Airborne: A Guided Tour of an Airborne Task Force

This is not to say that these other missions are not vitally important. They are. So much so that precedent was recently broken when the head of the USAF’s Air Mobility Command, General Ronald Fogelman, was elevated to the job of Air Force Chief of Staff. In a way, it was a reward for the unprecedented job that AMC had done in supporting (and in some cases rescuing) the foreign policy initiatives of the Clinton Administration. I would like to believe, though, that it was a recognition that there are other things of importance that airpower can deliver besides killing power on enemy aircraft and cities. AMC and the support communities within the USAF’s Air Combat Command (ACC) deliver a huge boost to the missions of services other than the Air Force. From hauling Army paratroops, to refueling Navy and Marine tactical aircraft, and providing close air support for Allied ground troops, these aircraft and their crews are perhaps the most powerful part of America’s empire of airpower.

Back in the first chapter, I spent a considerable amount of space and time explaining the development of transport aircraft and their importance to airborne warfare. This is a vital introduction, for without the cargo aircraft to fly them off to war, airborne units would not even exist. While these statements are patently obvious, their real significance to the concept of strategic mobility goes far beyond the single act of letting paratroops jump out to do battle. Transport and support aircraft are the trucks of the sky for the U.S. Air Force. This mission alone would justify the significant part of the federal budget that has been spent on transport aircraft. Still, as USAF leaders have often pointed out to me, without the Air Force, airborne units are just well-trained infantry with a bad attitude. Even Army airborne troopers would concede that this is true.

Inter-service rivalries aside, the history of Air Force support for Army airborne and ground operations is both long and distinguished. Historically, it has primarily centered on transporting airborne units to their drop zones (DZs), and then resupplying them until follow-on forces arrive to relieve them.

This simple description is fraught with risk and danger, though. By their very nature, anything that does not help get transport aircraft into the air is a waste of potential payload. Adding armor and self-sealing gas tanks to a cargo airplane would only take away from its primary mission: moving people and stuff by air. So when transport aircraft go into harm’s way, they do so with very few of the survival features that would allow them to stand up to surface-to-air missile (SAM) or antiaircraft artillery (AAA) fire.

The history of airborne operations is replete with stories of transport crews piloting their burning aircraft and sacrificing themselves so that they could deliver their loads of troops and supplies onto their DZs. The British drop on Arnheim during Operation Market Garden in September of 1944 resulted in a fistful of Victoria’s Crosses for transport crews. Similar decorations have been the norm for U.S. transport crews in operations from Sicily in 1943 to Khe Sahn in 1968. While some fighter and bomber general might see transport crews as just glorified airline personnel, they do a vital, unloved, and sometimes downright dangerous job.

Another group of Air Force personnel looking for a little respect are those that fly close-air-support (CAS) and forward-air-control (FAC) aircraft. From the point of view of the 82nd’s paratroopers, you could not want a more important group of people over your head in a fight. The men and women who fly FAC/CAS planes are the flying eyes and artillery of the airborne task force. Ever since the Marine Corps first came up with the idea of dedicated front-line air support, ground troops have turned their eyes skyward, and prayed that the planes overhead would be theirs. Today, the airborne troopers of the 82nd have to depend on CAS/FAC aircraft if they are to succeed in their mission.

In this chapter, we’ll try and show you some of the machines flown by the U.S. Air Force to support the troopers of the 82nd: the C-17 Globemaster III and C-130 Hercules, which haul the people and cargo; the KC-10 Extender deployment tanker; and the A/OA-10 Thunderbolt/Warthog, which provides the airborne with FAC and CAS services. In doing so, I hope that you will gain some insight into why they are both necessary and essential to our national interests, and to the brave men and women of the 82nd Airborne Division.

Warthog: The Fairchild-Republic A/OA-10 Thunderbolt II

I take back all the bad things I have ever said about the A-10.

I love them! They’re saving our asses!

— General Chuck Horner, USAF Press Briefing, Desert Storm, January 1991

Officially, it’s called Thunderbolt II, recalling the heritage of one of the great American propeller-driven fighters of World War II, the powerful Republic P-47 Thunderbolt. But in the Air Force everyone calls it the Warthog, recalling a mean-tempered and extraordinarily ugly African relative of the pig. With perverse pride, A-10 pilots and ground crews shorten this to “Hog,” a name and attitude that they love. Like the similarly named offensive line of the Washington Redskins, they and their airplanes are the “bad boys” of the USAF. Hog drivers and their steeds take the abuse and compliments that result with their own special attitude. Few aircraft in aviation history have been subject to so much ridicule as the Warthog. You often hear jokes like: “The only Air Force jet vulnerable to bird strikes from the rear.” “The airspeed indicator is a calendar.” “Above five hundred feet the pilots think they need oxygen.” “It’s got the radar cross section of Mount Rushmore.” For all of these put-downs, the A-10 is one of the finest CAS aircraft ever built, perhaps the best of all time.

A quick review of 20th century warfare shows that close air support (CAS) has been one of the most decisive and direct uses of airpower. Perhaps not as sexy as shooting down enemy fighters or dropping laser-guided bombs, but to ground troops certainly the most personal and useful to them. Direct use of aircraft to support ground operations date back to the American Civil War (1862) observation balloon ascents of Professor Thaddeus Lowe during the Peninsula Campaign. Interestingly, the first use of CAS was by the United States Marine Corps (USMC) during their “Banana Wars” in Central America in the 1920s. In fact, it was the observation by Germans of early USMC CAS tactics that led to their adoption by the new Luftwaffe. By the outbreak of World War II, the Germans had made CAS into a virtual science, and the planes designed for this unglamorous mission became some of the stars of combat aviation history.

CAS was one of the keystones of the German Blitzkrieg (literally “Lightning War”) doctrine early in World War II. During the first year of the war, the famous JU 87 Stukas (from the German word Sturzkampfflugzeug or dive bomber) and other bombers operated as flying artillery for the early conquests of the Wermacht. By the summer of 1940, though, they were decimated by modern British fighters like the Hurricane and the Spit-fire. A year later, when the Germans faced the Red Army’s increasingly powerful tanks, they discovered the limitations of dive bombing. On the fourth day of the Operation Barbarossa (Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941), a force of thirty-six Stukas attacked a concentration of sixty Soviet tanks, scoring only a single kill against the armor. What had happened was that the blast/fragmentation bombs the Stukas were using needed a direct hit to destroy an armored vehicle. The technology of modern antiarmor cluster munitions was years in the future. Clearly, new tank-busting weapons were needed to penetrate the thick armored hides of Russian tanks and again make CAS aircraft a viable force for the Luftwaffe.

One of the most attractive options was mounting heavy, tank-busting cannons (with armor-penetrating shells) on tactical aircraft. By 1942, the Luftwaffe had deployed the new JU 87G-1 version of the Stuka, equipped with a pair of pod-mounted 37mm cannon slung beneath the wings. The centerline bomb rack of the JU 87G-1 was retained, but the dive brakes were deleted, since very steep dives were not required to hit and penetrate the vulnerable top, side, and rear armor of tanks like the Russian T-34. The new cannons proved highly effective, and some pilots began to rack up amazing scores. Stuka pilot Colonel Hans-Ulrich Rudel was credited with some 519 tank kills and destroying a 26,000-ton Russian battleship. When a single flyer can demolish a whole Soviet Guards Tank Army (and a battleship!), you’ve really got a “force multiplier.”

By the end of the war, the Luftwaffe had fitted antitank guns as large as 75mm in purpose-built CAS aircraft like the heavily armored, twin-engine Hs 129B. Only twelve of the big 26-1b/11.8-kg 75mm shells were carried by each Hs 129, but pilots were trained to fire four-round bursts at 500 meters/547 yards, where it was hard to miss. No tank of the era could take the pounding, and thousands of Soviet tank crews paid the price.

The Luftwaffe also paid a high price for their CAS efforts. One of the toughest lessons learned was that conducting CAS operations in airspace that you do not fully control results in heavy losses to enemy fighters and