History of Military Aviation

The Birth of British Airpower describes how Hugh Trenchard, a man with few leadership skills, became a much-loved and inspirational commander who laid the foundation for British airpower on the Western Front in World War I and created the preconditions for the establishment of the world's first independent air service, the Royal Air Force. Author Peter Dye explores how friendship can overcome significant personal and character deficiencies and how, by assembling the right senior leadership team, Trenchard achieved greatness. The book also examines how the development of airpower doctrine in World War I owed as much to chance as to careful planning and how air superiority was achieved only through sustained effort, underpinned by an effective and responsive logistic system. Finally, it explains how the ethos of the postwar air force was built around these experiences and the collective effort of all those involved in the air war.

American military attachés document the impact of airpower during the Spanish Civil War, featuring intervention by some of the strongest air forces in the world in a prelude to World War II. This is the story of airpower in the Spanish Civil War from the perspective of three key American figures: Colonel Stephen Fuqua, military attaché to Republican Spain; Captain Townsend Griffiss, assistant military attaché for air; and former U.S. Navy pilot Frank Tinker, who flew for the Spanish government as a mercenary. Through his analysis of the experiences and writings of these three individuals, author Christopher Marquis explores the lessons the conflict revealed regarding the use of airpower in war. The book first places the Spanish Civil War within the broader context of early U.S. airpower development, progressing through the narrative of the war while focusing on key air operations and technological advancements. Marquis begins with the early history of American airpower through World War I and the institutional development of the U.S. Army Air Service and U.S. Army Air Corps. He also covers the evolution of early airpower theories, particularly the idea of strategic bombing, which involved the bombardment of civil, industrial, and political targets to bring the war to a swift conclusion. The narrative then moves to Spain in July 1936 and follows the course of the civil war, with a focus on air operations. Some of the significant events covered in detail include the airlift of Nationalist troops from Morocco to Spain; defensive counterair missions above Madrid; the firebombing of Guernica; the destruction of the "Iron Ring" of fortifications around Bilbao; the bombing of Barcelona; and, finally, the air superiority achieved by the Nationalist air force and their allies. The U.S. observers witnessed the German Luftwaffe's intervention in the conflict as well as air forces from Italy, France, and the Soviet Union. Marquis concludes that the Spanish Civil War proved airpower was a critical element of modern warfare. He also points out that American airpower leaders were reluctant to acknowledge the lessons of the war because they did not definitively prove the effectiveness of strategic bombing. Despite that reluctance, America's subsequent actions in developing its aircraft inventory before World War II reflected some of the lessons learned from the air war in Spain.

General Power: Strategic Air Command in the Cold War fills a critical gap in Cold War and Air Force history by telling the story of General Thomas S. Power for the first time. Thomas Power was second only to Curtis LeMay in forming the Strategic Air Command (SAC), one of the premier combat organizations of the twentieth century, but he is rarely mentioned today. What little is written about Power describes him as LeMay's willing hatchet man-uneducated, unimaginative, autocratic, and sadistic. Based on extensive archival research, General Power seeks to overturn this appraisal. Brent D. Ziarnick covers the span of both Power's personal and professional life and challenges many of the myths of conventional knowledge about him. Denied college because his middle-class immigrant family imploded while he was still in school, Power worked in New York City construction while studying for the Flying Cadet examination at night in the New York Public Library. As a young pilot, Power participated in some of the Army Air Corps' most storied operations. In the interwar years, his family connections allowed Power to interact with American Wall Street millionaires and the British aristocracy. Confined to training combat aircrews in the United States for most of World War II, Power proved his combat leadership as a bombing wing commander by planning and leading the firebombing of Tokyo for Gen. Curtis LeMay. After the war, Power helped LeMay transform the Air Force into the aerospace force America needed during the Cold War. A master of strategic air warfare, he aided in establishing SAC as the Free World's "Big Stick" against Soviet aggression. Far from being unimaginative, Power led the incorporation of the nuclear weapon, the intercontinental ballistic missile, the airborne alert, and the Single Integrated Operational Plan into America's deterrent posture as Air Research and Development Command commander and both the vice commander and commander-in-chief of SAC. Most importantly, Power led SAC through the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Even after retirement, Power as a New York Times bestselling author brought his message of deterrence through strength to the nation. Ziarnick points out how Power's impact may continue in the future. Power's peerless, but suppressed, vision of the Air Force and the nation in space is recounted in detail, placing Power firmly as a forgotten space visionary and role model for both the Air Force and the new Space Force. General Power is an important contribution to the history of the Cold War and beyond.

Airpower over the Rhine is a critical new perspective on the air battle between the French Air Force (FAF) and the Luftwaffe in the skies over France during May and June 1940. Why were the French overpowered in the air? What factors led to their defeat? Author James F. Slaughter III examines how each country's leadership created the circumstances that enabled the Luftwaffe's victory over the FAF and Germany's ultimate defeat of France. Conventional wisdom-especially in the English-speaking world-purports that the FAF was a nonentity whose loss was all but guaranteed. But the FAF did, in fact, show up to fight. With virtually every disadvantage and under impossible conditions, FAF pilots nevertheless managed to land significant blows against the Luftwaffe-far more than they are given credit for today. Slaughter traces this misconception to a largely collaborationist cover-up beginning with the Rion Trials in Vichy France that was then perpetuated by Cold War politics and popular mythology. Rather than absence or incompetence, the FAF lost due to a series of complex internal conflicts within French leadership, both political and military, that set them up to fail. This work compares and examines six fundamental areas that affected the development of the FAF and the Luftwaffe: aircraft and equipment, the aircraft industries, intelligence, the experiences of the Spanish Civil War, doctrine and training, and politics and air power. It also offers new details about and insights into Pierre Cot, a controversial French politician largely unknown outside France. Airpower over the Rhine explains Cot's internal and external impact on the development of the French Air Force and details what is known about his apparent efforts to spy for the Soviet Union. Thoroughly researched and compellingly written, this book will appeal to anyone with an interest in World War II.

Strategic bombing is likely the most studied element in Aviation History. The shelves of libraries are filled with books on the topic, yet relatively little is known about where the concept originated or how it evolved. Most of the books on strategic bombing fall into three categories: descriptions of bombing campaigns, critiquing whether they succeeded, or describing why different nations pursued individual visions of airpower. While these are important analyses, there is no one complete study of the idea behind America's vision of strategy bombing that answers: how it originated, why it changed over time, the factors that shaped change, and how technology molded military doctrine? This book provides just such a full spectrum intellectual history of the American concept of strategic bombing. In the minds of forward thinking aerial theorists the new technology of the airplane removed the limitations of geography, defenses, and operational reach that had restricted ground and naval forces since the dawn of human conflict. With aviation, a nation could avoid costly traditional military campaigns and attack the industrial heart of an enemy using long-range bombers. Yet, the acceptance of strategic bombing doctrine proved a hard-fought process. The story of strategic bombing is not that of any one person or any one causal factor. Instead, it is a twisting tale of individual efforts, organizational infighting, political priorities, and most important technological integration. At no point was strategic bombing preordained or destined to succeed. In every era, the theory had to survive critical challenges. By tracing the complex interrelationships of these four causal factors, this book provides a greater understanding of the origins and rise to dominance of American strategic bombing theory. The Origins of American Strategic Bombing meets this need in two ways. First, it explains the intellectual process of going from Wright Flyers to B-17 formations over Germany. Next, it identifies the factors that shaped that intellectual development. In doing so, it challenges the Air Force's self-identity with a much more complex explanation. It is no longer the story of Billy Mitchell or The Bomber Mafia, but one of a complicated interweaving of events, people, organizational cultures, technology, and politics. The book is unique as it integrates military, political, cultural, and technological history to explain the rise of strategic bombing as the dominant American vision of airpower as it entered World War II.

Winning Armageddon provides definition to an all-too-long neglected figure of the Cold War, General Curtis E. LeMay, and tells the story of his advocacy for nuclear first strikes while leading Strategic Air Command-the Cold War Air Force's nuclear organization. This was despite a publicly proclaimed policy of deterrence. In telling this story, Albertson builds for the reader a world that, while not in the distant past, has been forgotten by many; the lessons of that past, however, are as applicable today as they were 65 years ago. In weaving his story, the author brings to life the challenges, fears, and responses of a Cold War United States that grappled with a problem to which it did not have a clean solution: nuclear war. It was this concern that LeMay sought to assuage through making his arguments for attacking first in a nuclear conflict-but only if and when it was clear that the enemy was preparing to launch their own surprise strike. This approach, commonly referred to as preemption, was designed to catch an attacker off-guard and prevent the destruction of one's own nation. In LeMay's case, he made the argument that such attacks should initially be directed at an enemy's long-range air forces, in an effort to deprive them of an ability to destroy American cities, industry, and its own military. In so doing, LeMay hoped that rather than plunging the world into a fruitless nuclear exchange he could diffuse the conflict at its outset. It was a novel solution to a vexing problem.

Beyond the Beach examines the Allied air war against France in 1944. During this period, General Dwight David Eisenhower, as Supreme Allied Commander, took control of all American, British, and Canadian air units and employed them for tactical and operational purposes over France rather than as a strategic force to attack targets deep in Germany. Using bombers as his long-range artillery, he directed the destruction of bridges, rail centers, ports, military installations, and even French towns with the intent of preventing German reinforcements from interfering with Operation Neptune, the Allied landings on the Normandy beaches. Ultimately, this air offensive resulted in the death of over 60,000 French civilians and an immense amount of damage to towns, churches, buildings, and works of art. This intense bombing operation, conducted against a friendly occupied state, resulted in a swath of physical and human destruction across northwest France that is rarely discussed as part of the D-Day landings. This book explores the relationship between ground and air operations and its effects on the French population. It examines the three broad groups that the air operations involved, the doctrine and equipment used by Allied air force leaders to implement Eisenhower's plans, and each of the eight major operations, called lines of effort, that coordinated the employment of the thousands of fighters, medium bombers, and heavy bombers that prowled the French skies that spring and summer of 1944. Each of these sections discusses the operation's purpose, conduct, and effects upon both the military and the civilian targets. Finally, the book explores the short and long-term effects of these operations and argues that this ignored narrative should be part of any history of the D-Day landings.