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The War in the Air
Organization
In 1914 the airplane was still a new and unproved auxiliary
to the armies and fleets. Its intended missions were observation, reconnaissance,
and courier duty-functions generally viewed as extensions of the conventional
military signal communications systems for lack of a more definite classification
to assign them. Consequently, the Germans grouped their air service
with railway troops and signal units as communications troops, and the
French Army and Navy administered their respective aviation elements
as subdivisions of their communications services. In the United States
military aviation was a responsibility of the Signal Corps from 1907
to 1918, when the Air Service was organized. (In June 1917, General
Pershing had already detached the aviation units serving in France from
the Signal Corps, reorganizing them as the Air Service, American Expeditionary
Force.) Britain had followed a far different course, combining all of
its aviation units into a Royal Flying Corps, but on July 1, 1914, just
before the outbreak of the war, this force was broken up. The Royal
Navy set up its own air force under the title of the Royal Naval Air
Service, while the Royal Flying Corps became merely the air arm of the
British Army, where it had equal status with the cavalry, infantry,
and other combat arms.
As the war progressed and the importance of military
aviation became more firmly established and more generally recognized,
its management gradually moved to higher levels. Britain again led the
way. By 1918, largely as a result of German air raids (first by zeppelins
and later by Gotha bombers) on London, popular dissatisfaction with
Britain's air defenses had led to protests in Parliament. Cooperation
between the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Navy Air Service had been
limited; moreover, the two groups were struggling bitterly over the
limited supplies of planes, engines, and personnel available. On the
advice of a board headed by Lt. Gen. Jan Christiaan Smuts (who was strongly
supported by his fellow member, Winston Churchill), a separate Air Ministry
was set up in the British government in December 1917. This placed its
head, the air minister, in the War Cabinet as an equal partner (as least
in theory) of the secretary of state for war and the first lord of the
admiralty. Furthermore, in April 1918 the Royal Flying Corps and the
Royal Naval Air Service were recombined into the Royal Air Force, which
was given equal status with the Royal Navy and the British Army.
Both France and Germany continued to retain their air
services as organic parts of their armies and navies, but both established
subcabinet posts (assistant secretaries or undersecretaries) to coordinate
the administration of such matters as engine and aircraft construction,
allocation of personnel, and formulation of military aviation budgets.
In the United States a series of tentative reorganizations
in May 1918 had at last converted the Signal Corps' Aviation Section
into the independent Air Service, but had divided the necessary authority
between a director of military aeronautics and a Bureau of Aircraft
Production. Within three months aircraft production was in such chaos
that the post of second assistant secretary of war was created to provide
an official with sufficient authority to untangle it. At the same time,
this secretary functioned as director of the Air Service and so was
able to deal with military aviation problems as a whole.
On the fighting fronts the organization of the various
air forces was very similar. Each national commander had a senior air
force officer as his adviser on all matters relating to military aviation.
Thus in the American Expeditionary Force (organized according to French
and British experience), General Pershing's Air Service was commanded
by Maj. Gen. Mason M. Patrick; General Patrick, in turn, had General
Mitchell as his assistant for operations and Brig. Gen. Benjamin D.
Foulois as an assistant for training and supply. At the next lower level
of command each army commander had an aviation officer as a member of
his staff. These officers coordinated air operations for their respective
commanders, prescribed tactics, negotiated for flying fields, and allocated
supplies and replacements.
The basic air force tactical organization was the squadron,
usually composed of aircraft of one type only, and so designated as
a fighter, observation, bomber, or service squadron. Fighter squadrons
were equipped with approximately 18 planes, observation and bombing
squadrons with 12. A fighter squadron would have from 20 to 25 aviators,
and observation and bombing squadrons as many as 50, including observers
and bombardiers. In addition, each squadron had 100 to 150 ground crew
personnel. The service squadrons were responsible for the logistical
support of the combat squadrons.
It was usual for squadrons to be assigned to the direct
support and operational control of armies, where (as noted above) their
operations would be coordinated by the aviation staff officers concerned.
As the war progressed, the need for larger and more flexible air commands
developed, and squadrons would accordingly be formed into groups, and
these groups on occasion were assembled into wings. As a climax, in
1918 the French organized most of the planes which could be spared from
their hard-pressed armies into an aviation division of 432 fighters
and 193 day bombers, thus establishing a strong, mobile force which
could be readily shifted to any part of the western front to meet an
emergency or exploit an opportunity.
Also in 1918, General Trenchard established his famous
Independent Air Force (average strength, approximately 75 day bombers,
49 heavy night bombers, and 16 fighters) with the mission of bombing
rail and industrial centers behind the German front. This was the first
strategic air force to be established. Hindered in its avowed primary
mission by bad weather and heavy losses, it still furnished a powerful
air reserve. (It should be noted that this force did not utilize mass
air attacks, such as became common in World War II.)
In October 1918, Trenchard was organizing an Inter-Allied
Independent Air Force, made up of contingents from all of the Allied
air forces, to support the projected 1919 campaign by air strikes deep
into Germany. As the commander of this force, Trenchard was to operate
under the direct control of Marshal Ferdinand Foch, the Allied commander
in chief. The armistice of Nov. 11, 1918, scuttled his hope of leading
it on raids against Berlin.
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