Air warfare | History, Tactics, Technology | Britannica (original) (raw)

Also called:

aerial warfare

air warfare, the tactics of military operations and armed forces conducted by airplanes, helicopters, or other manned craft that are propelled aloft. Air warfare may be conducted against other aircraft, against targets on the ground, and against targets on the water or beneath it. Air warfare is almost entirely a creation of the 20th century, in which it became a primary branch of military operations.

Through World War I

Powered aircraft were first used in war in 1911, by the Italians against the Turks near Tripoli, but it was not until the Great War of 1914–18 that their use became widespread. At first, aircraft were unarmed and employed for reconnaissance, serving basically as extensions of the eyes of the ground commander. Soon, however, the need to deny such reconnaissance to the enemy led to air-to-air combat in which each side tried to gain superiority in the air. Fighter planes were armed with fixed, forward-firing machine guns that allowed the pilot to aim his entire aircraft at the enemy, and the effective range of these weapons (no more than about 200 yards) meant that the first aerial combat took place at very short range.

By the second year of the war fighter tactics emerged on all sides emphasizing basic concepts that, with modification, remained applicable through the jet age. First was the surprise attack; from the very beginning of aerial warfare in World War I, “jumping” or “bouncing” unsuspecting victims accounted for more kills than did the spectacular aerobatics of dogfighting. Because a pilot’s only warning system was the naked eye, attacking fighters, whenever possible, approached from the rear or dove out of the sun, where they could not be seen. The German ace Max Immelmann, in exploiting the superior abilities of his Fokker Eindeker to climb and dive quickly, helped expand aerial combat from the horizontal into the vertical dimension. Immelmann developed what became known as the Immelmann turn, in which an attacking fighter dove past the enemy craft, pulled sharply up into a vertical climb until it was above the target again, then turned hard to the side and down so that it could dive a second time. Fighters operated at least in pairs, flying 50 to 60 yards apart, so that the wingman could protect the leader’s rear. Flying speed averaged 100 miles per hour, and communication was by hand signaling, rocking the wings, and firing coloured flares.

The next role to emerge for military aircraft was ground attack, in which planes, by strafing with machine guns and dropping rudimentary bombs, aided an advance on the ground, helped cover a retreat, or simply harassed the enemy. By the late stages of the war, ground-attack aircraft had forced almost all large-scale troop movements to be carried out at night or in bad weather.

By war’s end a fourth vision of air power arose—that of an independent air force attacking the enemy far from the front lines, the purpose being to destroy essential elements of the enemy’s war capability by bombing factories, transportation and supply networks, and even centres of government. This role, never effectively implemented in World War I, was spurred largely by the German air attacks on London. Carried out at first by zeppelin airships, the bombing was later done by aircraft such as the Gotha bomber, which, by flying at night and often as high as 20,000 feet (forcing the crew to breathe bottled oxygen through a tube in the mouth), operated beyond the ceiling of many defensive fighters.

Britannica Quiz A History of War

Thus, the basic roles that aircraft would play in modern war were presaged in World War I: reconnaissance, air superiority, tactical ground support, and strategic bombing.

Through World War II

The all-metal monoplane represented a huge increase in performance and firepower over the aircraft of World War I, and the effects were first seen in fighter tactics.

Air superiority

Airspeeds of the new fighters jumped to more than 400 miles per hour, and some planes could operate at altitudes of 30,000 feet. Wing-mounted machine guns and aerial cannon were lethal at 600 yards, and pilots communicated with one another and the ground via the radio telephone. These developments—especially the greater speeds—led Germans participating in the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) to fly their Bf-109 fighters in loose, line-abreast Rotten, or pairs, about 200 yards apart. Two of these Rotten formed a Schwarm, and this flexible formation—called “finger-four” by English-speaking airmen—was eventually adopted by all the major air forces in World War II. An exception was the U.S. Navy, whose fighter pilots developed a system called the “Thach weave,” whereby two fighters would cover one another from attack from the rear. This proved highly successful against the Japanese.

Attacking out of the sun was still favoured, both because it preserved the element of surprise and because diving added speed. An alert defending fighter pilot, however, might use his attacker’s speed to his own advantage by executing a maneuver called a rudder reversal, in which he would turn and do a snap roll, suddenly reducing his forward motion so that the speeding attacker would overshoot and find the intended victim on his tail. Tight maneuvers such as the rudder reversal were most effective when attempted with such agile fighters as the British Spitfire and the Japanese “Zero.” Fighters such as the Bf-109 and the U.S. P-47 Thunderbolt, which were noted for their speed, best escaped by diving hard and pulling back up when the attacker had been shaken.

A diving maneuver called the split-S, half-roll, or Abschwung was frequently executed against bombers. Heavily armed fighters such as the British Hurricane or the German Fw-190, instead of approaching from the side or from below and to the rear, would attack head-on, firing until the last moment and then rolling just under the big planes and breaking hard toward the ground. The object was to break up the bomber formations so that individual ships could be set upon and destroyed.

Defensive fighter squadrons were directed by radar control stations on the ground to the vicinity of the bombers, at which point the pilots would rely once more upon the naked eye. This was adequate for day fighting, when enemy bombers could be seen miles away, but at night the pilots had to get within a few hundred yards before spotting a bomber’s silhouette against the sky or against the conflagration on the ground. For this reason, night fighting was ineffective until radar was installed in the planes themselves. This beginning of the age of electronic warfare required a novel teamwork between pilot and navigator, and it was best carried out in two-seat aircraft such as the British Beaufighter and Mosquito and the German Ju-88 and Bf-110. Some of these long-range, twin-engined night fighters also served as “intruders,” slipping into enemy bomber formations, following them home, and shooting them down over their own airfields.