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- For the H. G. Wells novel written in 1907, see "The War in the Air"
Aerial warfare is the use of military aircraft and other flying machines in warfare, including military airlift of cargo to further the national interests as was demonstrated in the Berlin Airlift. Developing from unpowered observation hot air balloons in the 18th century and even older Kite, aerial warfare has become a high-technology affair that has led to many advances in technology and techniques such as propulsion, radar, and use of composites and engineered materials such as carbon fibers.
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Kite warfare
The earliest documented aerial warfare took place in ancient China, when a manned Kite was set off to spy for military intelligence and communication [1]. Ancient Chinese soldiers also mounted massive aerial fire arrow attacks from war kites, where they would send a volley of flaming arrows from the war kite onto the ground target.
Balloon warfare
Balloon warfare in Ancient China
In or around the 2nd or 3rd century, a prototype Hot air balloon, the Kongming lantern was invented in China serving as military communication[2][3].
Balloon warfare in Europe
Some minor warfare use was made of balloons in the infancy of aeronautics. The first instance was by the French Aerostatic Corps at the Battle of Fleurus in 1794, who used a tethered balloon, L'entreprenant, to gain a vantage point [4] [5][6].
Balloons had disadvantages. They could not fly in bad weather, fog, or high winds. They were at the mercy of the winds and were also very large targets [7][8].
American Civil War
Union Army Balloon Corps
The American Civil War was the first war to witness significant use of aeronautics in support of battle[9][10]. Thaddeus Lowe made noteworthy contributions to the Union war effort using a fleet of balloons he created[11]. In June 1861 Professor Thaddeus S. C. Lowe left his work in the private sector as a scientist/balloonist and offered his services as an aeronaut to President Lincoln, who took some interest in the idea of an air war. Lowe's demonstration of flying his balloon Enterprise over Washington, DC, and transmitting a telegraph message to the ground was enough to have him introduced to the commanders of the Topographical Engineers[12]; initially it was thought balloons could be used for preparing better maps.
Lowe's first action was at the Battle of Bull Run in July 1861 with General Irvin McDowell and the Grand Army of the Potomac. Enterprise did a free flight observation of the Confederate positions[13].
In another demonstration, Lowe was called to Fort Corcoran by artillery General W. F. Smith. Lowe ascended to a given altitude in order to spot rebel encampments at Falls Church, Virginia[13][14]. With flag signals he directed artillery fire onto the sleeping encampment. As the General put it, "The signals from the balloon have enabled my gunners to hit with a fine degree of accuracy an unseen and dispersed target area."
By October, Lowe had orders in hand to build four balloons with portable hydrogen gas generators for use in aerial reconnaissance. Working with several other prominent American balloonists he formed the Union Army Balloon Corps who never received commissions, working as civilian contractors, This was of great concern should the aeronauts be shot down over enemy lines, as civilian spying is summarily punishable by death. Therefore Lowe instructed on the strict use of tethered (as opposed to free) flight. By attaining altitudes from 1,000 feet (300 m) to as much as 3-1/2 miles, an expansive view of the battle field and beyond could be had.
Lowe built seven balloons: Eagle, his first; Constitution, one of the smaller balloons; its sister, Washington; Intrepid, a larger balloon and his favorite; a sister, Union; Excelsior; and United States, which never came out of storage.
As the Confederates retreated toward Richmond, the War turned into the Peninsular Campaign. Due to the heavy forests on the peninsula, the balloons were unable to follow on land. Lowe was introduced to George Washington Parke Custis, a coal barge converted to operate balloons. The balloons and their gas generators were loaded aboard and taken down the Potomac, where reconnaissance of the peninsula could continue. Custis was taken up the Pawmunkey River, where Lowe was reunited with McClellan's army.
Lowe's most dramatic action came in the Battle of Fair Oaks, where he was able to view the advancing of Lee's army onto the isolated detachment of General Heintzelman. Working from two balloon camps, one at Mechanicsville and one at Gaine's Farm, Lowe galloped six miles (10 km) twice daily to keep up with the reconnaissance reports. McClellan was sure the rebels were feigning an attack, but Lowe could see differently. Heintzelman was left stranded on the other side of the Chickahominy River with the bridges having been taken out overnight by the swollen waters. Lowe sent a dispatch of utmost urgency to have the bridge repaired immediately and reserves sent to Heintzelman's aid.[15] He then sent dispatch from Mechanicsville to Gaine's Farm calling for the immediate inflation of the large balloon Enterprise, which would aid him in overlooking the imminent battle.
When Lowe arrived at Gaine's Farm, Intrepid will still far from being inflated. In a quick work of inventive ingenuity, Lowe had the bottom of a camp kettle cut out and joined the valve ends of the Intrepid and the partially inflated Constitution hooked together, thereby transferring the gas from the latter into the former. Within 15 minutes he was in the air to oversee the battle.
Lowe fell prey to malaria during Fair Oaks and was out of commission for more than a month. On his return he found the Balloon Corps had been stripped of horses and wagons and left out of service for Antietam. Lowe was called back into service at Sharpsburg and later responded to Gen. Burnside's army at Vicksburg. The ensuing defeat of the Union Army in what was referred to as the "Mud March" led to Gen. Joseph Hooker relieving Burnside. By this time, the Balloon Corps had been assigned to the Engineers Corps, and a newly promoted Captain Comstock cut Lowe's pay dramatically[16][14].
Lowe tendered his resignation and was released from military duty in May 1863. The Balloon Corps continued to operate with Lowe's handlers, but Union generals' continuing ignoring and mistrust of ballooning resulted in balloon-intelligence not being utilized. By August, the Union Army Balloon Corps was disbanded[17][18][16].
Silk Dress Balloons
Due to the effectiveness of the Union Army Balloon Corps, the Confederates felt compelled to incorporate balloons as well[19]. As coke gas was not always available in Richmond, the first balloons were made of the Montgolfier rigid style, cotton stretched over wood framing and filled with hot smoke from fires made of oil-soaked pinecones. They were piloted by Captain John R. Bryant for use at Yorktown[14][20]. Though Bryant's performance was not all that bad, his handlers were poorly experienced and his balloon was left in the air spinning like a top. Another incident had one of the handlers becoming entangled in the ascending tether rope which had to be chopped loose, leaving the Captain free-flying over his own Confederate positions whose troops threatened to shoot him down.
Attempts at making gas-filled silk balloons were hampered by the South's inability to obtain any imports at all. They did fashion a balloon from dress silk (purportedly silk for making dresses, not from silk dresses themselves)[14]. The inflated spheres appeared as multi-colored orbs over Richmond and were piloted by Captain Landon Cheeves. Before the first balloon could be used it was captured during transportation on the James River by the crew of the Monitor[14][21]. A second balloon did see action until summer 1863, when it was blown from its mooring and taken by Union forces only to be divided up as souvenirs for members of the Federal Congress[22][23]. As the Union Army reduced its use of balloons, so did the Confederates—much to their relief.
Zeppelins, airships and blimps
As powered aircraft with wings dominated military aviation during WWI, rigid dirigibles and zeppelins were used by the Germans to attack cities. After WWI, the United States Navy researched the use of airships, including their use as a base for fighter aircraft, but efforts were cancelled after losses in storms. In WWII, barrage ballons were used as obstacles against aircraft, and blimps were used as observation and radar platforms.
Before World War I
The armies of many countries evaluated the use of aircraft for observation purposes. Naval aviation was pursued as well; several tests were made in which floatplanes were launched by catapult from ships at sea, and recovered later by crane.
The U.S. Navy had been interested in naval aviation since the turn of the 20th century[24][25]. In 1910-1911, the Navy conducted experiments which proved the practicality of carrier-based aviation. On November 14, 1910, near Hampton Roads, Virginia, civilian pilot Eugene Ely took off from a wooden platform installed on the scout cruiser USS Birmingham (CL-2). He landed safely on shore a few minutes later. Ely proved several months later that it was also possible to land on a ship. On January 18, 1911, he landed on a platform attached to the American cruiser USS Pennsylvania (ACR-4) in San Francisco harbor[26][27].
The first use of airplanes in an actual war occurred in the 1911 Italo-Turkish War with the Italian Army Air Corps bombing a Turkish camp at Ain Zara, Libya[28], and in the 1912 First Balkan War with the Bulgarian Air Force bombing Turkish positions at Adrianople. Airplanes were also used by the U.S. against Pancho Villa[29][30]. Air reconnaissance was carried out in both wars too. The first air-dropped bomb in military history was developed by Captain Simeon Petrov of the Bulgarian Air Force, extensively used during the First Balkan War (including in the first ever night bombing on 7 November 1912), and subsequently shared with the Imperial German Air Service during World War I[31].
World War I
- See also: World War I Aviation
Initially during that war both sides made use of tethered balloons and airplanes for observation purposes, both for information gathering and directing of artillery fire[32]. A desire to prevent enemy observation led to airplane pilots attacking other airplanes and balloons, initially with small arms carried in the cockpit, but due to the technology of the time pilots couldn't have forward facing machine guns[33].
Although the addition of deflector plates to the back of propellers by French pilot Roland Garros and designer Raymond Saulnier in the Morane-Saulnier monoplane was the first example of an aircraft able to fire through its propeller, it wasn't until the Dutch aircraft designer Anthony Fokker developed the interruptor gear in 1915 that it became possible to aim the gun and the airplane at the same time. [34][35][36][37] Eventually the Allies were able to capture a Fokker Eindekker with an interruptor mechanism intact and reverse engineer it, leading to the birth of the dogfight. Tactics for dogfighting evolved by trial and error. Eventually the German ace Oswald Boelcke created eight essential rules of dogfighting, the Dicta Boelcke[38][39]. Both sides also made use of aircraft for bombing, strafing, sea reconnaissance, antisubmarine warfare, and dropping of propaganda. The German military made use of Zeppelins and, later on, bombers such as the Gotha, to drop bombs on Britain[40][41][42].
By the end of the war airplanes had become specialized into bombers, fighters, and observation (reconnaissance) aircraft.
Between the wars
Between 1918 and 1939 aircraft technology developed very rapidly. In 1918 most aircraft were biplanes with wooden frames, canvas skins, wire rigging and air-cooled engines. Biplanes continued to be the mainstay of air forces around the world and were used extensively in conflicts such as the Spanish Civil War [43]. Most industrial countries also created air forces separate from the army and navy. However, by 1939 military biplanes were in the process of being replaced with metal framed monoplanes, often with stressed skins and liquid cooled engines. Top speeds had tripled; altitudes doubled; ranges and payloads of bombers increased enormously[44][45].
Some theorists, especially in Britain, considered that aircraft would become the dominant military arm in the future[46]. They imagined that a future war would be won entirely by the destruction of the enemy's military and industrial capability from the air[47]. The Italian general Giulio Douhet, author of The Command of the Air, was a seminal theorist of this school, which has been associated with Stanley Baldwin's statement that "the bomber will always get through"; that is, regardless of air defenses, sufficient raiders will survive to rain destruction on the enemy's cities[48]. This led to what would later be called a strategy of deterrence and a "bomber gap", as nations measured air force power by number of bombers[49][50].
Others, such as General Billy Mitchell in the United States, saw the potential of air power to augment the striking power of naval surface fleets[51]. German and British pilots had experimented with aerial bombing of ships and air-dropped torpedoes during World War I with mixed results. The vulnerability of capital ships to aircraft was demonstrated on 21 July 1921 when a squadron of bombers commanded by General Mitchell sank the ex-German battleship SMS Ostfriesland with aerial bombs; although the Ostfriesland was stationary and defenseless during the exercise, its destruction demonstrated the potency of airplanes against ships[51][52].
It was during the Banana Wars, while fighting bandits and insurgents in places like Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua, that United States Marine Corps aviators would begin to experiment with air-ground tactics making the support of their fellow Marines on the ground their primary mission. It was in Haiti that Marines began to develop the tactic of dive bombing and in Nicaraugua where they began to perfect it. While other nations and services had tried variations of this technique, Marine aviators were the first to embrace it and make it part of their tactical doctrine[53]
Germany was banned from possessing an air force by the terms of the WWI armistice[54]. The German military continued to train its soldiers as pilots clandestinely until Hitler was ready to openly defy the ban. This was done by forming a "flying enthusiast's club"[55][56] and training pilots as civilians, and some German pilots were even sent to the Soviet Union for secret training; a trained air force was thus ready as soon as the word was given. This was the beginning of the Luftwaffe[57][58].
World War II
Military aviation came into its own during the Second World War. The increased performance, range, and payload of contemporary aircraft meant that air power could move beyond the novelty applications of WWI, becoming a central striking force for all the combatant nations.
Over the course of the war, several distinct roles emerged for the application of air power.
Strategic bombing
Strategic bombing of civilian targets from the air was a first proposed by the Italian theorist General Giulio Douhet. In his book The Command of the Air (1921), Douhet argued future military leaders could avoid falling into bloody World War I-style trench stalemates by using aviation to strike past the enemy's forces directly at their vulnerable civilian populations. Douhet believed such strikes would cause these populations to force their governments to surrender[59][60][61].
Douhet's ideas were paralleled by other military theorists who emerged from World War I, including Sir Hugh Trenchard in Britain.[62][63] In the interwar period, Britain and the United States became the most enthusiastic supporters of the strategic bombing theory, with each nation building specialized heavy bombers specifically for this task [64].
Luftwaffe
In the early days of WWII, the Luftwaffe launched devastating air attacks against the besieged cities of Warsaw and Rotterdam. In the case of Warsaw, the bombings had little effect, but in the case of Rotterdam, the psychological effect of the bombings did have the intended effect—a relatively rapid ending of Dutch resistance (Buckley 129).
During the Battle of Britain, the Luftwaffe, frustrated in its attempts to gain air superiority in preparation for the planned invasion, turned to bombing of London and other large English cities. However, the Luftwaffe found these raids did not have the effect predicted by prewar airpower theorists[65][66].
Royal Air Force
The British, started in kind - using a strategic bombing campaign in 1940 that was to last for the rest of the war. Early British bombers were all twin-engined designs and were lacking in defensive armament. Therefore, Bomber Command quickly turned to a policy of night bombing, for which the crews were untrained; their inaccuracy meant they were forced to adopt area bombing, never able to hit specific targets such as factories or power plants [67].
Soviet Red Air Force
Although the rapid industrialization the Soviet Union experienced in the 1930s had the potential to enable the Voyenno-voznushnyye sily (VVS) to be effective against the Luftwaffe, Stalin's purges left the organization intellectually and morally weakened. However, when Germany invaded in June 1941 (Operation Barbarossa), the massive size of the VVS, in both planes and people, allowed it to absorb "horrendous" casualties and still maintain capability[68][69].
Like Japan was to do in December of that year, Nazi Germany had awoken a sleeping giant which was too large to destroy despite the