| Subject: Re: Reactions on Operation Strandfest here please |
Author:
Joe Osman
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Date Posted: 14:11:18 01/29/06 Sun
In reply to:
Johan Ryheul
's message, "Reactions on Operation Strandfest here please" on 11:52:59 07/10/05 Sun
Johan:
Great work. I've taken a long time to reply because you got me interested in close air support in WWI. There was more of it than I expected.
Some questions first. In the third paragraph you say that the Seebataillone ceased to exist in 1914. Do you mean that the III.Seebatallion ceased to exist in 1914? It certainly did after its long defense of Tsingtao in China, but I don't think it was ever a part of the III.Marine Division like the I.Seebatallion and II.Seebatallion were part of the I.Marine Division and the II.Marine Division. They lasted until 1919. The II.Seebatallion was present at Von Lettow-Vorbeck's triumph in Berlin as he had commanded them before WWI.
You mention Ramcke being present. Do you know if this is where he earned his Golden Military Merit Cross? He would have had to have been an enlisted man at the time to earn it.
I'm wondering if the same close air support was also planned for the German Army that day. I found "Trampled underfoot: The story of attack aviation in the German spring offensives of 1918," Chad G Clark, Air Power History,Summer 199, Volume 45, Issue 2, pp.16-25 (ISSN: 1044016X), also at http://www.ku.edu/carrie/archives/wwi-l/2002/04/msg00245.html
Clark wrote:
"According to Ernest von Hoeppner, general of the Luftstreitkrafte, "The battle in Flanders had increased the possibilities for the use of aviation in a direction that was fully of significance for the further development of
the arm."19 Noting the "great moral effect" of strafing attacks by low-flying aircraft, Hoeppner relates that on July 10, 1917, attack sorties were first arranged to systematically accompany advancing infantry, which
advanced in coordination with a successful counterattack along the coast at Lombartzyde.20 Capt. Helmut Wilberg provided the intellectual foundation for German attack aviation. As Air Commander for the Fourth Army, Wilberg was
the first to organize attack aircraft into formations, greatly enhancing the effectiveness of the mission.21 From these efforts, the Luftstreitkrafte found that aircraft used in units formed specifically for ground attack and "working in closest cooperation with their comrades on the ground," against enemy troops massing behind the lines prior to an offensive represented the best use of attack aviation. After Flanders, attack aviation represented an "opportunity that was not neglected."22"
19. Ernest Wilhelm von Hoeppner, Germany's War in the Air: The Development and Operations of German Military Aviation in the World War, trans. J. Hawley Larned (Nashville, Tenn.: The Battery Press, 1994), p. 115.
20. Ibid.; Jones, The War in the Air: Being the Story of the Part Played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force, vol. 4. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934) p. 150.
21. Corum, "The Luftwaffe's Army Support Doctrine,
1918-1941," The Journal of Military History 59 (January 1995) p. 55.
22. Hoeppner, Germany's War in the Air, pp. 115, 118.
Were both the attack and the counterattack at Lombartzyde mentioned MarineKorps Flandern Operations? If not, it's interesting that the German services were able to coordinate their attacks as well as their doctrine. I recently found out that Erich Ludendorff had been in the Kaiserliche Marine as a Leutnant in the Kaiserliche Marine-Infanterie for three years starting in 1887. See http://www.tannenberg1914.de/4_feldh/ludf.htm.
Perhaps that was part of it.
Clark's article also has information on earlier, less coordinated British and German attack aviation at the Somme and Messines as well as later more coordinated air support in the war.
Some other sites of interest:
http://www.firstworldwar.com/airwar/groundattack.htm
"Field-Expedient Camouflage for Trench Strafing," Chandelle, Volume 1, Number 3 December 1996
http://www.worldatwar.net/chandelle/
"Plan 1919," Chandelle, Volume 2, Number 1 March 1997
http://worldatwar.net/chandelle/v1/v1n3/attack.html
Trench-Strafer:: Building Blue Max's 1/48 Halberstadt Cl.II by Tom Cleaver
http://www.internetmodeler.com/1999/may/aviation/halberstadt.htm
Halberstadt CLII
http://homepage.eircom.net/~frontacs/DOAcharts/Aircraft/HalberstadtCLII.html
EDUARD WOLFGANG ZORER “LE PERE DE L’AVIATION D’ASSAUT“
http://membres.lycos.fr/asduciel/zorer.htm
I'm much more familiar with the history of close air support in the United States Marine Corps, which came out of:
1.) a desire to support the Marines landing on the beach in the time interval after the ships must lift their gunfire and before there are naval gunfire fire control parties set up ashore
2.) On the spot additions to contact patrol work by Marine aviators in the Banana Wars in the Caribbean.
Thanks for your research, Johan, I found it very interesting.
Joe
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