Whirlwind - Barrett Tillman [9]
Meanwhile, the U.S. Army conducted a long search for a practical doctrine of strategic bombardment. Most of the work was conducted at the Air Corps Tactical School (ACTS) at Maxwell Field, Alabama. Between the world wars, ACTS was the closest thing to a U.S. air academy. It provided courses in leadership, command, and air doctrine and strategy, though some instructors and students recognized that until proven in combat, theory necessarily remained theoretical.
When the doctrinal search began in 1920, airmen acknowledged that aviation technology would not match airpower theory for many years. In truth, two decades passed before Douhet’s vision of long-range bombers delivering heavy loads became a reality. Consequently, in the first six years of discussion, ACTS’s focus narrowed on the primacy of bombardment over the other aviation branches, notably reconnaissance and observation, ground attack, and fighter. Experience in the Great War had conclusively proven the worth of aircraft in reconnaissance and directing artillery fire, the great killer of the Western Front. Only the Germans deployed dedicated ground attack units, but most combatant air arms used aircraft to support the infantry.
With the primacy of bombardment aviation accepted by 1926, the Maxwell theorists next evolved the concept of the self-defending bomber, which would not require fighter escort. ACTS’s second study period lasted until 1934, the dawning of the B-17 era. Though the early technological deficit was declining as more capable aircraft emerged, some important wrinkles remained to be ironed out. It is remarkable that so many knowledgeable practitioners (nearly all captains and majors) denigrated the fighter. With some exceptions, they convinced themselves that unescorted heavy bombers could not only survive but thrive in a modern air defense network. The school solution held that bombers would operate in an altitude sanctuary, well above the range of heavy flak guns and even beyond the effective ceiling of most interceptor aircraft. Among the few dissenters was a leather-faced Louisiana fighter pilot named Claire Lee Chennault, who in 1937 left the service for his heresy and took himself to China.
In truth, Chennault was not the only practitioner who recognized the importance of pursuit aviation. But as with strategic bombing, technical reality trailed in theory’s slipstream. Other fliers knew that long-range fighters would be necessary to escort heavy bombers, but almost none existed before 1943. However, there was evidence from abroad for those who cared to look. The Sino-Japanese conflict (initiated in 1931; permanent from 1937) and the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) seemed to indicate the need for bomber escorts. But neither war provided many solid case studies of modern, large-scale air operations.
If the limited examples of China and Spain could be ignored, the Battle of Britain should have convinced ACTS that unescorted daylight bombing was a dead end, in both the figurative and Darwinian sense. During the four-month 1940 air campaign, the Luftwaffe lost 1,000 bombers with escort, proving that fighter range as well as performance was crucial to bomber survival. But Hermann Göring’s Messerschmitt 109 fighters were fully extended just to cover his bombers over London from bases in northern France. His longer-ranged twin-engine Me 110 fighters, though fast and well armed, simply could not compete with lighter, more agile single-engine interceptors. Therefore, bomber escort became the question that no one dared speak. Because there were no long-range fighters, policy was tweaked to do without them. In short, the technological tail wagged the doctrinal dog.
Having spent fourteen years producing the philosophy and method of bombardment, from 1935 the next set of ACTS classes got down