TROOP-TRANSPORT BY AIR
By MERCURIUS
THE scattered contingents of German troops in Norway are dependent for their existence on the maintenance of their communications with Germany. These communi- cations are under constant fire from the Allied Navy and Air Force, and preliminary successes on their part have led Mr. Churchill to the conclusion that German hopes of main- taining supplies by sea are doomed to disappointment. There naturally springs to mind the possibility of Germany's at any rate diminishing this handicap by exploiting her mastery of the air over Scandinavia and opening up new channels in air-borne supply. We know the might of the German air-machine. Is it not possible that a proportion of it could be diverted for this supremely urgent task?
Fortunately for the Allies, aircraft margins of performance are so small that aeroplanes have, to be designed for each specific type of operation. Thus, to take the simplest example, the designer has to design a bomber to bomb and a fighter to attack the bomber, each aircraft having opposing characteristics of design and construction. This funda- mental restriction on the potentialities of the aeroplane pre- vents an Air Staff from attaining the ideal of standardisation of type.
Perhaps in no case is this necessity for a specialised type of aircraft so apparent as in that of a troop-transport machine. To be of any value it must have sufficient room in its fuselage to house men—the most extravagant cargo with regard to space that there is. This necessity for space in the fuselage in turn necessitates a fuselage of large cross- section, which results in heavy " drag " and therefore reduc- tion in speed. It will be seen, therefore, that a transport- aircraft is inefficient as a bomber, for the bomber has no need of a bulky fuselage, but has great need for all the speed it can get, and transport, though needing all the speed it can get, has a prior need for space.
Every air-force has squadrons of troop-transports, and some, like the Russian, have large numbers of such squadrons. But consider for a moment the vast numbers of such aircraft that would be required to help Germany with her Norwegian campaign if she tried to short-circuit the activities of the Allied Navy. The biggest troop-transport aeroplane in the Royal Air Force—and the British aircraft industry has specialised in big aircraft—takes no more than 22 equipped infantrymen. Fifty such aeroplanes would be needed to transport the same number of troops as is carried by a ship of modest tonnage. But the ship can also carry supplies of Stores and ammunition, vital essentials which would have to be carried by additional aircraft. And what use are a few thousand men in a major campaign such as Hitler has so rashly initiated in Norkay? Obviously, he has to think in terms of tens of thousands, and the fleet of aero- planes he would require to transport them and to maintain their supplies would number hundreds. But although he has a substantial number of bombers and fighters, it is known that he has only a limited number of troop-transports. Even the potentialities of those he has are limited by the fact that before the invasion there were only three serviceable aero- dromes in the whole of Norway. Flying boats and seaplanes are more suitable for operations in Norway, but here again Germany has too few of sufficient size to be of any decisive value in strengthening the various contingents of German troops which landed at six different places up and down the coast.
These considerations relate to the transport of infantry. For the transport of artillery, the potentialities of the aero- plane are even more limited ; and no one will deny that an expeditionary force without artillery, fighting against a well- equipped enemy backed by the heavy guns of a Navy that commands the seas, has little chance of survival. It is there- fore of the first importance for the Germans to get guns and ammunition through to their contingents. They cannot do it by sea—and they cannot do it by air. The largest load that a type of aircraft available to the Germany army is capable of carrying is' about three tons. But this does not mean that it can carry a gun or an armoured car weighing three tons. Considerations of space, hatchway-area into the fuselage, and the necessity for the avoidance of concentrated loads, very definitely limit the nature of articles that can be carried. Whereas a gun weighing three tons could not be carried, ammunition for that gun amounting to three tons could be.
The Russians get over the difficulty to a certain degree by slinging an armoured car or a gun beneath the fuselage. But though this is spectacular it is of little practical value, as in major operations too many individual loads would be needed. In the Finnish War the Russians found good use for freight-transport aircraft, but only as an adjunct to surface operations that had already taken place. They were able to drop supplies of ammunition and food on beleaguered troop concentrations, but the few attempts that they made to inviate offensive action by bringing troops up by air were unsuccessful. The Finns were always able to deal with the comparatively meagre numbers that the aircraft brought.
But these facts do not mean that there is no use for the troop-transport aeroplane. They merely show that its Po'entialities are inadequate when it is desired to rush heavy reinforcements to check heavy attacks from a better armed and determined enemy. There have been occasions when such machines have done invaluable work, for example at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, when the soldiers of the Republic were little more than amateurs. To take full advantage of this weakness, Franco wanted every trained soldier he could lay his hands on, and he wanted them as quickly as possible. The Germans therefore ran for him a high-frequency air-ferry service from Morocco, by which some four thousand Moors were carried in a few days. But, be it noted, these aeroplanes did not have to carry heavy equipment such as guns and vehicles. All that was already in Spain.
We, too, have found the greatest use for the troop-trans- port aeroplane, but only in conditions far from those that could be termed major operations. On the occasion of the rising of the Iraqi Levies, the R.A.F. carried a battalion of troops from Cairo to Baghdad in three days. On their arrival, these troops were hors de combat for twenty-four hours while they recovered from the rigours of air-sickness. An army marches on its stomach. What is not so generally realised is that its stomach has to be considered no less if the army is called upon to fly.
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