War and Game

A painting by Australian aviation artist Ray Honisett depicting No. 1 Squadron Lincolns on a low-level bombing run over the Malayan jungle in 1957. By that stage in the conflict the Commonwealth air campaign consisted largely of attacking suspected guerrilla positions in the remote northern areas of Malaya. [AWM ART27684]

Arriving in Malaya in July 1950, just one month after the Dakotas of No. 38 Squadron, the six Lincoln aircraft of No. 1 Squadron RAAF were the only heavy bombers in the area until 1953 when they were joined by some RAF Lincolns. The Australian Lincolns were therefore the mainstay of the Commonwealth bombing campaign, especially in the early years of the conflict when the outcome was still in doubt.

From 1950 to 1958 No. 1 Squadron flew 4,000 missions in Malaya. The squadron flew both pinpoint-bombing and area-bombing missions as well as night harassment raids – flying among many targets but only dropping bombs occasionally – in the manner of the RAF “siren raids” of the Second World War.
Operation Termite in July 1954 was a high point of the squadron’s service in Malaya. Five Australian Lincolns and six Lincolns from No. 148 Squadron RAF took part in this operation against guerrilla camps in Northern Malaya. The Lincolns carried out a series of bombing runs and ground attacks in conjunction with paratroop drops.

The long range and heavy payload of the Lincoln made it an effective bomber, while its relatively slow speed proved advantageous in Malaya when trying to locate jungle targets.

Although the fighting was largely over when they arrived in 1958, the Canberra bombers of No. 2 Squadron flew some missions from Butterworth including formation-bombing runs. The Sabre jet fighters of No. 3 Squadron and No. 77 Squadron also flew strafing missions from Butterworth against Communist-guerrilla targets.

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Elsewhere, however, the British made a major attempt to maintain their imperial position. The surrender of Japan was followed by the reimposition of control in occupied areas, including Malaya, Singapore and Hong Kong, and, from 1948, a serious effort was made to resist a Communist insurrection in the economically crucial colony of Malaya. In what was termed the Malayan Emergency, the British initially failed to devise an effective strategy, but this changed with the development of successful, and intertwined, military and political plans. ‘Hearts and minds’ policies restricted the appeal of the Malayan Communist Party, which was largely based in the minority Chinese population, although these policies also relied on the ability to coerce. Local economic growth, which benefited greatly from the Korean War, also helped. British effectiveness owed much to the use of helicopters and transport aircraft; to improvements in their intelligence system; and to the use of counter-insurgency forces skilled in jungle craft and understanding of the local situation. Rather than requiring protection, a problem with force-deployment in many counter-insurgency struggles, such forces could take the war to the guerrillas. This was complemented by steps to control the population that included the careful supervision of food supplies and the resettlement of much of the rural population, a crucial move. British assistance to the Greek army in the Greek civil war had played a role in the evolution of British experience with counterinsurgency operations.

Partly due to Malaya’s geographical isolation, and certainly to the absence of a neighbouring Communist state, the Communists lacked adequate Chinese or Soviet support; they also failed to create a parallel system of government, while the British did not allow the Emergency to deter them from their political course: moves towards self-government (1955) and independence (1957), which the British saw as the best way to defeat the Communists. On the local level, there was a parallel move toward normality, with pacified areas benefiting from an easing of the emergency regulations.

Having largely beaten the insurgents by 1954, the British maintained the pressure over the following years, in particular by the effective use of the now well-developed intelligence apparatus, further weakening the Communists, and were rewarded with mass surrenders in December 1957. In the 1960s, British success in Malaya was to be contrasted with American failure in Vietnam. The contrast frequently focused on greater British commitment to, and skill in, ‘hearts and minds’ policies, and on the deficiencies of the American stress on firepower.  While this was correct, the situation facing the Americans in Vietnam, in terms both of the political situation there and of the international context, was more difficult.

The 1990s opened with a second Iraqi invasion, this time of Kuwait. A far smaller and weaker target than Iran, oil-rich Kuwait rapidly fell on 2 August 1990, and, six days later, Saddam Hussein declared Kuwait Iraq’s nineteenth province. The response defined high-spectrum warfare for the following decade. Concerned about the impact of Iraqi expansion in the centre of the world’s oil production, George H. Bush, the US President, rapidly began diplomatic and military preparations for conflict, and Iraq’s failure to press on ensured that the initiative thereafter rested with its opponents. On 3 August two US carrier groups were ordered towards the region and, on 8 August, in response to a Saudi request for ground troops two days earlier, the first US troops arrived. The build-up of coalition forces in neighbouring Saudi Arabia, forces benefiting from the availability of Saudi oil and bases, was matched by a blockade intended to hit Iraqi trade, especially oil exports.

Iraq’s refusal to meet a UN deadline for withdrawal, led, on 17 January 1991, to the start of a major air offensive. Although aircraft from twelve countries were involved, the US was central to the offensive, which worked because of the rapid success in overcoming the sophisticated Iraqi anti-aircraft system; Saddam had used French and Soviet technology to produce an integrated system in which computers linked radars and missiles. Iraq’s heavily outnumbered air force did not intervene in force; instead the MIG-29s flew to Iran where they were added to the air force. The air offensive benefited from state-of-the-art US weaponry: F-117A Stealth bombers able to minimize radar detection bombed Baghdad – one of the most heavily defended cities in the world – and did so with impunity, while the US made effective use of guided bombs. Thermal imaging laser-designation systems were employed to guide the bombs to their target, and pilots launched bombs into the ‘cone’ of the laser beam in order to score a direct hit. The use of stealth and precision meant that it was possible to employ a direct air assault aimed at overcoming the entire Iraqi air-system, rather than an incremental roll-back campaign. The destruction of the air-defence system, with only one aircraft lost (to an Iraqi MIG-29) on the first night, was a triumph, not only for weaponry but also for planning, that made full use of the opportunities presented by the weapons, while also out-thinking the Iraqis, for example by getting them to bring their radars to full power, and thus exposing them to attack. As a result of the subsequent air assault, Iraqi ground forces were short of supplies, their command and control system was heavily disrupted, so that they could not ‘understand’ the battle, and their morale was low.

In February 1991, Iraq was driven from Kuwait in a swift campaign in which the Iraqis were out-generalled and out-fought by coalition forces that benefited not only from superior technology, but also from their ability to maintain a high-tempo offensive while executing a well-conceived plan that combined air and land forces. Allied (Coalition) fighting quality, unit cohesion, leadership and planning, and Iraqi deficiencies in each, all played a major role in ensuring victory. The Iraqis had surrendered mobility by entrenching themselves to protect their conquest of Kuwait. The US employed satellite surveillance, Patriot antimissile missiles against Iraqi attacks, and Cruise missiles and guided bombs to provide precise bombardment. In the ground war, which began at 4 am on 24 February, the Iraqis were defeated with heavy casualties, while their opponents lost few men, the US suffering 143 battle fatalities, 33 from ‘friendly fire’. Predictions that Iraqi entrenchments would be difficult to take, and that the Iraqis would force attritional warfare on the coalition, causing heavy casualties, proved mistaken. While the Iraqis were attacked on the direct route to Kuwait City, their right flank was outmanoeuvred by a rapid US advance to the west which put tremendous pressure on the Iraqis as the outflanking US forces turned, on 27 February, to attack them and destroyed much of the Iraqi army. The following morning, President Bush ordered a ceasefire, with the Iraqis, in 100 hours of non-stop combat, having lost over 50,000 dead, as well as 81,000 prisoners and nearly 4,000 tanks.

Despite the rapid victory, the US doctrine of AirLand Battle proved more difficult to execute in practice than to advance in theory, and to train for, not least due to the problems of synchronizing air and land forces under fast-moving combat conditions. However, compared to earlier conflicts, such as the Linebacker ii air offensive on North Vietnam in December 1972, there was unified control over air operations – a single air manager (the Joint Force Air Component Commander), target acquisition and accuracy were effective, and the pace of the air attack was maintained; even if some of the high-tech weaponry, such as the Patriot missile and British runway-cratering bombs, did less well than was claimed at the time. In addition, important parts of the Allied military did not use weaponry that was available. For example, the US used 9,300 precision-guided munitions, but most of their aircraft were not equipped or their pilots trained for their use and, instead, employed unguided munitions, which made up 90 per cent of the aerial munitions used. This was despite the extensive and effective use of precision-guided munitions in the Linebacker I and II campaigns in Vietnam in 1972. Similarly, although the US had developed stealth aircraft, most of their aircraft lacked this capability.

The conflict also saw Iraqi Scud missile attacks on Israel, and, although they did not achieve their desired aim of bringing Israel into the war, and thus jeopardizing Arab support for the USA, especially from Saudi Arabia and Syria, they underlined Israeli vulnerability. Concerned that, as a result of its inaction, their deterrence had been lessened, the Israeli government wished to take reprisals, but, aside from discouraging weather conditions, the Israelis were affected by US opposition to such action. The USA did, however, provide Israel with satellite information and Patriot batteries. The need to counter the military and, even more, the political threat from Scud missiles dramatized the implications of the spread of weaponry. American anti-missile doctrine had long focused on Soviet inter-continental ballistic missiles, but the Scuds indicated that short-range anti-missile defences and doctrine were also necessary, and drew attention to the problems of relying on the Patriot missiles for that purpose.
For the US and British navies, the war marked the major change that followed the end of the Cold War. In place of a doctrine focused on defeating Soviet naval forces in a struggle for maritime routes, came littoral force-projection and amphibious capability at the expense of a state, Iraq, with no real naval power.

The failure to keep military objectives and political goals in harmony, however, helped ensure that the Gulf War did not lead to the hoped-for overthrow of Saddam Hussein. The US decision to end the offensive was taken in haste, in a war that was very high-tempo, without an adequate consideration of how to translate the outcome of the campaign into a durable post-war settlement. This was linked to military factors, specifically the persistence of ‘friction’ and ‘fog’: ‘At the operational level, it is clear that Schwarzkopf lost track of the position of his forces and Iraqi troops at a critical point in the battle’.

A failure to distinguish victory from operational success helped ensure that the wrong decisions were taken when ‘battlefield commanders were allowed to improvise decisions that should have been made at the highest political levels’. The civilian leadership permitted the decision to end the war to be governed by military considerations, specifically the expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait, but the major goal, in fact, was political: the need to create a stable post-war situation in the Gulf, and the military pre-conditions for such stability were ultimately a political judgement. Secretary of State James Baker, however, offered little guidance during meetings held to discuss whether it was time to end the war.

Instead, after the coalition ceased its advance, Hussein was able to use his forces, particularly the Revolutionary Guard and its artillery and tanks, to smash a rebellion by the country’s Shia majority, causing heavy casualties and destroying Shia shrines in Karbala and Najaf. In contrast, in Operation Provide Comfort, a multi-service, multinational task force protected the Kurds in northern Iraq from action by Hussein’s forces. The war was followed by the long-term use of Allied airpower to try to prevent Iraq from rebuilding its military, an expensive commitment that had only limited success; not least because policing Iraqi ‘no-fly zones’ was easier than influencing developments on the ground.
The understandable focus on the US contribution to the war, which included over half a million military personnel, has led to an underestimation of its impact on other states. For all those militaries that took part, the war raised issues of force-projection, logistics, and interoperability, although the last was eased by the experience of many in cooperation through NATO. The contribution of those that did not send forces into the combat zone, but did provide financial support and/or indirect military help by freeing coalition units for operations, principally Germany and Japan, was important, although it also raised questions about their future military role.

By John T. Correll

The B-29 was rushed into production and sent to India to strike at Japan through staging bases in China.
When the Army Air Forces got the B-29 Superfortress, the United States finally had a weapon to strike the Japanese homeland. There had been no US aircraft over Japan since the Doolittle Raiders bombed Tokyo in April 1942, but the B-29, with a combat radius of more than 1,600 miles, was about to demonstrate the vulnerability of Japan.

The Boeing Superfortress was the first airplane to be classified as a very heavy bomber. It had more speed, range, and payload than its predecessors, the B-17 and the B-24, which were rated as heavy bombers.

So great was its promise that the B-29 was rushed into production and then rushed into war. The purchase order for 1,664 airplanes was placed before the first prototype flew. Production aircraft rolled off the line in 1943 before flight tests were completed. It was the most complex airplane US industry had ever built and it went into operation before the bugs were worked out.

A B-29 crosses the Hump in 1944, transporting supplies from India to an airfield in southern China.

Fortunately, the pilots and copilots were handpicked men with experience in B-17s and B-24s. Late deliveries of aircraft cut training in the United States to an average of 30 hours per man for the first crews deploying to combat in 1944. Few had ever fired the guns or dropped a bomb from their B-29s before departing.

Most critical of all, proper bases were not available. The B-29 could have reached every important target in Japan from the Marianas—Guam, Saipan, and Tinian—but the islands were still in Japanese hands. The Soviet Union would not allow its US ally to operate from eastern Siberia, which was only 700 miles from Tokyo. Parts of Japan were within range from western China, but it was not feasible to have main operating bases there. The Japanese held all of the seaports and strategic waterways and had cut off the land access route from the west, the Burma Road.

The solution hit upon was Operation Matterhorn, which called for basing the B-29s in India and staging them through forward airfields in China to strike at targets in Japan, Manchuria, and east Asia. They would be sustained by ammunition, fuel, and other military supplies, every pound and gallon of which had to be flown across the "Hump" of the Himalayas to the China bases. Tankers and transport aircraft were in short supply, so the B-29s had to do much of their own hauling, initially including all of the fuel used on missions flown from China.

"The scheme of operations had been dreamed up like something out of ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ " said Gen. Curtis E. LeMay, the officer who commanded the operation at its peak. "No one could have made it work. It was founded on an utterly absurd logistic basis. Nevertheless, our entire nation howled like a pack of wolves for an attack on the Japanese homeland. The high command yielded. The instrument wasn’t ready, the people weren’t ready, nothing was ready. Folks were given an impossible task to perform."

Impossible or not, the four B-29 bomb groups of XX Bomber Command from June 1944 to January 1945 tried valiantly to make the Matterhorn plan work, flying combat missions in one of the most complicated strategic operations ever attempted.

Much of the push to get the B-29 in action came from President Roosevelt, who wanted to buck up flagging Nationalist Chinese spirit and keep China in the war. Roosevelt promised the Nationalist leader, Chiang Kai-shek, that bombers would strike Japan from China.

Roosevelt was displeased when operations did not begin in 1943 and groused that, if the B-29s were not ready, "we have several other types of bombing planes." As Roosevelt knew full well, the bomber with the next best range, the B-24, could not reach Japan, but Gen. H. H. "Hap" Arnold, Chief of the AAF, got the message.

Arnold was under pressure to make an expensive program pay off. Development of the B-29 had cost $3 billion; by comparison, the US would spend only $2 billion for the entire Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb.

Arnold needed to establish a strategic plan for the B-29 before one of the other theater commanders could grab it. Both Gen. Douglas MacArthur in the Southwest Pacific and Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, who commanded the broad sweep of "Pacific Ocean Areas," wanted the B-29 to support their surface campaigns. The Joint Plans Committee was inclined to give it to MacArthur, whose air chief, Maj. Gen. George C. Kenney, proposed to base the B-29s in Australia and use them against regional Japanese installations.

Rather than dribbling the B-29s out on tactical targets, Arnold wanted to use them as strategic weapons against Japan to achieve results that might shorten the war. To keep them out of the hands of regional ground commanders, Arnold sold the idea of a strategic air force—Twentieth Air Force—which he would command himself as executive agent of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

All of the B-29s were assigned to Twentieth Air Force. A subordinate element, XX Bomber Command, was activated in November 1943 and began training at Smoky Hill Field near Salina, Kan., with two bomb wings.

Brig. Gen. Kenneth Wolfe (second from left) and XX Bomber Command officials exhibit a B-29 to British Adm. Louis Mountbatten, supreme allied commander, Southeast Asia Command (far right), and his staff at an air base in India in 1944.

Constant churning of the program made it even harder to bring B-29s on line on an accelerated schedule. Even before the first test flight, military officials had ordered some 900 modifications, and they kept coming. Deliveries fell behind, and there were not enough airplanes for training.
Arnold went to Kansas March 9 to see the B-29s off to war and discovered that none of them were ready to go. The famous Arnold temper erupted in what became known as "The Battle of Kansas" and a crash program had the first 11 B-29s deploying to the combat theater by the end of March, with more to follow.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff approved Operation Matterhorn, directed at targets in Manchuria and Kyushu, the southernmost of the Japanese home islands, which could be reached from bases in China. XX Bomber Command and one of its bomb wings, the 58th, deployed to the south of Bengal state in India. The other wing, the 73rd, was held in the United States until bases were available in the Marianas.
The first commander of XX Bomber Command was Brig. Gen. Kenneth B. Wolfe, who had been in charge of the B-29 production, testing, and training program. His headquarters in India was at Kharagpur, about 90 miles west of Calcutta. Each of the 58th wing’s four bomb groups had a base in Bengal. The four forward bases in China were 1,000 miles to the northeast, around Chengtu, the capital of Szechuan Province. By May 1944, Wolfe had 160 B-29s in India.

Arnold Pushes for a Large Strike 
Modification kits followed the B-29s to India as shakeout of the new system continued under combat conditions. It was tough going. The aircraft in-commission rate in July was 27 percent and 36 percent in August.

The worst problem was the powerful Wright Cyclone R-3350 engine, which had a tendency to overheat and catch fire. Accidents, crashes, ditchings, aborts, and diversions were common events. Eventually, the original R-3350-13 engines were replaced with improved R-3350-21s.

According to James L. Pattillo, a former B-17 instructor pilot and one of the first B-29 pilots, the "engine was a disaster the first year in combat, but as [it] became more reliable, noticeable by May-June 1945, the B-29 proved to be the world’s best heavy bomber of World War II and a good, reliable airplane."

The first B-29 combat mission was not against Japan and did not use the China bases. On June 5, Wolfe launched 98 bombers from their bases in India against the Makasan railway yards in Bangkok. More than a dozen B-29s aborted, but 77 hit the target. It was officially rated an operational success but the damage inflicted was modest.

Arnold was pressing for a large strike on Japan. On June 15, Wolfe finally had enough fuel pre-positioned in China to send the B-29s, on their second combat mission, against the Imperial Iron and Steel Works at Yawata on Kyushu. They left Bengal battle loaded, refueled in China, and flew their 3,200-mile round-trip mission from there. Of the 68 bombers launched from the China bases, two crashed, 10 had mechanical problems, and nine diverted to other targets. Forty-seven of them reached Yawata, which was obscured by cloud cover. Most of the B-29s bombed by radar and there was only one direct hit on the iron and steel works. Some of the bombs landed miles away. However, the eight news correspondents who went along on the mission filed favorable reports and the new vulnerability of the Japanese islands to air attack made the front pages of newspapers in the United States.

On July 4, Arnold relieved Wolfe, who was not meeting his expectations, and the 58th Bomb Wing commander, Brig. Gen. LaVerne G. Saunders, took over XX Bomber Command temporarily. No successor was named to command the wing, which faded into the background, and, under an organizational realignment, the four bomb groups reported directly to XX Bomber Command for the rest of their time in India.

Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay, who had achieved great success as a B-17 commander in Europe, arrived Aug. 29 to head XX Bomber Command. LeMay, 38 years old, was the youngest major general in the Army Air Forces.

B-29s tasked to fly cargo missions over the Himalayas displayed their mission count with camel silhouettes. A camel symbolized a "hump." (Photo by Chester Marshall)

For LeMay, as it had been for Wolfe, the biggest drag on the operation was getting supplies, especially fuel, to the forward bases in China. Air Transport Command was running a regular airlift over the Hump to its main terminal at Kunming, 400 miles south of Chengtu. ATC had its hands full supplying the US Fourteenth Air Force and Chiang Kai-shek’s forces and was limited in the support it could give to Matterhorn. Thus, XX Bomber Command carried a substantial amount of its own cargo to the forward bases, using B-29s and three assigned squadrons of C-46 transports.

Fuel was the critical commodity. Air Transport Command did not haul gas to China for XX Bomber Command until the last part of 1944, so the B-29s had to do it. Combat B-29s could carry three tons of aviation gasoline in tanks temporarily installed in their bomb bays. Some of the B-29s were converted to tankers, with all of their combat equipment except for tail guns and basic radar stripped out. They could carry seven tons of fuel.

"It meant seven flights with a B-29 off-loading gasoline—just putting on enough gas to get back—to build up a reserve of enough gas for that B-29 to fly a mission against Japan," LeMay said.
Other supplies had to be brought forward as well, and in all, 12 round-trip flights over the Hump were required to support one combat sortie. For a time in late 1944, Pattillo was the officer in charge of 468th Bomb Group’s forward base at Pengshan. "The motor pool of each advanced B-29 base consisted of two Jeeps, two weapons carriers, and two 6 x 6 trucks," he said. The trucks, too large to load onto transport airplanes, had to be cut in half in India and realigned and welded back together in China. "I don’t remember ever seeing any emergency equipment, fire truck, [or] ambulance at a XX Bomber Command China base," Pattillo said.

The Combat Box
"On a typical mission, we would fly up to Chengtu with the bombs loaded on the plane," LeMay later recalled in Superfortress: The B-29 and American Air Power, which he wrote with Bill Yenne in 1988. "Once we had a good night’s sleep, we would give the crews a briefing, get gassed up and checked out, and we’d be off. We would fly across China in a pretty loose formation, because we didn’t get any attacks from Japanese interceptors based there. We’d make a run on the target and come back in the same way.

"We would usually loosen up on the formation coming back to save gasoline, because we didn’t get intercepted on the way back either, and anybody who had engine problems could land someplace. The main force of B-29s would get back to Chengtu and then the crews would go to bed for the night. The day after a bombing raid against Japan, we would fly back to India and start all over again. How soon we’d go back to Chengtu for a bombing mission always depended upon how much gasoline we had up there. It was at least a week, normally, but we’d make flights up there with fuel all the time."

In late 1944, XX Bomber Command received a few dozen C-109s, tanker versions of the B-24 bomber, but soon transferred them, along with most of its C-46s, to Air Transport Command’s India-China Division.

LeMay brought with him two innovations that he had introduced and used successfully in Europe: his 12-ship "combat box," which replaced the four-ship formation, the "diamond four," the B-29s had been flying, and the lead crew system, in which the B-29s would drop their bombs on signals from the lead airplanes rather than bombing individually.

"In those days, I was trying to teach my crews to bomb in formation as we had done with the -17s in Europe: Put a pattern of bombs down," LeMay said. "These weren’t green crews by any means. They’d been bombing individually at night, but had absolutely no formation training in bombing. So I set up a training schedule to produce formation patterns." He also opened a lead crew school at Dudhkundi, one of the bases in India. The crews called it "Dudhkundi Tech."

"I picked out the lead crews—not necessarily the best crews, but people I had learned would be the ones who were most likely to hit the target regardless," LeMay said. On visual bombing missions, the following aircraft in the formation took their signal from the lead bombardier. When bombing was by radar, the lead radar operator had the responsibility.

Bombing results improved. More of the aircraft taking off reached the target area in the 12-ship box formation. Even LeMay could not solve some of the problems, though. The weather over East Asia and Japan was unforgiving and the meteorological information available to XX Bomber Command was fragmentary. Accordingly, the command was seldom able to take advantage of favorable weather, which was infrequent anyway, for high-altitude visual bombing.

XX Bomber Command pounded Japanese targets in Japan, Formosa, and Manchuria. In October, the Japanese aircraft industry became the priority objective and the aircraft factory at Omura was a regular target. At the request of Maj. Gen. Claire L. Chennault at Fourteenth Air Force, the B-29s struck the main Japanese Army supply base in China at Hankow Dec. 18. They used incendiary bombs, which destroyed the military storage area and left Hankow burning for three days. It was a preview of things to come in 1945, when LeMay would use firebombs with devastating effect against the highly inflammable wood and paper structures in the Japanese home islands.

Before he left China, LeMay gained the support of Mao Tse-tung, the communist leader and the mortal enemy of Chiang Kai-shek but an ally in fighting the Japanese. Mao controlled enormous areas in the north, northwest, and east. Mao, hoping for American recognition of his regime, provided assistance to downed airmen, allowed LeMay to put a radio relay station at Yenan, and improved an emergency landing field at Yenan for the use of B-29s. "General Mao offered to build airdromes for us up in the north," LeMay said. "He told me, ‘I can construct any number you wish.’ I replied that frankly we couldn’t supply the ones we already had, down there in Chengtu."

Meanwhile, US forces had captured the Marianas. From there, the B-29s could reach targets in Japan—including Tokyo—that were beyond range from China and they could obtain their fuel from tanker ships at local harbors. The first B-29s landed on Saipan Oct. 12, and XXI Bomber Command, headed by Brig. Gen. Haywood "Possum" Hansell Jr., flew its first combat mission Oct. 28. The first strike on Tokyo was Nov. 24.

XX Bomber Command under LeMay regularly got better results than XXI Bomber Command under Hansell, but the disadvantages of operating from China were so overwhelming that in December, the Joint Chiefs of Staff decided to phase out Operation Matterhorn and transfer the B-29s and their crews to Tinian. In January 1945, XX Bomber Command stopped operations from the China bases and pulled back to India. The last mission from China was flown against Formosa Jan. 15.

Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay took over XX Bomber Command in August 1944. Despite improved bombing results, B-29s were pulled from China.

Legendary Success for LeMay
Arnold was not satisfied with Hansell and brought LeMay to Guam to replace him as commander of XXI Bomber Command Jan. 20. Pushed relentlessly by LeMay, the B-29s finally achieved their full potential in the months ahead.

Brig. Gen. Roger M. Ramey took over at XX Bomber Command, which continued to fly missions from India through March in support of the allied Southeast Asia Command. The last mission was a 29-ship attack on Singapore March 30. The aircraft and crews, assigned to a reactivated 58th Bomb Wing, moved to the Marianas to join XXI Bomber Command. XX Bomber Command, no longer operational, was finally inactivated in July.

The effectiveness of the B-29s flying from the Marianas under LeMay’s command is legendary—but the preliminary Matterhorn round in the China-Burma-India theater is relegated to a lesser place in history.
From June 1944 to March 1945, XX Bomber Command in India and China flew 49 bombing missions, a total of 3,058 sorties. To put that in some perspective, Eighth Air Force in Europe flew 62 missions, 5,353 sorties, during a comparable period of its history. The difference was not so much in the number of airplanes assigned. It was mainly because of the logistics peculiar to Matterhorn. The most frequent targets in the Matterhorn missions were Japan (nine missions), Singapore (nine missions), and Formosa (six missions). XX Bomber Command also flew more than 250 photo reconnaissance sorties.

Japanese air defenses fared poorly against the B-29s. The best Japanese interceptors could reach B-29 altitudes, but it took them a long time and most of their fuel to get there. The gun pods on the Superfortress often picked off those that got too close. XX Bomber Command lost only 22 aircraft to enemy fighters, considerably fewer than were lost in accidents.

There was not enough bombing of Japan in Operation Matterhorn to make a strategic difference. The indirect results were more substantial and included rallying the Chinese, demonstrating the vulnerability of Japan, combat testing the B-29, and the maturing of the B-29 force.

It is generally agreed that Matterhorn failed to meet its strategic objectives and was not worth the great effort and high cost. The shortcomings were not the fault of the crews, who persevered and often excelled under difficult circumstances. The Matterhorn missions that employed the main planning premise lasted only seven months. It should be noted that neither Eighth Air Force in England nor XXI Bomber Command in the Marianas achieved much success in their first months either and they did not have to carry their own gasoline over the Hump.

Hansell gave his assessment of Matterhorn at a XX Bomber Command reunion in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in 1985. "From an operational point of view, it was not a success, " Hansell said. "You just couldn’t supply B-29s over the Hump and carry on a successful campaign. But from the standpoint of strategic effect, I think it was a tremendous success. If we had not ventured upon that, XX Bomber Command would have wound up in the Southwest Pacific under MacArthur, and the XXI would surely have wound up under Nimitz, the air assault on Japan would have been postponed indefinitely, and surely there would have been an invasion, with enormous loss."

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John T. Correll was editor in chief of Air Force Magazine for 18 years and is now a contributing editor. His most recent article, "Arc Light," appeared in the January issue.

By John T. Correll

The task for the US air commandos was to insert Orde Wingate and his Chindits far behind enemy lines and support them against Japanese forces.

The British military establishment was not fond of Orde C. Wingate. He was eccentric in personal habits and unconventional in his tactics, a practitioner of irregular warfare in the mold of T. E. Lawrence—the famed “Lawrence of Arabia”—who was in fact a distant cousin.

Wingate wore an old pith helmet that he had gotten in Africa. When on campaign, he let his beard grow to save the five minutes of shaving time in the morning. He quoted Aristotle, Plato, and the Old Testament. He ate quantities of raw onions between meals and carried a small alarm clock instead of a wristwatch. Some thought Wingate a genius; others regarded him as strange and counterproductive.
In February 1943, Wingate, then a brigadier general, introduced a “long-range penetration” strategy to break Japan’s hold on Burma. He called his soldiers “Chindits,” after the lion-like statues that guarded Burmese pagodas. Wingate took 3,000 men—Gurkhas and Burmese troops—and 1,000 mules deep into the jungle where they operated inside enemy territory for three months.

A glider trails behind a C-47 headed to a landing strip in Burma.

He faced huge logistics problems. Supplies ran short, casualties were severe because of inability to evacuate wounded, and there was difficulty extracting the force at the end of the mission. Support from the Royal Air Force was neither prompt nor sufficient.

British military leaders regarded the operation as a costly failure, but Prime Minister Winston Churchill was deeply impressed with Wingate and his determination to take the offensive. Churchill took Wingate along to the Quadrant Conference of Allied leaders in August 1943. Win-gate impressed the President, Franklin D. Roosevelt; the US Army Chief of Staff, Gen. George C. Marshall; and the Commanding General of US Army Air Forces, Gen. Henry H. “Hap” Arnold. All promised to help him.

Wingate hoped to return to Burma in 1944 with a larger force and asked the AAF to resupply him by air and get his wounded out. Arnold agreed, but he had more—much more—than that in mind. “We visualized an air commando force, the first in military history,” Arnold said. “Large numbers of Allied ground troops would be conveyed by aircraft deep into Burma, and once there, they would be wholly supplied by air.”

To lead the effort, Arnold sent for the two most capable lieutenant colonels he could find. Philip G. Cochran was famous not only for his own achievements but also because he was the model for Flip Corkin in Milton Caniff’s “Terry and the Pirates” comic strip. John R. Alison had been a fighter ace with the Fourteenth Air Force Flying Tigers in China; he was widely regarded as one of the AAF’s best pilots.

Both of them balked. Cochran said he did not want to go to some “offshoot side-alley fight over in some jungle in Burma that doesn’t mean a damn thing.” Alison, who had been selected to command a fighter group in England, said, “I don’t think you need me, and I don’t want to go.”

Arnold said this was not to be just a light-airplane operation. He intended to give Wingate and his troops more than they had asked for, and to have the AAF play a larger part in the operation than the British expected. Cochran and Alison were going to Southeast Asia to develop and demonstrate a new capability for airpower, he said.

Both Alison and Cochran were promoted to the grade of colonel. They agreed that Cochran would command and Alison was to serve as deputy. The organization, dubbed the “Project 9 Task Force,” operated out of a room in the Hay-Adams Hotel in downtown Washington and from an office in the Pentagon. Alison concentrated on recruiting people and obtaining equipment. Cochran went to London to confer with Wingate and Adm. Louis Mountbatten, who would shortly become Supreme Allied Commander Southeast Asia.

The project had top priority on everything, backed up as necessary by Arnold’s chief of staff. Cochran and Alison were also freed from the usual burdens of administration. Arnold told them, “To hell with the paperwork. Go out and fight.” They took full advantage of the dispensation.

They considered various ways to insert Wingate’s force. Parachute drop would require training for the soldiers and would not work for the mules the Chindits used for transport in the jungle. Furthermore, Arnold’s scheme included building airfields, and the construction equipment could not be parachuted in. Thus Cochran and Alison built their insertion force around gliders.

The key to the operation would be the Waco CG-4A Hadrian medium glider, which carried 13 passengers and their equipment or a jeep, a quarter-ton truck, or a 75 mm howitzer. The aircraft inventory that Alison pulled together included 150 of these gliders, which would be towed behind C-47 transports with a 350-foot nylon line.

There were 348 aircraft in all, including transports, gliders, P-51A fighters, B-25H medium bombers, light “grasshopper” utility airplanes, and six experimental helicopters. The force consisted of 523 men, all of them volunteers except for Cochran and Alison.

Cochran went ahead to India, arriving Nov. 13 with a small party. He found big trouble brewing when he got to Delhi. Wingate, who did not know the extent of Arnold’s intentions, told Cochran that the campaign had been canceled for lack of transport aircraft.

This landing site, dubbed “Piccadilly,” proved unusable for landing at the last minute, forcing the entire group of gliders to land on “Broadway.”

Seen It, Done It
Mountbatten’s staff doubted Cochran could deliver all that he promised, but Mountbatten was convinced and ordered Wingate’s campaign to proceed.

Alison finished up his work in the US and reached India on Christmas Eve. The task force had been renamed the 5318th Provisional Air Unit, and by Jan. 1, all of the men and equipment were in the theater. They settled in at two sod airstrips in the Imphal Valley about 100 miles west of the India-Burma border, the transports and gliders at Lalaghat, and the fighters and light aircraft at Hailakandi. Wingate’s headquarters was close by at Sylhet.

The air commandos practiced glider tow with men, equipment, and mules aboard. The mules were stubborn about getting on the airplanes at first but they adjusted, and according to their handlers, they even learned to bank in the turns.

For the main insertion operation, the tow planes and the gliders would take off in tandem from the airstrip, but the air commandos were also proficient in a dramatic “snatch” variation in which low-flying aircraft could grab a glider off the ground. The glider was hooked to a towline, which was strung to a loop held 12 feet high between two poles.

A C-47 transport swept by at treetop level, trailing a catch line with a hook on the end. The hook snagged the loop, the C-47 accelerated, and the glider was yanked into the air. Inside the airplane, the line was attached to a steel cable wound around a drum, which absorbed some of the shock.

In January, the air commandos and the Chindits performed 16 practice snatches. In one instance, 300 soldiers and their mules were inserted by glider into a demonstration site and grabbed out again. Wingate, who was aboard the first glider snatched, had a message for the doubters: “Tell the RAF that I have not only seen it but I have done it.”

In late February, the force practiced two covert insertions with glider extraction. In one of them, a C-47 snatched two gliders off a sandbar in the Chindwin River.

Command arrangements were loose. The task force was assigned for administration and supply to Tenth Air Force in India and was under the control of Mountbatten as Allied commander in Southeast Asia. However, Cochran reported directly to Arnold by cable and the chain of command did not strictly apply.

Cochran had two letters in his pocket. One was personal from Arnold to Mountbatten, saying the task force was exclusively for support of Wingate’s force. The other was from Marshall, backing up Arnold on the task force’s autonomy. Local commanders and in-theater organizations did not like this arrangement, but they bowed, some more cheerfully than others, to orders from Arnold and Marshall.

Wingate, now a major general, had three Chindit brigades. One of them would march into Burma. The other two would go in by air. Thirteen C-47s from Troop Carrier Command supplemented the 13 the air commandos had. Troop Carrier Command also provided pilots, but all of the aircraft commanders were from the 5318th PAU because of their glider towing experience.

The aerial invasion of Burma was named Operation Thursday. It was set for March 5. The gliders would go in first, land assault teams at two airfields, and suppress any enemy forces found at sites. They would also carry engineers and equipment to build airstrips for C-47s and British Dakotas to land.

Two main landing sites, essentially large clearings, in northern Burma were chosen. “Broadway” and “Piccadilly” were named for streets in New York and London. A third backup site, “Chowringhee,” was named for the main street in Calcutta.

Since only 26 C-47 tow planes were available, some of the gliders would have to wait until the transports returned from the first wave of landings. Each C-47 was to pull two gliders. Forty gliders would go to Piccadilly, another 40 to Broadway. American and British air forces would provide transports to fly in troops after the initial glider landings.


On Wingate’s orders, Cochran would remain at home base. Alison, however, would fly one of the gliders and command the field at Piccadilly. Lt. Col. Arvid E. Olson Jr., the executive officer, would be in command at Broadway. Alison had never flown a glider before, but he made three practice landings the day before the invasion and figured he was ready.

Cochran (l) and Alison split command duties for Project 9 Task Force. Alison concentrated on recruiting people and obtaining equipment; Cochran conferred with Wingate and Mountbatten back in London.

Piccadilly Is Out
Wingate had forbidden flights over the landing sites for fear of alerting the Japanese. On the day of the mission, the air commando photo officer, Capt. Charles L. Russhon, prevailed on Cochran to approve a photoreconnaissance mission by a B-25. Cochran did not tell Wingate. The aerial photos, rush processed, were delivered to the flight line at Lalaghat where the gliders were getting ready to go and where Cochran, Alison, and Wingate saw the pictures at about 5 p.m.

There was no problem at Broadway, but hundreds of large tree trunks littered the clearing at Piccadilly from one end to the other. The gliders could not possibly land, and Wingate almost canceled the mission out of concern that the Japanese had discovered the plan and blocked the landing site. (It turned out that the trees had been left by Burmese loggers who used the clearing to dry out their fresh-cut teak logs.)
After conferring with Cochran and Alison, Wingate decided to go ahead with the mission with all of the gliders going into Broadway.

The takeoff was delayed by less than an hour. The first C-47, towing two gliders, lifted at 6:12 p.m. The transports and gliders climbed out in wide circles to gain enough altitude to cross the mountains, taking 45 minutes to reach 8,500 feet.

Broadway was 165 miles behind Japanese lines, located in a river valley within striking distance of the rail line that ran north from Mandalay. The first few takeoffs from Lalaghat were without incident, but then problems developed. Towlines broke. Some gliders had difficulty in takeoff. Some were lost. It was later determined that the Chindits, who had been caught short of supplies in the previous year’s operation, had stowed unauthorized crates of rations and ammunition aboard the gliders, which were already overloaded. Some of the gliders were carrying 2,000 pounds of extra weight. Partway through the first wave, Cochran ordered that each C-47 pull one glider instead of two.

The first two gliders cut loose of the tow plane and descended to Broadway, landing safely. The assault teams bounded out on the dead run for the most logical places around the clearing for the Japanese to have placed machine guns. They soon determined that the site was unoccupied and fired a green flare to indicate that they had not been fired upon. It was about 9 p.m.

The lead glider towed by the second C-47 was flown by John Alison. His command job at Piccadilly gone, he had joined the formation as backup site commander to Olson, and it was good that he had done so. Olson’s glider was among those that had gone down, and Alison would command the field at Broadway. Alison cut loose of the tow plane and his glider touched down smoothly at 70 miles an hour.

Wingate (l) was an eccentric, but British leaders were impressed with his determination to take the offensive. Here, he confers with Cochran.

By luck, Alison had found one of the few unobstructed paths into Broadway. The gliders behind him were not so fortunate. The site was not nearly as clear as it had looked in the photos. “From the air it was impossible for us to see large trenches overgrown with grass which crossed the entire field,” Alison said. “The natives logged teak in this area and in the wet season skidded the logs across the ground and down to the river. Many years of this operation had completely rutted this area and the ruts were covered with elephant grass and were not visible from the air. They formed perfect glider traps, and there was no way of avoiding them.

“The gliders began immediately to arrive overhead in large numbers, and when a glider starts down there is no way to stop it. As each glider would hit the trenches, the landing gears would come off, and down the gliders would go in a heap. We tried to arrange the lights to spread the gliders all over the field to avoid collisions, but this was impossible. The gliders were coming in too fast to change their directions, and glider after glider piled into each other in the landing area.” The only available radio set was damaged in landing, but the operator got it working long enough to dispatch a short message to Cochran to hold the rest of the gliders.

Alison took charge of the chaos and, incredibly, managed to get most of the men and equipment down with limited casualties. That night, the gliders delivered 539 men, three animals, and 65,972 pounds of stores, including bulldozers and lighting apparatus. Of the 67 gliders that departed for Broadway, 32 got there, 20 were lost en route, and 15 turned back.

Alison asked his engineer how long it would take to make an airfield. “If I have it done by this afternoon, will that be too late?” the young officer asked.

Within 24 hours, the engineers had cleared and prepared an airstrip 300 feet by 5,000, and C-47s were coming in. Wingate was aboard the first one. Alison, still acting as ringmaster, increased the rate of transports into Broadway to 16 an hour. Impressed, Air Vice Marshal John E. A. Baldwin, commander of the Third Tactical Air Force, said, “Nobody has seen a transport operation until he has stood at Broadway under the light of a Burma moon and watched Dakotas coming in and taking off in opposite directions on a single strip at the rate of one takeoff or one landing every three minutes.”

The Chindits spread out, tearing up Japanese lines of communication and railroad tracks, destroying supplies, and engaging the enemy in pitched battles. On the second night, 12 gliders landed at the Chowringhee backup site, about 50 miles south of Broadway. The first glider into Chowringhee was flown by Flight Officer John L. Coogan—known to the American public as former child star Jackie Coogan and ex-husband of actress Betty Grable.

Operation Thursday ran for six days and six nights. During that time, 9,052 troops, 175 horses, 1,283 mules, and half a million pounds of supplies were flown in by Troop Carrier Command, the RAF, and the 5318th—renamed the 1st Air Commando Group by Arnold. Most of the deliveries were by the C-47s. The gliders made 74 flights in all. The AAF generally regarded the gliders as expendable, which was just as well. Their loss rate was 85 percent, mostly from the first night at Broadway. The only C-47 loss was an aircraft that pranged into a water buffalo while landing at Broadway at night.

Word From Arnold and Ike
The air commandos continued to support Wingate with fighters and bombers pounding the Japanese, light airplanes lifting Chindit casualties from openings in the jungle, and other aircraft delivering and dropping supplies and providing battlefield intelligence.

Where the Chindits went, the air commandos went. Wingate made the rounds of the battle area and jungle sites regularly, and it was nearly always Alison who flew him. However, Alison was otherwise occupied on March 24 and a different pilot was at the controls of Wingate’s airplane. A B-25H left Broadway, made an intermediate stop at Imphal, and took off for Wingate’s headquarters in India. It never got there. The airplane crashed into the side of a mountain and exploded, killing all aboard.
Four days later, Alison departed the theater in response to two radio messages. The first said, “Report to me without delay,” and was signed Arnold; the second said the same thing and was signed by Eisenhower.

With approval from Arnold, Alison stopped briefly en route to confer with Eisenhower, who was planning to use gliders in the D-Day invasion in June and wanted to hear about the experience in Burma. Arnold assigned Alison to organize more air commando groups, which he did, deploying with one of them to the Southwest Pacific where he finished the war as operations officer for Fifth Air Force.

The Chindit brigades fought their last engagements in May 1944 and pulled out of Burma, mining the Broadway site as they left. Monsoon rains made the sod landing fields in the Imphal Valley unusable and Cochran pulled the air commando group back to Central India. Cochran himself departed on May 20, 1944. He went first to Washington, where he conferred with Arnold, and then on to Europe, where he served on Eisenhower’s staff.

Without Wingate, enthusiasm for long-range penetration dwindled. US and British armies in the Burma-India Theater returned to more traditional strategies. The air commandos continued to provide support in Burma, but there were no more big missions in the style of Operation Thursday. Opinion was divided about the effectiveness of the Chindit campaign. In death as in life, Wingate inspired both admirers and detractors.

However, Operation Thursday had proved that a large force could be inserted and sustained completely by air. Cochran and Alison are recognized as founders of the air commandos, and appeared together at a program at Hurlburt Field, Fla., in 1963, where they were honored as the originators of Air Force special operations.


During the six days of Operation Thursday, troops, supplies, and 1,283 mules were flown into Burma by the air commandos. Most deliveries were made by C-47s.

Cochran, in poor health, retired from the Air Force in 1945. He died in 1979. Alison had several careers: assistant secretary of commerce for aeronautics, major general in the Air Force Reserve, and industry executive as well as president, chairman of the board, and longtime national director of the Air Force Association. Alison, who will be 97 this month, is still active as a member of the AFA Senior Leader Advisory Group, and tells a spellbinding story of that moonlit night in Burma in 1944.

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John T. Correll was editor in chief of Air Force Magazine for 18 years and is now a contributing editor. His most recent article, “Over the Hump to China,” appeared in the October issue.

At the beginning of Justinian’s reign in 527, the armies of the east Roman Empire were organised into five mobile field armies and a large number of smaller regional divisions along and behind the frontier regions of the empire. The field army units were referred to as comitatenses, and were each commanded by a magister militum, or ‘Master of the Soldiers’. The five divisions were those of the east (a huge region including both the Armenian and Mesopotamian fronts with Persia, as well as the Egyptian desert front), Thrace, Illyricum, and two further corps ‘in the presence’ of the emperor (in praesenti), based in north-west Asia Minor and in Thrace to defend Constantinople – in the days when emperors had personally commanded their field troops, these had been their divisions. By Justinian’s time this tradition of personal command had lapsed, although under Heraclius in the Persian war (622–629) it was revived. The troops making up the frontier divisions and permanent garrisons were known as limitanei, mostly composed of older legionary units and associated auxiliary units, backed up by mixed corps of auxiliary and legionary cavalry to provide local reserves.

Justinian undertook several reforms of these arrangements, introducing new commands for the Masters of Soldiers for Africa and Italy after their recovery, and establishing a Master of Soldiers for Armenia out of the older eastern field command. By the end of his reign there were over 25 regional commands behind the frontiers and deeper inland, serving both as military and police force for internal matters, stretching from that for Scythia in the north-west Balkans through the Middle East and Egypt to Mauretania in north-west Africa. The real differences between field troops and garrison units were not always very clear, mainly because of cross-postings from one type of army to the other, and because so many field units were more or less permanently based in and around garrison cities.

Justinian established a strategically very important new field command, known as the quaestura exercitus (loosely translated as ‘regions allocated to the army’), similar to that of a Master of Soldiers, but whose commander was entitled quaestor. This command included the troops based in the Danube frontier zone (the provinces of Scythia and Moesia II), but included in addition the Asia Minor coastal province of Caria along with the Aegean islands. The aim was to supply the Danube divisions by sea from an Aegean hinterland and thus relieve the oppressed local population of the frontier regions and their hinterland from the burdens of supporting a large military force. In addition to the regular corps, the empire maintained substantial numbers of allied forces: Arab clans and tribes were essential to the empire’s strategic arrangements in the east, and were subsidised with food, cash, vestments, imperial titles and weaponry.

The emperors had also several guards units based in or near the imperial palace, or in the districts about Constantinople. The most important were the Schools, or scholae palatinae and the excubitores. The former were organised in seven divisions of 500 heavy cavalry soldiers. Originally élite shock units recruited largely from German peoples, they had become by the middle of the fifth century little more than parade units. In their stead as active guards the Emperor Leo I (457–474) recruited the latter, a much smaller élite unit of a mere 300 men. Imperial naval forces were relatively limited – several small flotillas maintained along the Danube, a fleet was based at Ravenna, and a squadron at Constantinople.
Imperial strategy was based on a first line of defence that consisted of a linear frontier screened by fortified posts, major fortresses and a connecting network of minor fortified positions. This was supported by a second line made up of a reserve of mobile field units scattered in garrison towns and fortresses across the provinces behind the frontier. By the end of Justinian’s reign the gap between the different functions of the ‘frontier’ and ‘field’ armies had been narrowed, for the reasons noted already, and in the 560s and 570s garrison units seem to have reinforced and fought alongside field army units. In effect, the late Roman army was a relatively expensive force of very variable quality, which consumed a large proportion of the state’s fiscal revenue each year, both in respect of cash payments, as well as in terms of equipment and maintenance in kind for troops on campaign.

The frontier was considerably strengthened from the later fifth century into Justinian’s reign as political and military priorities evolved and as new threats developed. Typical of such efforts on the eastern front is the fortress of Dara. This fortress (also called Anastasioupolis, mod. Turkish Oðuz) was built by the Emperor Anastasius I in the years 505–507, to serve as a military base on the Roman–Persian frontier, where the doux of Mesopotamia was based c. 527–532. The magister militum per orientem may also have been established there from 540 to 573, when the city was taken by the Persians. Retaken in 591, it fell again to Persian forces in 604, was recovered at the end of the great Persian war in 628, and fell to the Arabs in 639. Situated on the road from Nisibis (mod. Nusaybin) to Marde (mod. Mardin), some 15 miles north-west of Nisibis, it stood at the head of a dry watercourse which, in the winter season, flows down to the Khabur River farther south. While the terrain of the region is fairly barren, consisting for the most part of an undulating plain dissected by several shallow dry watercourses and occasional ridges, the strategic importance of Dara was considerable, since it covered a major route into Roman Mesopotamia and beyond into both north Syria or north-westwards into Asia Minor.
Defensive building in the east was characterised by fortresses such as this, and by the maintenance or construction of large numbers of fortlets and defended outposts, linked by a network of military roads, which acted to screen the desert frontier and points of ingress and egress. Under Justinian, and following the recovery of the North African provinces, a similar screen of major fortified cities accompanied by outposts, watchtowers and fortlets was established there, designed to inhibit the depredations of the Berber peoples to the south (or to police their movements within imperial territory). In Italy and the Balkans the pattern was very different. In the Balkans, because of the penetration of the Danube front by Slav groups and other raiders, and in Italy as a reflection first of the long-drawn-out warfare with the Goths and the ensuing fighting with the Lombards, no cohesive linear system was possible. Instead, the government, in the form of the local military and civil authorities, seems to have promoted the development of a dense pattern of small fortified sites which could support both local military defence and defend the interests of agrarian production and local trade. This meant on the one hand a reduction in the importance to the state of some of the major urban centres, but on the other an increase in the numbers and in the strategic and economic relevance of medium- and small-scale sites, which were generally situated in more easily-defended locations, served as local centres of exchange and production, and possibly also fiscal administration. What might be termed a medieval pattern of small, highly-localised fortified centres was beginning to evolve in response to the changed circumstances and military needs of the times.

Nine days after Suleiman had written his victory letter in Belgrade, the man to whom it was addressed set foot in Rhodes. His name was Philippe Villiers de L’Isle Adam, a French aristocrat who had just been elected grand master of the Order of Saint John. He was fifty-seven years old, the descendant of a family with a long history of dying for the Crusades. His ancestor had conducted the order’s last-ditch defense at Acre in 1291. L’Isle Adam must have been under few illusions about the task ahead. The voyage from Marseilles to take up his post had been ominous with portents. Off Nice, one of his vessels caught fire; in the Malta Channel, the Order’s great flagship, the Saint Mary, was blasted by a lightning bolt. Nine men fell dead; a crackle of electricity flashed down the grand master’s sword, reducing it to twisted scrap, but he stepped away from the scorched deck unharmed. When the ships put in at Syracuse to repair the storm damage, they found themselves shadowed by the Turkish corsair Kurtoglu, cruising offshore with a powerful squadron of galleys stripped for war. Under cover of darkness, the knights quietly slipped from the harbor and outran their pursuers on a westerly wind.

When he read Suleiman’s letter, L’Isle Adam framed a terse response, distinctly short of pleasantries and any recognition of the sultan’s grander titles. “Brother Philippe Villiers de L’Isle Adam, Grand Master of Rhodes, to Suleiman, sultan of the Turks,” it began. “I have right well comprehended the meaning of your letter, which has been presented to me by your ambassador.” The grand master went on to recount the attempt by Kurtoglu to capture the ship on which he was traveling, before concluding with an abrupt “Farewell.” At the same time, he dispatched a parallel letter to the king of France: “Sire, since he became Grand Turk, this is the first letter that he has sent to Rhodes, and we do not accept it as a token of friendship, but rather as a veiled threat.”

L’Isle Adam was well aware what was likely to unfold—the knights’ intelligence was excellent and they had been bracing themselves against attack for forty years. The early years of the sixteenth century ring with their appeals to the pope and the courts of Europe for men and money. After the Ottoman capture of Egypt in 1517, the menace of the Turk loomed larger than ever. The Christian sea began to tremble in dreadful anticipation. Pope Leo was almost paralyzed by fear: “Now that the Terrible Turk has Egypt and Alexandria and the whole of the Roman eastern empire in his power and has equipped a massive fleet in the Dardanelles, he will swallow not just Sicily and Italy but the whole world.” It was obvious that Rhodes was the front line in a gathering storm. The grand master renewed his appeals for help.

The unified response of Christendom was exactly zero. Italy, as Suleiman well knew, was a battleground between the Hapsburg kings of Spain and the Valois of France; Venice, bloodied in her earlier struggle with the Turk, had opted for treaties of friendship; while Martin Luther’s reformation was beginning to split the Christian world into fractious shards. Successive popes unceasingly jabbed the conscience of the secular potentates of Europe to no avail, and dreamed up fantasy schemes for crusades. In more lucid moments the popes bewailed the disarray of Christendom. Only the knights themselves rallied from their command posts across Europe, but their numbers were pitifully small.

Undeterred, L’Isle Adam began preparing for siege. He dispatched ships to Italy, Greece, and Crete to buy wheat and wine. He oversaw the clearing out of ditches and the repairing of bastions and the operation of gunpowder mills—and tried to stifle the hemorrhaging of information across the narrow straits to the sultan’s lands. In April 1522, the unripe wheat was harvested and the ground outside the town stripped of cover and scorched. A pair of massive iron chains was hauled across the harbor mouth.

Four hundred fifty miles away in Istanbul, Suleiman was gathering a huge army and fitting out his fleet. The hallmark of any Ottoman campaign was the ability to mobilize men and resources on a scale that paralyzed their enemy’s powers of calculation. Chroniclers tended to double or triple the reasonable estimate of a force that could be assembled and supplied for war—or simply gave up; “numerous as the stars” was a common epithet of appalled defenders crouching behind their battlements at the sight of the vast host of men and animals and tents camped outside. In this spirit, the expedition to Rhodes was put at an inflated two hundred thousand men and a mighty armada of ships, “galleasses, galleys, pallandaries, fustes and brigantines to the number of 300 sails and more.” L’Isle Adam decided against counting his men too carefully. There were so few of them, it would be bad for morale, “and he feared that the Great Turk might have knowledge by goers and comers into Rhodes.” In all likelihood there were five hundred knights and fifteen hundred mercenaries and local Greeks to defend the town. The grand master decided on a series of morale-raising parades, whereby the various companies “decked their men with colours and devices” and mustered “with the great noise of trumpets and drums.” The knights in their red surcoats bearing white crosses made a cheerful array.

When Mehmet had besieged Rhodes in 1480, he had not attended in person. He stayed in Istanbul and sent his commander. Suleiman resolved to make a personal call on “the damnable workers of wickedness.” Any sultan’s presence upped the stakes in a military campaign enormously. Defeat was inadmissible; failure by any corps commander meant dismissal—or death. Suleiman was coming only to win.

On June 10 the knights received a second letter, this time stripped of diplomatic niceties: The Sultan Suleiman to Villiers de L’Isle Adam, Grand Master of Rhodes, to his Knights, and to the people at large. Your monstrous injuries against my most afflicted people have aroused my pity and indignation. I command you, therefore, instantly to surrender the island and fortress of Rhodes, and I give you my gracious permission to depart in safety with the most precious of your effects; or if you desire to remain under my government, I shall not require of you any tribute, or do anything in diminution of your liberties, or against your religion. If you are wise, you will prefer friendship and peace to cruel war. Since, if you are conquered, you will have to undergo all the miseries as are usually inflicted by those that are victorious, from which you will be protected neither by your own forces, nor by external aid, nor by the strength of your fortifications which I will overthrow to their foundations…. I swear this by the God of heaven, the Creator of the earth, by the four Evangelists, by the four thousand prophets, who have descended from heaven, chief amongst whom stands Muhammad, most worthy to be worshipped; by the shades of my grandfather and father, and by my own sacred, august and imperial head. The grand master did not deign a reply. He concentrated his efforts on the manufacture of gunpowder.

On June 16 Suleiman crossed the Bosphorus with his army and proceeded to make his way down the Asian coast to the crossing place to Rhodes. Two days later the fleet set sail from its base at Gallipoli, carrying heavy guns, supplies, and more troops.

After an eight-year struggle with France, Charles V  was in the act of signing what he hoped would be a lasting peace. Temporarily free from the burden of war, he set off for the greatest triumph of his life: his coronation in Italy as Holy Roman Emperor, the champion of the Christian world. He departed from Barcelona with the imperial galleys under their general in chief, Rodrigo de Portuondo, to a volley of ceremonial cannon shot.

It was to prove a moment of hubris. Charles might aspire to be the ruler of the world, whose kingdom stretched from Peru to the Rhine, but on the coast of Spain he was horribly vulnerable. In the summer of 1529 there was suddenly no protecting fleet, and Hayrettin quickly knew it. Immediately he dispatched Aydin the Devil Hunter, his most experienced corsair, with fifteen galliots to ransack the Balearic Islands and the Spanish coast. Revenge centered on Valencia. After snaffling a succession of passing merchant ships, Aydin’s pirates descended abruptly on a religious festival and seized a sizeable band of pilgrims, then rescued two hundred Muslims from the same coast, and made off.

Portuondo had delivered the emperor to Genoa and was on his way home when news of this raid reached him. Spurred on by a reward of ten thousand escudos for the return of the Muslim vassals, he turned to head off Aydin. He caught the corsair’s ships, totally unprepared, beached on the shore of the deserted island of Formentera, southwest of Majorca. Portuondo’s nine heavily armed war galleys had the lighter galliots totally at their mercy; he could and should have blasted them out of the water. But Portuondo had left half his complement of soldiers in Genoa to escort the emperor, and his ten thousand escudos depended on returning the Muslims alive. He decided not to use his guns, then dithered and missed his chance. Aydin’s galliots were able to push off from the shore, catch the galleys sideways, and counterattack. The Spaniards were taken by surprise. Portuondo was killed by an arquebus shot; his flagship surrendered. Panic spread to the rest of the fleet. Seven galleys were taken in all; the eighth rowed away to tell the tale. Aydin’s fleet, now doubled in size, returned to Algiers with guns firing and flags flying. The ships had so many Christian slaves on deck, including Portuondo’s son, “that they could not move.”

It was the first significant open sea engagement against Barbarossa’s corsair fleet and it ended in humiliation. “It was the greatest loss that had ever happened to the Spanish galley fleet,” wrote López de Gómara dramatically. The Spanish chronicler, not known for his objectivity, gave a ghastly account of the crew’s fate. The son of Portuondo “Barbarossa impaled with many other Spaniards…and they say that he subjected some of the captives to a form of torment and death that was as cruel as it was new. On a flat part of the countryside he had holes dug that were waist-deep and had the Spanish put in them; he buried them alive, leaving the arms and heads exposed, and he had many horsemen trample them.” Barbarossa’s own chronicle puts it differently: “Hayrettin spread his name and reputation through all regions and countries of both the Christians and Moors, and sent the sultan two galleys, one of these with Portuondo and all the other leading Christians.” In the deeds of the great corsair, the boundaries of truth remain hard to establish.

The soldiers who might have made the difference to Portuondo’s fate were at that moment preparing for Charles’s festivities at Bologna. On November 5, 1529, Charles entered the city in preparation for his coronation two months later. It was a carefully staged set piece of imperial theatre, modeled on the triumphs of Roman emperors—an extraordinary declaration of the emperor’s claim to the terrestrial globe. Charles rode through triumphal arches, accompanied by the pope and all the notables of his domains. Musicians played, drummers beat battering tattoos, and the populace, exuberant at the prospect of feasting, shouted “Caesar, Charles, Emperor!” Charles rode in stately procession under a brocaded canopy carried by four plumed knights. His own elaborate helmet was surmounted by a golden eagle, and he carried the imperial scepter in his right hand. Among the sea of banners embroidered with the emblems of emperor and pope was a Crusader’s flag decorated with the crucified Christ. During the months of celebration that followed, the artist Parmigiano started work on an immense allegorical portrait of the emperor. It showed the infant Hercules offering Charles the globe, turned not to the Indies or his possessions in Europe but to the Mediterranean, the center of the world, and ordained to be ruled by Caesar.

In truth, the humiliation of the imperial galleys ten days earlier had revealed the hollowness of this pantomime. After twelve years of warfare with the Barbarossas, Charles’s only tangible trophies were Oruch’s skull and his crimson cloak, now displayed in Córdoba cathedral as an object of venerable dread. The Spanish position in the Maghreb was precarious; the seas had never been less safe. The Western Mediterranean was in danger of being overrun by these outriders of the Ottoman Empire. On November 15, Charles received a letter in Bologna from the archbishop of Toledo, outlining the situation in stark terms. Immediate action was now critical. “Unless this disaster is reversed,” he wrote, “we will lose the commerce of the Mediterranean from Gibraltar to the east.” Now only decisive action would suffice. He urged the emperor to construct a new fleet of twenty ships and “sailing with a great armada to hunt out Barbarossa in his own house [Algiers], for money spent solely for defence will otherwise be wasted.” The Empress Isabella wrote in the same vein. Algiers was the key to Christian peace, but Barbarossa was the key to Algiers.

There were two balancing consolations for Charles as he contemplated these letters. The first was not inconsiderable. In the autumn rain, Suleiman’s great siege of Vienna had ground to a halt. By early October it was getting cold; his supply lines were overextended and the season late. On the fourteenth of the month, Suleiman made a short entry in his campaign journal in customary telegraphic style, as if it were a detail of no import: “Explosion of mines and new breaches in the walls. Council. Fruitless attack. The orders are given to return to Constantinople.” The briefest of notes sketch a bitter retreat: “17. The army arrives at Bruck. Snow. 18. We cross three bridges near Altenburg. A considerable quantity of baggage and part of the artillery are lost in the marshes. 19. Great difficulty in crossing the Danube. The snow continues to fall.” It was the first Ottoman setback in two hundred years. Suleiman was compelled to organize his own face-saving victory celebrations for the people of Istanbul.

The second consolation for Charles was more immediate. In anticipation of Toledo’s advice, the emperor had just provided himself with the means to strike back. In 1528 he managed to steal the services of Andrea Doria, the great Genoese admiral of the age, from Charles’s rival the king of France. Doria was a member of the old nobility of the city and a condottiere, a soldier of fortune. Disillusioned with Francis I, Doria switched sides for a handsome fee, but he represented good value and would prove durably loyal. The admiral brought with him his own galley fleet, use of Genoa’s strategic port, and immense experience of sea warfare and anti-corsair activity. Doria had his drawbacks. Because the galleys were his private property, he was excessively cautious in their use, but he was by far the most astute Christian naval commander in the emperor’s domains. At a stroke the sea-lanes between Spain and its Italian possessions became safer—Genoa gave Charles strategic control of his coasts and a substantial fleet with which to defend them. It was through Doria that he intended to halt the Hapsburg decline in the Mediterranean and wage aggressive war.

Charles also buttressed the defenses on Italy’s southern flank. Since the fall of Rhodes, the Knights of Saint John had been homeless wanderers in the Mediterranean. L’Isle Adam had petitioned the potentates of Europe, one by one, for a new base from which to carry on the Order’s mission of holy war. In London, Henry VIII had received the old man graciously and given him guns, but only Charles provided the possibility of a permanent home. He offered the barren and impoverished island of Malta, south of Sicily, in the path of every corsair raid on the Italian coast. The present came with strings attached—Charles did not give something for nothing; the knights also had to defend the emperor’s fort at Tripoli on the Barbary shore. It was an unattractive prospect but L’Isle Adam had no alternatives; without a base for piracy, the Order would certainly collapse. In 1530 Charles dispatched the fateful document to L’Isle Adam, “bestowing on the Knights in order that they may perform in peace the duties of their Religion for the benefit of the Christian community and employ their forces and arms against the perfidious enemies of Holy Faith—the islands of Malta, Gozo and Comino in return for the yearly presentation, on All Saint’s Day, of a falcon to Charles, Viceroy of Sicily.” This bargain placed the knights at the very center of the sea, in the eye of a rising storm.

by Joe Corey - June 4, 2011

Timing is everything in TV. You release a series at the right moment and it becomes a major hit. Release a great series at the wrong time and it eventually becomes a cult classic with its limited number of episodes repeated endlessly. After the success of The World At War, the Soviet Union wanted to tell more of its battles with Hitler and the Nazis. From the deep of their vaults, they found millions of feet of film to create The Unknown War. Burt Lancaster was hired to be the host and narrator. Twenty episodes were produced and offered to American TV stations that had scored high ratings with The World At War.

This is when timing failed.

When it first broadcast in late 1978, America was approaching the height of the Cold War with the Soviets. They were the enemy. The outcry from historians claiming this was more Soviet propaganda than education was heard loudly. Things would get nastier when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. The documentary series vanished from the dial and didn’t have a chance of returning to American airwaves with a national impact. The Unknown War: WWII and the Epic Battles of the Russian Front brings together all the episodes without the fear of it being yanked from your DVD player.

“June 22, 1941” starts the series off with the morning that Hitler ordered his trips across the Russian border. The German army goes straight for Moscow. The sieges of Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad are captured by Soviet camera crews. There’s also footage from the Nazi army. While part of the narrative is propaganda that plays up the party line, the footage is more than worth the experience. “The World’s Greatest Tank Battle” covers the Battle of Kursk. This massive armored conflict broke the back of the German army. The episode gives credit to Georgy Zhukov for coming up with the strategy that won Kursk for the Soviet. At once point the leaders of the Soviet Union wanted his contribution downplayed. The footage reveals how afterward, the land was covered in twisted metal and decaying corpses. This is not a G-rated look at war. The series doesn’t stick around after the final victories to focus on how after the Nazis. the Americans and Soviets became enemies.

The Unknown War: WWII and the Epic Battles of the Russian Front does give an insightful view of what things looked like on the Eastern front. The episodes have plenty of exciting battle footage that take you inside the gun shots and mortar rounds. The Nazi soldiers never look too happy on camera. This is why Col. Klink feared being transferred to the Russian Front on Hogan’s Heroes. The series is captivating. Burt Lancaster has a good enough touch in his voice to explain the images. This doesn’t completely play like a re-education film ordered by the communist party. Although you might want to read a more reliable book about Soviet history during World War II afterward. If you’ve already purchased The World At War, The Unknown War is a fine compliment. It does give a view of what happened on the other side on Europe while the Allies were preparing for D-Day. If this had been released today, it’d be a big hit on The Military Channel since Russia is no longer our enemy. Timing is everything in war and TV scheduling.

The Episodes
“June 22, 1941,” “The Battle for Moscow,” “The Siege of Leningrad,” “To the East,” “The Defense of Stalingrad,” “Survival at Stalingrad,” “The World’s Greatest Tank Battle,” “War in the Arctic,” “War in the Air,” “The Partisans,” “The Battle of the Seas,” “The Battle of Caucasus,” “Liberation of the Ukraine,” “The Liberation of Belorussia,” “The Balkans to Vienna,” “The Liberation of Poland,” “The Allies,” “The Battle of Berlin,” “The Last Battle of the Unknown War” and “A Soldier of the Unknown War”

The video is 1.33:1 full frame. The transfers are taken off the video masters. There’s an occasional video glitch, but nothing too distracting or annoying. The audio is mono English. Most of the sound is created in post along with Burt’s narration. The levels are fine although you might turn it down a notch to keep the bombs from destroying your woofer.

This short-lived series at least isn’t completely short-changed when it comes to extras. Up first is an Interview with Writer & Composer Rod McKuen. This 23-minute piece lets him explain the series. Turns out that an advertising firm picked up the series from the Soviets with the scheme to sell national advertising. The other featurette is Analysis By Professor Willard Sunderland (51:33). Here he picks apart the facts from the propaganda elements in two parts. Sunderland points out how the treaty between the Nazis and Soviets was a plan on how to divide up Eastern Europe. The Nazis grabbed their territory as invaders and the Soviets occupied their neighbors as protectors. This does a fine job of explaining the omissions.

The Unknown War: WWII and the Epic Battles of the Russian Front reveals the action on the other side of Europe. The Red Army fights back the Nazis over the course of 20 episodes. The series was made by the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, but shouldn’t be completely scoffed off as propaganda. The raw footage of World War II is essential viewing since it’s elements skipped by most U.S. History classes since it doesn’t involve the Americans until the end.

Shout! Factory presents The Unknown War: WWII and the Epic Battles of the Russian Front. Starring: Burt Lancaster. Boxset Contents: 20 Episodes on 5 DVDs. Released on DVD: May 24, 2011. Available at Amazon.com.

In 1979 V Sarov started work on a much larger development of the Su-24M which had an internal weapons bay that could hold most of the weapons intended to be used by the new aircraft. Known within the OKB as the T-6BM (Bolshaya Modifikatsiya or large modification), and to the W S as the Su-24BM, this was a much bigger aeroplane than the Su-24. The weapons bay was located between the engines and the shortened engine air intake channels allowed the intakes themselves to be located below the wings under the wing roots in a similar way to the American General Dynamics F-111; tandem main wheels were also introduced. As the design progressed and the overall weight increased, concern grew as to whether a strong enough wing swivel mechanism could be designed within the specified weight limit. Theoretically it was possible to produce such a mechanism that would work effectively but, with the types of engine currently available, the resulting aircraft may have been too heavy to take-off. The Su-24BM was intended to replace Tupolev's Tu-22M3.

General Designer Pavel Sukhoi died in 1975 and his deputy Yevgeny Ivanov was not confirmed as his successor as until 1977. In 1979 the bureau's Mikhail Simonov was seconded to the Ministry of Aircraft Industry as Deputy to Minister Ivan Silaev and, while there, Simonov was impressed by TsAGI's suggestion that the Sukhoi T-4 could be developed into a long-range missile carrier (with the designation T-4MS). Following Ivanov's decision to retire at the age of 72, Simonov returned to Sukhoi as General Designer in 1983 and he instructed a team to start a new project called the T-60S, which was to be a supersonic medium range bomber based on the T-4MS. Thus there were now two project teams within the OKB competing to create the Tu-22M3's replacement - the Su-24BM based on the Su-24M and the T-60S based on the T-4. Powered by two new turbofans mounted above the rear fuselage as on the original Tupolev Tu-22, the T-60S had a delta wing instead of a swing-wing. Canards were fitted just ahead of the wing and the new design was described as 'stealthy'.

Supporters of the Su-24BM were aware of the TsAGI proposal and came to the conclusion that a radical redesign was needed if they were to win the internal OKB competition. A new layout was sketched out that showed fixed-geometry wings with large leading edge extensions, which allowed the troublesome variable geometry wing to be dropped, plus a twin tail unit and also the state-of-the-arts avionics suite destined for the T-60S. In 1983, representatives of the WS and Ministry of Aircraft Industry accepted the Su-24BM full-scale mock-up and authorised the OKB to proceed with the design but, by this time, the rival T-60S team were slowly but surely gaining ground; in due course, more resources were moved onto this more advanced project. However the Su-24BM was not terminated until the President of the new Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin, stopped all work on it in 1992.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the subsequent economic problems that followed resulted in a hiatus in military aircraft production; this situation was, undoubtedly, also a factor in the decision to abandon the Su-24BM. Since funds were scarce and likely to remain so for some time, plans for the Tu-22M3 replacement were delayed. In addition, nothing further has been heard of the T-60S, so it can only be assumed that either this project suffered the same fate as the Su-24BM or that work continues in great secrecy. Approximate dimensions for the VG Su-24BM were span with wings in the minimum sweep position 37ft 5in (11.40m), at maximum sweep 61ft 10in (18.84m) and length 78ft 11 1/2in (24.07m). The model shows a single air-to-air missile and two air-to-surface missiles beneath each wing and two rear-facing defensive cannon in the end fuselage.