NEW TACTICS

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 67, 16 September 1936, Page 7

NEW TACTICS

FIGHTER AND BOMBER

AS SPEEDS CLIMB HIGH

END OF THE DOG FIGHT

An- article written recently by a well-known English airman, Captain Norman Macmillan, who has had a long and continuous experience in military aviation, as a pilot in France and Italy and latterly as test pilot, in which he contends that dog-fighting in the air is over and that entirely different tactics must be employed in future warfare, hcj started a lively controversy in British aviation circles. ;

Not much more than a hundred years ago, he wrote, it was naval practice to sail close alongside the enemy, firing grapeshot and solid ball ammunition from low-velocity cannon which could throw a projectile only a short distance. That might be compared with air fighting in the early days of the war. Then, pilots flew alongside each other's machines and discharged revolvers or rifles at close range. With the development of steam engines and higher-velocity guns and explosive shells, the conditions of sea warfare changed. Aerial dog-fighting was -the outcome of equipment and circumstances.

The work of the Flying Corps in the | war on the European front was not Air Force work at all, for everything pilots did was related to the needs of Army commanders on the ground—reconnaissance, photography, artillery cooperation, and bombing were conducted in accordance with the needs of ground strategy, and fighting in the air was incidental to the main army re-1 quirements. Essentially it was the type of war that brought about the dog-fight in the air and made it as much a part of the war of attrition as the digging-in under ground level of the infantry. PROBABLY NEVER AGAIN. The assumption that the dog-fight is the standard form of aerial righting can only hold good in circumstances which bear a similarity to those of the Western Front and it is problematical if such circumstances will again arise. In the war the fighter was queen of the air because it enabled Army, work to be carried out by machines of other categories. Today, the relative position of the fighter in the scheme of strategy no longer holds. Long: before ground forces could come to grips, and therefore long before any war of attrition could commence, the issue might be decided by the respective air forces of warring nations. Speed, mobility, and loadcarrying: capacity of modern bombing forces may reorientate geography without major actions being fought on ground or sea. ' The primary weapon today is indeed the bomber; with high -explosive and incendiary bombs it can carry war conditions into whichever area it can penetrate. The bomber is queen of the air today. Range, speed, and carrying capacity have forged ahead. All metal construction, renders the modern bomber more difficult to destroy. Developments in the art of flying and the use of blind-flying instruments and automatic pilots make the bomber able to operate undec;weather conditions that would have prevented flight even less. than eighteen years ago.': '' %.'■ ; Under these changed conditions what is,the role of the fighter? From being a flying spearhead of aerial attack to clear the way for the drones that did duty for the ground forces, the fighter has become a defensive weapon charged with tho^'duty of attempting to prevent the bomber from reaching its objective. LITTLE, IF ANY. MARGIN OF SPEED. If the relative speeds of the two machines are about the same, but with the fighter possessing great climbing power, unless he has already advantage in height to enable him to overhaul the bomber, he will not be ablo to prevent its attack. Thus the old adage of tremendous,climb at the-ex-pense of high forward speed cannot possibly- hold today. Excess speed must come first so that the fighter can overhaul the bomber.

Let us assume; that the .fighter' is faster than the.bomber. Here is no case of opposing aircraft ■ mutually bent: upon the destruction .of each other. The bomber has a definite plan to .carry out, and when fighting aircraft are seen the pilot will increase his speed to the utmost to reach his destination. There is no scope for the dog-fight,' for it takes two dogs to make a'fight. If the difference in speeds is not great it may not be possible for the fighter to do more than engage the bomber by firing from behind. The bomber class preponderates in every modern air force.

Captain Macmiljan holds that new tactics must be created to meet the changed conditions—the air weapon as a weapon in itself and not an auxiliary to surface forces, and the tremendous increase in range and speed- of machines. He "considers it probabl" that, just as naval tactics were changed" with the development of high-velocity guns and explosive shells, higher projectile velocities will be developed for fighting aircraft, which will no longer be ■ tiny single-engined single seaters, but,large multi-engined machines, in which everything is sacrificed to speed except ; the power of hitting. The tactics of such a type would not be the tactics of the past. It would dive in single line ahead, and when it reached the rear of the enemy formation it would pass to one side and fire a broadside of high-velocity shell, infinitely more deadly than the present 1 hose-pipe method' of firing large numbers of standard bullets. The strides made in bomber design have not been made by the fighter* except in relation to speed and climb, Captain Macmillan maintains. The armament of the fighter is out of date and its methods of employment as things stand today is open to question.