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Balloon Observations AIR WARFARE, military operations above the surface of the earth. Tactically, these operations include support of land and sea forces by aerial observation of the enemy; directing the fire of naval and ground weapons; and transporting troops, equipment, and supplies. Strategically, air warfare includes combat between fighter planes and bombardment of enemy factories, communications systems, and population centers. Balloon ObservationsThe idea of warfare conducted from an aerial ship was proposed as early as 1670 by the Italian Jesuit Francesco de Lana Terzi (1631–87) in his book of inventions Prodromo overo saggio di alcune invenzioni nuove. A balloon was first used for military purposes in 1794, during the French revolution, when French army observers stationed in one directed ground fire against Austrian forces. Contemporary engravings illustrate another military application: a fanciful proposal to employ balloons as troop transports to invade England. During the American Civil War, in 1862–63 the Army of the Potomac used balloons to observe Confederate movements. A balloon sent to Cuba during the Spanish-American War was used to direct U.S. artillery fire at the Battle of San Juan. World War IThe first U.S. military airplane, built by Wilbur and Orville Wright, was tested and accepted in 1909. As the threat of war in Europe grew before 1914, potential German use of zeppelins (see AIRSHIP) for military purposes led authorities to look seriously at military aviation; early in World War I, Paris and London were first bombed from zeppelins—which were subsequently withdrawn from use because of their extreme vulnerability. The future of air warfare lay with propeller-driven aircraft, first used by the Italian army during the Italo-Turkish War of 1911–12 to observe movements of the Turkish forces. Great Britain founded the Royal Flying Corps in 1912. When hostilities broke out in 1914, the Allies and the Germans had about 200 aircraft each on the western front. The first planes were primarily scout and reconnaissance types, slow and vulnerable to antiaircraft fire. The French flying ace Roland Garros (1888–1918) was the first to shoot down a plane by firing a machine gun through his propeller (1915). The Dutch aircraft designer Anthony Fokker, working with the Germans, developed an interrupter gear to permit machine guns permanently mounted on a plane to fire through the propeller without damaging the blades; with this modification, and the development of speedier planes, the era of fighter aircraft was born. Aerial combat produced the aces whose fame became legendary: Germany’s Baron Manfred von Richthofen (the Red Baron); Georges Guynemer (1894–1917) and Charles Nungesser (1892–1927) of France; Albert Ball (1896–1917) of Great Britain; William Bishop (1894–1956) of Canada; Eddie Rickenbacker of the U.S.; and the American volunteers who flew (1915–17) with the French as the Lafayette Escadrille. Earlier in the war, bombs were dropped by hand over the side of the cockpit; later, heavier aircraft were developed, and bombsights and standardized bomb fittings ensured greater effectiveness in striking military and civilian targets. By the war’s end, 254 metric tons of bombs had been dropped in raids over England, causing 9000 casualties. Although not to be compared with World War II statistics, these raids were psychologically and strategically important, resulting in the diversion of aircraft from the front for air defense at home. The use of massed air power at the front reached its peak in 1918 in the battles of Château-Thierry, Saint Mihiel, and the Meuse-Argonne, with Allied forces led by the U.S. general Billy Mitchell. Between the WarsAfter the war, the chief European proponents of the development of air power were Hugh Trenchard (1873–1956), leader of the British Royal Flying Corps and first commander of the Royal Air Force (RAF) on its creation in April 1918, and Giulio Douhet (1869–1930), an Italian army officer who commanded his nation’s first aviation unit from 1912 to 1915. Douhet’s book Command of the Air (1921; trans. 1942) proposed the idea of strategic bombing of enemy centers. As the war ended, Trenchard and Mitchell were in fact planning extensive attacks on German war production sites and dropping soldiers behind the German lines. Mitchell’s attempts to focus attention on the effectiveness of bombing by means of demonstrations conducted in 1921 and 1923 (several battleships were sunk in these tests) led to national prominence as a prophet of air power. His ideas bore fruit in World War II. The development of high-speed offense bombers during the 1930s culminated in America’s long-range Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress. Fighter aircraft did not receive the same attention in the U.S., because design modifications made bombers self-defending. The U.S. thus entered World War II with the P-39 and P-40 as its main fighter planes. Between 1935 and 1936 Great Britain and Germany developed the prototypes of the Hawker Hurricane, Supermarine Spitfire, and Messerschmitt Me 109 fighters; the Junkers Ju 87, better known as the Stuka dive bomber; and the Bristol Blenheim and Heinkel He 111 bombers. The war in Ethiopia in 1935 and Spanish civil war air battles, starting in 1938, served as testing grounds for aircraft design and tactics. World War IIWorld War II began in 1939 with the invasion of Poland, the bombing of its major cities, and the immediate destruction of the Polish air force by the German Luftwaffe. In 1940 the defeat of Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, and France was effected, in large part through air support. The Battle of Britain, in August–September 1940, concluded with the RAF Fighter Command having fought off the Luftwaffe. Strategic bombing efforts to destroy British factories and civilian morale had failed. The U.S. entry into the war began with the Japanese carrier-borne aircraft attacks on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines. Such attacks quickly destroyed most American land-based combat aircraft in the Pacific. In the European theater, air defense systems in England were greatly aided by the development of radar to guide interception, as well as by the inability of German fighter planes to escort their bombers, because of low fuel capacity. The development of night-fighter systems by the Germans did not begin until after British night bombers began large-scale raids on Germany, such as the 1000-plane raid over Cologne in May 1942. At the same time, American bombers were carrying out early daylight attacks on specific industrial and military targets. This Combined Bomber Offensive included the costly Ploesti mission of Aug. 1, 1943 (planes launched from Africa to bomb Romanian oil fields) and the Regensburg-Schweinfurt mission of August 17 (the first large-scale American attack on Germany, launched from bases in England). American losses in these and other offensives were heavy until 1944, when long-range P-47 and P-51 escort fighters became available and made it possible for bombers to reach sites deep within Germany in relative safety. The Allies then gained air superiority by destroying German aircraft and aircraft-production facilities. On D-Day, June 6, 1944, Allied air superiority permitted only a few sorties by the Luftwaffe against land invasion forces. German developments, however, indicated the future of air warfare. Their V-1, or "buzz bomb," a pilotless jet-propelled plane carrying 907 kg (2000 lb) of explosives, was directed against England in June 1944. The V-2, a true guided missile capable of carrying 748 kg (1650 lb) of explosives some 320 km (about 200 mi), was launched in September 1944. These attacks came too late to affect the final outcome of the war, as did the failure of the Germans to use the Me 262 as a jet fighter until 1945. In the early days of World War II, the China-Burma-India theater was the site of the efforts of the American Volunteer Group, better known as the Flying Tigers. Following the Japanese conquest of Burma, supply flights from India to China over the "Hump" (the Himalayas) were as important as combat efforts. Bases in China later served in launching bombing operations against Japan. In the Pacific, the Battle of Midway in June 1942 was a great victory for American carrier-based naval air power. The battles for the Gilbert, Marshall, and Mariana islands eventually provided bases for bomber attacks on Japan. The Japanese had not developed strong air defenses at home, and the use of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress, starting in 1944, caught them unprepared to detect bombers or to coordinate army and navy efforts. On March 9, 1945, a massive incendiary raid destroyed about one-fourth of all Tokyo’s buildings, and on August 6, the B-29 Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The use of air power resulted in the defeat of Japan without an invasion and seemed to demonstrate that, in a future general war, ultimate defeat or victory would be settled by air battle. Some 20 years later, in 1967, this was demonstrated in the Six-Day War between the Arabs and Israel, which was decided in the first three hours when the Arab forces lost 452 aircraft. Post-World War II
By the 1950s surface-to-air, surface-to-surface, air-to-air, and air-to-surface missiles, as well as missiles fired from under water, were adopted by the major powers (see GUIDED MISSILES). The tactical use of piloted aircraft was, however, continued in the so-called limited wars fought after World War II. The Korean War started with World War II propeller-driven aircraft, but soon became the occasion for the first aerial combats between jet fighters, notably the Russian-built MiG-15 and the U.S. F-80 and F-86. For political reasons U.S. Air Force and Navy strikes were limited to interdiction: the prevention of enemy movements and destruction of their communications and supply lines by gunfire and bombing. In 1954 the doctrine of "massive retaliation" suggested that in future conflicts the U.S. would not necessarily confine air strikes to the local area of hostilities, but might strike at the enemy’s homeland. In the mid-1960s the U.S. adopted the policy of "strategic persuasion," in which the application of military force is designed to dissuade an enemy from the prospect of overall gain by continued aggression. The Vietnam WarWeaponry used in the war in Vietnam included supersonic jets; Russian-built MiG-17s and MiG-21s opposed F-105s and F-4s. American pilots faced the substantial new menace of surface-to-air (SAM) missiles used for air defense. Electronic technology, however, provided them with laser-guided and optically guided bombs, missile-detection and radar-jamming countermeasures, and air-to-air and air-to-ground rockets. The development of aerial refueling aided in extending the range of combat aircraft; on the other hand, the efforts of carrier-based aircraft were largely wasteful, compared with their successes in World War II. It was in Vietnam that helicopters, initially used for observation, transport, and medical evacuation, became a significant combat weapon, and the World War II DC3 cargo plane was converted into a gunship. Persian Gulf War
In January 1991, the role of air power in modern warfare was dramatically demonstrated during the Persian Gulf War. Adhering to the military doctrine "Airland Battle," behind-the-lines attacks were made on enemy command and control centers, communication facilities, supply depots, and reinforcement forces, and air superiority was established before armored ground units moved in. The initial attacks included Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from warships in the Gulf, F-117A Stealth fighter-bombers armed with laser-guided smart bombs, and F-4G Wild Weasel aircraft loaded with HARM anti-radar missiles. Timed to eliminate or reduce the effectiveness of Iraq’s ground radar defenses, these attacks permitted the F-14, F-15, F-16, and F/A-18 fighter bombers to achieve air superiority and drop TV- and laser-guided bombs. The A-10 Thunderbolt, with its Gatling gun and heat-seeking or optically guided Maverick missiles, provided support for ground units and destroyed enemy armor. The AH-64 Apache and the AH-1 Cobra helicopters fired laser-guided Hellfire missiles, guided to tanks by ground observers or scout helicopters. Also essential to the allied victory were the E-3A Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS), and an aging fleet of B-52Gs. Over 2250 combat aircraft, including 1800 U.S. craft, participated against Iraq’s approximately 500 Soviet-built MiG-29s and French-made Mirage F-1s. By the end of the fifth week, over 88,000 combat missions had been flown by allied forces, with over 88,000 tons of bombs dropped. D.J.B. For further information on this topic, see the Bibliography, sections Air warfare, U.S. Air Force, Aircraft. © Copyright 1999 Simon & Schuster Inc. and its licensors.
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