Fighter Combat Tactics In The Southwest Pacific Area

Merriam Press Military Monograph 400. Ninth Edition (February 2012). The text in this monograph is from a booklet prepared during the war by the Fifth Air Force. It was written by the combat pilots of the Southwest Pacific area who managed to fight-and survive-the best aircraft and pilots that the Japanese Army and Navy Air Forces could throw at them. Their comments were intended to aid the newer pilots just arriving on the scene, so that they would not have to learn from experience-and perhaps save their lives. Twenty-five fighter pilots, including William Giroux, Edwin Doss, Leroy Grosshuesch, Gerald Johnson, Richard Bong, Robert De Haven, Edward Roddy, Charles MacDonald, and Thomas McGuire, provide their rules for dealing with the Japanese in the air and on the ground. Contents: Colonel Earl H. Dunham, Commanding Officer, 8th Fighter Group (P-38); Captain William K. Giroux, 36th Fighter Squadron, 8th Fighter Group (P-38); Captain William A. Gardner, Operations Officer, 8th Fighter Group (P-38); Major Cyril F. Homer, 80th Fighter Squadron, 8th Fighter Group (P-38); Captain Allen E. Hill, 36th Fighter Squadron, 8th Fighter Group (P-38); Colonel Edwin A. Doss, Commanding Officer, 35th Fighter Group (P-47); Major John R. Young, Operations Officer, 35th Fighter Group (P-47); Captain Leroy V. Grosshuesch, 39th Fighter Squadron, 35th Fighter Group (P-47); Captain William H. Strand, 40th Fighter Squadron, 35th Fighter Group (P-47); Major Douglas V. N. Parsons, Deputy Commander, 35th Fighter Group (P-47); Lieutenant Colonel Gerald R. Johnson, Commanding Officer, 49th Fighter Group (P-38); Colonel George A. Walker, former Commanding Officer, 49th Fighter Group (P-38); Major Richard I. Bong, 49th Fighter Group (P-38); Captain Robert M. De Haven, 7th Fighter Squadron, 49th Fighter Group (P-40, P-38); Major Wallace R. Jordan, 9th Fighter Squadron, 49th Fighter Group (P-38); Colonel Gwen G. Atkinson, Commanding Officer, 58th Fighter Group (P-47); Major Edward F. Roddy, Operations Officer, 58th Fighter Group (P-47); Colonel Robert R. Rowland, Commanding Officer, 348th Fighter Group (P-47); Lieutenant Colonel William M. Banks. Deputy Commander, 348th Fighter Group (P-47); Captain Marvin E. Grant, 342nd Fighter Squadron, 348th Fighter Group (P-47); Major William D. Dunham, 460th Fighter Squadron, 348th Fighter Group (P-47); Major Walter G. Benz, Jr., 342nd Fighter Squadron, 348th Fighter Group (P-47); Colonel Charles H. MacDonald, Commanding Officer, 475th Fighter Group (P-38); Major John S. Loisel, Operations Officer, 475th Fighter Group (P-38); Major Thomas B. McGuire, 431st Fighter Squadron, 475th Fighter Group (P-38); Captain Elliot Summer, 432nd Fighter Squadron, 475th Fighter Group (P-38); 17 photos; 9 illustrations.

As shared by Jonathan D. George, Colonel, USAF with regard to Matthew K. Rodman's, book “A War on Their Own: Bombers over the Southwest Pacific.” “Capt. Matt Rodman's book is an intriguing study of a moment in history when combat airpower played a key role in achieving victory. He expertly recounts how Fifth Air Force quickly developed new tactics and procedures that “saved the day.” The perfection of low-altitude bombing, strafing, and skip bombing made differences that in hindsight are easy to recognize and quantify. Without them the Fifth would have found itself in a longer, costlier fight with an uncertain outcome. However, these new tactics hurt the enemy to the extent that the Allies eventually prevailed. The real value of Captain Rodman's study, however, lies not so much in his excellent retelling of significant developments in airpower as in his pushing the need for us to be flexible, adaptive, opportunistic, and entrepreneurial while safeguarding our core values and capitalizing on our core competencies. He therefore helps us take some of the uncertainty out of the largely unpredictable future by stressing the importance of “effective adaptability.” Obviously, many components determine success—preparation, resources, knowledge, and determination, to name just a few. None of these, however, have nearly the importance as the creative ability to adapt effectively in order to confront the threat and deliver victory. By telling us the story of Fifth Air Force in the Southwest Pacific, Captain Rodman schools us on our need to employ all of our resources creatively, no matter their limitations. Our future battles will be new and different, as will the actions we take, even though they derive from our past successes. In the mid-1980s, experts would have had difficulty forecasting the effectiveness of the precision and near-precision aerial strikes we executed in Iraq just a few years later. In the mid-1990s, almost no one could have envisioned allied and joint ground forces, some riding on horseback, communicating through satellites to a multitude of aircraft that produced effects leading to our triumph in Operation Enduring Freedom. Today we can only venture a guess—and probably not very accurately—at what we will confront in the coming years. But this much is certain: we will face challenges unlike those of the past, and victory will go to the team that can best adapt its resources to stop the enemy. Captain Rodman's great effort convinces us that it is our legacy to maintain and even enhance that ability.”

Captain Rodman, an instructor weapon-systems officer at Dyess AFB, Texas, examines the distinctive nature of Fifth Air Force's role in the air war over the Southwest Pacific Area during World War II. Especially notable is Gen George Kenney's innovative use of light attack aircraft as well as both medium and heavy bombardment aircraft, characterized by theater-specific tactics, ordnance, and structural modifications. A War of Their Own also considers the free exchange of aircraft and missions in the Southwest Pacific--a hallmark of that theater--in terms of the conflict between doctrine and tactics that underlay Fifth Air Force's relationship to the prewar Army Air Corps and the postwar Air Force. The author also notes the relevance of the Fifth's experiences to airpower.

Spain (1936-9), China (1937 onwards), Mongolia (1939), Finland (1939-40) and France (1939-40) were a testing ground for a new approach to air tactics with western democracies and totalitarian states analysing the resulting lessons. Attention in Air Wars 1920-1939: The Development and Evolution of Fighter Tactics is given to the means by which intelligence on aerial tactics was collected and why it was not always fully absorbed, resulting in many nations having to relearn the same lessons at the outset of the Second World War. Finland, during the Winter War, while not involved in Spain or any other air war of the time, better applied the lessons being learned than that of the Soviet Union, which had been directly involved in air wars fought over China, Mongolia and Spain. In the case of Britain, not only were the lessons of Spain ignored, but so too that of its own experimental fighter unit, the AFDE (Air Fighting Development Establishment) that had been formed in 1934 and which was reinforcing the intelligence received from those real air war conflicts.