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From early zeppelins, to the Luftwaffe and the Enola Gay, to the unmanned aerial vehicles of today, air power has long been regarded as an invaluable instrument of war. However, nations have employed aircraft for many other purposes as well; they provide security and surveillance, and they are vital to myriad diplomatic and humanitarian efforts. Air power has become a means for statesmen to advance a variety of goals, opening up new possibilities and problems in times of peace as well as war. The Influence of Air Power upon History examines the many ways in which aviation technology has impacted policymaking since 1903. It analyzes air strategy in nations around the world and explores how a country's presumed technological capability, or lack thereof, has become a crucial aspect of diplomacy. Together, the essays in this insightful volume offer a greater understanding of the history of military force and diplomatic relations in the global community.
Airpower, especially strategic bombing, frequently generates controversy. Ever since the US Army bought it first "aeroplane" in 1909, debates have raged over the utility, effectiveness, efficiency, legality, and even the morality of air power. These debates continue despite (or perhaps because of) the hundreds of books that have been written on the subject and the scores of examples witnessed. Much of the debate regarding airpower and strategic bombing has been colored by accusations, misconceptions, inaccuracies, myths, and simple untruths. If airpower needs criticizing it must be based on accurate information. This manuscript highlights points and counterpoints that attempt to clear away some of the detritus that obscures the subject, thus allowing more informed debate on the real issues concerning air power and strategic bombing.
The United States relied heavily on bombing to defeat the Germans and the Japanese in World War II, and air raids were touted as "precision" bombing in American propaganda. But was precision possible over cloud-covered Europe or a darkened Japanese countryside? Could the vaunted Norden optical bombsight in fact "drop bombs into pickle barrels" as advertised? Were the American aircrews well trained and well protected? How good were their airplanes? What were the results of the costly raids? This work sets suppositions against facts surrounding the United States' use of strategic bombing in World War II. Chapters cover the events leading up to World War II; the start of the war; the seers and the planners; the airplanes, bombs, bombsights, and aircrews; the planes Germany used to defend itself against American planes; the five cities (Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki) that experienced the most destruction; and the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey of the damage done by aerial bombing. The book also probes the government's myth-building statements that supported America's view of itself as a uniquely humanitarian nation, and analyzes the role played by interservice rivalry--"battleship admirals" against "bomber generals."
For nearly two decades the United States Air Force (USAF) oriented the bulk of its thinking, acquisition, planning, and training on the threat of a Soviet blitzkrieg across the inter German border. The Air Force fielded a powerful conventional arm well rehearsed in the tactics required to operate over a central European battlefield. Then, in a matter of days, the 1990 invasion of Kuwait altered key assumptions that had been developed over the previous decade and a half. The USAF faced a different foe employing a different military doctrine in an unexpected environment. Instead of disrupting a fast paced land offensive, the combat wings of the United States Central Command Air Forces (CENTAF) were ordered to attack a large, well fortified, and dispersed Iraqi ground force. The heart of that ground force was the Republican Guard Forces Command (RGFC). CENTAF's mission dictated the need to develop an unfamiliar repertoire of tactics and procedures to meet theater objectives. How effectively did CENTAF adjust air operations against the Republican Guard to the changing realities of combat? Answering that question is central to this study, and the answer resides in evaluation of the innovations developed by CENTAF to improve its operational and tactical performance against the Republican Guard. Effectiveness and timeliness are the primary criteria used for evaluating innovations.
The book is a collection of the 10 most important lectures written by the early leaders of the Air Force, like Muir Fairchild, Harold George, and Laurence Kuter. Haun went to the Air Force Historical Research Center archives and found the original typed lectures and reproduced the ones that best explained the school's philosophy on the primacy of the airplane in the modern battlefield, the offensive capabilities of the bomber, and the vulnerabilities of an industrialized nation. Haun then augmented each lecture with a short summary that provides a historical perspective and a condensing of the key points each instructor wanted to be carried forward.
This book contains the following chapters concerning Haywood Hansell and American Strategic Bombing in World War II: the problems of air power, (2) the early years: education and acts, (3) planning, (4) the frictions of war, (5) the global bomber force, (6) triumph, and (7) tragedy.
Expanded from an article that created a stir in foreign policy circles, this book shows why five central arguments promoting nuclear weapons are, in essence, myths.
Ever since the US Army bought its first "aeroplane" in 1909, debates have raged over the utility, effectiveness, efficiency, legality, and even the morality of airpower and strategic bombing. Unfortunately, much of this controversy has been colored by accusations, misconceptions, inaccuracies, myths, and simple untruths. If airpower needs criticizing - and certainly there are times when criticism is appropriate - it must be based on accurate information. In Airpower: Myths and Facts, Col Phillip S. Meilinger, USAF, retired, raises points and counterpoints that attempt to clear away some of the detritus that obscures the subject, thus allowing more informed debate on the real issues concerning airpower and strategic bombing and giving our political and military leaders a better basis on which to form decisions in future conflicts.
A major revision of our understanding of long-range bombing, this book examines how Anglo-American ideas about "strategic" bombing were formed and implemented. It argues that ideas about bombing civilian targets rested on--and gained validity from--widespread but substantially erroneous assumptions about the nature of modern industrial societies and their vulnerability to aerial bombardment. These assumptions were derived from the social and political context of the day and were maintained largely through cognitive error and bias. Tami Davis Biddle explains how air theorists, and those influenced by them, came to believe that strategic bombing would be an especially effective coercive tool and how they responded when their assumptions were challenged. Biddle analyzes how a particular interpretation of the World War I experience, together with airmen's organizational interests, shaped interwar debates about strategic bombing and preserved conceptions of its potentially revolutionary character. This flawed interpretation as well as a failure to anticipate implementation problems were revealed as World War II commenced. By then, the British and Americans had invested heavily in strategic bombing. They saw little choice but to try to solve the problems in real time and make long-range bombing as effective as possible. Combining narrative with analysis, this book presents the first-ever comparative history of British and American strategic bombing from its origins through 1945. In examining the ideas and rhetoric on which strategic bombing depended, it offers critical insights into the validity and robustness of those ideas--not only as they applied to World War II but as they apply to contemporary warfare.