The escort fighter was a concept for a fighter aircraft designed to escort to and from their targets. An escort fighter needed range long enough to reach the target, loiter over it for the duration of the raid to defend the bombers, and return.
A number of twin-engined with high fuel capacity were designed for escort duties prior to the outbreak of World War II. Such heavy fighters largely failed in their intended escort role during the war, as they were commonly Dogfight by more agile single-engined fighters. As the war progressed, longer-range fighter designs and the use of allowed single-engined fighters to perform escort duties. In the post-war era the introduction of and their inherent short range made escort fighters very difficult to build. The related concept of a penetration fighter emerged briefly in the 1950s and again in the 1960s, but did not result in any production aircraft. Parasite fighters—small aircraft designed to be carried by a specialized bomber—were seen as a possible solution to the limited ranges of most traditional escort fighters. First experimented with in WWI, the U.S.-designed XF-85 Goblin would emerge as the last dedicated parasite fighter design and was abandoned in 1949 due to technical issues as well as the advent of practical aerial refueling.
The escort role has been diminished as modern air combat doctrine places a heavy emphasis on the idea of air superiority, and its importance in the ability of an air force to carry out effective operations. Air superiority is defined as a situation in which an air force dominates an airspace to such a degree as to be able to carry out any operations with no interference from enemy air combatants. Fighting an opponent with air superiority in a given battlespace is much harder, as any offensive or defensive tactics are likely to be overwhelmed.Lt. Col. Stoll, Hans G. "Luftwaffe Doctrine and Air Superiority throughout WWII: The Luftwaffe Experience." United States Air War College, 1994. p. 1.
In early 1916, the British War Office drew up a specification for a multi-seat escort fighter intended to protect formations of bombers from German fighters.Bruce 1957, p. 25. While the specification did not require high speed, a good field of fire for its guns was essential.Mason 1992, p. 67. Prototype aircraft were built – Armstrong Whitworth F.K.6, Sopwith L.R.T.Tr and Vickers F.B.11 – all three put gunners into nacelles to provide wide fields of fire. The development of effective synchronisation gear which meant smaller fighters could be equally effective led to the end of development of the designs.
As the fighters held the upper hand, raids were almost always carried out at night. During the inter-war era, this led to the creation of dedicated night bomber designs that concentrated on solving the problem of long-range navigation at night. During 1932, in the face of increasingly capable bomber aircraft, the British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin surmised that interception efforts would inevitably not always succeed and that "the bomber will always get through". Furthermore, due to a lack of precision aiming capabilities, bombers were viewed as likely to attack urban environments in general; Baldwin noted that their primary purpose would be to "kill the enemy's women and children more rapidly than they killed yours".Keith Middlemas and Anthony John Lane Barnes, Baldwin: A Biography, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969, p. 722.
This state of affairs was considered distasteful and there was some consideration given to methods to allow bombing during the day. Two ideas became popular. The schnellbomber was a very fast aircraft that would simply fly right past the slower fighters due to the Flight envelope of their twin-engine designs. This was demonstrated with great effect at multiple air races during the early 1930s, where light twins easily outperformed fighters.Ciglic and Savic 2007, pp. 6–7.Moyes 1966, pp. 3–4. However, this situation only existed for a short period until more powerful emerged in the mid-1930s and once again a single-engine fighter could catch a twin-engine bomber. The other idea was the escort fighter that would attempt to break up attacks by the defense before they could reach the bombers. To have the desired range, the aircraft had to carry a large fuel load, and at the time this demanded a twin-engine aircraft. Such a design would not be able to maneuver with the single-engine , so attention was given to outright performance.
During the Battle of Britain, the Luftwaffe used both Messerschmitt Bf 109s and Bf 110s based in France as escort fighter-bombers. Although flying from relatively close airfields in France, the Bf 109 was operating at the extreme of its range and unable to remain for long with the bombers if it was to have fuel to return, while the Bf 110, specifically designed for the escort role, had inferior performance and was easily outperformed by the Royal Air Force's Supermarine Spitfires and .Eden 2003, p. 168. In those few situations where the German bombers were escorted only by Bf 110s, the RAF fighters could simply ignore them and attack the bombers almost unhindered. In engagements where the fighters opted to engage the BF 110s instead, a relatively high loss rate for the Bf 110s was typically incurred as a result.Weal 1999, pp. 43–51.
In one famous example, a group of seventy-two Heinkel He 111's from Norway, escorted by Bf 110s, made an attack on Newcastle. The defending Hurricanes and Spitfires were able to pick their targets with complete impunity, eventually destroying eight He 111s and seven Bf 110s without loss. The raid was such a disaster than the Luftwaffe abandoned attacks from Norway and directed the remaining aircraft to France. From that point onwards, the Bf 110 was mostly withdrawn from the escort role, in part because so many had been lost that sufficient numbers could no longer be fielded in the short term; when it did return, it was largely used as a light bomber,Weal 1999, pp. 50–51.Bergstrom, Dikov & Antipov 2006, p. 67. and night fighter instead.Treadwell 2003, p. 76.
At the same time, the newly formed Bomber Command developed their plans with the assumption that there would be no escorts. This was due to a combination of factors. One was the belief that improved navigational technique would allow the night bomber force to attack point targets. Another was that immediately before the war, new and much larger aircraft like the Vickers Wellington were arriving that mounted heavy defensive armament. This convinced some in Bomber Command that daylight raids would not require escorts.
The concept of daytime raids quickly ended after the disastrous air battle of the Heligoland Bight, in which a force of 22 Wellingtons lost 12 aircraft to German fighters as they attacked warships in harbour. For the rest of the war, the RAF was convinced night bombing was the only survivable strategy and this opinion was not seriously reconsidered. Both Fighter and Bomber command evolved doctrinal arguments against escorts, even after photoreconnaissance versions of the Spitfire were flying deep into Germany at ranges that would allow them to escort daytime bombing.
During the preparations for the Big Week offensive, the USAAF asked the RAF to consider how to carry out daytime bombing with Spitfire escorts. Fighter Command claimed this was impossible, making several highly questionable calculations to "prove" this. This led to two Spitfires being shipped to Wright-Patterson where many new fuel tanks were added without major effects on performance. Their now excellent range was demonstrated by flying them back across the Atlantic to England. In spite of this demonstration, Fighter Command was slow to consider such adaptations and was not until well after Pointblank was concluded that final sign-off was given, at which point they saw no need for such conversions.
In the early stages of the US efforts, bombing runs often took place without escort fighters. German fighter pilots were scrambled to deal with these raids, and soon learned that it was much easier for them to take out formations which were unescorted as opposed to those who were escorted. As a result, fighters would attack bomber formations that were on long-range operations, as they would not have escorts with them. They quickly determined the point at which the fighters would be forced to turn around and massed their fighters just beyond that point.
USAAF bomber losses gradually increased, and experimental "gunships" like the YB-40 did nothing of significance to reduce them.Levine 1992, p. 90. This culminated in the disastrous Second Raid on Schweinfurt on 14 October 1943, in which 26% of the attacking force was either destroyed or written off due to damage.Cate & Craven 1983, pp. 704–05.
This forced the United States Army Air Force to come to the conclusion that their B-17 bombers needed to do something to reduce losses, and that escorts had an appreciable benefit in reducing the rate of losses, particularly as the intensity of German interception efforts had grown substantially,Bowman 2002, p. 7. to the point where unescorted bombing missions came to be discouraged.Weigley 1977, p. 339. This realisation eventually led to the development of long range escort fighters.Major Lesher, Lee A. "The Evolution of Long-Range Escort Doctrine in World War II" United States Air Command and Staff College, 1988. p. 6. A series of unrelated developments had left the US in the position of being able to quickly address this need. Prior to their entry into the war, the USAAF fighter forces were interested in and developed a series of cannon-armed aircraft, among which, the Lockheed P-38 Lightning was large enough to also have a large fuel capacity. Unlike earlier twin-engine designs like the Bf 110, the Lightning proved to be competitive with the German fighters it faced, permitting it to be easily adapted to the escort role through the use of .Johnsen 2003, p. 75.Caidin, Martin. Fork-tailed Devil, New York: Ballantine Books, 1983. . On 3 March 1944, the 55th Fighter Group flew their P-38s over Berlin.Bodie 2001, p. 223.
Further adaptations quickly followed. The Republic P-47 Thunderbolt mounted a powerful engine that allowed it to carry large loads. This made it suitable in the fighter-bomber role, as well as giving it the ability to carry large fuel tanks. "Republic P-47D Thunderbolt". Museum of Flight. Retrieved: 12 July 2006. Finally, the extremely high efficiency of the laminar-flow wing on the Merlin-powered North American P-51 Mustang gave it unparalleled range even on internal fuel, and with external tanks, it could cover most of Europe. Although not designed for the escort role, the P-51 remains the canonical example of the class.Boylan 1955, pp. 155–56.Sherman, Steven. "Aces of the Eighth Air Force in World War Two." Ace pilots, June 1999. Retrieved: 7 August 2011.
Whilst projects for dedicated escort fighters such as the XF-85 Goblin came to nothing, the advancement of technology and the nature of warfare of the wars being fought allowed the role of fighter escort to gradually merge with fighter types, so the term fell out of use. During the Korean War, the Lockheed F-80 Shooting Star and later the North American F-86 Sabre escorted B-29 heavy bombers and Republic F-84 Thunderjet .McLaren 1998,
Although the North American XB-70 Valkyrie Mach number 3 bomber, was intended to be immune to enemy attack due to its speed,Spick 1986, pp. 4–5.Pedlow and Welzenbach 1992, p. 9. North American Aviation briefly proposed the North American XF-108 Rapier interceptor for the escort role. In this case, the term "penetration fighter" was used, as the aircraft was not expected to actually escort the bombers, and was instead intended to fly into Soviet airspace well in advance of the bombers and attack the Soviet interceptors long before they could approach the bombers.Robert Lyons Jr., "The Search For An Advanced Fighter" , US Air Force Air Command and Staff College, 1986 "Fact Sheet: North American F-108A Rapier" , National Museum of the United States Air Force
With the development of , particularly surface-to-air missiles, plans for dedicated escort fighters designed to escort gradually faded from the scene. Missile technology meant that interceptors would rarely engage bombers directly, if ever, and the escorts could do little against missiles. At the same time, the advancement of land and submarine-based ballistic missiles relegated bombers to a lower importance – they became just a single element of the nuclear triad in the US, and largely ignored entirely in the USSR. Furthermore, with the concept of mutually assured destruction high on the political agenda throughout the Cold War, a nuclear exchange became ever less likely, leaving existing fighter designs more than adequate for their protection in the wars being fought. In Vietnam for instance, McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom IIs and sometimes Vought F-8 Crusaders escorted the American bombers such as Boeing B-52 Stratofortresses, Republic F-105 Thunderchiefs and Douglas A-4 Skyhawks. In some cases the missions of F-4 were "mixed", when some F-4 were equipped with bombs, and some F-4 acted as escorts (similar cases occurred with F-8).
The development of the multirole fighter, such as McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet, also decreased the need for escorts, as the aircraft on air strike mission became capable of effectively defending themselves.Jenkins 2000, p. 19.
During the 2010s, the US Air Force was in the early stages of developing a new fighter intended to operate as an escort for the next generation Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider strategic bomber.
In US Army Air Force service
Cold War
Modern era
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> "current escort and call girls situation in mumbai". The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance: The U-2 and OXCART Programs, 1954–1974. Washington, D.C.: Central Intelligence Agency, 1992. No ISBN.
See also
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