing what we need, how do we get it? How shall we get it in the shortest space and with the fewest setbacks, mistakes, and extravagances? Here we turn the searchlights on ourselves.
The United States at this moment, in its wild race for rearmament, is exalting production — any and all production — at the cost of common sense. We are allowing non-essentials as well as essentials to ravage our resources, on the theory that if we have three of everything we must automatically become thrice-armed. There is not enough raw material available to make three of everything, nor is there enough manpower available to turn it out. Even if there were, we are blinding ourselves to this restraining fact: whether or not our capacity to produce is unlimited, our capacity to transport is not. Only that portion of our production which can be actually transported to the theatre of war can be effective. It does not give us Striking Power to pour our resources into the equipment of an army too unwieldy to transport and to supply — to produce, for example, staggering quantities of secondary equipment, such as short-range pursuit planes that are already jamming our dockheads and piling up in our own fields, or to turn out tanks beyond the ships abuilding. To win swiftly, only one thing counts: Striking Power that can be brought to bear directly upon the enemy.
There is only one way in which we can achieve this. There must be between our forces a triple partnership in actual fact, a partnership free from prejudice or jealousy. At present, each of our three forces strives to outdo the other in speed and in the volume of its requirements, as if the fate of the nation depended upon the simultaneous production of the full strength of each. The conflict in priorities and in purpose is correspondingly intense. There are not three inexhaustible reservoirs from which to draw. There is only one, and that is by no means bottomless.
The solution lies in a policy which recognizes that priority belongs solely to that combination of actual Striking Power that can be brought to bear against the enemy. All the evidence leads to this final conclusion: —
A policy of intimate coöperation between Army, Navy, and Air Corps having as its objective the soonest possible destruction of enemy citadels by our new Striking Power in the air.
At present, there is critical confusion and discord even in the air program itself. The fact that we have a big bomber program at all, a program already in operation, is due to a crusade carried on by the Assistant Secretary of War for Air, appointed by the President about a year ago. The Assistant Secretary and his associates in the Army Air Corps have been disbelieved, impeded, contradicted, and have only succeeded because of the direct support of the President.
To make the effort succeed, all hands are required — every resource of daring, of experience, of executive power, of vision. We have no time for ‘ experts ‘ who argue, without the facts, that Air Power always has been and always will be indecisive. Until recently, these people were proving that battleships were immune to air attack; and even after the sinking of $200,000,000 of battleships at a loss of only $5,000,000 of planes, they insist that Air Power is just an important auxiliary. Against them are ranged aviation extremists who talk and write as if battleships and tanks and troops should be scrapped, and Air Power sustained, like some hydroponic plant, without visible means of support. None of this makes for swift victory.
The things that count in this war are the long-range bombers, the heavy bombs, the bases, the ships and engines and spares that comprise final Striking Power. If we pursue any other policy, if we waste vital time and materials upon the production of weapons that chain us to the past, the war can only end when the man-power and the treasure of the whole world have been devoured by battle and by disease.