The Air Staff were correct in holding to their belief that air superiority over the battlefield would enable aircraft, including those not necessarily designed for a battlefield role, to provide all of the army’s offensive air support needs. Only at the expense of a powerful striking force for all strategic purposes, cautioned the airmen, could a specialised army support air force, entirely under military control, be provided. The soldiers disagreed. This fundamental difference in perception between the Army and the RAF over their respective approaches to fighting a combined air and land battle was an obstacle that was not to be overcome quickly. In addition to the struggle between the Army and the RAF to reach an agreed position on the function of air forces when in support of a land battle, the Army also had to find new operational procedures in order to obtain the best results from its own organic combat power. The Army’s weakness, in terms of doctrine and tactics, would be exposed again in other theatres, particularly in North Africa. In fact, throughout the first half of the war, and perhaps even longer, the Army did not know how to fight and win a modern war. Effective co-operation depends entirely on how well all of the parties involved work together. ‘The system fails if one party to it collapses’, which is what one historian, John Terraine, criticised the Army for doing all ‘too frequently in the face of the Afrika Korps’.

As intractable as the problems seemed to be between the Army and the RAF during the summer of 1940, they did not preclude genuine attempts by the two services to break the impasse and institute effective reforms. Between July and October 1940, the Air Staff gave serious attention to the problem of how best to meet the Army’s air requirements. Memoranda were written and discussed, conferences were held with the Army, and a number of exercises and trials were mounted. Perhaps the most important of these exercises was the joint army–air experiment in Northern Ireland directed by Group Captain A.H. Wann and Lieutenant-Colonel John Woodall. From 5 September to 28 October 1940, Wann and Woodall conducted a series of signals exercises and command and control trials that led to the formation of a rudimentary joint (army/air) battle headquarters equipped with direct communication links to forward troops and both forward and rear airfields. By the end of the year both the Army and the RAF would celebrate three notable achievements: the creation of a Combined Central Operations Room at GHQ Home Forces, the adoption of Close Support Bomber Controls following extensive experiments and trials in Northern Ireland and, on 1 December, the formation of Army Co-operation Command. There was reason to be optimistic about the future.

Air Marshal Sholto Douglas offered an encouraging view on the subject: ‘Army co-operation? There’s nothing in it. All you need is willingness to co-operate and good signals.’ In the end it took a little more than this to produce the well-honed procedures that gave Anglo– American armies the finest tactical air power enjoyed by any army during the war. The process had, however, begun. During the summer of 1941, more signals and command and control exercises on the Wann–Woodall design were conducted in Egypt and, along with the battlefield experience obtained in the Western Desert, much progress was made on how best to provide the army with flexible, timely and overwhelming air support both in offensive and defensive operations. To a large degree, the issues of command and control of Close Air Support were resolved. The successful co-operation achieved by the Western Desert Air Force and the Eighth Army in 1942, and the formation of the Second Tactical Air Force in the spring of 1943, attest to the accuracy and prudence of Air Marshal Douglas’s vision, as well as the laborious work of the many airmen and soldiers who overcame numerous conceptual, political, procedural and technical difficulties in their search for an effective army air support system.