'Military Lessons of the Arab Rebellion in Palestine 1936' [‎75v] (155/294)

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THE ORGANIZATION OF AIR CO-OPERATION
The Requirements
Experience in Palestine pointed, to iour main requirements of
successful co-operation between troops and aircrait;-
(a) An Air Striking Force specially organized to meet the
peculiarities of local conditions.
(b) Speedy communication with the Royal Air Force from the great
est possible number of Army detachments.
(c) A constant supply of up-to-date military information to R.A.F,
Squadrons and detached Flights, and close liaison between commanders
of troops and crews of aircraft.
(d) Constant practice in working together.
Organization of the Air Striking Force
The R.A.F. suffered as badly as the Army from the difficulty of
finding substantial targets at which it could strike. The armed band
as a rule concentrated only for attack: in defence it was concerned
chiefly in running away to live another day, it held no ground, it had
no headquarters and no communications at which to strike, and it depended
for its armour upon its elusiveness. The difficulty was increased by
the dearth of information, which prevented pre-arranged attacks being
made upon the bands and resulted in contact being gained mostly when
the enemy himself chose to attack. The combined problem therefore
was to concentrate force as quickly as possible at any point where the
enemy had shown himself, so as to strike at him before he could run
away; and the weapon most suited to do this was the aircraft. To
develop this further: what was in the main an Army problem was to make
the enemy show himself and then to indicate a target to the R.A.F. with
the greatest possible speed. The R.A.F. problem was to get aircraft
to the scene with the minimum of delay; after which the mutual problem
of both was to stop the target from disappearing before it had been
dealt with adequately by their combined efforts. The organization adopted
with a view to meeting these requirements is described in full in
Operation Order No. 8, reproduced here as Appendix XVIII.
In brief, the Air Striking Force was composed of two squadrons and
one flight of light bombers, and was based on Ramleh and Gaza with
detacned flights as Samakh and Jisr Al Majami, The country was divided
into Aircraft Zones, and a number of R.A.F. mobile wireless sets were
ms ailed in lorries (known as ’’RODEX* vehicles) and distributed widely
among Army detachments. The Rodex vehicles moved constantly all over
the country with convoys and columns of troops who seemed likely to
be ? 1 ° m ( ?r/n he targets for enem y attacks, while in addition aircraft fitted
with W/T carried out continual low flying reconnaissance of possible
poin s o con ac with the armed bands. In this way one or other
me lum o communication was usually on the scene of every chance
encounter. Immediately contact was made the Rodex or aircraft, con-
farming to one frequency of the Aircraft Zone, would send out an "XX” call,
Gal1 f0r air su PP° rt 'by the Air Striking Force.
ywjjj x 15 • / q^ aS 4 . °^ 0wed - "by a simple code - described in Appendix
XVIII - to indicate the location of the enemy, and if the detachment
^ e e nd r :rb ed + r inf ° rcins ° n the ™d y ; s well as in the air he
suooort bv y the + saine means a call, which was a summons for
support by the nearest military striking force.