The end of World War I found military air
observation at a crossroads. The device upon which the U.S Army had depended
since Civil War days, the hydrogen-filled, captive balloon, was due to be
phased out. Its vulnerability to attack by hostile fighters and the growing
range and accuracy of antiaircraft fire rendered it completely obsolete.
Some 265 balloons had been sent to France; 77 had participated in action and
48 had been lost. It was too fragile a device for frontline observation
purposes.
Fortunately, the same instrument that had brought
about the demise of the balloon bow provided a replacement: the fixed wing
aircraft. Although the Wright brothers had first flown in 1903 and the U.S.
Army had bought its first airplane as recently as 1909, by the end of World
War I it had had 39 aerosquadrons in action against the enemy. They had
performed "pursuit" (fighter), bombardment and observation
missions, all of primitive type, using mostly open cockpit biplanes.
But enough had been learned to make it clear that
the fixed wing aircraft (helicopters were way in the future) was the device
to develop. When the Army Air Corps was created by Act of Congress in 1926
it began to develop specialized types of aircraft to perform its several
functions: for observation a tandem two-seater, open cockpit biplane was
generally used. Rather heavy, it required a hard surface runway or its near
equivalent. The Air Corps furnished the plane and pilot for observation of
artillery fire while the field artillery furnished the observer. Doctrine
specified that such observation planes should be attached to corps and from
there allotted to subordinate units on a mission-by-mission basis as the
situation dictated.
The two branches quickly worked out a suitable
technique. During 1930 to 1932, at Ft. Bliss, TX, I was reconnaissance
officer of the 82d Field Artillery Battalion (Horse) of the 1st
Cavalry Division. My duties included those of battalion air observer. On
numerous occasions I went aloft as observer in an Air Corps plane and
adjusted artillery fire during target practice at the Dona Ana Firing Range
in New Mexico. Adjustments were routinely rapid and accurate, though slowed
somewhat by the use of Morse code instead of radio telephone; a suitable set
was not then available. (During this experience I became interested in
flying and learned to fly at a nearby civilian school. Over the next few
years I advanced through several pilot ratings – solo, amateur, private,
limited commercial with instrument rating – and I owned two airplanes. I
flew often from small fields and strips, gaining experience which was to
bear fruit later.)
But, however adequate the technique, there were
serious and I think fatal flaws in the arrangement just described:
- The plane furnished was always a fairly heavy
type requiring a hard surface runway or near equivalent; it therefore
had to be based at an airport or temporary field some distance to the
rear, "on call."
- When the call was made (if indeed it was heard)
the pilot had first to find the guns he was to serve, since the
artillery often had moved since the last mission.
- The observer, whether Field Artilleryman or Air
Corps observer, was likewise in the dark as to gun position and target
location; this had to worked out by radio after the plane was airborne.
It wasn’t easy. Of course the observer could be stationed between
missions at the guns, and thus have all the information he needed, but
the delay due to his travel overland from guns to airfield to begin the
mission was unacceptable.
- The overriding deficiency in this system was the
limited amount of observation time available. There was need for
air observation, not merely to fire on some target previously located
(located how, please?) but to sit up there and find
targets. Time spent by the airplanes on the ground or flying back and
forth between landing area and gun position was a complete loss.
All this was well-known to every artilleryman and
much complaining was done, but little else. The stringencies of peacetime
funding plus the natural preoccupation of the Air Corps with what it
considered its more pressing responsibilities, strategic bombing and
tactical air support, left scant opportunity for improvement in air
observation for Field Artillery.
