Tag: Royal Air Force

#BookReview – Balloon Ace: The Life of an Early Airpower Visionary

#BookReview – Balloon Ace: The Life of an Early Airpower Visionary

Reviewed by Ray Ortensie

Charles D. Dusch Jr., Balloon Ace: The Life of an Early Airpower Visionary. Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2025. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pbk. 269 pp.

Charles D. Dusch Jr.’s Balloon Ace: The Life of an Early Airpower Visionary chronicles the brief, heroic, and influential life of Louis Bennett Jr., a figure who sought to revolutionise American military aviation during the First World War. Dusch skilfully integrates Bennett’s personal history, familial pressures, military ambitions, and spectacular combat achievements with the broader cultural and military history of the Great War, resulting in a biography that is both insightful into early air power concepts and profoundly moving in its examination of wartime loss and subsequent commemoration. The book’s comprehensive scope, spanning from Bennett’s Southern upbringing to his mother’s tireless post-war efforts, illuminates how one young man’s vision anticipated future air power strategy and how the ensuing grief shaped public memory.

The narrative begins by establishing Bennett’s complex heritage. Born into a prominent Southern family with service in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, his identity was heavily influenced by the narrative of the Lost Cause. His family was related by marriage to Thomas J. ‘Stonewall’ Jackson, a figure elevated to the pantheon of Confederate heroes and Bennett was taught by his mother to embrace the Lost Cause mythology and recognise that he had ‘big shoes to fill.’ Despite this powerful heritage, as a student at Yale University on the eve of the Great War, Bennett intended to be ‘his own man’ and forge his own path, perhaps spurred by this very Civil War legacy.

Bennett and his classmates followed newspaper accounts that dramatically romanticised the war, particularly focusing on the new air weapon, often casting aviators as ‘medieval knights, jousting high above the clouds.’ (p. 24) This glamour, coupled with the speed of aviation, appealed greatly to Bennett. He became an early advocate for military flying, joining the Aero Club of America in 1915. While many Yale students debated the war or joined the Connecticut National Guard, Bennett focused on flying, securing a summer job at an aircraft factory in Marblehead, Massachusetts, in 1916 to learn how aircraft were assembled – a pursuit he deemed a ‘good healthy job’ and ‘quite a science.’ (p. 38)

Upon America’s entry into the war in April 1917, Bennett, a senior at Yale, departed mid-semester. He purchased a Curtiss aeroplane and immediately pursued his most significant, yet ultimately unrealised, vision: the creation of the West Virginia Flying Corps (WVFC). Bennett sought to form a state aerial militia, as outlined in his ‘West Virginia Aerial Reserve Unit’ sketch, to train 15 aviators. The unit’s goal was to establish ‘aerial efficiency in this section of the country.’ Bennett’s expansive concept went beyond West Virginia, where he envisioned a national aviation reserve system with a decentralised network of airfields and repair stations. Dusch notes that this systematic approach made practical sense, especially given the unprepared state of American aviation technology and industry, which lagged well behind Europe. Furthermore, Bennett’s idea closely resembled the air power arguments William ‘Billy’ Mitchell put forth in 1925.

To ensure the unit’s sustainability, Bennett incorporated the WVFC and established the West Virginia Aircraft Factory in Warwood, West Virginia, along the Pennsylvania Railroad line. This factory later produced spare parts and Curtiss JN-4D airframes for the Army, valued at about $1 million. Crucially, Bennett hired Captain E.A. Kelly, an officer on leave from the British Royal Flying Corps (RFC), as an instructor, ensuring his cadets would learn modern combat tactics, which few available US Army aviators were qualified to teach.

Despite his patriotic efforts, the War Department resisted Bennett’s efforts to create an elite, independent unit. General George Squier, head of the US Army’s Signal Corps, advised Bennett that the government was reluctant to recognise individual units because doing so would restrict the stationing of officers. Secretary of War Newton D. Baker appreciated the WVFC’s patriotism but asserted that military aviation demanded far more than mere flying skills, requiring training in ‘radio telegraphy, aerial combat, and reconnaissance, machine guns, topography, etc..’ Baker recommended that WVFC members apply for regular US Army training. Discouraged by the US Army’s refusal and aware of the logistical ‘growing pains’ and production delays plaguing the fledgling US Army Air Service, Bennett made a realistic choice: the ‘quickest and most direct route’ to active combat was through the RFC in Canada. (p. 87) This decision was upsetting to his father, who questioned Bennett’s choice of Canadian service over American service once the US declared war.

A Royal Air Force pilot affixing to his Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5a biplane a notice reading: ‘Huns: 39 in 14 Days.’ Saint-Omer Aerodrome, 21 June 1918. This was the same type of aircraft flown by No. 40 Squadron during 1918. (Source: IWM)

Bennett was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the RFC in January 1918. After primary training, he progressed rapidly through advanced aircraft in England, moving from the Avro 504 to the beloved Sopwith Pup. He then trained on the highly manoeuvrable but notoriously tricky Sopwith Camel and the Sopwith Dolphin. Dusch expertly discusses the deadly instability of the rotary-powered Camel, which was known for killing new pilots.

Posted to France around 21 July 1918, Bennett joined No. 40 Squadron of the Royal Air Force (RAF) the following day, replacing Lieutenant Indra ‘Laddie’ Roy, an ace from India recently killed in combat. Placed in ‘C Flight’ under Captain George E.H. ‘McIrish’ McElroy, one of Britain’s leading aces, whose reputation for ‘great determination, reckless bravery and abandonment’ galvanised the squadron. Bennett was thrilled, believing he would learn more from the experienced flight commander. (p. 114) Bennett’s combat career was intensive but brief, occurring during the great Allied counteroffensive of summer 1918. His first combat sortie was disastrous; on 31 July, his commander, McElroy, was shot down and killed by ground fire. This high rate of attrition was sobering; one pilot estimated the average life expectancy of a pursuit pilot was just three weeks.

Bennett soon became known as a highly effective ‘balloon buster,’ targeting German observation balloons (Drachen). Dusch emphasises the strategic importance of these attacks: balloons and observation aircraft provided the necessary aerial observation for accurate artillery fire, which accounted for approximately 75 per cent of First World War casualties. Neutralising these platforms was key to achieving air superiority, thereby protecting Allied soldiers and blinding enemy commanders.

Bennett scored his first confirmed air victory on 15 August, sending a German Fokker DVII down out of control. Later that same day, he destroyed his first balloon near Merville using Buckingham incendiary ammunition. On 19 August, demonstrating unusual courage, Bennett took off alone after being delayed by engine trouble and dove on an easterly balloon, setting it ablaze instantly. Emboldened, he took off again that afternoon, destroying two more balloons near Merville and Hantay. In just four hours, he destroyed four German targets. On 23 August, he destroyed two more balloons in a single sortie, bringing his confirmed score to seven.

However, on 24 August 1918, Bennett was reported missing. Later accounts from villagers and German Lieutenant Emil Merkelbach confirmed his final heroic actions. Bennett was shot down after successfully attacking German balloons. He had pursued the balloonists fiercely, despite being low to the ground and facing intense anti-aircraft fire, a risk he willingly took. Wounded by a bullet to the head and suffering severe burns and two broken legs, he died that evening in the German field hospital at Wavrin without regaining consciousness. He was buried the next day with full military honours by his German captors.

Dusch spends the concluding section of the book discussing the legacy established by Bennett’s mother, Sallie Maxwell Bennett, a woman driven by intense, personal bereavement. Dusch frames Sallie’s actions within the larger context of First World War grief, noting that the absence of identifiable bodies caused acute psychological suffering for families, linking the experience back to the American Civil War. Sallie, already mourning the death of her husband earlier that August, immediately began a tireless quest to find her only son. Despite being initially denied a passport by the US government, she prevailed by becoming a correspondent for the Wheeling Register.

Once in France, Sallie overcame bureaucratic obstacles and conflicting reports about the location of her son’s grave. With assistance from Major General Mason Patrick and local French villagers, she eventually located his grave in the Wavrin cemetery. Her efforts soon expanded beyond her son; profoundly moved by the devastation and the grief of other mothers, Sallie undertook a ‘private quest’ to find, visit, photograph, and map the graves of other fallen American servicemen for their families back home. She overcame French governmental resistance to repatriation and, in April 1920, successfully arranged for Bennett’s remains to be returned secretly to Weston, West Virginia, where he was buried next to his father.

Sallie ensured Bennett’s legacy through perpetual memorials. She dedicated the family home in Weston as the Louis Bennett Jr. War Memorial and Public Library. More globally, she commissioned a stained-glass window in Westminster Abbey to guard the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, dedicating it to ‘all flying men.’ In a unique blending of collective and personal memory, the artist used Bennett’s image as the model for the angel holding the shield of Faith within the window. Her final major endeavour was commissioning the statue of ‘The Aviator,’ designed to inspire the nation’s youth with his example of ‘able courage.’ This statue was ultimately dedicated at Linsly Military Institute in Wheeling, strategically positioned along the National Road to be seen continually by the American public.

Dusch’s Balloon Ace paints a comprehensive portrait of Louis Bennett Jr., not merely as a combat hero, but as an insightful, if ultimately thwarted, early air power visionary whose innovative ideas predated official policy. Furthermore, the detailed account of Sallie Bennett’s unrelenting efforts provides a powerful case study of maternal grief and the profound role of women in shaping national commemoration during the tumultuous post-war years. Balloon Ace: The Life of an Early Airpower Visionary convincingly demonstrates how Bennett’s story, though tragic and brief, became a foundational part of America’s public memory of the First World War.

Ray Ortensie is the Command Historian for Headquarters Air Force Materiel Command, based at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio, giving command oversight and support to 13 field-level history offices and four field-level museums. He is also an adjunct professor at American Public University System and Southern New Hampshire University, teaching undergraduate and upper-level graduate courses in U.S. history. His research focuses on aviation depots and Civil War guerrilla warfare. Ray received his master’s from Purdue University in 2004 and started working as an Air Force Historian shortly afterwards.

Header image: A Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5 returning to St Omer aerodrome in the evening, 26 June 1918. This was the same type of aircraft flown by Bennett when he served with No. 40 Squadron RAF in 1918. (Source: IWM)

#BookReview – Educating Air Forces: Global Perspectives on Airpower Learning

#BookReview – Educating Air Forces: Global Perspectives on Airpower Learning

Reviewed by Dr Ross Mahoney

Randall Wakelam, David Varey and Emanuele Sica (eds.), Educating Air Forces: Global Perspectives on Airpower Learning. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2020. Hbk. Notes. Index. vii + 260 pp.

Air power history is dominated by accounts of operations, especially those of the First World War, the Second World War, and the Vietnam War. There is relatively little written about how air forces prepared for war. However, an inherent part of this preparation is how air forces have educated their aviators throughout history. As such, it is refreshing to read a volume dedicated to the subject of learning in air forces. Moreover, as the editors of the volume correctly write (p. 1), [i[f we accept that militaries are professions and that professions need education […] then we could reasonably want to know how militaries are educated and how well they perform this task.’

This edited volume is the outgrowth of a 2016 conference held at the Royal Military Academy of Canada on air power education. The book consists of 13 chapters organised into three chronological eras (the interwar years, the Cold War, and the post-Cold War). Many of the chapters were presented as keynote lectures at the 2016 conference. Several chapters, such as James Beldon and Peter Gray’s reflection on air power education in the modern Royal Air Force (RAF), were added for the publication of the volume (pp. 232-44). The addition of such chapters helps to round out the book and give shape to the subject.

Before examining some of the chapters, it is essential to recognise that, conceptually, this edited volume focuses on learning rather than solely on education. However, the latter is its main focus. This is an important distinction, as some of the chapters deal with educational establishments whose primary focus was training rather than education. As the editors relate, a tiered system of learning exists in military organisations that moves from training through to education (pp. 3-4). Nonetheless, for example, the chapters by Emanuele Sica (pp. 30-50) and John Farquhar (pp. 111-33) address institutions – the Accademia Aeronautica (Italian Air Force Academy) and the United States Air Force (USAF) Academy, respectively – whose primary focus is training. However, such institutions still have a broader educational role to play, and in this, we have a case of ‘Athens in Sparta,’ or a mix of skills-based training (Sparta) with broader education (Athens).

A review of this kind cannot hope to critique each chapter individually. As such, a couple of examples taken from each period will suffice. In the section on the interwar years, Sica examines the role that Giulio Douhet’s writing played in the education of the Regia Aeronautica (Italian Air Force) through the lens of the Accademia Aeronautica. In doing this, Sica presents a well-trodden subject – the writing of Douhet – in a new light. As Sica highlights, the place of Douhet in the development of his own country’s air force remains ‘open to debate’ (p. 43). Moreover, while the appointment of Italo Balbo in 1926 as undersecretary for air in the Italian government has been interpreted as ‘boon for Douhet’s fortune,’ the former’s policies illustrate the difficulty of assessing Douhet’s impact. This is born out in the teaching at the Accademia Aeronautica. As Sica argued, Douhet’s ‘ideas […] did not appear to gain wide acceptance, especially in the first years of the Italian Air Force Academy’ (p. 44).

In the section on the Cold War, the chapter by Richard Goette is of particular interest to this author, given the parallels between the Canadian and Australian experiences in the early years of the Cold War. Canada’s experience with creating its own Staff College is the subject of Goette’s chapter. However, it is worth noting that during the interwar years, both the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) and the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) relied on the RAF to provide mid-level officer education through the RAF Staff College at Andover, the latter examined by Gray in his chapter (pp. 15-29). The experience of the Second World War led the RCAF and RAAF to establish their own staff colleges. Goette, however, points out (p. 103) that ‘[a]ir force education at the RCAF Staff College […] involved much more than studying and time spent in the classroom.’ Goette’s point here is important. Attendance at institutions such as staff colleges is about more than just formal learning; it is about the experience as a whole and the opportunity for socialisation, networking and the sharing of ideas amongst peers.  

The establishment of the USAF School of Advanced Airpower Studies (now the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies (SAASS)) by the world’s preeminent air force is the subject of Harold Winton’s chapter. In this chapter, Winton compares SAASS with the interwar Air Corps Tactical School and examines five key areas of comparison: origins and purpose, faculty, curriculum, students, and significance (p. 154). In his conclusion, Winton rightly highlights that, in creating an institution for the ‘elite’ education of select officers in the form of SAASS, the USAF must ensure that its officers show ‘intellectual humility’ to prevent them from degenerating (p. 163) into ‘elites of privilege and entitlement.’ Conversely, Martin James discusses the role of education and the establishment of the Air Power Studies Centre (APSC) (now the Air and Space Power Centre) by the RAAF. In this, James highlights the importance of key stakeholders, notably, the Chief of the Air Staff (CAS), Air Marshal Ray Funnell, in supporting the establishment of APSC. Indeed, the role of such ‘champions’ needs to be more fully understood. For example, Marshal of the RAF Lord Cameron was instrumental in establishing the role of Director of Defence Studies for the RAF in 1977. The RAAF was fortunate in having a CAS, Funnell, who recognised that the study and writing of air power, including its doctrine, had been neglected (p. 170).   

It is hard to criticise an edited work such as this, as it does not purport to be a comprehensive examination of air power learning. It could never hope to be, but it does offer a valuable insight into a much-underappreciated subject. However, the volume focuses on the experience of Western air forces. It would have been interesting to compare the experience of Western air forces in learning with that of non-Western countries. For example, discussing air power learning in communist countries such as the Soviet Union and China could highlight the role ideology played in officer education.

In conclusion, despite the author’s criticism above, the editors are to be commended for bringing this volume to fruition. The volume offers a starting point for any scholar researching learning in the military, generally, and in air forces specifically. It should be read by both scholars and practitioners who are interested in military learning.

Dr Ross Mahoney is an independent scholar specialising in the history of war, with a particular focus on the use of air power and the history of air warfare. He is the Editor-in-Chief of From Balloons to Drones and currently the Senior Historian within the Heritage Policy team at Brisbane City Council in Australia. He has 20 years of experience in the education, museum, heritage and government sectors in Australia and the United Kingdom, including serving as the inaugural Historian at the Royal Air Force Museum from 2013 to 2017. His other research interests are military leadership and command, military culture, and the history and development of professional military education. He also maintains an interest in transport history. He has published numerous articles, chapters and encyclopedia entries, edited two books, and delivered papers on three continents.

Header image: Ramslade House, the home of the RAF Staff College in Bracknell after the Second World War. (Source: Wikimedia)

Air Vice-Marshal Professor R.A. ‘Tony’ Mason – A Reflection

Air Vice-Marshal Professor R.A. ‘Tony’ Mason – A Reflection

By Dr Ross Mahoney

Editorial note: This piece was originally drafted not long after the passing of Air Vice-Marshal Mason. However, several personal reasons led to a delay in its publication. 

On 12 November 2023, Air Vice-Marshal Professor R.A. Mason, one of the doyens of air power studies, sadly passed away. Known as Tony by most who knew him personally and professionally, Mason can be considered one of the fathers of air power studies in the UK. As I have argued elsewhere, Mason was arguably the critical British air power thinker of the late 20th Century. From being the Royal Air Force’s (RAF) first Director of Defence Studies (DDefS) to his writing and commentary work, Mason was consistently at the forefront of the field until the 2010s. Indeed, his consistent commitment to the field and the length of his career made him stand out. He was also generous with his time and knowledge and always happy to share material with those who shared his interests.

Mason joined the RAF in 1956 and entered the Education Branch. He gradually rose through the ranks in his branch and undertook various assignments, including attending King’s College London, the United States Air War College and the RAF Staff College. Eventually, in 1976, Mason was informed that he would be the RAF’s first DDefS. Mason took up the role at the start of 1977. The position of DDefS was established due to the perceived state of thinking on air power within the RAF and public awareness of the Service’s role. In a letter to Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief Support Command, Air Marshal Sir Reginald Harland, Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Neil Cameron noted that the position was being established ‘to help provide a new stimulus to air power thinking’ throughout the RAF.[1] This point was also emphasised in the terms of reference for the DDefS post, as there was a need to ‘write on air power and defence issues,’ which was to be encouraged.[2]

The establishment of the post of DDefS at the RAF Staff College at Bracknell and Mason’s perceived suitability for the role caused some debate. While this is not the place to consider that debate, the view of Mason’s successor, Group Captain Timothy Garden, is worth noting. Garden, a pilot and later Air Marshal Baron Garden, noted in 1982 in Air Clues that a colleague had questioned why he would want to take over what was perceived by 1982 as an ‘admin branch’ role. Garden reflected that the most appropriately qualified person should essentially hold the post to achieve its aims and that it ‘should not be the prerogative of any branch.’[3] That Garden, as a pilot, viewed the post in such a way was as much down to Mason’s hard work in the role as it was to the importance of the RAF’s intellectual development.

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Mason nonetheless quickly sought to encourage discussion and debate and discussion about the role of air power within the service on taking up the role of DDefS. Despite the demise of the RAF Quarterly in 1977, Mason regularly contributed to Air Clues, which, up to the 1970s, had primarily been a technical publication for the RAF. In 1980, he established the Air Power Supplement to Air Clues, the spiritual ancestor to the RAF’s current professional flagship journal, Air and Space Power Review.[4] He also regularly contributed to other publications, such as The RUSI Journal. Perhaps his critical success in this period was organising an academic symposium in his first year in post. This symposium was entitled ‘Air Power in the Next Generation.’ It was well attended and laid the basis for similar endeavours by his successors. It was also published as Air Power in the Next Generation, co-edited with Edgar Feuchtwanger and published by The Macmillan Press in 1979. The book included contributions from the senior USAF, Luftwaffe, and Israeli officers, as well as civilian academics such as John Erickson. Much of Mason’s work started a process whereby his successors have continued to contribute to the collegiate intellectual development of the RAF through various schemes such as publications, conferences, and the management of defence fellowships.[5] Many former post-holders, such as Air Commodore (ret’d) Professor Peter Gray, are also notable for their contribution to developing British air power thinking through their engagement with academia after leaving the post of DDefS and the RAF.

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Mason’s contributions to air power studies continued after moving on from the DDefS role. In 1983, Mason published Air Power in the Nuclear Age in conjunction with Air Marshal Michael Armitage. This publication helped cement Mason’s position as a leading air power thinker. As Marshal of the Royal Air Force Lord Cameron noted in the foreword to the book, ‘[t]he joint authors of this book are advanced and enlightened thinkers about the doctrine of air power as a vital and perhaps the most important element of modern and future warfare.’[6] This view was not hyperbole. For example, in his 1984 overview of air power literature, historian Richard Hallion described the book as an ‘excellent survey’ of the development of air power during the Cold War.[7] The book was updated as a second edition in 1985. Mason’s other notable works in this period were the edited book War in the Third Dimension and the establishment of the Brassey’s Air Power: Aircraft, Weapons Systems and Technology Series. This latter series was interesting because it was explicitly directed at developing an awareness of air power amongst junior military personnel.

After retiring from the RAF in 1989, Mason moved into academia. He became the Leverhulme Air Power Research Director for the Foundation for International Security and took up a post as a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Studies in Security and Diplomacy at the University of Birmingham, where he was director. In 1996, he was made an Honorary Professor of Aerospace Policy at the University of Birmingham.

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In 1994, Mason published what might be considered his magnum opus, Air Power: A Centennial Appraisal. This book confirmed Mason’s place as one of Britain’s leading air power thinkers. In this book, Mason examined the development of air power between 1989 and 1994. In doing so, he took a historical approach to examine how air power developed in the years up to this period. Mason then conceptualised the period 1989 to 1994, focusing on several key themes, such as the place of air power in arms control. Notably, he sought to contextualise much of the then-contemporary debate about the role of air power in the First Gulf War. Perhaps the most significant aspect of the book lay in Mason’s conceptualisation of what he called ‘differential air power.’[8] In short, Mason argued that while many nations shared ideas around the implementation of air power, only one in 1994 might be able to fully apply the advantages afforded by air power – the US. Using the idea of differential air power, Mason explored why the US stood out as a unique user of air power capabilities. These were important views for the time; however, while the book remains a significant contribution to air power studies, given factors such as the rise of China in the 21st Century and the distributed use of off-the-shelf technology such as drones, it remains to be seen whether his view remains applicable. Nevertheless, Mason concluded that:

One enduring concept underlay all air power thinking and all operations from the first day of the century to the last, and will continue to do so. Any nation intent on going to war to pursue an interest or defend a principle must first secure the air above it.[9]

Mason’s book was well received at publication and has become a commonly cited work. In his 1995 review in The RUSI Journal, Garden described the book as ‘excellent [and] thought-provoking.’[10] Thomas Keaney, who had worked on the Gulf War Air Power Survey, noted that the book made an ‘important contribution to any discussion on the future of airpower in the United States or elsewhere’ in a 1996 review for the US Joint Forces Quarterly.[11] However, historian Philip Sabin, reviewing the book in the Journal of Strategic Studies in 1995, offered a more tempered view. While recognising that the book had certain strengths, particularly Mason’s ‘balanced insights into many of the controversial issues regarding air power,’ Sabin also highlighted the challenge of reading a book that was ‘dense and difficult to follow without careful reading.’[12]

After the publication of Air Power, Mason continued to contribute to both the public’s and the RAF’s understanding of air power through his continued contribution to publications.[13] He also served as an expert member of the House of Commons Defence Committee in the early 2000s and helped inform British defence policy. He was also an inveterate media commentator and was often called to provide expert opinion. Mason’s contribution to air power studies was wide-ranging. While he had retired several years before his passing, his expertise will undoubtedly be sorely missed by many air power scholars for decades to come.

Dr Ross Mahoney is an independent scholar specialising in the history of war with particular reference to the use of air power and the history of air warfare. He is currently the Senior Historian within the Heritage Policy team at Brisbane City Council in Australia. He has nearly 20 years of experience in the education, museum and heritage sectors in Australia and the United Kingdom. Between 2013 and 2017, he was the inaugural Historian at the Royal Air Force Museum in the UK. In Australia, he has worked as a Historian for the Department of Veterans’ Affairs and taught at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at The Australian National University based at the Australian War College. His research interests are focused on the history of war, specifically on the history of air power and air warfare, military leadership and command, military culture, and the history and development of professional military education. He also maintains an interest in transport history. He has published numerous articles, chapters and encyclopedia entries, edited two books, and delivered papers on three continents. His website is here, and he can be found on Twitter at @airpowerhistory.

Header image: Ramslade House, the home of the RAF Staff College in Bracknell when Mason took up the role of Director of Defence Studies. (Source: Wikimedia)

[1] Author’s Personal Collection, Letter from the Chief of the Air Staff to AOC-in-C Support Command, 2 November 1976. I am grateful to the late Air Vice-Marshal Professor R.A. Mason for a copy of this and other documents linked to the establishment of the DDefS post.

[2] Author’s Personal Collection, Terms of Reference for Director of Defence Studies appended to a Letter from the Chief of the Air Staff to AOC-in-C Support Command, 2 November 1976, p. 1.

[3] Group Captain Timothy Garden, ‘Why don’t we forget Defence Studies and get on with the job?’ Air Clues 36, no 10 (1982), p. 364.

[4] Air Vice-Marshal Tony Mason, ‘Air Power Review’s Place in RAF History,’ Air Power Review 21, no. 1 (2018), p. 10.

[5] For a variety of publications produced under the guidance of DDefS, see: Andrew Lambert and Arthur C. Williamson (eds.), The Dynamics of Air Power (London: HMSO, 1996); Stuart Peach (ed.), Perspectives on Air Power: Air Power in its Wider Context (London: The Stationary Office: 1998); Peter W. Gray (ed.), Air Power 21: Challenges for the New Century (London: The Stationary Office, 2000); Peter W. Gray and Sebastian Cox (eds.), Air Power Leadership: Theory and Practice (London: The Stationary Office, 2002).

[6] Marshal of the Royal Air Force Lord Cameron, ‘Foreword’ in M’J’ Armitage and R.A. Mason, Air Power in the Nuclear Age: Theory and Practice, Second Edition (Basingstoke: The Macmillan Press, 1985), p. vii.

[7] Richard Hallion, The Literature of Aeronautics, Astronautics, and Air Power (Washington DC: Office of Air Force History, 1984), p. 36.

[8] Tony Mason, Air Power: A Centennial Appraisal (London: Brassey’s, 1994), pp. 235-278.

[9] Mason, Air Power, p. 278.

[10] Timothy Garden, ‘Book Reviews – Air Power: A Centennial Appraisal,’ The RUSI Journal 140, no. 3 (1995), p. 60.

[11] Thomas Keaney, ‘A Jubilee for Airmen: A Book Review,’ Joint Forces Quarterly 11 (1996), p. 134

[12] Philip Sabin, ‘Book Review – Air Power: A Centennial Appraisal,’ Journal of Strategic Studies 18, no. 4 (1995), pp. 141-2.

[13] For example, see: Tony Mason, ‘British Air Power’ in John Andreas Olsen (ed.), Global Air Power (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2011), 7-62; R.A. Mason, ‘The Response to Uncertainty’ in John Andreas Olsen (ed.), European Air Power: Challenges and Opportunities (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2014), pp. 215-30; Mason, ‘Air Power Review’s Place in RAF History,’ pp. 10-1.

Call for Submissions: Air Power and 1944 Revisited

Call for Submissions: Air Power and 1944 Revisited

In 2024, From Balloons to Drones will run a series of articles that examines the role of air power during the defining year of the Second World War – 1944.

The year 1944 was the defining year of the Second World War. Events such as the fall of Rome, the invasion of France and the destruction of Germany’s Army Group Centre on the Eastern Front defined the war in Europe. In the Pacific and Southeast Asia, events such as the Battles of Imphal and Kohima and the Battle of the Philippine Sea marked important points in the war. In the strategic air war, the Combined Bomber Offensive in Europe peaked. At the same time, the Boeing B-29 Superfortress was introduced in the Far East and Pacific as the US increased its strategic air operations in this theatre of operations.

2024 marks the 80th Anniversary of the critical events of 1944. At all levels of war, air power played an essential role in the various battles and campaigns of 1944. As such, From Balloons to Drones is seeking submissions for articles examining the varied use of air power in 1944. Articles might, for example, explore the strategic air campaigns of 1944, the use of tactical air power, or the use of carrier-based air power. Possible themes to be explored might include, but are not limited to:

Strategy, Theory and Doctrine | Organisation and Policy | Roles
Operations – Kinetic and Non-Kinetic | Tactics, Training and Procedures
Strategic and Operational Effect | Technological Developments | Ethical and Moral Issues
National, International and Transnational Experiences | Personal Experiences
Memory and Memorialisation

We are looking for articles of between 500 to 4,000 words, but we will accept larger pieces and reserve the right to publish them in parts. Please visit our submissions page for more information on the types of articles published by From Balloons to Drones.

We plan to begin running the series in March 2024, and it will continue for as long as we receive potential contributions. We welcome and encourage submissions from academics, policymakers, service personnel, and relevant professionals.

Submissions should be submitted in Word format and emailed to the email address below with ‘SUBMISSION – Air Power and 1944 Revisited’ in the subject line. Also, please include a 50-100-word biography with your submission. Footnotes can be used, and please be careful to explain any jargon. If you are unsure if your idea fits our requirements, please email us with ‘POTENTIAL SUBMISSION – Air Power and 1944 Revisited’ in the subject line to discuss.

If you are interested in contributing, please email our Editor-in-Chief, Dr Ross Mahoney, at airpowerstudies@gmail.com or contact us via our contact page here.

Header image: Rows of fuel tanks in front of a B-29 Superfortress of the 40th Bombardment Group assigned to the US Twentieth Air Force in China, c. 1944. (Source: Wikimedia)

#ResearchNote – Brassey’s Air Power: Aircraft, Weapons Systems and Technology Series

#ResearchNote – Brassey’s Air Power: Aircraft, Weapons Systems and Technology Series

By Dr Ross Mahoney

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With an abiding interest in how air power has been presented and written about, I, like many others, am an inveterate buyer of second-hand books. I recently added to my library a volume entitled Air Power: An Overview of Roles by R.A. ‘Tony’ Mason, published in 1987. Mason is arguably the key British air power thinker of the late-20th Century. He was appointed the Royal Air Force’s (RAF) first Director of Defence Studies (DDefS) in 1977. Since then, he has widely commented on, lectured, and written about air power. When he wrote this book, Mason, an Air Vice-Marshal, served as Air Secretary.

The book formed part of a series published by Brassey’s Defence Publishers, consisting of 11 titles – see the list below. I have read several of these during my career, including Mason’s title. However, I had not realised several interesting aspects of this series until now. Namely, these volumes were written for a specific audience and authored by serving RAF officers.

Dealing with the first issue, the series outline in the book’s frontmatter noted that ‘[t]his new series […] is aimed at the international officer cadet or junior officer level.’ Thus, the series had a specific pedagogical aim in mind. The series was designed to provide the knowledge that new officers joining an air force needed regarding the use and development of air power. In the case of the RAF, it was clearly aimed at those attending the RAF College at Cranwell and junior officers undertaking staff education. It would be interesting to find out whether the books ended up on the reading lists for these institutions and whether they were used as part of the curriculum. More research…

This leads to the second interesting aspect of this series, namely that they were all written by serving RAF officers. Indeed, many, such as Mason, Armitage, Knight, and Walker, were officers holding Air Rank. As noted, Mason was an Air Vice-Marshal when writing this book – he retired at this rank. Sir Michael Armitage was an Air Chief Marshal, and at the time his book was published, he had been appointed Commandant of the Royal College of Defence Studies. Knight was an Air Chief Marshal at the time of publication, while John Walker was an Air Vice-Marshal – he retired as an Air Marshal. Moreover, many of these officers were regular writers on air power at the time. Aside from Mason’s own outputs, which included editing Air Power in the Next Generation (1979) and War in the Third Dimension (1986), Armitage had, by this time, co-written Air Power in the Nuclear Age (1983) with Mason. Similarly, Walker had edited a collection for the Royal United Services Institute entitled The Future of Air Power (1986), to which Armitage also contributed.

What is interesting about the choice of officers is that the views presented in these books constitute an RAF view of air power and its employment in the late-1980s and early-1990s despite the series being ostensibly aimed at an international market. More interesting is that, taken as a whole, these books can be considered a source of informal or implicit doctrine. In essence, this is a form of doctrine not codified in formal manuals and helps explore the changing debates surrounding the use of military force, in this case, air power. This is especially important given that when the first volumes of this series were published, the RAF did not have its own formal, explicit environmental capstone doctrine – it was using NATO doctrine to guide operations. Furthermore, the final edition of AP1300 was declared obsolete in the 1970s, and the first edition of AP3000 would not be published until 1990. As such, this series should not be separated from the broader context of the RAF’s re-engagement with formal doctrine.

Finally, the publication of this series, through its choice of authors, shows that despite operating in a doctrinal lacuna, the RAF of the 1980s was still a thinking organisation that thought about the role of air power in war. Critical in that process was the establishment of the DDefS position in 1977. Mason, both as DDefS and in subsequent roles, published works on air power that can be seen as informal doctrine. This started with Air Power and the Next Generation and continued through the 1980s and 1990s. Moreover, this form of publishing informal doctrine would be formalised in the 1990s when the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Graydon, established the CAS Air Power Workshop, led by DDefS. Over time, the Air Power Workshop has published several significant edited volumes on air power that can be viewed as informal doctrine. The first publication from the Air Power Workshop was The Dynamics of Air Power (1996), edited by DDefS, Group Captain Andrew Lambert and Arthur Williamson. These publications were an essential adjunct to the RAF’s formal doctrine, AP3000. Indeed, the volumes published in the late-1990s under the auspicious of the Air Power Workshop were significant because of the time taken to publish the various editions of AP3000. Put simply, informal doctrine could discuss and debate issues that took time to filter into formal codified doctrine.

Given this, the various DDefS’ have invariably played an essential role in developing British air power thinking, both formal and informal, since the establishment of the post. Moreover, the personalities who have held this role have been influential in that process. While Mason is a prominent name to cite to highlight the role’s importance, it is possible to note several other officers who held the post of DDefS and have played a role in developing British air power thinking inside the RAF and externally within academia and the broader public. These have included Air Marshal (ret’d) Timothy Garden, Air Vice-Marshal (ret’d) Andrew Vallance, Air Commodore (ret’d) Andrew Lambert, Air Chief Marshal Sir Stuart Peach, Air Commodore (ret’d) Professor Peter Gray and Air Commodore (ret’d) Dr Neville Parton.

Brassey’s Air Power: Aircraft, Weapons Systems and Technology Series

  1. Mason, R.A., Air Power: An Overview of Roles (London: Brassey’s Defence Publishers, 1987).
  2. Walker, J.R., Air-to-ground Operations (London: Brassey’s Defence Publishers, 1987).
  3. Armitage, M.J., Unmanned Aircraft (London: Brassey’s Defence Publishers, 1988).
  4. Browne, J.P.R, and Thurbon, M. T., Electronic Warfare (London: Brassey’s Defence Publishers, 1998).
  5. Walker, J.R., Air Superiority Operations (London: Brassey’s Defence Publishers, 1989).
  6. Chapman, K., Military Air Transport Operations (London: Brassey’s Defence Publishers, 1989).
  7. Elsam, M.B., Air Defence (London: Brassey’s Defence Publishers, 1989).
  8. Knight, M., Strategic Offensive Air Operations (London: Brassey’s Defence Publishers, 1989).
  9. Oxlee, G.J., Aerospace Reconnaissance (London: Brassey’s, 1997).
  10. Dutton, L. et al., Military Space (London: Brassey’s Defence Publishers, 1990).
  11. Laite, B.C., Maritime Air Operations (London: Brassey’s Defence Publishers, 1991).

Dr Ross Mahoney is an independent scholar specialising in the history of war with particular reference to the use of air power and the history of air warfare. He is currently the Senior Historian within the City Architecture and Heritage Team at Brisbane City Council in Australia. He has over 15 years of experience in the heritage and education sectors in Australia and the United Kingdom. Between 2013 and 2017, he was the inaugural Historian at the Royal Air Force Museum in the UK. In Australia, he has worked as a Historian for the Department of Veterans’ Affairs and taught at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at The Australian National University based at the Australian War College. His research interests are focused on the history of war, specifically on the history of air warfare, transport history, and urban history. He has published several chapters and articles, edited two books, and delivered papers on three continents. His website is here, and he can be found on Twitter at @airpowerhistory.

Header image: A Royal Air Force SEPECAT Jaguar GR1 of No. 2 Squadron RAF parked on the flight line during Tactical Air Meet ’78 at RAF Wildenrath, 15 May 1978. (Source: Wikimedia)

#Podcast – Best Aviation and Air Power Books of 2022: An Interview with Dr Ross Mahoney

#Podcast – Best Aviation and Air Power Books of 2022: An Interview with Dr Ross Mahoney

Editorial Note: Led by Editor Dr Mike Hankins, From Balloons to Drones produces a monthly podcast that provides an outlet for the presentation and evaluation of air power scholarship, the exploration of historical topics and ideas, and provides a way to reach out to both new scholars and the general public. You can find our Soundcloud channel here. You can also find our podcast on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.

Our latest podcast discusses our favourite books of the year with Dr Ross Mahoney, Editor-in-Chief of From Balloons to Drones. Each of us discusses our top three reads of 2022, and we take a look forward at some topics we would really like to hear more about in the future.

The books discussed:

  1. Malayan Emergency and Indonesian Confrontation, 1950-1966 by Mark Lax
  2. Air Power in the Falklands Conflict: An Operational Level Insight into Air Warfare in the South Atlantic by John Shields
  3. Air Power Supremo: A Biography of Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir John Slessor by William Pyke
  4. Black Snow: Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb by James Scott – reviewed here.
  5. A Long Voyage to the Moon: The Life of Naval Aviator and Apollo 17 Astronaut Ron Evans by Geoffrey Bowman – reviewed here.
  6. Dark Horse: General Larry O. Spencer and His Journey from the Horseshoe to the Pentagon by General Larry O. Spencer, USAF (Ret.) – interviewed here.
  7. Wings of Gold: The Story of the First Women Naval Aviators by Beverly Weintraub – interviewed here.
  8. Tomcats and Eagles: The Development of the F-14 and F-15 in the Cold War by Tal Tovy
  9. Because Our Fathers Lied: A Memoir of Truth and Family, from Vietnam to Today by Craig McNamara.

Dr Ross Mahoney is an independent scholar specialising in the history of war, particularly concerning the use of air power and the history of air warfare. He is currently the Senior Historian within the City Architecture and Heritage Team at Brisbane City Council in Australia. He has over 15 years of experience in the heritage and education sectors in Australia and the United Kingdom. Between 2013 and 2017, he was the inaugural Historian at the Royal Air Force Museum in the UK. In Australia, he has worked as a Historian for the Department of Veterans’ Affairs and taught at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at The Australian National University based at the Australian War College. His research interests are focused on the history of war, specifically the history of air warfare, transport history, and urban history. To date, he has published several chapters and articles, edited two books, and delivered papers on three continents. He has a book review website here and can be found on Twitter at @airpowerhistory.

Header image: One of six FMA IA 58 Pucará’s destroyed on 15 May 1982 after a raid by the Special Air Service on Pebble Island during the Falklands War. (Source: Wikimedia) 

#BookReview – Rearming the RAF for the Second World War: Poor Strategy and Miscalculation

#BookReview – Rearming the RAF for the Second World War: Poor Strategy and Miscalculation

Adrian Phillips, Rearming the RAF for the Second World War: Poor Strategy and Miscalculation. Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2022. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Hbk. xxvi + 350 pp.

Reviewed by Dr Matthew Powell

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The history of the rearmament of the Royal Air Force (RAF), and the British aircraft industry in the inter-war period, more generally, has undergone a degree of revision over recent decades, mainly through the works of Sebastian Ritchie and David Edgerton. In this work, Adrian Phillips looks to challenge this new orthodoxy. Phillips seeks to show that the RAF adopted an incorrect way of conceptualising air warfare in the mid-to late-1930s. Phillips claims that the Air Ministry and the wider RAF incorrectly prioritised bombers over fighters when rearmament began in the 1930s. Phillips further contends that this prioritisation can be traced back to the theorising of Marshal of the Royal Air Force Lord Trenchard, the RAF’s Chief of the Air Staff in the 1920s. Despite dispelling several myths about RAF expansion in the inter-war period, Phillips does not provide an overly convincing case for several reasons.

The critical issue with Phillips’ book is that it suffers from a general lack of understanding of the wider historical context of the RAF’s development in this period. Despite a relatively extensive bibliography, it appears that many more recent works in this area have not been consulted. This illustrates a broader bias inherent in Phillips’ work, namely that the RAF was wrong in its thinking.

Several examples sufficiently highlight the problem of understanding present in this work. For instance, in seeking to rehabilitate the argument that the RAF took no interest in supporting the British army or developing its capabilities in this area, this has long been questioned by more recent studies showing the case to be far more complex and nuanced than Phillips is willing to give them credit for. Indeed, Phillips’ would have benefitted from a reading of the work of David Ian Hall or this author’s own research. The lack of engagement with such works suggests a wider lack of contextual knowledge of the inter-war period and the pressures the RAF faced regarding their survival as an independent Service.

Concerning issues related to aircraft development, an examination of the various works of Edgerton, would have aided in providing the wider context of the development of the British aircraft industry. This would allow for a greater understanding of the relationship between the Air Ministry and the aircraft industry to be explored within the book. This lack of understanding is a concern in a work of this length. For instance, the Air Ministry is criticised for its decision to continue authorising the production of obsolescent aircraft such as the Fairey Battle (p. 42). Phillips’ argument, however, does not consider the industrial problems of the British aircraft industry in enough depth to demonstrate the difficulties faced by the Air Ministry. For example, officials at the Air Ministry faced the difficult decision of whether to order aircraft from firms to retain labour and gain large-scale production experience or reduce the potential for losing skilled labour. If the latter option were chosen, the teething problems of ramping up production that had been experienced at the start of the rearmament drive would be experienced again.

Moreover, there also appears to be a further lack of specific understanding of the wider aircraft industry and the challenges the Air Ministry faced in getting aircraft through the design and development programme. This is used, again, as a stick with which to hit the Air Ministry, without taking the time to develop a more nuanced argument by considering the lead times from specifications being issued to the first production batch being delivered (p. 107). Aircraft that emerged from aircraft firms and went on to be household names during the Second World War were going through the design and development process at the time decisions were being made to expand the RAF and fall into the quantity versus quality argument that was had by those in the Air Ministry responsible for this area. Phillips is, however, correct in highlighting that this left Bomber Command with a significant capability gap from the start of the war in 1939 until the introduction of the four-engined Lancaster heavy bomber in 1941.

Combined with the issue of contextual understanding, Phillips’ work suffers from a degree of hindsight bias. Again, this bias is used to illustrate that the RAF were wrong. For example, the RAF and the wider Air Ministry are criticised for not realising the importance of the experiments being conducted by Robert Watson-Watt in developing a basic air defence system (pp. 30, 130-1). This feels like an overly harsh criticism given that the technology was being developed as decisions on arming the RAF were being made. Furthermore, a potential failure in this technology meant facing a similar problem to that of the First World War regarding advanced warning of incoming enemy aircraft.

Despite these criticisms, the chapters analysing the relationship between the wider government and the Air Ministry are the most engaging. They provide a real depth of understanding of the dynamics at play between the two. However, even here, there is a degree of reading history backwards and criticising the RAF on decisions where those looking after the event know what happened, but the protagonists do not.

Vildebest
A Vickers Vildebeest I on display at King George V’s Jubilee Review at Mildenhall, July 1935. (Source: IWM)

As well as the areas identified above, several stylistic issues exist with the book’s structure and form. This makes gaining any momentum in the argument and analysis challenging to sustain. The book comprises 38 chapters, which, given the size of the work, means most are relatively short and jump around the topic area, thus making the overall argument and analysis challenging to follow. There is also a lack of analytical consistency tying each chapter together and a tendency to move around chronologically without setting the ideas being discussed in context, especially if they had been mentioned in previous chapters. This truncated style leaves an impression that a tighter structure would have helped with the flow of the argument and would have aided in making the links between developments clearer. In addition, a clearer statement of intent at the beginning of each chapter would have aided readers in understanding what the author wanted them to take away in terms of argument and viewpoint.

Critically, one of the significant issues with this work’s presentation is the lack of references within each chapter. Many statements lack supporting evidence (either primary or secondary), and quotes are also left unsupported. For example, chapter 2, which looks at the period when Sir Hugh Trenchard becomes Chief of the Air Staff for the second time, has only one reference, despite plentiful sources. Additionally, the primary evidence cited has been chosen to suit a particular pre-formed argument rather than the argument formed by the available evidence (of which the files in The National Archives alone are plentiful).

Overall, this attempt at post-revisionism largely fails in presenting a depth of analysis through the poor use of references and available evidence. It feels as if the author had their argument in mind before the research. The traditional bashing of the RAF of the inter-war period has yet to disappear from the annals of history.

Dr Matthew Powell is a Teaching Fellow at Portsmouth Business School at the Royal Air Force College, Cranwell. He holds a PhD in Modern History from the University of Birmingham. His first book The Development of British Tactical Air Power, 1940 1943: A History of Army Co-operation Command, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2016. He has published in War in History, The Journal of the Royal United Services Institute, Air and Space Power Review and the British Journal of Military History. His current research investigates the relationship between the Air Ministry and the British aircraft industry in the inter-war period.

Header image: The prototype Supermarine Spitfire, K5054, c. 1936. (Source: Wikimedia)

Looking Back at Iraqi Air Defences during Operation DESERT STORM

Looking Back at Iraqi Air Defences during Operation DESERT STORM

By Colonel Mandeep Singh

Iraqi forces stormed into Kuwait on 2 August 1990 and, after a seven-month occupation of its southern neighbour, was defeated by the United States-led coalition forces consisting of troops from 39 countries. A five-week air offensive preceded the ground offensive on 24 February 1991 to put down the Iraqi air defences and prepare the battlefield for a ground offensive. The air war during DESERT STORM is generally considered a resounding success, with the Iraqi air defences failing to offer any significant opposition. Thomas Withington’s recent insightful article ‘Electric Avenue: Electronic Warfare and the battle against Iraq’s air defences during Operation Desert Storm’ is similar but misses out on some crucial aspects.

This article aims to offer a counter view to Withington’s and put the performance of Iraqi air defences in perspective. It also must be noted that Iraq had the sixth largest air force globally, with about 915 aircraft.[1] However, it put up only minimal opposition, and only the ground-based air defences (GBAD) offered any real resistance to the coalition air forces. This article thus focuses mainly on GBAD and discusses three fundamental issues. First, were Iraqi air defences as lethal and effective as projected before the war? Second, how effective were the suppression of enemy air defences (SEAD) operations conducted by the coalition air forces and did they achieve the stated goal(s)? Finally, how did the Iraqi air defences perform during the war?

The commonly held view is that the Iraqi air defences were lethal and ‘potentially ferocious.’[2] This was echoed in Withington’s article, who quoted the following from an official report by the US Department of Defence on DESERT STORM:

The multi-layered, redundant, computer-controlled air defence network around Baghdad was denser than that surrounding most Eastern European cities during the Cold War, and several orders of magnitude greater than that which had defended Hanoi during the later stages of the Vietnam War.

This claim about the lethality and ferocity of Iraqi air defences needs to be analysed to see if it has any merit. The Iraqi integrated air defence system (IADS) comprised a mix of Soviet and Western air defence systems. While the surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) were predominantly of Soviet origin, the heart of the IADS, called KARI, was built by the French defence contractor, Thomson-CSF. It was designed primarily to provide air defence against Israel and Iran and had a severe limitation: it could only manage 20 to 40 hostile aircraft. Iraq had over 500 radars located at about 100 sites, but the radar layout did not afford comprehensive coverage with a bias toward east and west. Most radars could not detect stealth aircraft barring the limited capability of the P-12 and P-18 radars and the six Chinese (Nanjing) low-frequency radars.[3]

Iraqi GBAD included SAM and anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) guns. The missiles included the Soviet SA-2, SA-3, SA-6 and SA-8 and the Franco-German Roland I/II missiles. With a range limitation of about 40km, even SA-2s and SA-3s cannot be considered strategic air defence systems, while the SA-8s and the Rolands were purely tactical SAM systems. The SA-6 was used for the tactical role and to fill gaps in the strategic SAM layout. The 58 SAM batteries notwithstanding, Iraq had no strategic SAM system, and with the available SAM batteries, it was capable of limited and thin air defence cover over its strategic targets.

Sam Coverage
(Source: Barry Watts and Thomas Keaney ‘Effects and Effectiveness in Gulf War Air Power Survey – Volume II: Operations and Effects and Effectiveness (Washington DC: Department of the Air Force, 1993), p. 134.) 

With the country’s material assets widely dispersed; no attempt was made to defend all of them. Instead, the SAMs and AAA were concentrated on defending selected areas or sectors like Baghdad, Basra, the Scud-launching sites in western Iraq, and the northern oil fields only, with the defence of the capital given the foremost priority. With a concentration of the SAMs and AAA in select areas, Iraq had adopted a point defence system.

Fifty-eight SAM batteries, almost half the total 120 batteries, were deployed to defend Baghdad alone and 1,300 AA guns. The other areas with these missile systems were Basra with fifteen and Mosul/Kirkuk with sixteen batteries. In addition, the airfield complex of H-2/H-3 had 13 SAM batteries, and the Talil/Jalibah complex had three.[4]

Location SA-2 SA-3 SA-6 SA-8 Roland Total
Mosul/Kirkuk 1 12 0 1 2 16
H-2/H-3 1 0 6 0 6 13
Talil/Jalibah 1 0 0 0 2 3
Basrah 2 0 8 0 5 15
Baghdad 10 16 8 15 9 58

IR SAM
(Source: Williamson Murray, ‘Operations’ in Gulf War Air Power Survey – Volume II: Operations and Effects and Effectiveness (Washington DC: Department of the Air Force, 1993), p. 82.)

Even in Baghdad, the defence systems did not necessarily protect downtown Baghdad at a higher threat level than the rest of the overall metropolitan area, as the SAM sites were dispersed throughout the Baghdad area. The United States Air Force (USAF)’s claim that downtown Baghdad was where air defences are uniquely dense or severe was thus without merit.[5]

The SA-2s and SA-3s, being vintage missiles, were supplemented by the newer SA-6s with a battery deployed at essential sites. Although the presence of SA-6s at selected locations beefed up the air defences, it had an unintended effect that with the SA-6s moving back from the front-line units, the forward army units were left devoid of the most effective SAM in the inventory. The Iraqis captured several examples of the US HAWK missile system when they invaded Kuwait. The HAWK missile, with a comparable range, would have been an effective deterrent, but as the Iraqis did not have the technical expertise to operate it, it was never not used.[6] Another drawback of the Iraqi IADS was that the 8,000 or so anti-aircraft guns were reportedly not integrated with the overall air defence system and were designed to operate independently.[7]

KARI
(Source: Barry Watts and Thomas Keaney ‘Effects and Effectiveness’ in Gulf War Air Power Survey – Volume II: Operations and Effects and Effectiveness (Washington DC: Department of the Air Force, 1993), p. 132.)

The air defence network was thus far from lethal and was not designed to work against a massive air assault as it was subjected to during DESERT STORM. Instead, it had limited capabilities and was optimised only to take on threats from two axes. These were from Iran to the east or from Israel to the west and did not cater for any significant threat from the south or the north. Notably, only the overall assessment of the Iraqi IADS by the US Navy’s Strike Projection Evaluation and Anti-Air Research (SPEAR) Department was more realistic than other claims as it stated that:

[t]he command elements of the Iraqi air defence organisation (the interceptor force, the IADF [Iraqi Air defence Force], as well as Army air defence) are unlikely to function well under the stress of a concerted air campaign.[8]

The coalition forces launched DESERT STORM at 2:38 on 17 January 1991 when Task Force Normandy struck the two Iraqi radars codenamed Nebraska and Oklahoma, firing 27 Hellfire missiles, 100 rockets and 4,000 rounds of 30mm ammunition. A corridor 30 kilometres wide was now available for the follow-on missions. Next were the eight USAF F-15E Strike Eagles that targeted the local air defence command and control centre, further degrading the network and facilitating the strike by the F-117s preceded by three EF-111 Ravens. Seventeen F-117s were tasked to deliver 27 laser-guided bombs on 15 Iraqi air defence system-related targets. Contrary to initial claims related to the effectiveness of the F-117, only nine of the 15 targets were hit, and eight remained operational even after the air strikes.[9] One of the main targets, Baghdad’s central air defence operations centre was not damaged and remained operational.[10] The F/A-18 Hornets armed with AGM-88 high-speed anti-radar missiles (HARMs) fared not much better as about half of the 75 HARMs fired hit their targets.[11]

The performance of Iraq’s air defence system was effective on Day 1 as they shot down six aircraft: all except one by GBAD. The AAA shot down two aircraft (one F-15 and a Royal Air Force (RAF) Tornado GR.1) while the SAMs claimed three. An Iraqi MiG-25 shot down one F/A-18.[12] GBAD damaged a dozen more aircraft.

The Coalition air forces lost three aircraft to ground fire over 2,250 sorties on Day 2 as one aircraft each was claimed by AAA (a US Navy A-6) and SAM (a US Marine Corps OV-10), while the cause of loss of an Italian Tornado GR.1 could not be ascertained.[13] The next day, several missions were called off due to bad weather though the strikes against Scud launchers continued during the day. The Iraqi SAMs shot down two United States F-16s over Baghdad and another F-15. The RAF and Royal Saudi Air Force each lost two Tornadoes, while a USAF F-4 crashed after being hit by AAA. The air operations on 20 January were scaled down due to continued bad weather, and with losses mounting, especially to AAA, the USAF imposed a minimum altitude to reduce attrition. The Iraqi air defences, for their part, shot down two Coalition aircraft; a United States Navy F-14, downed by an SA-2 and an RAF Tornado, besides damaging three more. The RAF lost a Tornado to ground fire, with a USAF F-15 also being hit by a SAM.

On 23 January, coalition air forces claimed to have destroyed 19 Iraqi aircraft thus far and achieved air superiority over Iraq. The losses to Iraqi air defences were 15 aircraft, and AAA and hand-held SAMs’ unexpected intensity of ground fire forced Coalition aircraft to adopt higher-altitude delivery tactics. During the second week, the Iraqi air defences could not put up any concerted opposition. It was not until 28 January that they claimed their next kill when a SAM shot down a US Marine Corps AV-8B, although several Coalition aircraft was hit by AAA fire. KARI was badly fragmented by the end of week two, and only three of 16 Intercept Operations Centres (IOCs) were reported to be fully operational. Coalition losses during week three were again relatively low, with only three aircraft (an A-10, an AC-130 and an A-6E) lost to Iraqi air defences. The following week, Iraqi air defences shot down only three Coalition aircraft – two AV-8Bs and a Saudi F-5E.

The radar-guided SAMs had been targeted repeatedly, but the Iraqis sparingly continued to launch them. In one such instance, an SA-3 shot down an RAF Tornado GR.1 on 14 February. The Iraqis managed to shoot down five aircraft during week five, including two A-10s on the same day (15 February) by SA-13s. This forced the restricted use of A-10s in high-threat areas. As the war entered its final phase with the Coalition aircraft attacking from lower altitudes, the losses went up with Iraqi air defences shooting down eight aircraft during this last week of the war: three AV-8Bs, one OV-10, one OA-10, one A-10, and two F-16s.[14] This marked the second-highest weekly loss rate since the beginning of the war.

During the ground offensive, Iraqi air defences did not fight as they folded up tamely against the coalition air forces. During the whole campaign, a total of 38 coalition aircraft were lost to Iraqi air defences. At the same time, a further 48 aircraft were damaged in combat, totalling 86 combat casualties. Most losses were to infra-red guided SAMs, which claimed 13 aircraft and damaged 15 more, while the radar-guided SAMs shot down ten aircraft and damaged four. AAA caused the lowest losses at nine aircraft, although it damaged 24 more. The remaining losses were to accidents or technical reasons, including, for example, electrical malfunction. Considering the ‘lost’ and ‘damaged’ aircraft, the maximum casualties were due to AAA as it claimed 33 aircraft (38 per cent of the total losses), with the infra-red guided SAMs accounting for 28 aircraft (31 per cent). Only 16 per cent of the casualties were attributed to radar-guided SAMs.

The low kill rate by the radar SAMs is attributable to several factors, the primary one being the SEAD missions conducted by Coalition air forces which forced the radar SAMs to shut down most of the operations. In addition, all the radar SAMs held by Iraq were vintage Soviet-era missiles that had been used in combat earlier – there were no new weapons, like the SA-6s in the Yom Kippur War, which could have posed difficulties for the Coalition air forces.

DESERT STORM
A close-up view of a damaged section of an A-10A Thunderbolt II of the 23rd Tactical Fighter Wing. The aircraft sustained damaged when an SA-16 missile exploded near it during Operation DESERT STORM, 15 February 1991. (Sorce: Wikimedia)

There was a significantly higher daily casualty rate in the first five days of the war, during which 31 aircraft casualties occurred (36 per cent of the total and an average of 6.2 per day), compared to the following 38 days, with a total of 55 more casualties (an average of 1.45 per day). Losses to radar-guided SAMs fell to nearly zero after day five, accounting for 29 per cent (nine out of 31) of total casualties by then. They accounted for just nine per cent (five out of 55) of all aircraft casualties in the remainder of the war. It is apparent, therefore, that by the end of day five of the air campaign, radar SAMs had mainly been eliminated as an effective threat to coalition aircraft. Moreover, in the first three days of the war, some aircraft (B-52s, A-6Es, GR-1s, and F-111Fs) attacked at very low altitudes, where they were more vulnerable to low-altitude defences. After the imposition of a minimum attack level of about 12,000 feet, the losses reduced, resulting in much less accuracy with unguided weapons.

Iraq managed to maintain a fair degree of air defence capability throughout the war. The primary reason for this was KARI, which expanded the responsibilities of various nodes and developed local back-up air-defence networks using different communication networks over combat phone lines and wire between multiple stations. These back-up networks could control local air defences, even when the communication to the central network was down. These back-up systems used ground observers passing information over voice and data channels for information on Coalition aircraft. Radars associated with the Roland or SA-8 would be used to gain information about the altitude of inbound aircraft. The radars would be brought online for short 15-second bursts to ensure survivability in a hostile environment. The SAMs were sometimes fired without using the target-tracking radars to prevent being targeted by the anti-radar missiles. Optical tracking mode was also used while firing the SAMs.

At the war’s end, Iraq’s air defence was far from finished. According to Anthony Cordesman of Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, Iraq retained at least 380 Soviet-made surface-to-air missile launchers, about 80 French-made Roland units and ‘large numbers’ of portable Soviet-made anti-aircraft systems, not counting the hundreds of AA guns.[15] After initially claiming almost the complete destruction of the Iraqi air defence network, the claims were revised as the operations progressed. As USAF Colonel David Deptula, one of the architects of the air campaign, put it in 1996, ‘We didn’t go in there to eviscerate the whole network. The aim was to suppress their defences.’[16]

The Soviet reaction to the Gulf War was significant as the entire Iraqi IADS consisted of Soviet SAMs. In an understatement, Marshal Dmitri Yazov, the Soviet Minister of Defence, admitted that Iraq’s air defences ‘failed in most cases.’[17] Commenting on the initial attack on the IADS, Lieutenant General V. Gorbachev, Dean of the faculty at the General Staff Academy, opined that:

‘The Iraqi air defence system was paralysed by powerful electronic warfare devices. Command and control of troops was overwhelmed in the first few minutes.’[18]

Gorbachev also added:

[a]s far as Soviet equipment is concerned, it is not so much a problem, I think, as the people operating it. Iraqi military professionalism is not, as we can see, up to the mark.’[19]

Reinforcing this view, the Soviets believed that, as the air defence systems employed by the Iraqis were able to down most types of Coalition aircraft used, it suggested that the problem was more one of staffing than technology. It also reinforced an emerging view that modern wars demand well-trained professional soldiers to man and maintain it, not a large conscript army.[20]

After DESERT STORM, Iraq’s air defence system continued to harass the Coalition aircraft, defying the restrictions imposed by the no-fly zone. During Operation DESERT FOX, Iraq engaged Coalition aircraft more than 1,000 times over three years and fired nearly 60 SAMs.[21] The Iraqis even fired unguided rockets at the aircraft to harass them. The Iraqi IADS remained operational throughout and was never ‘put down.’

The Iraqi IADS had limited capabilities and was not as lethal or effective as initially projected; however, its capabilities had been exaggerated in most of the assessments conducted before DESERT STORM. Considering its limited capabilities against a modern air force, aggravated by poor training standards, it performed reasonably well and inflicted a fair amount of attrition. On the other hand, the SEAD operations by coalition air forces were not as effective as claimed during the operations. Even as the surveillance network and radar-guided SAMs were suppressed, the Iraqi IADS continued to function, albeit with reduced efficiency and continued to attrite. It must be remembered that GBAD cannot be suppressed entirely and will continue to inflict losses. It was so during DESERT STORM and will remain so in future conflicts.

Colonel Mandeep Singh, a veteran air defence gunner, has a Masters in Defence and Strategic Studies. He has contributed several articles on air power and air defence for specialist journals. His books include Air Defence Artillery in Combat, 1972 to the Present: The Age of the Surface-to-Air Missiles (2020) published by Air World.

Header image: An Iraqi SA-6 Gainful low-to-medium altitude surface-to-air-missiles on its transporter-erector-launcher. This system was captured by US forces in 2006; however, during the first Gulf War, Iraq operated a number of these systems. (Source: Wikimedia)

[1] The Iraqi Air Force had a mix of combat aircraft, ranging from 190 advanced Mirages, MiG-25s, MiG-29s, and Su-24s to about 300 moderate-quality MiG-23s, Su-7s, Su-25s, Tu-16s and Tu-22s. Most of the air force however comprised of older aircraft like the MiG-17s and MiG-21s.

[2] ‘Conduct of the Persian Gulf War,’ Final Report to the Congress (Washington, DC : Dept. of Defense, 1992), p. 15.

[3] The P-18 radar, which uses metre-length waves in the Very High Frequency (VHF) bandwidth, can detect targets at a greater range than centimetre or millimetre wave radar which stealth aircraft are optimised against. It was a P-18 radar of the Yugoslav Army that detected an F-117 Nighthawk during the Kosovo air war, which led to its shooting down by an SA-3 missile. Similarly, P-12 radar also operates in VHF and can detect stealth aircraft. Kenneth Werrell, in his book Archie to SAM, mentions that Iraq had low-frequency radars though this is not mentioned by any other source. See, Kenneth Werrell, Archie to SAM: A Short Operational History of Ground-Based Air Defense, second edition (Maxwell, AL: Air University Press, 2005), p. 218. Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor, The Generals’ War: The Inside Story of the Conflict in the Gulf (New York: Little Brown, 1995), p. 105; Williamson Murray, ‘Operations’ in Gulf War Air Power Survey – Volume II: Operations and Effects and Effectiveness (Washington DC: Department of the Air Force, 1993), pp. 77-82.

[4] Iraq had 7,000 SAM and 6,000 AA Guns with the Republican Guard had its own air defence System with about 3,000 AA Guns and 60 SAM Batteries. See: Anthony Tucker-Jones, The Gulf War: Operation Desert Storm 1990-1991 (Barnsley: Pen & Sword Books, 2014), p. 40.

[5] United States Air Force, ‘Reaching Globally, Reaching Powerfully: The United States Air Forces in the Gulf War’ (United States Air Force, 1991), p. 5.

[6] Richard Blanchfield et al, Part I – Weapons, Tactics, and Training’ in Gulf War Air Power Survey – Volume IV: Weapons, Tactics, and Training and Space Operations, directed by Eliot Cohen (Washington DC: Department of the Air Force, 1993), p. 15.

[7] Tucker-Jones, The Gulf War, p. 40.

[8] ‘Iraqi Threat to U.S. Forces,’ Naval Intelligence Command, Navy Operational Intelligence Center, SPEAR Department, December 1990, p. 3-14.

[9] ‘Operation Desert Storm: Evaluation of the Air Campaign’ (Washington DC: General Accounting Office, 1997), p. 137.

[10] ‘Operation Desert Storm: Evaluation of the Air Campaign,’ p. 137.

[11] Jim Corrigan, Desert Storm Air War: The Aerial Campaign against Saddam’s Iraq in the 1991 (Guilford, CT: Stackpole Books, 2017), p. 59.

[12] Lon Nordeen, Air Warfare in the Missile Age, second edition (Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution, 2010), pp. 413-4.

[13] James P. Coyne, Air Power in the Gulf (Arlington, VA: Air Force Association, 1992), pp. 67-71.

[14] ‘Conduct of the Persian Gulf War: Final Report to Congress, April 1992,’ (Washington, DC: Dept. of Defense, 1992), p. 197.

[15] Bradley Graham, ‘Gulf War left Iraqi Air Defence Beaten, Not Bowed,’ Washington Post, 6 September 1996.

[16] Graham, ‘Gulf War left Iraqi Air Defence Beaten, Not Bowed.’

[17] Quoted in ‘Outgunned Weaponry is Under Fire in Kremlin,’ The Irish Independent, 2 March 1991, p. 6. See also Alexander Velovich, ‘USSR Demands Post-Gulf Air Defense Review,’ Flight International, 13-19 March 1991, p. 5.

[18] Benjamin S. Lambeth, ‘Desert Storm and Its Meaning: The View from Moscow,’ A RAND Report (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1992), p. 23.

[19] Lambeth, ‘Desert Storm and Its Meaning,’ pp. 23-4, fn. 10.

[20] Daniel Sneider, ‘Soviets Assess Their Arsenal After Iraq’s Defeat in Gulf,’ The Christian Science Monitor, 8 March, 1991, p. 1.

[21] Tucker-Jones, The Gulf War, p. 201.

#BookReview – An Officer, Not a Gentleman: The Inspirational Journey of a Pioneering Female Fighter Pilot

#BookReview – An Officer, Not a Gentleman: The Inspirational Journey of a Pioneering Female Fighter Pilot

Mandy Hickson, An Officer, Not a Gentleman: The Inspirational Journey of a Pioneering Female Fighter Pilot. London: Mandy Hickson, 2020. Images. Pbk. 294pp.

Reviewed by Mark Russell

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Women have long served in the Royal Air Force (RAF). Female service in the RAF began during the First World War when up to 25,000 women served until the Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF), disbanded in 1918. Approximately 180,000 then served in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) during the Second World War, followed by those who served in the re-formed WRAF, an administrative entity within the RAF from 1949. Finally, in 1994, the WRAF was merged into the RAF.  

Although 166 women flew during the Second World War as delivery and ferry pilots in the Air Transport Auxiliary, it was not until 1991 that women began to serve as pilots, a decision approved in 1989. The first female pilot was Flight Lieutenant Julie Ann Gibson, who re-trained from her existing career as an RAF engineer before flying Andovers with No. 32 Squadron from RAF Northolt in 1991. However, the issue of allowing women to fly fast jets still raised questions. Nonetheless, in December 1991, it was announced that women were cleared to fly in combat roles. However, it was not until August 1994 that Flight Lieutenant Jo Salter breached the ‘holy of holies,’ the fast jet pilot role, when she joined No. 617 Squadron at RAF Lossiemouth to fly the Tornado GR1B. She became the RAF’s first female fast jet pilot. As of 1 April 2019, there were 30 female fixed-wing pilots in the RAF, while as of July 2021, 15.1% of the RAF regulars were female. 

Mandy Hickson’s An Officer, Not a Gentleman, is the autobiography of only the second woman to fly the Tornado in the RAF. It documents her experience flying the Tornado and becoming an operational fast jet pilot. Some of what Hickson writes will also resonate with those working within large organisations that continue to grapple with issues of inclusion and equality. It must, however, be noted that the RAF of the 1990s comes out of Hickson’s recollections well – perhaps not as an organisation, but certainly in the attitudes of some of those individuals Hickson encountered during her service.

Hickson has said she did not feel like a pioneer: ‘no different to anyone else for being a woman’ (p. 161). The book describes Hickson’s life and her RAF career. Hickson’s description of her feelings. For example, Hickson describes her isolation on her first deployment to the Gulf in 2000 as the only female aircrew on the squadron (pp. 187-90). This type of insight sets this book apart from some of the more ‘traditional’ aircrew memoirs written by male aircrew. Indeed, to this reviewer’s knowledge; this is the first memoir written by a female RAF pilot.

Hickson’s story opens with her joining the Air Training Corps in 1986 before winning a Flying Scholarship and receiving her Private Pilot’s Licence (PPL) in August 1991 at 18. As one of the first female pilots in the RAF, Hickson inevitably faced challenges. For instance, being six feet tall at 16, she was too tall for the RAF height to weight charts and was told she needed to lose weight to obtain the Flying Scholarship, although her doctor noted that she was a healthy weight. Having cleared that hurdle and obtained her PPL, she went to the University of Birmingham, where she joined the University of Birmingham Air Squadron (UBAS) in late 1991. During this period, Hickson appears to have had no problem fitting into the flying and social life of the University Air Squadron (UAS), and she does not describe any times when she felt that being a woman created additional challenges for her or saw her discriminated against in any way. This may have been because she was, as she describes, ‘a bit of a tomboy’ (p. 1) and ‘a sports-mad teenager’ (p. 2). 

The next hurdle Hickson faced was at the start of her third year at university, when, to remain in the UAS, she needed to demonstrate a more concrete commitment to an RAF career. In December 1992, the UAS was told women could train as fast jet pilots, which triggered Hickson’s application to become aircrew. Having attended Officer and Aircrew Selection Centre, she failed the pilot aptitude tests despite having flown over 100 hours with the UAS. Instead, she was offered a career as an air traffic controller. The Officer Commanding of her UAS, Squadron Leader Karl Bufton, allowed her to continue flying with UBAS and arranged two separate check rides with instructors from the RAF’s Central Flying School both of whom rated her as above average as a pilot. He believed ‘the tests are wrong. I have a feeling they are not designed for women’ (p. 13). Hickson had the support she needed to continue. 

Hickson joined the RAF, and in November 1994, a month into her initial training at RAF College Cranwell, she was told that her request to transfer to the General Duties branch had been approved so that she could train as a pilot. ‘My grin stretched from ear to ear’ (p. 26). Later Hickson discovered that she ‘had been taken on as a test case to see how far I would get before I failed’ (p. 27). Discovering this when qualified as a fast jet pilot can only have made the achievement all the sweeter, but at the time, her feeling was: ‘They’d opened the door. I was ready to barge through it’ (p. 27). 

However, she soon came up against some of the less enlightened aspects of the RAF’s expectations of women. Most notably, Hickson describes her first performance appraisal with ‘Flight Lieutenant Beige’ as she nicknamed him. Hickson was told she should ‘be more feminine’ (p. x) and not buy two half pints of beer in the Mess at a time so she could drink pints – despite, as she puts it, having ‘spent three years at university doing exactly that’ (p. x). Hickson describes this experience as being ‘the first of many encounters with more senior officers who had a problem with women taking on new roles in the RAF’ (p. 38). Being six feet tall, extroverted, and athletic, one suspects that Hickson may have struggled to meet the RAF’s definition of ‘femininity’ (as being described as ‘Amazonian’ by Flight Lieutenant Beige indicates). However, it would be interesting to know more about the experience of other female officer candidates through this period, who may have been more ‘feminine’ and to understand the extent to which the culture at Cranwell has changed since the mid-1990s.    

There is evidence throughout the book of just how male-centric the RAF was at this point in its history. In addition to the requests that she be more ‘feminine’, there were also comments which she believes were ‘undoubtedly […] all meant in humour’ (p. 88) from instructors along the lines of ‘Off to apply your lippy, are you’ which Hickson says she had not noticed until fellow male course mates raised them with her, saying they felt it was wrong. Her coursemates raised these comments with the squadron commander, who immediately resolved this and apologised to her. The instructors who had been making these comments also apologised. Hickson reflects on this: ‘It’s shocking how I had normalized this behaviour to simply ‘get through’’’. This is another insight into how far the RAF had to go to make the most of female talent and invite work on where it is now in terms of its culture and ethos. 

A more positive story is how Hickson’s coursemates rallied around to teach her the mechanics of ‘battle turns’, leading to her instructor saying he had ‘never heard of a course coming together like that’ (p. 97). This is interesting on two levels: firstly, the willingness to help a female coursemate, suggesting) that the new generation was rather more enlightened than the organisation, and, secondly, with fast jet seats likely at a premium, one might have expected a more ‘dog eat dog’ attitude from Hickson’s fellow students – one person failing means more chance of a fast jet seat for the remaining students. The collegiate attitude is a tribute to her coursemates and, perhaps, to the supportive ethos that the training had inculcated to date. 

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Mandy Hickson stood in front of a Panavia Tornado.

Her lowest point career-wise came on her first two-month operational tour in Kuwait in 2000. She says, ‘I don’t think they had any empathy for how hard it was being the only woman’ (p. 187). During this tour, Hickson had issues with more senior squadron members, although when she later discussed it with one specific individual, he was unaware of the stress he had placed her under with his attitude (p. 196). ‘I was their first female pilot, and they weren’t used to it’ (p. 187), and they either consciously or unconsciously were not including her in squadron life, to the point that she felt ‘bullied’ and ‘marginalised’ to the point where she was confused about ‘who – and what – I was trying to be’ (p. 187) and considered handing in her resignation (p. 190). ‘Do I try to fit in […] or do I stand out?’ – another conundrum that, 20 years later, minorities continue to face despite inclusion programmes in many workplaces. ‘I was just trying to fit into the mould of junior fast jet pilot, regardless of gender’ (p.188) without the benefit of role models or (understandably) feeling able, as the most junior pilot on the squadron, to have any real impact on the definition of what a junior fast jet pilot was expected to be.

Hickson also got used to being assigned rooms on postings whose walls were covered in porn. She was not sure if this was how all rooms were or whether they had been prepared as a special welcome for her. However, Hisckon recalls that she took this in her stride, ripping the pictures down and throwing them into the corridor with a shout of ‘Porn’s up, boys’ (p. 175). While such interior decoration was considered acceptable, concerns over the impact women would have on the RAF’s prevailing culture are highlighted by Air-Vice Marshal Roger Austin, the Director-General Aircraft. In March 1989, a mere five years before Hickson arrived at Cranwell, Austin lamented on the coming day when the RAF would be ‘powdering its nose as it admire[d] Robert Redford and Tom Jones on the Flight Safety calendar.’[1]  Austin went on to become Commandant, RAF College Cranwell later in 1989. Culture continues to be a challenge for women in the military in the UK.

Being six feet tall, Hickson did not have some of the practical problems documented by other early female aircrews in terms of flying clothing not fitting and simply being the right size and shape for the aircraft. This had been a critical part of the debate about opening up fast jet cockpits for women, and it was a genuine issue. However, Hickson does document the consequences of the RAF not having thought through how to allow female aircrew to urinate while strapped into an ejector seat. The options available meant unstrapping from the seat, which was not an option when Hickson was policing the no-fly zone over Iraq, for example (p.194-195). Hickson being grounded due to a kidney infection that resulted from being unable to urinate in the air shows the need to think through these things. The solution on offer – a form of nappy – was described by Hickson as ‘awful’. Other female aircrew concurred, recalling that ‘they tried to avoid using them.’[2]  

Hickson left the RAF in 2009, having had two children in 2003 and 2004. She left in part because she was unable to be promoted under the RAF rules of the time, which required her to take another flying job to be promoted to Squadron Leader. In addition, she felt this was incompatible with having two children and a husband who was an airline pilot. ‘If you’re on a flying squadron, you’re on a flying squadron’ is how she puts it, and ‘You can’t just say “Oh sorry, I can’t do this bit today”’ (p.275). 

One recent reviewer of Hickson’ book in The Journal of the Royal Air Force Historical Society has suggested that it ‘is not a major work of moment.’ While one day we might view memoirs of female aircrew as being ‘seen as nothing remarkable’ as there no longer anything unusual about that experience, that day has still yet to be fully realised. Indeed, this book is a work of the moment because it is a pioneer’s story. While it has many elements of what one might call the ‘standard aircrew memoir’ that chronicles the path from air cadet to operational flying, it also provides many insights into the culture and ethos RAF of the time – the early post-Cold War period – and how the Service adapted to the introduction of female fast jet aircrew. In doing so, both Hickson and the RAF emerge well from the telling. A highly recommended book on many levels that may provide valuable insights to future historians, especially those interested in the RAF, military culture, and the role of gender in the military.

Mark Russell graduated with a 2:1 in History in 1985 and has worked in professional services ever since. He returned to academia in 2015 and graduated with an MA in Air Power: History, Theory and Evolution from the University of Birmingham in December 2017. Since then, while working in professional services, he has published articles and reviews in various publications, including the RAF’s Air and Space Power Review, the Journal of the Royal Air Force Historical Society, The Aviation Historian and From Balloons to Drones. Longer term, he is interested in organisational culture and how the coming of unmanned aircraft might impact on the culture of air forces. He is currently researching a possible article on Squadron Leader Freddy Lammer DFC and Bar.

Header image: A Panavia Tornado GR4 in grey colour scheme and special markings for the 95th anniversary of No. 2 Squadron in 2007. This was the type flown by Hickson with No. 2 Squadron. (Source: Wikimedia)

[1] Kathleen Sherit, Flying Roles for Women in the RAF, Journal of the Royal Air Force Historical Society 63 (2016), p. 63.

[2] Kathleen Sherit, ‘The Integration of Women in the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force Post-World War II to the Mid 1990s’ (PhD Thesis, King’s College London, 2013), p. 235.

#ResearchResources – Recent Articles and Books

#ResearchResources – Recent Articles and Books

Editorial note: In this series, From Balloons to Drones highlights research resources available to researchers. Contributions range from discussions of research at various archival repositories to highlighting new publications. As part of this series, we are bringing you a monthly precis of recent articles and books published in air power history. This precis will not be exhaustive but will highlight new works published in the preceding month. Publication dates may vary around the globe and are based on those provided on the publisher’s websites. If you would like to contribute to the series, please contact our Editor-in-Chief, Dr Ross Mahoney, at airpowerstudies@gmail.com or via our contact page here.

Articles

Kristen Alexander and Kate Ariotti, ‘Mourning the Dead of the Great Escape: POWs, Grief, and the Memorial Vault of Stalag Luft III,’ Journal of War & Culture Studies (2022), DOI: 10.1080/17526272.2022.2097774.

In March 1944 seventy-six Allied prisoners of war escaped from Stalag Luft III. Nearly all were recaptured; fifty were later shot. This article examines what happened in the period between recapture and the interment of the dead prisoners’ cremated remains at Stalag Luft III. It positions what came to be known as ‘the Great Escape’ as an event of deep emotional resonance for those who grieved and reveals the dual narrative they constructed to make sense of their comrades’ deaths. In discussing the iconography of the vault constructed by the camp community to house the dead POWs’ ashes, this article also suggests a dissonance in meaning between that arising from personal, familial grief and the Imperial War Graves Commission’s standardised memorial practice. Focusing on the Great Escape’s immediate aftermath from the perspective of the POWs themselves provides a more nuanced understanding of the emotional impact of this infamous event.

Susan Allen, Sam Bell and Carla Machain, ‘Air Power, International Organizations, and Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan,’ Armed Forces & Society (2022), doi:10.1177/0095327X221100780.

Can the presence of international organizations reduce civilian deaths caused by aerial bombing? This commentary examines this question in the specific context of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. We evaluate this based on interviews conducted with members of international organizations that were present in Afghanistan during the conflict, existing intergovernmental organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and government reports, and with quantitative data on civilian casualties between 2008 and 2013. We conclude that there is tentative evidence from Afghanistan that international organizations can in fact reduce the severity of civilian killings that result from the use of air power. However, there is much need for greater data sharing to more fully answer this important question.

Derek Lutterbeck, ‘Airpower and Migration Control,’ Geopolitics (2022), DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2022.2094776.

Migration scholarship has thus far largely neglected the role of aircraft in both (irregular) migration and state policies aimed at controlling migration. Drawing inspiration from the field of strategic studies, where ‘airpower’ has been a key theoretical concept, this article explores the role of aerial assets in states’ migration control efforts. The article discusses three main dimensions of the use of airpower in controlling migration: the increasing resort to aircraft for border enforcement purposes – or what can be referred to as ‘vertical border policing’ –, states’ tight monitoring of the aerial migration infrastructure, and the use of aircraft in migrant return operations. As a core element of state power, it is airpower’s key features of reach, speed and height which have made it a particularly useful migration control instrument.

Priya Mirza “Sovereignty of the air’: The Indian princely states, the British Empire and carving out of air-space (1911–1933),’ History and Technology (2022), DOI: 10.1080/07341512.2022.2079370.

Who owns the skies? Under British colonialism, the ownership of the skies of India was a contested matter. The onset of aviation presented a challenge to the territorial understanding between the British and semi-sovereign Indian princes, Paramountcy (1858–1947). Technology itself was a tricky area: roadways, railways, telegraphs, and the wireless were nibbling away at the sovereign spheres which Paramountcy had put in place. This paper looks at the history of aviation in princely India, from aviation enthusiasts such as the rulers of Kapurthala, Jodhpur and Bikaner to subversive princes like the Maharaja of Patiala who worked towards a military air force. The paper tracks the three stages of the journey of aviation in princely India, from individual consumption, to the historical context of World War One which aided its access and usage, and finally, the collective princely legal assertion over the vertical air above them in the position, ‘sovereignty of air’. The government’s civil aviation policy in India remained ambiguous about the princes’ rights over the air till 1931 when their sovereignty of the sky was finally recognised. The paper focuses on the Indian princes varied engagement with aviation, modernity and their space in the world.

Ayodeji Olukoju ‘Creating ‘an air sense:’ Governor Hugh Clifford and the beginnings of civil aviation in Nigeria, 1919-1920,’ African Identities (2022), DOI: 10.1080/14725843.2022.2096566.

This paper focuses on the neglected subject of the beginnings of civil aviation in Nigeria in the aftermath of World War I. Until now, the literature on civil aviation in British colonial Africa had focused largely on Kenya, Central and South Africa and on post-World War II West Africa. This paper, relying on previously unexploited archival material, examines policy debates and options considered by the Colonial Office, the Air Ministry and the Nigerian colonial government. The unique, pioneering aviation drive of Nigeria’s Governor Hugh Clifford took place in the context of immediate post-World War I dynamics: economic vicissitudes, Anglo-French rivalry in West Africa and the policy interface between London and the colonies. This paper demonstrates that aviation development in Nigeria had roots in the early 1920s, and that the initiative was not a metropolitan monopoly, thereby illustrating the extent of colonial gubernatorial autonomy vis-à-vis London.

S. Seyer, ‘An Industry Worth Protecting? The Manufacturers Aircraft Association’s Struggle against the British Surplus, 1919–1922,’ Journal of Policy History 34, no. 3 (2022), pp. 403-39.

The American aircraft industry’s important role in the economic, military, and cultural expansion of the United States over the past one hundred years has been well documented by historians. But America’s twentieth century aerial dominance was not preordained. After World War I, the nascent American aircraft industry faced a concerted British effort to dump thousands of war surplus machines on the U.S. market. With aircraft outside of the nation’s tariff regime, members of the Manufacturers Aircraft Association turned to Congress for emergency protections in the face of what they considered an existential threat. Despite efforts to equate a strong industrial base for aviation with the national defense, aircraft antidumping legislation became mired in partisan debates over tariff policy and accusations of wartime corruption. In the absence of relief from Congress, the Wright patent served as a barrier against the importation of foreign surplus machines.

Ameya Tripathi, ‘Bombing Cultural Heritage: Nancy Cunard, Art Humanitarianism, and Primitivist Wars in Morocco, Ethiopia, and Spain,’ Modernist Cultures 17, no. 2 (2022), pp. 191-220.

This article examines Nancy Cunard’s later writing on Spain as a direct legacy of her previous projects as a modernist poet, publisher and black rights activist. Cunard was a rare analyst of the links between total war, colonial counter-insurgency, and cultural destruction. Noting the desire of both the air power theorist and art collector to stereotype peoples, from Morocco to Ethiopia to Spain, as ‘primitive’, the article brings original archival materials from Cunard’s notes into dialogue with her journalism, and published and unpublished poetry, to examine how she reclaimed and repurposed primitivism. Her poems devise a metonymic and palimpsestic literary geopolitics, juxtaposing fragments from ancient cultures atop one another to argue, simultaneously, for Spain’s essential dignity as both a primitive and a civilised nation. Cunard reconciles Spain’s liminal status, between Africa and Europe, to argue for Spain’s art, and people, as part of a syncretic, universal human cultural heritage, anticipating the art humanitarianism of organisations such as UNESCO.

Books

Stephen Bourque, D-Day 1944: The Deadly Failure of Allied Heavy Bombing on June 6 (Osprey: Osprey Publishing, 2022).

D-Day is one of the most written-about events in military history. One aspect of the invasion, however, continues to be ignored: the massive pre-assault bombardment by the Allied Expeditionary Air Force (AEAF), reinforced by RAF Bomber Command and the US Eighth Air Force on June 6 which sought to neutralize the German defenses along the Atlantic Wall. Unfortunately, this failed series of attacks resulted in death or injury to hundreds of soldiers, and killed many French civilians.

Despite an initial successful attack performed by the Allied forces, the most crucial phase of the operation, which was the assault from the Eighth Air Force against the defenses along the Calvados coast, was disastrous. The bombers missed almost all of their targets, inflicting little damage to the German defenses, which resulted in a high number of casualties among the Allied infantry. The primary cause of this failure was that planners at Eighth Air Force Headquarters had changed aircraft drop times at the last moment, to prevent casualties amongst the landing forces, without notifying either Eisenhower or Doolittle.

This book examines this generally overlooked event in detail, answering several fundamental questions: What was the AEAF supposed to accomplish along the Atlantic Wall on D-Day and why did it not achieve its bombardment objectives? Offering a new perspective on a little-known air campaign, it is packed with illustrations, maps and diagrams exploring in detail the features and ramifications of this mission.

Laurence Burke II, At the Dawn of Airpower: The U.S. Army, Navy and Marine Corps’ Approach to the Airplane 1907–1917 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2022).

At the Dawn of Airpower: The U.S. Army, Navy, and Marine Corps’ Approach to the Airplane, 1907-1917 examines the development of aviation in the U.S. Army, Navy, and Marine Corps from their first official steps into aviation up to the United States’ declaration of war against Germany in April, 1917. Burke explains why each of the services wanted airplanes and show how they developed their respective air arms and the doctrine that guided them.   His narrative follows aviation developments closely, delving deep into the official and personal papers of those involved and teasing out the ideas and intents of the early pioneers who drove military aviation   Burke also closely examines the consequences of both accidental and conscious decisions on the development of the nascent aviation arms.  

Certainly, the slow advancement of the technology of the airplane itself in the United States (compared to Europe) in this period affected the creation of doctrine in this period.  Likewise, notions that the war that broke out in 1914 was strictly a European concern, reinforced by President Woodrow Wilson’s intentions to keep the United States out of that war, meant that the U.S. military had no incentive to “keep up” with European military aviation.  Ultimately, however, he concludes that it was the respective services’ inability to create a strong, durable network connecting those flying the airplanes regularly (technology advocates) with the senior officers exercising control over their budget and organization (technology patrons) that hindered military aviation during this period.

Jim Leeke, Turtle and the Dreamboat: The Cold War Flights That Forever Changed the Course of Global Aviation (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2022).

The Turtle and the Dreamboat is the first detailed account of the race for long-distance flight records between the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy less than fourteen months after World War II. The flights were risky and unprecedented. Each service intended to demonstrate its offensive capabilities during the new nuclear age, a time when America was realigning its military structure and preparing to create a new armed service – the United States Air Force.

The first week of October 1946 saw the conclusion of both record-breaking, nonstop flights by the military fliers. The first aircraft, a two-engine U.S. Navy P2V Neptune patrol plane nicknamed the Truculent Turtle, flew more than eleven thousand miles from Perth, Western Australia, to Columbus, Ohio. The Turtle carried four war-honed pilots and a young kangaroo as a passenger. The second plane, a four-engine U.S. Army B-29 Superfortress bomber dubbed the Pacusan Dreamboat, flew nearly ten thousand miles from Honolulu to Cairo via the Arctic. Although presented as a friendly rivalry, the two flights were anything but collegial. These military missions were meant to capture public opinion and establish aviation leadership within the coming Department of Defense.

Both audacious flights above oceans, deserts, mountains, and icecaps helped to shape the future of worldwide commercial aviation, greatly reducing the length and costs of international routes. Jim Leeke provides an account of the remarkable and record-breaking flights that forever changed aviation.

Micheal Napier, Flashpoints: Air Warfare in the Cold War (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2022).

The Cold War years were a period of unprecedented peace in Europe, yet they also saw a number of localised but nonetheless very intense wars throughout the wider world in which air power played a vital role. Flashpoints describes eight of these Cold War conflicts: the Suez Crisis of 1956, the Congo Crisis of 1960-65, the Indo-Pakistan Wars of 1965 and 1971, the Arab-Israeli Wars of 1967 and 1973, the Falklands War of 1982 and the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88. In all of them both sides had a credible air force equipped with modern types, and air power shaped the final outcome.

Acclaimed aviation historian Michael Napier details the wide range of aircraft types used and the development of tactics over the period. The postwar years saw a revolution in aviation technology and design, particularly in the fields of missile development and electronic warfare, and these conflicts saw some of the most modern technology that the NATO and Warsaw Pact forces deployed, alongside some relatively obscure aircraft types such as the Westland Wyvern and the Folland Gnat.

Highly illustrated, with over 240 images and maps, Flashpoints is an authoritative account of the most important air wars of the Cold War.

David Nicolle and Gabr Ali Gabr, Air Power and the Arab World – Volume 6: World in Crisis, 1936-March 1941 (Warwick: Helion and Company, 2022).

Volume 6 of the Air Power and the Arab World mini-series continues the story of the men and machines of the first half century of military aviation in the Arab world. These years saw the Arab countries and their military forces caught up in the events of the Second World War.

For those Arab nations which had some degree of independence, the resulting political, cultural and economic strains had a profound impact upon their military forces. In Egypt the Army generally remained quiet, continuing with its often unglamorous and little appreciated duties. Within the Royal Egyptian Air Force (REAF), however, there were a significant number of men who wanted to take action in expectation of what they, and many around the world, expected to be the defeat of the British Empire.

The result was division, widespread mistrust, humiliation, and for a while the grounding of the entire REAF. In Iraq the strains of the early war years sowed the seeds of a yet to come direct armed confrontation with the British.

Volume 6 of Air Power and the Arab World then looks at the first efforts to revive both the REAF and the Royal Iraqi Air Force (RIrAF), along with events in the air and on the ground elsewhere in the Arab world from 1939 until March 1941.

This volume is illustrated throughout with photographs of the REAF, RIrAF and RAF and a selection of specially commissioned colour artworks.

Adrian Phillips, Rearming the RAF for the Second World War: Poor Strategy and Miscalculation (Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2022).

When the RAF rearmed to meet the growing threat from Nazi Germany’s remorseless expansion in the late 1930s, it faced immense challenges. It had to manage a huge increase in size as well as mastering rapid advances in aviation technology. To protect Britain from attack, the RAF’s commanders had to choose the right strategy and the right balance in its forces. The choices had to be made in peacetime with no guidance from combat experience. These visions then had to be translated into practical reality. A shifting cast of government ministers, civil servants and industrialists with their own financial, political and military agendas brought further dynamics into play. The RAF’s readiness for war was crucial to Britain’s ability to respond to Nazi aggression before war broke out and when it did, the RAF’s rearmament was put to the acid test of battle. Adrian Phillips uses the penetrating grasp of how top level decisions are made that he honed in his inside accounts of the abdication crisis and appeasement, to dissect the process which shaped the RAF of 1940. He looks beyond the familiar legends of the Battle of Britain and explores in depth the successes and failures of a vital element in British preparations for war.

John Quaife, Battle of the Atlantic: Royal Australian Air Force in Coastal Command 1939-1945 (Newport, NSW: Big Sky Publishing, 2022).

At the outbreak of World War II, somewhat by accident — and just as the first shots of the war were fired — young Australian airmen from the Royal Australian Air Force were engaged in operations that would become known collectively as the Battle of the Atlantic. Arguably lesser-known than air campaigns in other theatres, large numbers of Australians who volunteered for service with Royal Australian Air Force, found themselves fighting in this battle. Australians were there at the outbreak and many would go on to fly some of the final missions of the war in Europe.

This book captures some of the experiences of the Royal Australian Air Force members who served with Coastal Command and, through the weight of numbers alone, stories of the Sunderland squadrons and the Battle of the Atlantic dominate the narrative. Being critical to Britain’s survival, the battle also dominated Coastal Command throughout the war but Australians served in a surprising variety of other roles. The nature of many of those tasks demanded persistence that could only be achieved by large numbers of young men and women being prepared to ‘do what it took’ to get a tedious and unrewarding job done. Over 400 did not come home.

Steven Zaloga, The Oil Campaign 1944–45: Draining the Wehrmacht’s Lifeblood (Oxford: OIsprey Publishing, 2022).

With retreating German forces losing their oilfields on the Eastern Front, Germany was reliant on its own facilities, particularly for producing synthetic oil from coal. However, these were within range of the increasingly mighty Allied air forces. In 1944 the head of the US Strategic Air Forces, General Carl Spaatz was intent on a new campaign that aimed to cripple the German war machine by depriving it of fuel.

The USAAF’s Oil Campaign built up momentum during the summer of 1944 and targeted these refineries and plants with its daylight heavy bombers. Decrypted German communications made it clear that the Oil Campaign was having an effect against the Wehrmacht. Fuel shortages in the autumn of 1944 forced the Luftwaffe to ground most of its combat units except for fighters involved in the defense of the Reich. Fuel shortages also forced the Kriegsmarine to place most of its warships in harbor except for the U-boats and greatly hampered German army campaigns such as the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944-45.

This fascinating book packed with key photos and illustrations examines the controversies and debates over the focus of the US bombing campaign in the final year of the war, and the impact it had on the war effort overall.