The Importance Of The Blitzkrieg Operation

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General Trenchard, the first commander of Royal Air Force (RAF) (and ‘Chief of Staff’ of world’s first independent air force) also continued to develop Britain’s AP Doctrine after the war. He strongly advocated the importance of an offensive role of A. He also believed AP’s primary mission is to annihilate the enemy from the air. He also believed that if that was his strategy, it will be so for other countries as well. Therefore they needed to dedicated resources to air development. He stress that they must deny the enemy the capability to conduct strategic bombing campaign on them, but they must be able to conduct strategic bombing campaign against the enemy. Like Douhet, He also believed that Air power alone, would lead to enemy’s defeat. …show more content…
German’s "Blitzkrieg Operation" (Similar to US AirLand Battle) was made up of the Luftwaffe, an innovative combination of aircraft of speed and range, fast armor (Panzer), and infantry. The Luftwaffe entered WWII demonstrating the doctrines of ‘control of air’ and ‘support to surface forces’. Their execution was so powerful, that the Germans easily took over the countries. The Blitzkrieg Operation “was a perfect example of air power acting in unison in support of the ground forces”. The Luftwaffe focused on three primary missions. The mission of the Luftwaffe was to 'win command of the air', 'close air support', and 'interdiction'. Interesting enough, the mission of 'strategic bombing' was absents. This was a very costly mistakes made by the German high command, assuming the available twin-engine bombers could be used both in the tactical and strategic role, as they decided to take on UK and USSR. In 1940, the Germans Luftwaffe set to take command of the air over Britain, known as ‘Operation ‘Sea-Lion’ (aka ‘Battle of Britain’). Britain was able to repulse the German assault. Britain set up the ‘Dowding System’ – the creation of a ‘Centralized Air Command’. First ‘Air Defense Network’ - Radar and Observer Corps gave the British early warning of Luftwaffe raids. Early Warning on incoming raids was passed to the Fighter Command Headquarters at Bentley Priory. At one point, Germany was on the brink of annihilating the RAF (objective for ‘Air Superiority’), when they made a fatal error and changed their campaign objectives from ‘Air Superiority’ through ‘precision bombing’ on the population, to ‘break civilian morale’. Failing to ‘Control the Air’ allowed for the RAF to quickly rebuild, recuperate, and then re-engaging. Additional Lessons Learned from this battle showed that the Luftwaffe’s lack of heavy long-range bombers, which could conduct sustained strategic bombing offensive, and

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