Military Learning: Part 2

A case study on strategic bombing in World War 2

Two weeks ago I started this specialized discussion of military learning and the Russo-Ukraine War.

The Russian Campaign Against Ukrainian Infrastructure: Military Learning in Action?

I was a little mystified that serious analysts were saying that the Russian military was showing military learning, and pointed to the Russian campaign against Ukrainian power supply (which will be the subject of part 3 next week) as an example of this learning. As I said two weeks ago—that made little sense considering the campaign against Ukrainian power generation was failing to achieve even modest results and in fact revealed so many shortcomings that it reinforced the idea that the Russian military was still struggling mightily to be a learning institution at this point.

What I thought I would do now is discuss an example of military learning, to show just how difficult and complex it can be. The example comes from Anglo-American strategic bombing in World War II, probably the most technologically and industrially advanced campaign in the war.

It first would be useful to discuss what I mean by military learning. Learning is not tactical adaptation, which can happen almost unconsciously. The Russians moving from vehicle assaults in the first part of the Russo-Ukraine War to the infantry-heavy assaults we see now is not learning—it is adjustments in many ways being forced on them. Btw, there was a very interesting thread on the changes the Russian have been doing by the Institute for the Study of War, based on some documents claimed to be found by a Ukrainian officer.

ISW @TheStudyofWar

ISW said the regular #Russian military around #Bakhmut may be adopting practices that #Wagner has used, including frontal attacks by smaller groups as Russian artillery stocks have dwindled during the six-month fight for the city. @WSJ

wsj.comUkraine’s Forces Endure Increasingly Dire Conditions in Bakhmut, Officials SayUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reiterated his urgent calls for jet fighters from Western allies.

Learning comes through a process of identifying a problem, trying to analyze the problem and provide answers, and then putting into place both training and operational structures to put these answers into action. It takes a huge effort, real intellectual honesty and debate, often threatens to breakdown, but in the end can make a massive difference in how militaries operate and how wars are fought. To show how difficult it can be, I will break down strategic bombing learning into 4 different areas—

1. First, the background (to show just how difficult it is to even ask the right questions). This will be a brief overview of the approach to strategic bombing before the war

2. Then to show that even if you put into place a solid system to ask the right questions—you might not get the right answers. This will focus on US strategic bombing debates, 1942-1944, including the fascinating construction of Committee of Operations Analysts

3. Then to show that if you have the right answers, you might not have the command structure to put those answers into operational planning. This will focus on RAF strategic bombing, where it really mattered who took command where.

4. Finally, even if you have the right operational plan, you need the technology and depth of equipment to make it work.

(btw—you might see where I am going on this with Russian military learning and the campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure—but thats for next week)

Background: Anglo-American Strategic Bombing—the Search for the Right Target.

To try and militarily ‘learn’ it helps that you have a culture of analytical introspection. Both the US and British air forces in the interwar period were forced to wrestle intellectually with questions that the army and navy to a certain degree were spared. The air forces, because they had just come into being and had only scratched their potential in World War I, had to wrestle intellectually with their real purpose. This debate was heightened by the constant increase in the technological abilities of aircraft (speed, range, lift, etc). As your aircraft get better, it broadens options, and that actually becomes more intellectually challenging. The more you might do, the more you have to discuss what you will do.

Now I don’t have the ability to write a whole history of interwar period airpower thought, but much of it boiled down to targeting. There was a difference between those who favored more tactical operations (attacking the enemy’s armed forces—such as Air Marshal Slessor and I would argue General Billy Mitchell) and those who favored what came to be known as strategic bombing (the attacking of targets that underpin enemies armed forces, but removed from the battlefield. These different strategic airpower ideas took many forms. There was some who favored the attacks on enemy cities and civilian populations—to break morale and cause such terror that the other side’s government would be forced to sue for peace (see Air Marshal Trenchard). On the other hand there were those who favored attacks on economic/productive targets, to try and disable an enemies ability to wage war. For the US the group most engaged with this was the Air Corps Tactical School, which it could be argued did the first systematic studies about how strategic airpower could cripple enemy production by destroying some vital productive nodes. On the other hand, there were those who looked more at attacking economic capabilities—such as fuel production and the like, to try and degrade an enemy’s ability to move things. One of the most important examples of this was was Maurice Hankey, secretary to the UK Committee for Imperial Defence.

If you want to read more on the subject, the link below will let you download a 600+ page book edited by the airpower scholar Philip Meilinger, a book which goes into the interwar period in good detail and mentions all of the above except Hankey. See, you get links to free books with this substack ;)

https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/AUPress/Books/B_0029_MEILINGER_PATHS_OF_HEAVEN.pdf

Overall what comes out is the widespread variety in the airpower discussion, as a range of individuals and organizations tried to understand how airpower should best be utilized. By the end of the interwar period, this debate was unresolved. When it came to strategic bombing in particular, what seems to have happened was that both the RAF and USAAF (the United States did not have a separate Air Force at this time, and strategic bombing became the preserve of the United States Army Air Force) came up with plans to do almost everything—not knowing what they would prioritize when the time came.