Exercise Cupola
By E. COLSTON SHEPHERD WESTERN Europe's air defence can be considered as launched by last week-end's exercise. It has still to be equipped, especially with communications. That, as Air Chief Marshal Sir James Robb said after Exercise Cupola, is a political matter. The Air Staff of the Brussels Treaty Powers can see to the training, co-ordinating and organising of four air forces but it can only advise the four governments, through the Chief of Staffs Committee, as to what must be done to turn an efficient machine into and effective defence force. One thing which Exercise Cupola has done is to unveil for the benefit of a number of Ministers the mysteries of detecting, identifying and tracking enemy aircraft and of directing fighters to their interception. Perhaps no process in warfare is more intricate or more dependent on a complete communications network of the highest quality. Many a Minister in Western Europe had no clear understanding of this until he watched the wheels go round in operations and control rooms last week-end.
The educational purposes of the exercise had not been expected to go so far. They aimed chiefly at practising the nationals of four countries in combined air defence operations on a standard pattern. The pattern accepted was the British. To make sure that there should be no slip in transplanting it, the operational language was English or more precisely R.A.F. English pre- served gen-like in all its Battle of Britain terseness and lucidity. Slips were to be heard occasionally as one listened in on the radio channels. They were mostly slips in rendering figures into English. They may have originated with radar operators or in filter rooms or at control centres. They were usually put right in time, like the 12,000 ft. height which was changed to zz,000 ft. soon enough for a Dutch squadron to intercept. The important thing was that the thousands of men engaged were getting some real practice and seeing how their small or big cogs fitted into the machine.
Another thing which the exercise sought to do was to make sure there were no gaps at the joins in the fighter screen. French and Belgian fighters, for instance, could expect to continue an engagement over each other's territory. The British pattern covered this by providing a technique for handing over the control of aircraft in the air from one sector to another. West- ern Union had to supply the same need, not only inside one country but also across two sets of frontiers. Those frontier links between France and Belgium and between Belgium and Holland had to work smoothly.
Increasing efficiency is often the way in an exercise. The rate of interception in Exercise Cupola rose at such a speed as to prove the value of practice and test. There was one station in France from which 18 sorties were made on the first day, with only one interception to reward them. On the second day there was one interception to every six "sorties and on the third day, one for every two sorties. So far as I could gather, the average interception rate did not rise above that 5o per cent along most of the 5 oo-miles front. The Dutch may have done a little better than that. By all the laws of probability they should have done worse because they had so little opportunity for pursuit when once a raider has crossed their frontier. The Dutch secret was largely that of good communications added to an immense zest for doing the job the R.A.F. way. Given the basic keenness, the network of telephone lines is clearly the key to success.
When the telephone system failed to paint the complete picture for a controller, one could watch him using the air dis- cipline and flexibility of his fighter units to clarify it. Listening to the interchanges between a controller and a British squadron in the air near Paris one was able to imagine a plot being corrected in the control room with the help of air observation. At that moment there were three sets of aircraft to be sorted out. An attack by Wellington bombers had come in and was being engaged by French Vampires. Meanwhile a squadron of R.A.F. night-fighters had been let into the area to land in readiness for the night's operations. A third report of enemy aircraft approaching from the east had evidently been received from the radar chain. The British squadron was first put on a course which brought it close to the French. Vampires already engaged with the Wellingtons and quickly the leader reported Vampire, ahead. He was promptly switched 15o degrees. Again he obligingly reported seeing the Mosquito night fighters, and finally he was switched by the controller another i to degrees, apparently to meet the last-detected raiders.
Searching and tracking is the work of the ground organisation. If 'the ground organisation is incomplete the controller's picture of the situation in his sector .is also incomplete and precious . minutes may be lost in directing the fighters to the kill. There should not be two false starts to an interception ; and most of the responsible people who took part in this exercise now know how false scents can be followed unless they are properly iden- tified and plotted in the control room. The value of Exercise Cupola in bringing out facts like that must be set high, because it pointed out how national responsibility can make or mar the effectiveness of a combined air defence.
The fighter squadrons of the Western European air defence seemed in excellent shape. Uniform methods of training has apparently not conflicted with national peculiarities, perhaps because so many of the squadron commanders had served with the R.A.F. The Dutch squadrons, in particular, had acquired the knack of the quick take-off, assembly and climb on course, and of slipping in around the corner for landing to avoid delaying the next formation's take-off. The French and the Belgians too had got the hang of this fast-moving game and brought to it a high spirit. Their ground crews also compared well with those of their companion squadrons from England. As a beginning of Western Europe's air defence, the exercise was heartening. The unity achieved by the joint air staff at Fontainbleau is assuredly percolating to the other layers of air defence.
Early in the exercise, the French Air Ministry issued a bulletin in which the size of the fighter force was given as 300 front-line aircraft. When Germany was defending roughly the same frontier from the other side, she had at least five times that number of front-line fighters. Western Union cannot expect to apply any type of magic to step up its fighter force. If it should ask for United States jet fighters, it would have to extend many of its aerodromes and lengthen most of its runways. This is sometimes as costly as building at home the new fighters it may need. The French have had this impressed on them when they saw British jets at Coulommiers tearing up the runway which had been made for the Germans—and therefore made a little perfunctorily. But if the money is available, expansion can be fast and need not be restricted to types of aircraft now in production. In Sir James Robb's view, training of both air and ground crews can go along at a good pace if the necessary provision is made in the respective countries, even though a year is needed to turn out a good fighter pilot and about nine months for a good member of a ground crew. Some impetus should have been given to air force expansion by Exercise Cupola, for it showed in the highest light that joint air defence on common standards and a common plan can be made to work. There had already been some reaction in the spheres of air defence to the happen- ings in Korea. This joint exercise has come just at the right time to convince the Brussels Treaty Powers that there can only be economy in unity if there is no cheese-paring in the contri- butions put into the common pool. Last week-end interceptions were seen in progress. In Holland and Belgium they were quite close to the frontier. Ili France they were both at the frontier and near the inner arc of the air defences. As the defence system is developed that pro- jection of the fighter screen beyond the frontier which the R.A.F. used in the Battle of Britain will become possible. ' Wester,. Union air defence is certainly launched. How it fares wit depend on how it is equipped.
Previous page
