rehearsals for war: Ethiopia, Spain, and China
Spanish Civil War poster
Before the outbreak of World War II, several of the major
combatants had opportunities to test
their equipment, especially
their combat aircraft and air tactics. The first
such test came when the
Italians invaded Ethiopia (then
known as Abyssinia) in May 1936. The use of bombers
against tribal soldiers with pre—World War I
equipment outraged the world and
gave a clear indication what
Italian Fascist dictator Mussolini was made of. It
left little doubt that if Germany
declared war Italy was likely
to side with the Germans and use the opportunity to
grab anything
within the flight range of its aircraft. The Italian
Caproni bombers used dive-bombing techniques
taught them by German
flight instructors, and the battle for
Ethiopia was over in just a few
months.
Italian troops in Abyssinia
A more serious test that pitted plane against plane was
the Spanish Civil War of 1937—1938. To
many observers, he war was
promoted by Germany, Italy, and Russia for
the express purpose of
providing an opportunity for these
nations to test their weaponry in combat situations—
at least that was how the
wavering support on both sides was
interpreted. Germany and Italy backed the
Nationalists led by Francisco Franco, while the
left-wing Republicans were
supported by the Soviet Union.
Both sides provided their latest
aircraft and insisted that their
own pilots fly them, ostensibly to
prevent them from falling into
enemy hands. Expensive and secret Junkers
JU52s were used to
transport troops when simple trucks
would have served.
The bombing of Guernica in April
1937 by the German-commanded Kondor
Legion brought home the new
threat of
“saturation bombing.” It made clear that
the next war
was going to be fought largely
in and from the
air, and made technical
development a top priority for
all parties
A Messerschmitt Me
109 is tested
in a German
wind tunnel, the most advanced in the world at that time.
And several operations were
entirely gratuitous, such as the
saturation bombing of the inconsequential town of Guernica
on April 26, 1937, by the
elite Kondor Legion of the Luftwaffe.
The bombing was decried
around the world and became the subject of a
celebrated antiwar mural by
Picasso. The most telling
indication of the German motive for
entering the conflict,
however, was the introduction of its
most advanced fighter plane, the Messerschmitt Bf
109B. This aircraft was to become
a mainstay of the Luftwaffe, and
it had its first test runs in Spain in
1937. The plane had been
designed by a young airplane builder, Willy
Messerschmitt, whose name
was to become virtually synonymous with the German fighter
aircraft of World War II.
Messerschmitt, born in 1898, was too young to
have been involved in World War I,
but he spent much of the
post-war years learning to glide and building, first
gliders, and then light aircraft.
He was a particularly ambitious
young man and joined the Nazi Party as soon as it
came to power.
Messerschmitt became a close friend of
Hermann Goring and was unofficial technical advisor
to the Luftwaffe throughout the
war (which was another reason a
weak man like Udet filled the post
officially).
The basic design principle behind the Bf 109 was a
simple, if coldly calculating, one. Until World
War II, designers had
little hard information on the strength of
material or manufacturing
techniques, and since it would not
do to have a plane come apart in flight, engineers
took no chances. The planes
were thus better armoured and better
constructed than they needed to be. (A similar reason
accounts for the incredible longevity of the early DC and
Boeing transports of the 1930s: they were much better built
than their expected lifespan required, and that kept them in
service for decades longer than their designers intended.)
Messerschmitt, accustomed to the
transitory construction of gliders, believed that there was
no reason for fighter aircraft to have this safety factor
built in—so he eliminated it. The fighter pilot should
survive by virtue of his flying, Messerschmitt thought, and
not at the expense of the aircraft. As a result, the
Messerschmitt planes were lighter and faster than comparably
designed and powered fighters. Messerschmitt (and his chief
designer, Walter Rethel) could get away with this as a
manufacturing policy only if he knew he had the unwavering
support of the Air Ministry and that Goring would allow that
some planes and pilots would be lost when planes came apart
in a dive or too sharp a turn. This policy was equivalent to
a “trading of like pieces” in the chess game of the
battlefield, a strategy Germany could afford early in the
war, but for which they paid dearly in the Battle of Britain
and in the latter stages of the war.
The 1937 air war between China and Japan
saw the final
from World War I open-cockpit planes (used by the Japanese
in 1933), in which armament was hand-controlled, to the
closed
cockpit, featuring automatic armaments, of World War II
aircraft.
The final rehearsal for World War II was
the Japanese invasion of China in 1937. During the 1930s the
attitude of the United States toward Japan was ambiguous. On
the one hand, the State Department liked having an irritant
to Russia on its eastern border, and the Japanese were
certainly that, seizing Manchuria in 1931. On the other
hand, the United States supported the government of Chiang
Kai-shek in China and supplied him with (meaning, sold him)
Curtiss Hawk fighter aircraft to defend his country against
Japan.
There was little doubt that when Japan invaded China
in 1937, it was using aircraft that were designed by Jiro
Horikoshi, who had been taught his craft at the Curtiss-Wright
plant and who was the principal designer for Mitsubishi. In
its invasion of China, the Japanese used the Mitsubishi 96,
an aircraft designed to be launched from an aircraft
carrier. This was deemed unnecessary for invading China and
indicated larger goals for the Japanese. When fighting broke
out with Russia, the Russians brought in their best fighter,
the Polikarpov 146, teaching the Japanese that they were
going to have to continue fighter development if they were
ever to fight an air war with the Soviet Union.
Mitsubishi 96
The hostilities were ended
in June 1940 with the signing of the Russo-Japanese Pact.
The Japanese saw from early in the
1930s that its main rival in the
Pacific was not China or Russia,
but the United States. For fourteen years prior to the out-
break of war in the Pacific, the single
question on the final
examination in the Japanese aeronautical military
academy was how one would
plan an aerial attack on the U.S.
Naval Base at Pearl Harbour.
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