History of The Swiss Air Force - Interwar Years

Interwar Years

With continuing budgetary restraints, the air force remained in an overall state of neglect during the 1920s. 27 Twenty-seven Fokker D.VII, 16 Hanriot HD.1, and 15 Nieuport 28 Bébé war surplus airplanes were acquired in 1920 (as were 20 Zeppelin LZ C.11 reconnaissance biplanes obtained on the postwar black market) but were soon obsolete, and further efforts to develop indigenous aircraft (MA-6, MA-7, and MA-8) were unsuccessful. Seven pilots were killed in 1925 and 1926 before all Swiss military aircraft with equipped with parachutes. By 1929, only 17 of its 213 airplanes were considered fit for service. The air force consisted of 18 aviation companies (Flieger-Kompagnien), three aerial photography platoons and one airfield company. In the decade following World War I, 162 pilots and 165 observers were trained, and the full complement of the air force was 196 officers, 499 NCOs and 2241 enlisted men. The only aircraft purchased in any quantity were the Potez XXV, and the Swiss-built Häfeli DH-5.

The difficulty of maintaining an air force with little funding during a time of rapid technological development was compounded by the Swiss militia system: all but a handful of military personnel were citizen soldiers who served only a few weeks each year following their initial recruitment phase. Military pilot candidates underwent the same recruit training, NCO school and officer candidate school as other Swiss army officers, followed by a pilot school of 173 days, then re-entered civilian life. During his first two years of service, a pilot's training continued with ten logged flight hours per month, and thereafter he was required to fly fifty hours per year at his convenience.

However in 1930 the military and civilian leadership decided to establish an effective air force. On 13 December 1929, in what was in retrospect referred to as the "bill to create an air force", the Federal Council asked the Swiss Federal Assembly to approve the spending of 20 million francs for the purchase of 65 French Dewoitine D.27 fighters and the manufacture of 40 Dutch (Fokker C.V-E) reconnaissance planes under licence. Although the opposition Social Democratic Party collected 42,000 signatures in a petition opposing the bill, Parliament passed it handily and declined to allow a referendum on the issue, optional at that time for spending bills.

This was the start of a massive armament programme that would consume more than a billion francs over the next ten years, but after Hitler's rise to power in Nazi Germany, the Social Democrats added their support to the efforts. They also supported Gottlieb Duttweiler's 1938 popular initiative calling for the purchase of a thousand aircraft and the training of three thousand pilots. After 92,000 citizens signed in support, nearly twice the number necessary for a national popular vote, the federal government offered a referendum proposal in 1939 that was nearly as extensive, which was accepted by a 69 percent majority.

In large part, the money was used to acquire modern aircraft, most notably, 90 state-of-the-art Messerschmitt Bf 109D and E fighters from Germany in 1938 for 36.6 million francs, the last of which were delivered in April 1940, eight months after the outbreak of World War II. However, the need to expand the size of the pilot corps resulted in the acquisition of 146 trainers from Germany, the Bücker Bü 131 basic and Bücker Bü 133 advanced trainers.

In addition, Swiss factories licence-built 82 Morane-Saulnier D-3800 and 207 D-3801 fighters between 1939 and 1945, and manufactured 152 domestically-designed C-36 fighter-bombers between 1942 and 1948. Both of these types remained in service well into the 1950s as trainers.

On 19 October 1936, the air arm was reorganised, and renamed the Schweizerische Flugwaffe (Department of Aviation and Anti-Aircraft Defense), becoming an autonomous service under the Swiss Federal Military Department, analogous to the organizational autonomy of the United States Army Air Forces within the U.S. Army.