Fighter Aircraft Combat Debuts 1915=1945 Innovation in Air Warfare Before the Jet Age

383 Pages·2014·8.58 MB·English

by  Guttman

FIGHTER AIRCRAFT COMBAT DEBUTS,
1915–1945
Innovation in Air Warfare Before the Jet Age
JON GUTTMAN
Frontis: Republic P-47C-2RE Thunderbolts of the 62nd Squadron, 56th Fighter Group, embark on a bomber escort
mission from Horsham St. Faith, England, on May 25, 1943. (US Air Force)
©2014 Jon Guttman
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be
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CONTENTS
Foreword
ONE
First Blood: The Earliest Fighters, 1914–16
TWO
Biplanes, Boelcke, and the Baron: Halberstadt and Albatros Scouts, 1916–17
THREE
A Deadlier Breed: Fighter Development, 1916–17
FOUR
The Triplane Craze: Sopwith Triplane and Fokker Dr. I.
FIVE
Glimpses of Things to Come: Fighters of 1918
SIX
A New Generation: Fighters of the Spanish Civil War, 1936–39
SEVEN
First Shots of a Second World War: Czechoslovakian, Polish, German, French, Dutch, and
Yugoslav Fighters, 1939–41
EIGHT
The Immortals: Hawker Hurricane and Supermarine Spitfire, 1939–41
NINE
Zero Hour: Japanese Fighters, 1937–41
TEN
Under Foreign Management: Licensed and Leased Fighters, 1939–42
ELEVEN
The Tide-Turning Generation: American Fighters, 1941–43
TWELVE
Illustrious Beginnings: Fairey Fulmar and Firefly, 1940–44
THIRTEEN
The Axis Strikes Back: German, Italian, and Japanese Fighters, 1941–44
FOURTEEN
Red Resurgence: Soviet Fighters, 1941–44
FIFTEEN
Aerial Supremacy Over the Islands: Vought F4U Corsair and Grumman F6F Hellcat, 1943
SIXTEEN
Heavy Hitters: Cannon-Armed Fighters, 1940–44
SEVENTEEN
Dueling in the Dark: Night Fighters, 1940–44
EIGHTEEN
Odds and Ends: Improvisations and Developmental Dead Ends, 1940–45
NINETEEN
Dawn of a New Era: Messerschmitt Me 262, Gloster Meteor, and P-80 Shooting Star,
1944–45
Notes
Bibliography
Index
FOREWORD
Of all military aircraft, fighters hold the most mystique—perhaps because of all military
aircraft, fighters are the type that can afford the least compromise. There have been
numerous occasions when desperate combatants managed to achieve a surprising degree
of success by improvising the most unlikely available aircraft into bombers, attack planes,
and reconnaissance aircraft. There is far less room for ingenuity in the realm of fighter
planes. When the goal is to seize and maintain control of the air, the confrontation is
direct, with the prospect of only one out of two possible outcomes. If a pilot and his plane
are better, he and his side wins; if his enemy is superior, he loses—and often dies.
Although aircraft—in the form of balloons—have appeared in battle since 1794, the
concept of air superiority dates to 1914, during World War I. Since then, the development
of fighter aircraft has been an ongoing seesaw battle in itself, with each new design
leading to another. Like sports cars, fighter planes became sleeker and their performance
greater as the competition intensified—but in contrast to peacetime competition, they also
became deadlier. And with each new development, the pilots had to adjust to higher
speeds and higher gs—something they did not always do ungrudgingly. The alternative,
however, was to suffer the fate of those seat-of-the-pants Italian fighter pilots who were
loath to give up open cockpits, or of the Japanese who regarded dogfighting ability as the
primary determinant of a fighter’s worth—in both cases, these aircraft were literally left
behind by newer, faster opponents.
Aside from the adrenaline rush of aerial combat itself, a great cause of excitement
among fighter pilots is the arrival of a new airplane. As they admire its lines, the questions
fill their minds: Will it be all that the manufacturer claims it will be? Will I be able to
adjust to its idiosyncrasies? Above all else, will it give me the edge I need to win?
This book explores the first military actions for a variety of famous fighters of World
War I, the conflicts of the so-called interwar years, and World War II—a thirty-year period
that saw the birth of the fighter concept and its maturity on the threshold of the jet age.
Comparisons of the strengths and weaknesses of fighter aircraft will probably go on as
long as there are men who will fly them. This study, however, will compare them from a
somewhat narrower perspective: How did they do at the very onset?
Most of the aircraft described are fairly well known to aviation historians, and a few
names, such as Sopwith Camel, Fokker Triplane, Messerschmitt Me 109, Mitsubishi Zero,
North American Mustang, and Supermarine Spitfire, are familiar even to the most
nonaviation-minded layman. Not so well known are the circumstances of their combat
debuts, in which some, such as the Zero, made their mark almost from the outset, but in
which others, like the Bristol F.2A, showed rather less promise than they would ultimately
realize.
While a certain amount of space must be devoted to the technical development of these
famous fighters, these studies of first combats serve as a reminder that it is the human
factor, with all its special quirks, that inevitably came into play when these deadly flying
machines first fired their guns in anger. It was the pilot who determined how a new
airplane did, and the results were not always in direct relation to the plane’s capabilities.
To cite a particularly striking example, the Brewster Buffalo, long vilified for its wretched
performance against the Japanese Zero and Hayabusa fighters in the Pacific, actually saw
combat for the first time over Finland nearly half a year earlier—and, thanks to the skill of
the Finnish pilots, enjoyed a generous measure of success over its Soviet opponents that
its American and British users would have found unbelievable.
Some of the pilots became as famous as the aircraft they flew, and some of the first men
to fly the fighters recounted in this volume are exactly those whom the lay reader would
expect. For example, the first aerial victory scored in a Fokker triplane was achieved by
the man most popularly associated with it: Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron.
Likewise, although Georges Guynemer may not have gained the first aerial victory
credited to a Spad 7.C1, he did score the first for the cannon-armed Spad 12.Ca1, in the
development of which he had played a prominent role.
Other fighters had combat debuts that were more obscure, and sometimes, as in the case
of the Supermarine Spitfire and the Vought F4U-1 Corsair, less than auspicious. Several
famous types did not even enter combat with the countries that designed them, for
example, the quintessentially French Spad 13.C1 scoring its first victory with a British
pilot in the cockpit. Although an American did score the first aerial victory for the North
American P-51 Mustang, he did so while serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force!
My original findings were published in Fighting Firsts in Britain in 2001. Since that
time, my research for a number of subsequent book projects uncovered an astonishing
wealth of new information, adding new factual details. Some revelations include combat
debuts that were even earlier and under different circumstances than previously thought.
There have even been a few additional fighter types, overlooked in the original book,
given their due in this one. Therefore, this volume offers the fruits of more than a dozen
years of fresh scholarship. Much of the newly unearthed material represents not only
information from some countries from which it was previously not released, but also a
proliferation of exchanges with colleagues over the Internet at unprecedented speeds. As
with aviation technology, information interchange has undergone some advances in the
past few decades that have radically altered the state of the art.
This begs a question that may enter the heads of some readers: Why limit things to the
first thirty years of fighter development? The answer is that that period covers a classic
phase of fighter origins and evolution, leading to the threshold of the jet age, when the
formula underwent a new phase of refinement to accommodate an entirely new mode of
propulsion, along with even higher speeds and stresses. (It had, in fact, been my intention
to write a sequel covering the jet age’s more notable products, which saw their own share
of action over Korea, Indochina, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent, among
others. Certainly the jet age has produced its own share of classics, worthy of their own
treatment in this context. There may very well be a volume two to follow this one.)
What began for this writer, in all honesty, as a casual literary lark, soon took on the
trappings of an often frustrating scavenger hunt—one, it must be added, that I could not
have completed alone. Among the friends and colleagues who lent a hand to the project, I
particularly wish to gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Frank W. Bailey, Dugald
Cameron, Christophe Cony, Jerzy B. Cynk, Douglas Dildy, Norman L. R. Franks, Colin
Heaton, Predrag Jelíc, D.Y. Louie, David Méchin, George Mellinger, Lt. Gen. Heikki
Nikunen, Finnish Air Force, ret., Colin Owers, Henry Sakaida, Kari Stenman, Andrew
Thomas, Greg VanWyngarden, and Paolo Varriale, as well as the late veteran pilots Robert
Duncan, Svein Heglund, Robert S. Johnson, Eino Ilmari Juutilainen, and Stanislaw
Skalski.
Last but by no means least, I reserve special thanks to Bruce H. Franklin of Westholme
Publishing, who made the publication of this new, transatlantic edition possible, and to
Laura Pfost, whose meticulous copyediting not only picked out a multitude of nits, but
which frequently led to the discovery of new sources of information that produced outright
changes for the better. Any errors that remain at this point are strictly the author’s.
One
FIRST BLOOD
THE EARLIEST FIGHTERS, 1914–16
When Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on July 28, 1914, it began a chain reaction
that rapidly plunged the world into a struggle which would be carried out not only on land
and sea, but in the air as well.
Aircraft were then nothing new to warfare. The French had introduced observation
balloons to the battlefield in 1794, and that means of intelligence gathering was
subsequently employed in numerous other conflicts, such as the American Civil War, the
Franco-Prussian War, and the Spanish-American War. The Italians introduced airplanes
during their 1911 campaign in Libya, not only for reconnaissance but also for bombing.
Airplanes were also much in evidence during the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913. It was
during World War I, however, that airmen began to take air power seriously enough to try
to take control of the sky by eliminating the other side’s aircraft.
Britain’s Royal Flying Corps (RFC) has often taken credit for the first air-to-air victory,
although that claim is not without its qualifications. The main protagonist was Lt. Hubert
D. Harvey-Kelly, who at 0820 hours on August 13, 1914, had had the distinction of
landing the first RFC airplane on French soil since the war began: Royal Aircraft Factory
B.E.2a No. 347. Harvey-Kelly’s unit, No. 2 Squadron, soon commenced reconnaissance
operations, and it was during one such patrol on August 25 that three of its BEs
encountered a German Rumpler Taube. Harvey-Kelly and his observer, Lt. W. H. C.
Mansfield, immediately attacked the enemy plane with whatever small arms they carried,
to which the German pilot responded by bringing his plane down to earth near Le Cateau.
Harvey-Kelly landed nearby and saw the enemy pilot and observer running into some
nearby woods. He and Mansfield gave chase but were unable to overtake them. They then
returned to the Taube, and after taking some trophies from it, burned it and took off again.
Theirs would not be the only victory claim that day, however. In one of three encounters in
the course of it, 2nd Lt. C.W. Wilson and Lt. Cuthbert Euan Charles Rabagliati of No. 5
Squadron spotted a Taube approaching their airfield, took off in an Avro 504 and forced
the German to land at Le Quesnoy, where it was captured by British troops.
A few weeks later a Russian pilot actually destroyed an enemy plane in the air, albeit by
means that few of his colleagues would want to emulate. The drama began on September
7, when an Austro-Hungarian Albatros two-seater of Fliegerkompagnie 11, based at
Zurawica, flew over the Russian XI Korpusnoi Aviatsionny Otryad’s (Corps Aviation
Detachment’s) aerodrome outside of the town of Zholkov and dropped a bomb on it. The
Austrian observer, Oberleutnant (First Lieutenant) Friedrich Freiherr von Rosenthal,
owned several large estates in territory that by then had been occupied by the Russians, so
his action may have been inspired by a degree of personal rancor. His attack, however,
was taken equally personally by one of the Russian pilots, Shtabs-Kapitan (Staff-Captain)
Piotr Nikolayevich Nesterov.
Born in Nizhny Novgorod (now Gorky) on February 27, 1887, Nesterov had graduated
from the aviation school in March 1913. Flying over Syretsk military aerodrome on