Page 102 - Airpower in 20th Century - Doctrines and Employment

102 airpower in 20 Century doCtrines and employment - national experienCes
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could be deployed efficiently in direct support of the fighting ground forces. Thus,
the still fledging air force service gained increasing acceptance in the Army, dis-
pelling concerns as had still been uttered by the Chief of the Army General Staff,
General Ludwig Beck, following an indoor exercise in 1938: „Make sure that the Air
Force will not be conducting an operational war somewhere in the enemy’s hinter-
land, with our infantry being stuck in a war of position“. 47
Despite the news about the German bomb raids on Polish towns and cities, the
British and the French air forces kept in the background, playing for time. The German
air fleets in the West, on the other hand, were ordered to: „clearly leave responsibility
48
for opening air warfare to England and France“, even though commanders of the
German Air Force advocated an attack on British industrial sites. Hitler, however,
considered crossing Belgium and Netherlands territory, neutralization of the French
Air Force and the destruction of the British-French Army as a precondition for later
operations of the German Air Force against other targets.
The first raids conducted by the Royal Air Force in September 1939 were directed
at German maritime task forces in the German Bight. They resulted in heavy losses
and the decision to wage future strategic bomb attacks mostly during the night. This,
however, made “precision bombing” difficult, even though the marking tools for
night target recognition were improving in the course of the war. The first German
Air Force raid against England was directed against airfields of the Royal Air Force.
The latter responded with an attack on the Hörnum Naval Air Force Base on the
island of Sylt. Even though, for strategic considerations, the Royal Air Force would
have preferred to attack the Ruhr area armaments center, the British war cabinet
was opposed to this because of „the possibility that we would be accused of having
started the undifferentiated bomb war, and fact that such an approach would prob-
ably result in German retaliatory strikes against England “. 49
In the context of the campaign against France, Hitler forbade the German Air
Force to bomb industrial sites and such targets that would pose a high degree of
threat to the civilian population during the attack on Belgium, Luxembourg and the
50
Netherlands. On the one hand, this was to avoid English retaliatory strikes against
Germany that would be justified by such attacks and, on the other hand, not to ham-
per the later use of industrial sites in these countries unnecessarily. Nevertheless,
nearly 1,000 civilians were killed in an attack of the German Air Force on Rotterdam
on 14 May 1940.

47
Horst Boog, Die deutsche Luftwaffenführung 1935-1945. Führungsprobleme-Spitzengliederung-
Generalstabsausbildung (Beiträge zur Militär- und Kriegsgeschichte. Militärgeschichtliches Forsc-
hungsamt (ed.) , Vol. 21). Stuttgart 1982, p. 174.
48
Cited in Maier, Der operative Luftkrieg bis zur Luftschlacht um England (see Note 19), p. 331.
49
Cited in Boog, Der anglo-amerikanische Luftkrieg (see Note 9), p. 453.
50
Cf. Weisung Nr. 6 für die Kriegführung, in: Walter Hubatsch, Hitlers Weisungen für die Kriegführung
1939 -1945. Dokumente des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht. Frankfurt am Main 1962, p. 33.