THUS THE SECOND WORLD WAR ENDED FOR HUNGARIAN airmen in a manner very much like the First World War and the 1919 intervention. It was not just the ending that was familiar. In many ways, the experience of the MKHL was remarkably similar to that of the Habsburg LFT. That this would prove to be so might have come as a surprise to readers of MKSz in the mid-1930s; it certainly was not the outcome that Ferenc Szentnémedy had led them to expect. Szentnémedy had predicted a Douhetian future of unrestricted air warfare, in which the heart of the enemy was laid open to direct attack by fleets of bombers impervious to air defense, and capable of destroying the adversary’s will to resist. As it happened, the closest Hungarian bombers ever came to a strategic attack was the two-day retaliation campaign against Stanislau and Strij. The MKHL, like the LFT and the VR, was a tactical air force whose primary missions were air defense, aerial reconnaissance, and battlefield interdiction. In the chaos that followed the 1918 dissolution of the imperial army, Hungarian airmen had deliberately stressed continuity in creating the first national air service. During the lean years that followed, visionaries among them had argued for something far removed from the First World War field aviation model: an independent air force with the organizational and operational autonomy to pursue a war-winning strategy. The airmen won the argument, for a time, but their inability to fulfill the promise of air power resulted in a service subordinated to its own army, and eventually its patron’s air force. This was something of a regression to the mean, yielding continuity in spite of plans to the contrary.
Hungary’s failure to develop an air force capable of effective independent operations is entirely predictable, even natural, given its strategic context and economic capabilities.1 Hungarian foreign policy during the Horthy era had one goal: the reclamation of the territories lost after the First World War. Successive governments agreed that this objective required rearmament and military expansion, including the development of a capable air force. Notions of massive bomber fleets spreading through continental popular culture had begun to take root in Hungary, and the idea of an autonomous air force was not anathema to Hungarian political leaders. Unrestricted air war did not suit Hungary’s strategic context, however, and, if attempted, could have been counterproductive. Hungarian revisionism, even in its maximalist form, had fairly limited aims—it required only the reoccupation of contiguous territories sliced away at Trianon. Aerial destruction of Prague or Bucharest might have been satisfying to consider, but it would have been a strategic disaster, inviting certain Western retaliation. That an air force was expressly prohibited by treaty did not dissuade Hungary from trying to protect and expand its air service, but it did place sizable obstacles in its path by severely limiting its ability to purchase, produce, or operate military airplanes.
The creation and sustainment of an air force that could conduct strategic bombing campaigns was also beyond Hungary’s economic capability. The worldwide economic crisis of the early 1930s had hit Hungary late, but hard, erasing the financial gains realized in the late 1920s. Lack of capital and collapsing commodity prices left Hungary unable to finance further large weapons purchases. Only Mussolini’s willingness to extend arms credits to Horthy’s regime allowed Hungary to slowly modernize and expand its clandestine air service. It was not until the institution in 1938 of Imrédy’s Győr program that Hungary’s rearmament was domestically funded, and its billion pengős were raised from internal loans and a one-time wealth tax—hardly a formula for a sustainable defense buildup. Hungary possessed large deposits of bauxite and some oil, but these industries were underdeveloped until German wartime investment financed their expansion.
Hungary also lacked the scientific and technical mobilization required to create a strategic air force. Habsburg factories had not been able to provide sufficient airplanes for the LFT in the First World War, and the situation had not improved for an independent Hungary in the intervening years. The country had neither the established aircraft manufacturing capacity nor the raw economic strength required to create one from scratch. It did have a few industrial concerns, such as WM and MÁVAG, that could produce foreign designs and make incremental improvements, but even those production lines, subsidized by foreign credits, could not sustain the MKHL losses in combat. Air power, perhaps more than any other form of military strength, requires a strong industrial base. No country, with the possible exception of present-day Israel, has been able to become even a regional air power without manufacturing its own combat airplanes in substantial numbers. As Hungary’s experience with both Italy and Germany shows, reliance on foreign producers can lead to inopportune interruptions in the supply (as when Berlin held up deliveries of He 112s to Budapest, but fulfilled Bucharest’s order) or to on-time delivery of inadequate machines (the returned Ca.310s). Kálmán Csukás, who later commanded 1/1 Fighter Squadron and was killed at Ilovskoje, recognized in March 1940 the difficulties that a small country would face in trying to conduct an independent air war. He suggested that in the future, small countries would probably fight as part of a larger alliance. Further, he wrote, “small countries normally do not possess their own independent aviation industry, but rather purchase particular types from large powers. They have to be familiar with the large power’s strategic concept, because only then can one judge whether the material is suitable for its objective.”2
The strategic context and economic and industrial deficiencies should not have caused Hungarian airmen to abandon the idea of a strong, and even independent, air force, but perhaps more consideration should have been given them when planning the air service’s force structure. Having no vital interests outside the Danube basin, Hungary had no immediate need for long-range bombers. An all-fighter force based on the WM-14 engine and the CR.42 and Re.2000 could have fulfilled the critical missions of Hungarian aviation: defending the country’s exposed industrial center, supporting the Honvéd in limited ground incursions, and blunting an armored invasion. A tactical air fleet of comparatively few varieties of single-engine airplanes would have simplified production and repair, as well as aircrew training, and it would have permitted the MKHL to build deeper stocks of spare parts. Increased pilot proficiency and a concentration on tactical operations would have encouraged the development of more sophisticated tactics, and could have led to innovations in fields such as aerial communications and close air support.
This approach (very similar to the one championed by Mecozzi) would have been no less dependent on political and social receptiveness than was the one followed by the LÜH. The Justice for Hungary flight and the later crash, Bánhidi’s Gerle 13 successes, and the glamour of international travel increased air-mindedness among the Hungarian public. Support for air power among the Hungarian political and military elites turned out to be broad but shallow. The enthusiasm created for the air arm in the 1930s was fleeting, and could have been intensified by its very prohibition by Trianon. Once the service was able to operate in the open, criticism of its performance increased, and the organizational weaknesses were exposed. After the regent withdrew his protection of the MKHL, the VKF was able to reassert control of the air arm. Had the airmen inclined toward independence pressed their case with less vehemence in the 1930s, it is possible that the service would have gained its autonomy somewhat later, but maintained it much longer. That is by no means certain, however, for a more restrained campaign could have resulted only in a force of short-range reconnaissance squadrons, one of the options proposed by the VKF in 1938.
Ultimately, this study of the Hungarian air service demonstrates the degree to which circumstances constrain action. Examinations of the American, British, Japanese, and German air forces often turn on principles declared, decisions taken, and opportunities missed. Those are of critical importance indeed, and the intellectual history of the Hungarian air force as depicted in its professional journal occupies a central part of this book. But the great powers were free to follow their strategic and operational concepts in a way that was completely unknown to the smaller combatants. The composition and employment of the large air forces, at least in the first years of the war, reflected their airmen’s conceptions of aerial warfare. In marked contrast, the Hungarian airman operated from the beginning at a severe disadvantage. The years of aerial disarmament deprived him of realistic training and experience in large-force operations, and the lack of adequate domestic aircraft production meant that he flew too little, and in out-of-date machines. Unlike his German comrade, he found that equality of arms was merely a legal status, not a tactical reality.
NOTES
1. Strategic context, economic capability, scientific and technical mobilization, and political and social reception are the factors identified by R. J. Overy as conditioning the evolution of air forces. See Overy, “Air Power in the Second World War.”
2. Csukás, “Önálló légiháború,” p. 45.