The mention of Korea brings an interesting angle to the topic, as in my view this was a very similar scenerio to the percieved situation for the late Pacific war and RAF Tiger Force.
Korea seemed to prove that lack of very long range or lack of suitable landbases can render a complete force as useless, RAF landbased bomber and fighter aircraft where conspicous by their abscence, with the RN carrier combat fleet, RAF flying boats, and transports being the main British contribution to the war.
RAF long enough range and flight refuelling hadn’t been advanced at all at that stage.
AKs mention of the SARO SR.A/1 suddenly makes some sense when you look at that scenerio, the fast flying boat fighter (sometimes forgotten how good an aircraft it actually was) working along side Seafords and Shetlands out of sea bases.
The Tiger Force situation strikes me as fairly unusual in being such a huge push (in development and orders) for deployed equipment old and new for one particular theatre of operation, interesing that most of it was cancelled, only for their to be a second massive rearming drive mainly fuelled by the Korean war.
Some 30 years later the Falklands proved how important range with AAR and the use of landbases was, with initially only very long range RAF types being used for surveilance, followed by a massive push to equip (and in some cases refit) inflight refueling systems to Nimrods, Hercules, Vulcans etc, while RN Carriers (with partial equiping of RAF Harriers)were being relied on to provide the combat and strike aircraft.
The capture of a relatively intact runway was vital to maintain the effort combined with building a post conflict defence point at MPA.
BTW, I thouroughly recommend taking up JDKs’ kind offer in post #6:)
Sign In
