Aerial Interdiction

Published by Superintendent of Documents, US Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402-9328 for the Pacific Air Forces Office of History, Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Examines the practice of air interdiction in three wars: World War II, the Korean War, & the war in Southeast Asia. The author proposes a realistic objective for interdiction: preventing men, equipment, & supplies from reaching the combat area when the enemy needs them & in the amount he requires. Bibliography & index. Contains over 100 charts, tables, maps, & photos.

This analytical work by Dr. Eduard Mark of the Center for Air Force History examines the practice of air interdiction in three wars: World War II, the Korean War, and the war in Southeast Asia. It considers eleven important interdiction campaigns, all of them American or Anglo-American, for only the United States and Great Britain had the resources to conduct interdiction campaigns on a large scale in World War II. Dr. Mark proposes what he considers to be a realistic objective for interdiction: preventing men, equipment, and supplies from reaching the combat area when the enemy needs them and in the quantity he requires. As Mark notes, there has been little intensive scholarship on the subject of interdiction especially when contrasted with the work done on strategic bombardment. In the wake of the Persian Gulf War, the reader will no doubt be impressed by the comparatively low performance of weapons in these pre-Gulf war campaigns. DESERT STORM showed that recent advances in technology had enabled interdiction to reach new levels of effectiveness, especially in night operations. Yet, as the reader soon discovers, interdiction in the pre-Gulf campaigns sometimes profoundly influenced military operations. As is often the case in military history, the effects were often serendipitous-not as planned or anticipated, but present nevertheless. By the middle of the Second World War, aircraft were already demonstrating that they could have a devastating impact upon a military force's ability to wage war. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, for example, complained bitterly during the North African and Normandy campaigns about air power that, in his memorable words, "pinned my army to the ground" and otherwise denied his forces both supplies and the ability to freely maneuver. The aircraft and weapons that caused the German commander such problems were, by today's standards, primitive. The accuracy of bombing was calculated in terms of circles with radii of hundreds or even thousands of feet. Bridges took dozens, sometimes hundreds, of sorties to destroy, meaning that a simultaneous taking-down of an enemy's transportation network was impossible. A single target also required strike packages of hundreds of airplanes. Target "revisiting" because of poor bombing accuracy meant that aircraft loss rates were often alarmingly high. Yet, even with all of these limitations, air attack still had the ability to hinder, limit, and eventually help defeat a robust, well-trained and well-equipped opponent. It is important that this be recognized, just as it is important that we recognize that modern air war, as shown in the Gulf conflict, is very different and more effective, not only from that of 1941-1945, but from the more recent Vietnam era as well. The challenges posed by aerial interdiction from the dust of the Western Desert to the triple canopy of Southeast Asia gave but a hint of how devastating an attacker the airplane would prove in the Gulf War of 1991. There, advanced strike aircraft-some of them stealthy as well-dropped precision munitions with shattering effect against the Iraqi military machine. As shocking as it might seem, revolutionary advances in precision navigation and weapons technology had largely reduced the previous experiences of interdiction to historical anecdote, not historical prediction. Today, in the era of Global Reach-Global Power, the lessons of aerial interdiction through Vietnam are instructive, for no other reason than this: they reveal how far modern airpower has come. This book, by tracing air interdiction from the Western Front through Vietnam, and by examining both its failures and successes, fills an important gap in the history of air power and enables us to appreciate to an even greater degree the profound significance that air power possesses now and for the future.

This study undertakes to examine the aerial interdiction activities conducted against the enemy railway system by United Nations’ forces during the Korean War, June 1950-July 1953. It has three major goals: (1) to compile a concise history of these interdiction activities; (2) to evaluate the effectiveness of these efforts as it might relate to the conduct of the total war effort; and (3) to make recommendations pertaining to the future conduct of aerial interdiction.

This study attempts to show the misapplication of tactical airpower by the Luftwaffe in support of German ground forces during the Battle of Kursk in July 1943. The analysis is based on an investigation of historical references and provides lessons learned which might be applied in future conflicts. The study shows that the Luftwaffe concentrated its efforts at Kursk on Close Air Support and neglected Battlefield Air Interdiction. This was primarily because Close Air Support had proven itself so successful in German experience prior to Kursk. However, the failure of the Luftwaffe to interdict Russian reinforcements at Kursk proved to be critical and contributed to the German defeat. Air planners must realize that a correct balance between Close Air Support and Battlefield Air Interdiction is essential to the efficient use of airpower during any tactical application in support of ground forces. Neither Close Air Support nor Battlefield Air Interdiction should gain primacy in doctrine, rather, a mix of the two should be applied on a situational basis.

Three distinguished USAF Generals offer their wisdom on Aerial Interdiction. In the long evolution of American air power in the twentieth century the professional experiences and judgments of these senior air leaders are both representative and instructive. Over one hundred years of military service are contained in this oral history interview, almost all of it concerned with the application of a new kind of military force—air power—to the oldest of military questions: how to defeat enemy armies. In discussing their experiences in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, these men focus on those air campaigns which have come to be considered classics of air interdiction: in World War II, Operation Strangle in Italy, March-May 1944, and operations in support of the Normandy Invasion, April-June 1944; in the Korean War, all campaigns, especially Operation Strangle, May-October 1951; in the Vietnam War, the air interdiction part of the Rolling Thunder air campaign, March 1965-November 1968, the air campaign in Southern Laos, 1965-1972, and especially the air interdiction portions of Linebacker I and II, May-October and December 1972. In addition, the discussion turns in the latter stages to the impact of electronics—laser guided weapons, electronic suppression devices, drone air planes, and immediate air intelligence—on air interdiction operations. Generals Partridge, Smart, and Vogt offer definitions, clarifications, examples, generalizations, and advice. Their purpose, and that of the Office of Air Force History, is to further the dialogue among military professionals so that the past can help us to meet the challenges of the future.

This analytical work by Dr. Eduard Mark of the Center for Air Force History examines the practice of air interdiction in three wars: World War II, the Korean war, and the war in Southeast Asia. It considers eleven important interdiction campaigns, all of them American or Anglo-American, for only the United States and Great Britain had the resources to conduct interdiction campaigns on a large scale in World War II. Dr. Mark proposes what he considers to be a realistic objective for interdiction: preventing men, equipment, and supplies from reaching the combat area when the enemy needs them and in the quantity he requires. As Mark notes, there has been little intensive scholarship on the subject of interdiction especially when contrasted with the work done on strategic bombardment. In the wake of the Persian Gulf war, the reader will no doubt be impressed by the comparatively low performance of weapons in these pre-Gulf war campaigns. DESERT STORM showed that recent advances in technology had enabled interdiction to reach new levels of effectiveness, especially in night operations. Yet, as the reader soon discovers, interdiction in the pre-Gulf campaigns sometimes profoundly influenced military operations. As is often the case in military history, the effects were often serendipitous-not as planned or anticipated, but present nevertheless. By the middle of the Second World War, aircraft were already demonstrating that they could have a devastating impact upon a military force's ability to wage war. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, for example, complained bitterly during the North African and Normandy campaigns about air power that, in his memorable words, "pinned my army to the ground" and otherwise denied his forces both supplies and the ability to freely maneuver.