The FACs of War, Part I
By: Norm Goyer
I was looking over my stack of log books yesterday and came across a notation I had purchased an AT-6 G which had served in Korea as a Mosquito FAC. Then I remembered that there was a FAC North American OV-10 Bronco training squadron at nearby George AFB in the 1970s. A number of their pilots had been renting our aircraft on weekends. Finally, I had found a subject for some columns; most of the FAC aircraft were of the smaller variety and many ended up being sold surplus. So here is my story on the impact that FAC aircraft have had with the Gods of War.
The Valiant Air Command Museum in Titusville, FL has this L-4 on display equipped with spotting rockets.
In case someone is wondering, FAC stands for Forward Aircraft Control. Various nations used different terms, but the results were the same. FAC target spotting, whether from aircraft or military vehicles on the ground, increased the ability of artillery, jet fighters and bombers to drop their ordinance on the correct targets. It took the military and aircraft manufacturers until the 1960s to design an aircraft designed specifically for the task of spotting targets. The new aircraft could also eliminate the targets without the need to call in other aircraft for the actual hit. The first real FAC aircraft was the North American OV-10 Bronco, a twin boom, twin-engine turboprop with outstanding visibility for both the pilot and the spotter. The cockpit canopy even had bubbles on the side so the pilot could look almost straight down without rocking the aircraft back and forth.
General Billy Mitchell outfitted his French SPAD with a crude radio for spotting duties.
The first FAC type of operations actually started with the balloon division of the Union Army in our own civil war. Hot air balloons would rise into the air near the front lines and spotters in the balloons, using binoculars, would search for enemy encampments, or activity. The observers would then spot the targets on maps for the ground troops to target. Germany also used balloons for the same purpose during World War I. By that time, crude radios or even Morse code senders would transfer knowledge to troops on the ground. These balloon spotters were considered so important they were the only ones who were allowed to use parachutes to escape burning balloons after Allied fighters exploded them.
The Vought Corsair was used for FAC duties during the “Banana Wars.”
World War I was the first war in which an aircraft was used for FAC or spotting duties. Colonel Billy Mitchell, the B-25 bomber was named after him, outfitted his SPAD with a crude radio and flew his plane over the Western Front relaying information about gun placements and troop movements. The Germans followed that by installing radios in some of their Junkers J-1 (first use of corrugated aluminum sheets for aircraft).
This is a CAA Australian Wirraway used with great success in the South Pacific.
Between the wars. Vought Corsairs (the first Corsair biplane) and Curtiss Falcons were equipped with airstream-driven generators. Their radios had a range of up to 50 miles. Another method of communication had the pilot dropping messages in a weighted container, then swooping in to pick up messages hung out by ground troops on a “clothesline” between poles. The objective was aerial reconnaissance and air attack. Using these various methods, the Marine pilots combined the functions of both FAC and strike aircraft, as they carried out their own air attacks on the Sandinistas in Nicaragua in 1927 in the so called Banana Wars.
World War II saw increased use of the FAC principals. Forward Air Control came into existence as a result of exigency, and was used in several theaters. It was a result of field expedience rather than planned operations. FACs were first used by the British Desert Air Force in North Africa, but not by the USAAF until operations in Salerno. During the North African Campaign in 1941, the British Army and the Royal Air Force established Forward Air Support Links (FASL, a mobile air support system using ground vehicles). Light reconnaissance aircraft would observe enemy activity and report it by radio to the FASL; the FASL would then call in air strikes. During Operation Barbarossa, in the latter part of 1941, circled over fleeing Russian troops in a Fieseler Storch and called in Stukas and other German ground attack aircraft on the enemy. Our US Army Air Force used what they called “Horsefly” for FAC duties. The first Horsefly FACs were launched on June 28, 1944. The borrowed Stinson L-5s had been equipped with VHF radios, were flown by volunteer fighter or bomber pilots. Squadrons were instructed that FAC missions had priority in targeting. The Horseflies operated at an altitude of 3,000 to 4,000 feet, ranging above small arms fire, roving up to 20 miles inside German lines, and marking targets with smoke bombs. To aid the strike pilots in seeing the tiny liaison craft, the upper wing surfaces were painted with one of four bright colors. Call signs were keyed to these colors: Horsefly Red, Green, Yellow, or Blue. The Horseflies saw action until the end of the European war. Horsefly losses amounted to one L-5 wiping out its landing gear in a landing accident.
Australia also used FACs to great advantage in fighting the Japanese. In November, 1942, the Australian military were fighting the Japanese. The Royal Australian Air Force was an army cooperation squadron flying support for the ground effort, in outdated two-seater CAC Wirraway trainers (Texan look a likes with fabric covered aft fuselages) using tracer bullets. One pilot, Pilot Officer J. Archer, even shot down a Japanese Zero, for the only known aerial victory by a FAC. Tracer bullets were difficult to see and made for poor target marking. This led to the Fifth Squadron’s use of 30 pound phosphorus bombs on Bougainville in 1944. During the Bougainville campaign, FACs from the Fifth Squadron directed as many as 20 Corsairs at a time in air strikes. With practice, ordnance came to be delivered as close as 150 yards from friendly troops. After World War II the FAC Squadrons were eliminated only to rise twice as necessary during the Korean and Vietnam conflicts which we will cover in Part II.
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