WHAT AN INVASION TAKES

...By ordinary conditions I mean when there is no critical objective at stake...

...But apparently we do not hold complete control over Europe...

...Well, it can mean permanent control, or it can mean temporary control...

...We have at the moment what appears to be air superiority over Western Europe...

...We had only air superiority in the early stages of the African campaign, and the fortunes of that campaign swung first one way and then the other, as one air force and then the other managed to gather a numerically greater force at a given point...

...American production has swung the balance of every combat front, and it will eventually provide Allied air forces with complete control over Europe...

...The British Are Active Air supremacy of Allied airpower over Europe is bound to come, because these scheduled bombings of Germany are doing one thing of incalculable import-steadily cutting the Nazi production of airpower machinery...

...We have reason to believe that at the present moment the Nazis have exhausted their aircraft reserve, and are now flying planes right from the factories to the combat fronts...

...These things have been published, but published in such desultory fashion as to avoid bringing the matter squarely to the attention of the American people...

...Now, don't tell me that discussion of such vital matters is poor taste and tends to produce disunity between England and America...

...It can mean the superiority in numbers and quality of plane performance to keep the enemy air forces out of a given combat zone under ordinary conditions...

...For instance, what does "control of the air" mean...

...Then American airpower began to arrive, until finally it drove the Nazi air forces out of the sky...

...In the main, this is because of the fact that the area involved is within the range of our fighter squadrons...

...As soon as that was accomplished, the African campaign moved right along to its conclusion...

...This happened at Guadalcanal and it happened again before the last shot had been fired at Tarawa...

...There is, at this moment, the most pressing necessity for all hands to understand the essential differences between air supremacy and air superiority...

...Just a note on another subject: As American airmen, sailors, and soldiers blast the Japs from one Pacific island after another, they raise the American flag over the captured points while an accompanying delegation representing the British Foreign Office raises the British flag and takes over the civil administration...

...If we invade with only the sketchy air protection of air superiority, we are walking into a holocaust the like of which the world has never seen...

...Unless the air force which is charged with the task of protecting invading land and sea forces is in actual and complete control of the air, the defensive air force will break through...

...The Allied forces had only air superiority at Dieppe, and the result was frightful...

...That disunity business works both ways and the British don't seem to consider their taking of these islands as we win them as tending toward disunity...

...Air Supremacy Vital The mobility of air forces, the capacity of aircraft to evade other air forces and concentrate their attacks on land and sea forces, has already demonstrated, and disastrously, the necessity for providing air supremacy instead of mere air superiority...

...If we withhold invasion until we have established air supremacy over Europe, and particularly over the combat zone, the manpower losses will be justifiable...

...What An Invasion Takes By MAJOR AL WILLIAMS IF THE TIMING of the invasion of Europe is in conformance with airpower lessons learned thus far, and not the result of political consideration, the grim job can be done with a minimum of blood and treasure...

...At that moment we can move our land and sea forces and begin the real invasion, with every angle for success and minimum manpower losses covered...