空權在軍事歷史(從Kitty Hawk到伊拉克)上扮演的角色.
American Air Power
The American vision of air power doctrine proved to be the winning one during and after WW2: absolute air-superiority and the denial of air force use at all times by the enemy.
How was this achieved? In WW2:
* Fuel:
Huge stockpile of 100 octance aviation fuel. Other nations had to use less pure fuel, even synthetic fuel.
* Production industry:
Aircraft industry protected by the two Oceans, safe from enemy bombardment, plus the ability to safely deliver them in quatity on time across the U-boat infested North Atlantic.
* Engine:
High performance aircraft engines. American engines were producing 2000+ hp, while the Axis engines were of smaller caliber. American engines had super-turbocharging, ie, the pressurization of air before feeding it into the cylinders. This allowed American warplanes to fly and fight at higher altitudes, choose to fight when situation is favorable, and escape via diving away.
The Axis fighters, on the othe hand, had trouble reaching the extreme heights of the US planes. When they did manage to get high enough, their plane's performance had dropped off drastically. In a dive, the heavier US planes had the advantage of either out-running their pursuer or catching their escapee.
* Weapons system:
Limitless supply of armor-piercing-incendiary .50" caliber bullets. With a hitting range of over 800 yards, unhindered firing rate (US planes had machine guns mounted on wings); the US planes have the advantage of longer range, greater piercing power, higher chance of scoring hits in deflection shots, and simply more bullets.
The Axis weapon system usually consist of 20mm cannons, one in each wing, with twin .50" machine guns firing through the propeller.
In practice, this is disadvantageous because the propeller interrupter slows the firing rate of the .50" weapons. With late WW2 planes flying at over 400mph, firing at high deflection angles, planes can literally fly safely in between shells of the bullet stream.
The 20mm cannons have a shorter hitting range of 300 yards, exploding on impact. This tears away the skin, is less harmful than the API bullets used by US planes, which can cause 2ndary explosions within the target.
In addition, the computing gun sights empowers average, competent pilots just out of flight school to approach the shooting skills of veterans.
The Axis planes used the simple reflector gun sight, which requires excellent skill and considerable experience to hit those very fast late WW2 US planes, especially at deflection angles.
* Pure numbers:
Air war in some respect is fought like traditional foot soldier vs foot soldier battles, ie, the side which out-numbers the other side usually wins.
In this respect, again the very large numbers of American planes in any given mission also gives the defenders a sense of hopelessness upon seeing the endless stream of US fighters/bombers in the air.
* Training:
As the war drew on, US airmen began to receive more hours of uninterrupted training, and can get R&R after 25 missions. Axis airmen had to fight until they were unable to fly; and their training flights can get jumped by Allied fighters too.
