NOTES ON WAR NEWS

Waihi Daily Telegraph, Volume XXXXI, Issue 9763, 27 April 1942, Page 3

NOTES ON WAR NEWS

THE NEED FOR lINITT IN THE JIB LORD TRENCHARD’S PLEA VICTORY DEPENDS ON COMMAND

As the war goes on the part played by the air forces of the belligerents grows ever more and more important, and it is hardly too much to say that it is now clear that command of the air is essential to victory. It has been proved again and again already in the various theatres of war that land and sea forces are liable to be handicapped to extinction by lack of air support, and, conversely, that, with command of the air, land and sea forces can extend their operations almost without limit. All this raises to the forefront once more one of the burning questions of the war, whether the air force should be unified under a central independent control or whether it should be split up and attached separately in sections to the land and sea forces for cooperation with them under their command. In recent months mufih has been written, particularly in the American Press, to show that British system of an autonomous air | force is a disastrous failure and that every defeat that has befallen British arms, for example, in Norway, Greece, Crete and Malaya, has been due to the existence of the third service. The moral urged by these critics is that the present system in the United States, where there are three or four separate air forces, should be perpetuated there and extended to the British Empire. Lord Trenchard, Marshal of the Royal Air Force, and the great air commander of the last war, makes a strong defence, in an article in the “New York Times,” for the principle of unity in the air and a unified air force. ■

DEFEAT DUE TO WEAKNESS The first point Lord Trenchard makes as a background to all considerations of the lessons of this war up to date is that Britain and the Empire started this war in a shocking condition of weakness. For years, he says, we had been spending annually about eight times as much on the older Services as we spent on the air forces. To this weakness must be attributed all the failures and disasters in Europe, over the Mediterranean, and in the south-west Pacific. Our successes in the Battle of Britain, in Libya, in the Battle of the Atlantic, and in the present air offensives over occupied Europe and in the Far East are due to superior air strength and its use in those areas.

LACK OF AIR STRENGTH Lord Trenchard says that at the time of the Battle of Crete “we had still to concentrate our limited resources on providing for the vital needs of defence at home and in the Atlantic to an extent that can be measured by the fact that we had then barely fifty serviceable fighters in the Middle East Command and a few obsolescent American, fighters at Singapore.” He adds: “Fifteen years ago I, as Chief of the Air Staff, was advocating that Malaya should be made a great air base and that our limited allotment of money should be spend on bombing and torpedo aircraft instead of on the huge guns that are there now.” There seems hardly any doubt now that had this been done, Malaya and with it the whole East Indies might have been saved.

THE ART OP WAR On general principles Lord Trenchard says: “The art of war is to know how to weld all tactics into one whole, when to put the emphasis on one or another, how much of the nation’s resources to allot to each, and, as far as air power is concerned, to take full advantage of its flexibility to concentrate it in adequate strength at the place and on the task which is of decisive Importance at the time. . . No serious exponent of air power or of the system of a third service claims that tvar can be won solely by air forces. THE GERMAN SECRET “We cannot be stronger than the enemy everywhere all the time. If we could be, it would cease to be relevant because the war would be won. So,” the writer says, “we must, use our air resources flexibly as our major national -strategy demands at the time, as the Germans do. We can only do that if we have a single autonomous air service, as the Germans have, based by Goering’s own admission on our model.” Then the writer explains the secret of German success: "Where their organisation is superior to ours is, first, in their centralised high direction, which controls and co-ordinates the effort of all three services, and, secondly, in" the fact that they have ruthlessly discarded outworn naval and military traditions, have allotted to air power its proper share in their plans, and have remoulded their naval and military technique to suit the conditions of the air age. AIR A DECISIVE FACTOR After declaring that “there is a great deal of egregarious nonsense talked about the need for specialised training for air operations in support of armies and navies,” Lord. Trenchard concludes: “It comes down to this: There is no such thing as separate air strategy or an independent air force any more than there is a separate sea or land strategy or an independent navy or army. All strategy is inter-dependent and interlocked and the extent to which one or the other arm predominates is determined by a country’s national policy, its geographical position, the character of its population, and the nature of its resources. But air warfare has its own technique, its own tactics, and special administrative foundations. And to-day, whether we like it or not —and it is an

unfortunate fact for Britain—the air is a decisive factor in any campaign, and has been the decisive factor in more than one. So any nation that neglects its air power or declines (o move with the times and free itself from the trammels of a military or naval tradition that'has been obsolescent since Wright first hopped off the ground at Kittyhawk does so at its own great peril and to' the serious disadvantage of its allies.” It may be added that General Wavell’s.statement on the defence of India lays special stress on air power, while the White Paper issued in London is designed to show that co-ordination and co-operation between the services in the planning of operations are now and have been for a long time accomplished facts.