The Myth of Air Control Reassessing the History

Aerospace Power Journal, Winter, 2000 by Dr. James S. Corum

Editorial Abstract: Dr. Corum provides a historical look at air-control operations in the British Empire during the first half of the twentieth century. The idea of occupying and pacifying a country with air-power alone has always appealed to airmen. The author, however, argues that advocating air-control doctrine as the basis for US Air Force operations in the twenty-first century lies more in the realm of myth than reality.

IN THE AFTERMATH of World War I, a financially strapped Britain had to face up to several expensive, new colonial obligations in the form of League of Nations mandates to govern Palestine, Transjordan, and Iraq. At the same time that the armed forces received orders to assume a costly burden of military occupation in regions rife with violent internal conflicts, the government moved to demobilize the wartime forces and to economize by any means possible. This meant that the British had to police new imperial obligations on the cheap.

At the same time, the Royal Air Force (RAF), which had recently become a separate service in April 1918, was fighting for its institutional existence. Both the army and navy argued that the RAF ought to revert to its position as a subordinate arm of the two senior services. Air Marshal Hugh Trenchard, RAF chief of staff, sought a mission that would justify the service independence of the RAF. The effectiveness of a few aircraft in putting down a minor rebellion in British Somaliland in 1919-20 provided Trenchard and the Air Staff the concept of an independent mission for the RAF. Trenchard proposed that the RAF be given full responsibility for conducting military operations in Britain's most troublesome new mandate--the former Ottoman provinces of Mesopotamia. [1]

Trenchard promised that the RAF could police the mandate with air squadrons and a few armored-car squadrons, supported by a few British and locally recruited troops, at a fraction of the cost of a large army garrison. That particular argument proved irresistible to Whitehall, so in October 1922, RAF air marshal John Salmond took over military command and assumed military responsibility for Iraq. The RAF's primary garrison for Iraq consisted initially of eight squadrons of fighters and light bombers, such as DH-9s. As the RAF's account goes, the air-control doctrine worked remarkably well. All through the 1920s and 1930s, the RAF was able to quell minor rebellions and tribal banditry by swiftly punishing the culprits from the air. Bombing and the threat of bombing seemed to keep Iraq relatively quiet. Policing the empire by means of airpower became popular in other colonies as well. RAF bombing raids largely replaced the army's traditional punitive expeditions mounted against troublesome tribes on India's Nor thwest Frontier. In Aden, the British also used air attack on numerous occasions to deal swiftly with trouble in the interior.

The idea of occupying and pacifying a country by airpower alone, or with the air force as the primary force employed, is especially attractive to airmen. Indeed, in the 15 years that the United States has found itself involved in various peacekeeping and peace-enforcement operations, as well as no-fly-zone enforcement and a variety of small and conventional wars, Air Force officers and airpower theorists have looked at the RAF's colonial air control as a useful model for the kind of military-occupation missions that the United States conducts today. [2] Further, the idea of controlling a country by airpower, with few or no ground troops involved, has excited the interest of such influential airpower theorists as Carl Builder. [3] The low cost of air control is an especially attractive feature of the operation. Another is the fact that aerial policing does not put US soldiers at risk. It is a good doctrine for casualty avoidance.

However, if one offers air control on the imperial British model as a model for the US Air Force, then one should look carefully at the actual record of air control in the British Empire. The following questions are in order: Did the RAF overstate its role and minimize the actions of ground troops in order to defend its budget? Did air control really work as well as advertised? What were the drawbacks to air control? What was the political context of air control, and is there an analogy to today's political situations? Did other countries use air control, and, if so, what was their experience? After reviewing the record, I will draw a few lessons of my own.

The Genesis of Air Control

The British first employed the concept of air control in the wastes of Somaliland, one of the most primitive backwaters of the empire. Since the 1890s, Mohammed bin Abdullah Hassan, a charismatic tribal leader known as "the Mad Mullah," had caused trouble in the British protectorate by raiding tribes friendly to the British. From 1900 to 1904, the British mounted several punitive expeditions against him and took fairly heavy losses. In 1904 they finally brought the Mad Mullah's main force to battle, defeated it, and drove him out of British territory. However, the trouble did not end. In 1909 Abdullah Hassan started raiding again, and in 1913 his forces shot up a unit of British constabulary. During World War I, the British ignored the problems in Somaliland, but after the war, the British government decided to reinforce the protectorate with an RAF squadron of DH-9 reconnaissance/light-bomber aircraft. Eight aircraft had arrived by January 1920, and the British set to work with surprise bombing raids on Abd ullah Hassan's forts. Several days of bombing inflicted heavy casualties, forcing the Mad Mullah to abandon his forts. The army field force--consisting of detachments from the King's African Rifles, Somaliland Camel Corps, and Indian army--moved in pursuit of the mullah's force. Over the next weeks, the RAF reverted to supporting the ground force by reconnaissance and bombing. The mullah escaped and took his remaining forces over the border into Ethiopia, where he died the next year. [4] For the astoundingly low price of 80,000 pounds, airpower had played a central role in defeating a force that had irritated the colony for many years.