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HOW THE GERMANS USED AIR POWER
Spaight is keen to set out the differences between Germany and the Allies with respect to bombing. He stresses the fact that Britain had always seen its bombing fleet, organised separately as Bomber Command, as an independent entity with the objective of bombing Germany in a future war, whereas Germany had viewed the Luftwaffe as primarily a supporting force to be employed with its armies in land war. Spaight saw the German view of an airforce as both naïve and outdated, and he took this as being related to the natural conservatism of the Germans. The Germans could only view the aircraft as an adjunct of traditional forms of warfare. The idea of air power as a rival or as an equal of land or sea power was beyond the comprehension of Prussians steeped in the philosophy of war:
“In Germany the emphasis was placed on land-air power. In Britain it was placed on air power, with sea-air power as runner-up, land-air power being a rather straggling competitor. The difference was reflected in the composition of the respective air forces, in the organisation of the higher commands, and, above all, in the attitude of the Governments to the master-strategics which the scientific study of air warfare presented.
“The German air force was an instrument admirably fitted for the execution of the air policy which the German military authorities had adopted. It was an almost ideal arm for co-operation with ground forces. It contained a high proportion of dive-bombers (Junkers 87’s) and of transport aircraft (Junkers 52’s). Our own air force was weak in these two categories but was superior to the German in the quality (though not the quantity) of its long-range bombers and its single-seat fighters. Our Wellington was a better heavy bomber than anything which Germany had, and we were definitely ahead of her in the fighter class… In other words, in the two categories which are of prime importance in the waging of air warfare, considered per se, we had the advantage, while Germany had it in those categories which are essential in air operations ancillary to those of ground forces.
“In Germany, as in Britain, the air force is a separate Service, but it has never been able to free itself from the army’s influence to the same extent. Our own air force cut adrift from the army more than twenty-one years before the present war began. The date when it came into being, 1 April, 1918, is an epochal one in the calendar which records the conflict between British air power and German militarist ambition. The other red-letter dates in that calendar are 11 May, 1940, when we opened our strategic air offensive against the Reich, and 27 September, 1940, when Fighter Command won the last of its great victories over the Luftwaffe in the battle of Britain. Perhaps some other dates should be added to this list, those, for instance, in 1935-36 when we conceived the… big four-engined bomber. None of them had the same importance, however, as the first of all, the date on which the Air Force was formed. Its creation was an act of faith. Those who worked for a separate Service — and General Smuts was first and foremost in that prescient band — looked far ahead… They grasped the truth that man’s mastery of the air has not only made warfare three-dimensional — that is a truism today — but entitles the arm whose path is the third element to claim the place of a co-equal with the historic arms of war.” (pp.23-4)
The German Army, much reduced by the dictation of Versailles, remained at its core something with the traditional military philosophy of fighting a military enemy. The only innovation that Hitler had introduced was a determination to fight the military enemy as far from Berlin as possible with his army, the shield of the Reich. But the British strategic bombing policy meant that Germany would be fought in Germany, not by British soldiers, and it would be its women and children who would be the target. And the Reich’s shield “would be powerless to avert” the “death and destruction which rained from the skies while German armies stood massively on guard far beyond the frontiers of the Reich. Such catastrophes were the price which Germany had to pay for pinning her faith to military doctrines which were already obsolete.” (p.22)
In Britain the airforce had been intent to remain independent of the military and the ambition of replacing the senior service, the Navy. England was more radical and “progressive” than Germany and had planned for a modern war in which battlefield front lines were no longer important and war would be waged across the total area of belligerent countries, without respect of distinction between combatant and civilian. As such bombing would be a similar thing to naval blockade.
Spaight revealed that was why Britain, from an early day, built heavy four-engined bombers, while Germany constructed mainly light twin-engined and single-engine dive bombers to be used tactically with its ground forces. The light German bombers allowed for precise targeting of specific military targets. The heavy British bombers were designed for saturation bombing of large areas. In a section called The Birth of the Giant Bomber Spaight revealed that it was Britain and the RAF which was the originator of the strategy of pulverising civilians in their homes:
“The result of the re-organisation of 1918 was that the air was assured of its merited place in the scheme of national defence. It became the concern of a department and a Service which could concentrate all thought and energy on this one subject… It enabled ‘thinking ahead’ to be systematised in the sphere of air defence. That is really why today giant four-engined bombers are tearing the heart out of industrial Germany.
“Those bombers trace their descent to a brain-wave which came to British experts in 1936, while Germany was thinking only in terms of short-range bombers and particularly of dive-bombers for employment with her powerful mechanised army. The idea behind ‘specification B. 12/36’ was that when the next war came Britain would need a long-range weight-carrying bomber which could go farther and load a bigger cargo of high explosive in its own bomb-racks than a whole squadron could at that time. This advance was becoming possible as a result of the development of new techniques of construction… The Stirling, built by Short Brothers to Mr. Arthur Gouge’s design, was the answer to the specification; it marked an epoch in the history of heavy bombers. It was followed by the Handley Page Halifax and the Avro Lancaster. The last is the finest heavy bomber in existence, today. But the whole trio is unsurpassed. Germany has nothing approaching them. And they are not the last word in the vocabulary of Britain’s effort in the air. Mightier bombers are on the stocks already.” (pp.26-7)