Trenchard Doctrine

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The Trenchard Doctrine is a doctrine of the Royal Air Force (RAF), according to which the destruction of the opposing armaments industry, including the transport routes to the front with long-range bombers, is preferable to direct field battles with the opposing armed forces. The doctrine is named after Hugh Trenchard , who commanded the RAF from 1919 to 1929, and was developed from the end of the First World War . It was used in a modified form with the British Area Bombing Directive and the area bombing of German cities and industrial areas in World War II .

Due to the Trenchard Air War Doctrine, work had been going on in Britain since the early 1930s to develop and build a fleet of heavy-range heavy bombers. The rapid operational readiness of the heavy bombers ( Bristol Blenheim , Vickers Wellington , etc.) even before the start of the Second World War was based on the extensive planning in the early 1930s. Following the Trenchard doctrine, in addition to building up the bomb transport capacity , work was also carried out on the main weapon of the bombing war, the electron thermite rod . In October 1936 the British Ministry of Defense received the first production order for the production of 4.5 million stick incendiary bombs (at the start of the war more than 5 million were already available) to the British company Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) .

History and Change of the RAF Doctrine

The origin of the British idea of ​​a strategic air attack on the “nerve centers of the enemy” is considered to be the bombing of England by the German air forces in World War I, first with zeppelins from 1915 , then with Gotha bombers from 1917 . The RAF itself (at that time still Royal Flying Corps ), however, had no significant experience with long-range bombers. After the end of the war there was a protracted institutional struggle for resources and independence in Britain's political and military leadership amid drastic austerity efforts.

Under the impression of the successful Allied offensives of 1918 and the finally won war, the prestige of the Army rose again, which had suffered from 1915 to spring 1918 from the loss-making and unsuccessful run-up against the enemy entrenched in trench warfare. Nevertheless, the approach of a large field army, which defeated the opponent's field army in material battles up to the war of fatigue, was considered an unsuitable strategy for the future. Accordingly, the decision was made against a large standing army and a small expeditionary force that was to receive colonial tasks. A closer look at the economic situation in defeated Germany revealed the devastating effect the blockade by the Royal Navy had had. In addition, the role of the Navy as primus inter pares of the British armed forces was never in question. Thus, the RAF threatened the downgrade to a tactical role and a renewed separation into a Royal Flying Corps supporting the Army and a Royal Naval Air Service supporting the Navy . The advocates of an independent air force were therefore more than interested in the RAF's own strategic role.

According to Clausewitz , the aim of a war is to impose one's own will on the opponent. According to the RAF masterminds, this goal could be achieved in two ways at the end of the First World War: by destroying the opponent's ability to offer resistance, or by destroying his will to resist. The army was “condemned” to concentrate on destroying the enemy's ability to fight, which could only be achieved through a field battle against his army. The air force, on the other hand, can and should break the will of the enemy. Trenchard firmly believed that the massive use of bombers against the enemy's hinterland would achieve this goal.

Later intensification of the RAF doctrine blurred the difference between the immediate post-war doctrine of the RAF on the one hand and the influential publications of the aerial warfare masterminds Giulio Douhet ("Dominio dell'Aria", 1921) and Billy Mitchell (sinking of naval units for demonstration purposes in 1921) on the other. Douhet and Mitchell foresaw wars in which their own land forces would only have to occupy the territory of the enemy already defeated by the air forces ("mopping-up operations"). The naval forces would only provide floating air war bases. The view of the RAF leadership in 1928 was different. She saw the strategic blockade ("strategic interdiction") as the main task of the RAF, as a complement to the naval blockade by the Navy, which together would be decisive for the war. The exact content of a “moral bombing” was not defined in detail.

The Trenchard Doctrine is dated in many places to 1928, but this year is only a better published point in the continuous development of the RAF Doctrine between the World Wars. This year three documents fall: Trenchard wrote a memorandum in May 1928 with the title The War Object of an Air Force to the Chief of Staff Subcommittee , in July 1928 the RAF War Manual of 1928 was passed, and in October 1928 Trenchard gave a speech at the Imperial Defense College .

literature

  • Phillip S. Meilinger: Trenchard and "Morale Bombing": The Evolution of Royal Air Force Doctrine Before World War II . In: Journal of Military History . Vol. 60, No. 2 (April 1996), pp. 243-270, JSTOR 2944407
  • Phillip S. Meilinger: The Historiography of Airpower: Theory and Doctrine . In: Journal of Military History , Vol. 64, No. 2 (April 2000), pp. 467-501, JSTOR 120248 .
  • Malcolm Smith: "A Matter of Faith": British Strategic Air Doctrine before 1939 . In: Journal of Contemporary History . Vol. 15, No. 3 (July 1980), pp. 423-442, JSTOR 260412 .
  • Malcolm Smith: British Air Strategy between the Wars . Clarendon, Oxford 1984, ISBN 0-19-822767-1 .
  • Scot Robertson: The Development of RAF Strategic Bombing Doctrine, 1919-1939 . Praeger, Westport (CT) 1995, ISBN 0-275-94997-4 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jörg Friedrich: The fire: Germany in the bombing war 1940-1945 . Propylaea, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-549-07165-5 , pp. 29 .
  2. ^ Jörg Friedrich: The fire: Germany in the bombing war 1940-1945 . Propylaea, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-549-07165-5 , pp. 28 .
  3. ↑ Meilinger: Trenchard and "Morale Bombing" . In: J. of Military History . Vol. 60, No. 2 (April 1996), pp. 246-247.
  4. ↑ Meilinger: Trenchard and "Morale Bombing" . In: J. of Military History . Vol. 60, No. 2 (April 1996), pp. 243-244.
  5. ↑ Smith, "A Matter of Faith" . In: J. of Contemporary History . Vol. 15, No. 3 (July 1980), pp. 429-430.
  6. ↑ For example Jana Flemming: The bombing war in the opinion of the British public, 1940-1944 . In: Bernd Heidenreich, Sönke Neitzel (ed.): The bombing war and its victims (PDF; 786 kB) . HLZ, Wiesbaden 2004, ISBN 3-927127-56-6 , p. 19.
  7. ^ Full text of the Trenchard Memorandum on The War Object of an Air Force , May 1928 . In: Jeremy Thin: The Pre-History of Royal Air Force Area Bombing, 1917-1942 . University of Canterbury, Christ Church (NZ) 2008, Permalink , Appendix 6, pp. 141-144. (MA History thesis)
  8. ^ Tami Davis Biddle, Rhetoric and reality in air warfare: the evolution of British and American ideas about strategic bombing, 1914-1945 . Princeton University Press, Princeton (NJ) 2004, ISBN 0-691-12010-2 , p. 94.