Air Powered

Air Powered

Author: Richard H. Childers Productions

Publisher: Random House (NY)

Published: 1979

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13:

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Air Power

Air Power

Author: Jeremy Black

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2016-03-10

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 1442250976

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This essential book offers a compelling and original interpretation of the rise of military aviation. Jeremy Black, one of the world’s finest scholars of military history, provides a lucid analysis of the use of airpower over land and sea both during the two world wars and the more limited wars of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Considering both the theory and praxis of air power, the author begins with hot air balloons, and then highlights the use of zeppelins, piston engine fighters, jet bombers, and finally the so-called Military Revolution of today. While discussing the growth of American and European military aviation, Black, a pioneer in emphasizing the importance of non-Western military history for understanding global developments, also traces the emergence of air power in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Black breaks new ground by exploring not only to conventional war—both inside and outside Europe—but also to the use of air power in unconventional wars, especially critical given to the spread of insurgencies around the globe. He vividly describes traditional debates over the pros and cons of strategic bombing and aircraft carriers versus battleships and gives equal attention to managerial, doctrinal, and technological innovations. The author shows how better management resulted in increasing lethality of close air support of the RAF during the latter part of World War II and at the same times highlights the limits of air power with case studies of the two Gulf Wars. The author goes beyond our traditional understanding of air power associated with bombing and fighter engagements, adding the important elements associated with naval power, including ground/logistics support, anti-aircraft measures, and political constraints. As he explains, air power has become Western politicians’ weapon of choice, spreading maximum destruction with the minimum of commitment. His current and comprehensive study considers how we got to this point, and what the future has in store. Anyone seeking a balanced, accurate understanding of air power in history will find this book an essential introduction.


The Transformation of American Air Power

The Transformation of American Air Power

Author: Benjamin S. Lambeth

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2018-10-18

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 1501735950

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Since the unprecedentedly effective performance of the allied air campaign against Iraq during Operation Desert Storm, the role of American air power in future wars has become a topic of often heated public debate. In this balanced appraisal of air power's newly realized strengths in joint warfare, Benjamin Lambeth, a defense analyst and civilian pilot who has flown in most of the equipment described in this book, explores the extent to which the United States can now rely on air-delivered precision weapons in lieu of ground forces to achieve strategic objectives and minimize American casualties.Beginning with the U.S. experience in Southeast Asia and detailing how failures there set the stage for a sweeping refurbishment of the nation's air warfare capability, Lambeth reviews the recent history of American air power, including its role in the Gulf War and in later conflicts in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Serbia. He examines improvements in areas ranging from hardware development to aircrew skills and organizational adaptability.Lambeth acknowledges that the question of whether air power should operate independently or continue to support land operations is likely to remain contentious. He concludes, however, that air power, its strategic effectiveness proven, can now set the conditions for victory even from the outset of combat if applied to its fullest potential.


Global Air Power

Global Air Power

Author: John Andreas Olsen

Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 609

ISBN-13: 1597977446

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What influences have shaped air power since human flight became a reality more than a hundred years ago? Global Air Power provides insight into the evolution of air power theory and practice by examining the experience of six of the world’s largest air forces--those of the United Kingdom, the United States, Israel, Russia, India, and China--and of representative smaller air forces in Pacific Asia, Latin America, and continental Europe. The chapters, written by highly regarded scholars and military leaders, explore how various nations have integrated air power into their armed forces and how they have applied air power in both regular and irregular warfare and in peacetime operations. They cover the organizational, professional, and doctrinal issues that air forces confronted in the past, the lessons learned from victory and defeat, and emerging challenges and opportunities. Further, Global Air Power supplements the traditional military perspective with examinations of the ideological, economic, and cultural factors that give air forces their distinctive characters. Chapters show how the interplay among these internal factors, together with external challenges, determines the structure, role, and effectiveness of air forces. Together, these chapters illuminate universal trends as well as similarities and differences among the world’s air forces. Its combination of military history and sociopolitical analysis makes Global Air Power especially valuable to a broad range of historians, air power specialists, and general readers interested in national defense and international relations.


Air Power and Armies

Air Power and Armies

Author: Sir John Cotesworth Slessor

Publisher: University of Alabama Press

Published: 2009-08-31

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 081735610X

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An account of Sir John Cotesworth Slessor (1897–1979), one of Great Britain's most influential airmen Sir John Slessor played a significant role in building the World War II Anglo-American air power partnership as an air planner on the Royal Air Force Staff, the British Chiefs of Staff, and the Combined Chiefs of Staff. He coordinated allied strategy in 1940–41, helped create an Anglo-American bomber alliance in 1942, and drafted the compromise at the Casablanca Conference that broke a deadlock in Anglo-American strategic debate. Slessor was instrumental in defeating the U-boat menace as RAF Coastal Commander, and later shared responsibility for directing Allied air operations in the Mediterranean. Few aspects of the allied air effort escaped his influence: pilot training, aircraft procurement, and dissemination of operational intelligence and information all depended to a degree on Slessor. His influence on Anglo-American operational planning paved the way for a level of cooperation and combined action never before undertaken by the military forces of two great nations.


Air Power

Air Power

Author: Stephen Budiansky

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2005-03-29

Total Pages: 529

ISBN-13: 1101118407

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No single human invention has transformed war more than the airplane—not even the atomic bomb. Even before the Wright Brothers’ first flight, predictions abounded of the devastating and terrible consequences this new invention would have as an engine of war. Soaring over the battlefield, the airplane became an unstoppable force that left no spot on earth safe from attack. Drawing on combat memoirs, letters, diaries, archival records, museum collections, and eyewitness accounts by the men who fought—and the men who developed the breakthrough inventions and concepts—acclaimed author Stephen Budiansky weaves a vivid and dramatic account of the airplane’s revolutionary transformation of modern warfare. On the web: http://www.budiansky.com/


Selling Air Power

Selling Air Power

Author: Steve Call

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 9781603440912

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In Selling Air Power, Steve Call provides the first comprehensive study of the efforts of post-war air power advocates to harness popular culture in support of their agenda. In the 1940s and much of the 1950s, hardly a month went by without at least one blatantly pro-air power article appearing in general interest magazines. Public fascination with flight helped create and sustain exaggerated expectations for air power in the minds of both its official proponents and the American public. Articles in the Saturday Evening Post, Reader's Digest, and Life trumpeted the secure future assured by American air superiority. Military figures like Henry H. "Hap" Arnold and Curtis E. LeMay, radio-television personalities such as Arthur Godfrey, cartoon figures like Steve Canyon, and actors like Jimmy Stewart played key roles in the unfolding campaign. Movies like Twelve O'Clock High!, The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell, and A Gathering of Eagles projected onto the public imagination vivid images confirming what was coming to be the accepted wisdom: that America's safety against the Soviet threat could best be guaranteed by air power, coupled with nuclear capability. But as the Cold War continued and the specter of the mushroom cloud grew more prominent in American minds, another, more sinister interpretation began to take hold. Call chronicles the shift away from the heroic, patriotic posture of the years just after World War II, toward the threatening, even bizarre imagery of books and movies like Catch-22, On the Beach, and Dr. Strangelove. Call's careful analysis goes beyond the public relations campaigns to probe the intellectual climate that shaped them and gave them power. Selling Air Power adds a critical layer of understanding to studies in military and aviation history, as well as American popular culture.


Allies in Air Power

Allies in Air Power

Author: Steven Paget

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2021-01-04

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 0813180341

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In the past century, multinational military operations have become the norm; but while contributions from different nations provide many benefits—from expanded capability to political credibility—they also present a number of challenges. Issues such as command and control, communications, equipment standardization, intelligence, logistics, planning, tactics, and training all require consideration. Cultural factors present challenges as well, particularly when language barriers are involved. In Allies in Air Power, experts from around the world survey these operations from the birth of aviation to the present day. Chapters cover conflicts including World War I, multiple theaters of World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, Kosovo, the Iraq War, and various United Nations peacekeeping missions. Contributors also analyze the role of organizations such as the UN, NATO, and so-called "coalitions of the willing" in laying the groundwork for multinational air operations. While multinational military action has become commonplace, there have been few detailed studies of air power cooperation over a prolonged period or across multiple conflicts. The case studies in this volume not only assess the effectiveness of multinational operations over time, but also provide vital insights into how they may be improved in the future.


The Limits of Air Power

The Limits of Air Power

Author: Mark Clodfelter

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2006-01-01

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 9780803264540

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Tracing the use of air power in World War II and the Korean War, Mark Clodfelter explains how U. S. Air Force doctrine evolved through the American experience in these conventional wars only to be thwarted in the context of a limited guerrilla struggle in Vietnam. Although a faith in bombing's sheer destructive power led air commanders to believe that extensive air assaults could win the war at any time, the Vietnam experience instead showed how even intense aerial attacks may not achieve military or political objectives in a limited war. Based on findings from previously classified documents in presidential libraries and air force archives as well as on interviews with civilian and military decision makers, The Limits of Air Power argues that reliance on air campaigns as a primary instrument of warfare could not have produced lasting victory in Vietnam. This Bison Books edition includes a new chapter that provides a framework for evaluating air power effectiveness in future conflicts.