So given the catalog of dangers, why would you want to fly close air support missions? Because this job provides some unique satisfactions: If you cut it too fine, you can haul back on the stick to point To juggle the need to get the target in your sights against the need to pull out in time. In a P-47 Thunderbolt or a Do 335 Arrow, or even a big German jet, you’ve got
If you’re flying one of the heavyweights in your air force’s inventory, the ground can reach up and grab you. Power and gravity combine to eat up altitude inĪ hurry, and the ground is never very far away. Even if you’re flying a relatively light and nimble fighter, your plane’s ordnance load makes it heavier and less responsive you can drop like a rock in a dive. You’ll be craning your neck and straining your eyes to spot incoming bandits, mixing it up with enemy fighters as you match your skills against skilled adversaries, but remember, this is dogfighting with a difference. Now this kind of teamwork is what you joined up to do, right? Not quite. Getting bounced from above while going after ground targets is an ever-present danger, so you and your buddies have got to take turns flying combat air patrol over the target area to keep the opposition busy while the rest of the team beats up targets on the ground. While you’re concentrating on the enemy below, don’t forget the most dangerous and persistent threat any combat pilot faces: enemy fighters attacking from superior altitude. Are those enemy troops? Are you sure the squat form of a heavy tank glimpsed through foliage is an appropriate target? You may never know for Over a crowded battlefield doesn’t give you a lot of time to make vital decisions. Skimming along at low altitude and high speed Identifying appropriate targets-now! While you’re thinking about the target, the flak, and the need to pull out before you become part of the landscape, you also need to make sure that the target you’re attacking belongs to the enemy. If you’re not both attentive and lucky, you may fixate on the target until it’s too late to pull out. Diving a heavy, powerful aircraft from low altitude makes for a thrilling pullout, if you’re lucky. By the time the rest of you approach the target those gunners are wide awake and filling the air with flak.
If you and your buddies swoop down to beat up an enemy airfield, the guy who flies through first is the lucky one, because he might catch the antiaircraft defenses off guard. In addition to reduced altitude and the hail of flak and small arms fire coming up at you as you approach targets on the ground, you have a few additional worries as a fighter-bomber pilot: STRAFING POWER OF MULTIPLE GUNS AND CANNON TOĬLOSE-FOUGHT SITUATION ADDED TO THE DIFFICULTIES TO SUPPORT THE WAR ON THE GROUND, WHILE MITCHELL, OR INCOMING BANDITS) CARRIED OUT A BLITZKRIEG POTENTIAL OF A TACTICAL ROLE FOR COMBAT AIRCRAFT, THE ALLIES TOOK LONGER TO FULLY EMBRACE THE GERMAN JETS SAW SOME SERVICE IN THE TACTICAL TO PLACE THEIR ORDNANCE WHERE IT WOULD DO VICE EVEN AS THE STRATEGIC BOMBING CAMPAIGN PRESSED MORE AND MORE AIRCRAFT INTO TACTICAL TRAL PART OF THE BLITZKRIEG ACROSS EUROPE SUPPORT, USING AIRCRAFT TO ASSIST THE ADVANCE THE GERMAN ARMY HAD ALWAYS VIEWED AIR POWER OF FRIENDLY FORCES ON THE GROUND, WHILE KEEPING MOST WERE INVOLVED IN THE STRATEGICĮSCORTING OR ATTACKING BOMBERS WAS THEIR PRIMARYĪND COMBAT IN THE FRIGID SKIES AT 20,000 TOĬAL AIR WAR IN THE WEST HEATED UP AND EMPHASIZED BY MID-1943 THE AIR WAR IN EUROPE HAD SETTLED