Abstract
Even before the Second World War ended, the lines were being drawn for a number of less intense conflicts of a kind that were to become all too familiar in the nuclear age. Some of these campaigns were large scale civil wars like that in Greece from 1945–57: others were local rebellions on a smaller scale, such as the Huk campaign in the Philippines. But as far as air power was concerned, the most significant conflicts were to be found among those fought by the European powers as they sought to resist or to delay the process of decolonisation in their overseas territories.
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Notes and References
Bernard B. Fall, Street Without Joy — Insurgency in Indo-China 1946–63, rev. edn (Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole, 1965).
Quite extensive fighting had taken place before this, and for example as early as March 1946 a force of 1,400 rebels at Takhek on the River Mekong in Laos. The assault was supported by artillery as well as by the JU-52s and four Spitfires. The bombs and cannon of the Spitfires broke the enemy resistance at a critical stage of the battle leading to the dispersal of the rebel force and the capture of 150 prisoners. General L. M. Chassin, Aviation Indochine (Paris: Amiot Dumont, 1954) pp. 59–60.
Joseph Buttinger, Vietnam; A Dragon Embattled (New York: Praeger, 1967).
Chassin, op. cit., pp. 93–4 and Robert B. Asprey, War in the Shadows (London: Macdonald & Jane’s, 1976) p. 764.
Bernard B. Fall, Hell in a Very Small Place (London: Pall Mall, 1967) p. 24.
Bernard B. Fall, The Two Vietnams (London: Pall Mall, 1963) p. 122.
Jules Roy, Battle of Dien Bien Phu (London: Faber, 1965) p. 143.
For comparison, during one of the heaviest USAAF raids on Berlin in the Second World War, on 3 February 1945, 2,022 tons of HE and 244 tons of incendiaries were dropped. During the Korean War, a total of 386,000 tons of bombs had been dropped, and 313,600 RPs and 166,853,100 rounds of ammunition discharged. Futrell, The United States Air Force in Korea (New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1961) p. 645.
General Clutterbuck, The Long, Long War (London: Cassell, 1967) p. 160–1. Compare this with the US technique in Vietnam.
The techniques are well described by MRAF Sir John Slessor in The Central Blue (London: Cassell, 1956).
See General Frank Kitson’s book Gangs and Counter-Gangs (London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1960) for a full account of these operations.
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© 1985 Sir Michael Armitage and R. A. Mason
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Armitage, M.J., Mason, R.A. (1985). Air Power in Colonial Wars. In: Air Power in the Nuclear Age, 1945–84. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17964-0_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17964-0_3
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