front cover of Air Power in War
Air Power in War
Arthur W. Tedder
University of Alabama Press, 2010
The architect of the successful air strategy which led to Allied victory

Arthur Tedder, who was knighted and raised to the peerage for his contributions to the Allied victory in World War II, served in the British air force in World War I and played an important role in professionalizing and organizing British air forces between the two world wars. During World War II, he held a succession of increasingly vital air force posts.
 
In addition to his achievements as Air Commander-in-Chief in the North African theater early in the war, Tedder’s most lasting contribution was as Deputy Supreme Commander under Dwight D. Eisenhower. He deserves much credit for keeping the Allied command functioning and harmonious. He was also the architect of the successful air strategy Eisenhower adopted for the Normandy invasion of 1944, which departed from both the British and American existing doctrine and models by concentrating on German rail systems rather than on either civilian or industrial targets.
 
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Bodies and Ruins
Imagining the Bombing of Germany, 1945 to the Present
David F. Crew
University of Michigan Press, 2017
Bodies and Ruins explores changing German memories of World War II as it analyzes the construction of narratives in the postwar period including the depiction of the bombing of individual German cities. The book offers a corrective notion rising in the late 1990s notion that discussions of the Allied bombing were long overdue, because Germans who had endured the bombings had largely been condemned to silence after 1945. David Crew shows that far from being marginalized in postwar historical consciousness, the bombing war was in fact a central strand of German memory and identity. Local narratives of the bombing war, including photographic books, had already established themselves as important “vectors of memory” in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The bombing war had allowed Germans to see themselves as victims at a time when the Allied liberation of the concentration camps and the Nuremberg trials presented Germans to the world as perpetrators or at least as accomplices. The bombing war continued to serve this function even as Germans became more and more willing directly to confront the genocide of European Jews—which by the 1960s was beginning to be referred to as the Holocaust.

Bodies and Ruins examines a range of local publications that carried photographic images of German cities destroyed in the air war, images that soon entered the visual memory of World War II. Despite its obvious importance, historians have paid very little attention to the visual representation of the bombing war. This book follows the search for what were considered to be the “right” stories and the “right” pictures of the bombing war in local publications and picture books from 1945 to the present, and is intended for historians as well as general readers interested in World War II, the Allied bombing of German cities, the Holocaust, the history of memory and photographic/visual history.

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A Few Planes for China
The Birth of the Flying Tigers
Eugenie Buchan
University Press of New England, 2017
On December 7, 1941, the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor plunged the United States into armed conflict with Japan. In the following months, the Japanese seemed unbeatable as they seized American, British, and European territory across the Pacific: the Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong, the Dutch East Indies. Nonetheless, in those dark days, the US press began to pick up reports about a group of American mercenaries who were bringing down enemy planes over Burma and western China. The pilots quickly became known as Flying Tigers, and a legend was born. But who were these flyers for hire and how did they wind up in the British colony of Burma? The standard version of events is that in 1940 Colonel Claire Chennault went to Washington and convinced the Roosevelt administration to establish, fund, and equip covert air squadrons that could attack the Japanese in China and possibly bomb Tokyo even before a declaration of war existed between the United States and Japan. That was hardly the case: although present at its creation, Chennault did not create the American Volunteer Group. In A Few Planes for China, Eugenie Buchan draws on wide-ranging new sources to overturn seventy years of received wisdom about the genesis of the Flying Tigers. This strange experiment in airpower was accidental rather than intentional; haphazard decisions and changing threat perceptions shaped its organization and deprived it of resources. In the end it was the British—more than any American in or out of government—who got the Tigers off the ground. On the eve of Pearl Harbor, the most important man behind the Flying Tigers was not Claire Chennault but Winston Churchill.
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front cover of Fighter Aircraft Combat Debuts, 1915–1945
Fighter Aircraft Combat Debuts, 1915–1945
Innovation in Air Warfare Before the Jet Age
Jon Guttman
Westholme Publishing, 2014
An International History of the Development, Competition, and Deployment of High-Speed, Maneuverable, Fighter Aircraft During the Era of the World Wars
Of all military aircraft, fighter planes hold a mystique all their own. Perhaps it is because fighters can afford the least compromise: when the goal is to seize and maintain control of the air, the confrontation is direct. During World War I, the concept of air superiority took hold and in the ensuing decades the development of fighter aircraft became an ongoing back-and-forth battle, with adversaries trying to gain an upper hand through innovations in aerodynamics, powerplants, and armament. Fighter Aircraft Combat Debuts, 1915–1945: Innovation in Air Warfare Before the Jet Age by prominent aviation expert Jon Guttman explores the first combats for a variety of fighters of World War I, the conflicts of the so-called "interwar years," and World War II—a thirty-year period that saw the birth of the fighter concept and its maturity on the threshold of the Jet Age. Most of the aircraft described are fairly well known to aviation historians and a few names, such as Sopwith Camel, Fokker Triplane, Messerschmitt Me-109, Mitsubishi Zero, North American Mustang, and Supermarine Spitfire, are familiar even to the most nonaviation- minded persons. Not so well-known are the circumstances of their combat debuts, in which some, such as the Zero, made their mark almost from the outset, but in which others, like the British Bristol F.2A, showed rather less promise than they would ultimately realize. While a certain amount of space must be devoted to the technical development of these famous fighters, these studies of first combats serve as a reminder that it is the human factor, with all its special quirks, that inevitably came into play when these deadly flying machines first fired their guns. Profusely illustrated, Fighter Aircraft Combat Debuts is an authoritative history of one of the most enduring subjects in military aviation.
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The Great War in the Air
Military Aviation from 1909 to 1921
John H. Morrow
University of Alabama Press, 2009

"For the general reader as well as the specialist, Morrow's history of the development and significance of airpower during WWI will be considered definitive. He compares the military, technological, and industrial aspects of the air services of the major powers--France, Germany, England, Italy, Austria-Hungary, and the United States--and reveals how, by means of superior production (particularly French engine manufacture), the Allies prevailed in the air war."--Publishers Weekly

"Morrow's encyclopedic examination of aviation's part in World War I concentrates on aircraft engine and airframe production, but the emotional content of contemporary accounts rises to the surface to put a human face on the brutal use of an infant technology. . . . a serious yet readable history of this vital part of the conflict, meant for any reader."--Library Journal

"A comprehensive study of the totality of the air war in its military, political, industrial, and cultural aspects distinguish this book from other treatments of military aviation during this period. . . . Morrow's efforts have yielded new insights into the evolution of military aviation and corrected previous oversights. The author's attention to developments in production and logistics, as well as events at the front, provide the most complete understanding of the development of air power and its role in the Great War."--American Historical Review

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The Origin of the Fighter Aircraft
Jon Guttman
Westholme Publishing, 2009

From Scouts to Balloon-busters, the Emergence of Air-to-Air Combat in World War I
When World War I began in August 1914, the airplane had already proven its worth as an intelligence gathering “eye-in-the-sky.” These scouting aircraft soon became indispensable to armies on both sides, and the attempt to drive enemy planes away began in earnest. Local air superiority was incorporated into battlefield strategy, and the use of aircraft to conduct offensive operations would change warfare as dramatically as the first firearms 300 years before. By the end of 1915, the basic formula of the armed scout settled on a single-seater with a machine gun synchronized to fire through its propeller blades. This heavily armed aircraft became the first true fighter plane whose primary function was to destroy enemy aircraft, whether scouts, balloons, bombers, or other fighters. A new glamorized “knight of the air” was born: the ace, a fighter pilot who brought down five or more opponents. From 1916 on, as the combatants relied on airplanes more, flying tactics and strategy—including mass formations—were developed for what would become a deadly struggle for complete air superiority. By 1918, the final year of the war, air battles could be as sprawling as those on the ground.

In The Origin of the Fighter Aircraft, historian Jon Guttman tells the engrossing story of how one of the most amazing inventions became a integral component of warfare. Balancing technical description, personalities, and battle accounts, the author demonstrates that by the end of World War I most of the fundamentals for modern aerial combat had been established.

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front cover of Precision and Purpose
Precision and Purpose
Airpower in the Libyan Civil War
Karl P. Mueller
RAND Corporation, 2015
A team of U.S. and international experts assesses the impact of various nations’ airpower efforts during the 2011 conflict in Libya, including NATO allies and non-NATO partners, and how their experiences offer guidance for future conflicts. In addition to the roles played by the United States, Britain and France, it examines the efforts of Italy, Canada, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Qatar, the UAE, and the Libyan rebels.
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