The Myth of Air Control Reassessing the History

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

In Morocco in the 1920s, the French faced a level of fighting against warrior tribes that resembled the constant warfare the British faced on India's Northwest Frontier. By 1923 Marshal Louis Lyautey, the French commander, was heavily engaged in pacification operations in Morocco and requested reinforcements. The French government sent 36 army battalions and six air squadrons to Morocco. [45] By 1925 the French air service in Morocco had increased to 10 squadrons of mostly two-seater light bombers. However, even this large force could not handle an invasion of French Morocco by a well-armed nationalist force under Abd el-Krim, who led the Rif tribes and had destroyed an entire Spanish army in 1921.

The French air service, whose mission was primarily army support, saw extensive action. In 1923 the French had dropped 345 tons of bombs in Morocco. [46] Air operations were dramatically increased in 1925-26. In 1925 Marshal Lyautey requested reinforcements to face a major rebel offensive that pushed the French out of the highlands towards the coast. Aircraft saw constant action in support of the hard-pressed French defenders in an effort to delay the rebel advance. The combat was intense. In July 1925, the 10 squadrons of the 37th Air Regiment flew a total of 1,759 combat sorties against the Riffians. [47] Eventually, the French pacified Morocco, but tribal flare-ups were common into the 1930s.

In two respects, the French proved more innovative than the British in the use of airpower in colonial campaigns. First, the French relied much more on aerial resupply of outlying garrisons and small detachments, using airdrops and light bombers as transports, which landed at small forward airfields. Aerial supply allowed the French to successfully maintain many isolated, small forces for long periods in the rugged terrain of Morocco's Rif region. [48] In Morocco the French established the first large-scale aerial medevac system. The French air service specially modified 22 Bloch 81, Potez 29, and Hanriot 431 aircraft (the Hanriot 437 was the medevac version of the Hanriot) and formed air detachments with the exclusive mission of air evacuation of the sick and wounded. [49] The French also established a regular system of collection points at forward airfields so that aerial ambulances could get wounded and sick soldiers from the battle lines to forward and central military hospitals in only an hour. [50] Dur ing the heavy fighting of 1925, the French evacuated 987 wounded and sick soldiers to rear hospitals by air. [51]

In his book on air control, David Omissi argues that the French had the reputation of being more ruthless and less humane in their methods of air control than the RAE For example, he accurately characterizes the French as less likely to send warnings to villages before they bombed them, thus allowing no time for civilians to evacuate. [52] But one should note that the French faced a rebellion in Syria in 1925 that was essentially a conventional war. They suffered heavy casualties and fought some major battles just to hold on in parts of Syria. [53] The French also faced a more formidable and dangerous enemy in the Rif tribes in Morocco in the 1920s than the British faced in Iraq or the Northwest Frontier. In 1925, when Abd el-Krim attacked, the French retreated and built a defense line; they were hard-pressed just to hold those positions against the well-armed Rif forces, who were equipped with artillery captured from the Spaniards. In any case, although the French, under their air-control doctrine, regularly bombed tribes and villages, no evidence exists that they ever bombed the natives as a means of revenue enforcement, as did the British in Iraq. This difference in air-control doctrines between the French and British may indicate deep cultural differences between the two nations. A likely explanation is that the French are culturally more tolerant of and sympathetic to tax evasion than are the British.