Airmen and Air Theory

A Review of the Sources

COL PHILLIP S. MEILINGER, USAF, RETIRED

Air University Press

Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama

2001
Originally published as American Airpower Biography: A Survey of the Field

First edition 1995

Revised edition 1997

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Meilinger, Phillip S., 1948-

[American airpower biography]

Airmen and air theory : a review of the sources / Phillip S. Meilinger.

p. cm.

Rev. ed. of: American airpower biography : a survey of the field, Rev. ed. 1997; also

includes The historiography of airpower theory and doctrine, originally published in

the Journal of military history, April 2000.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 1-58566-101-5

1. Aeronautics, Military—United States—Biography. 2. United States. Air Force—

Officers—Bibliography. 3. Generals—United States—Biography. 4. Air power—United

States—Historiography. I. Meilinger, Phillip S., 1948– Historiography of airpower

theory and doctrine. II. Title.

UG626 .M49 2001

358.4'0092'273—dc21

2001053948

Disclaimer

Opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied within are solely those of

the author and do not necessarily represent the views of Air University, the United States Air

Force, the Department of Defense, or any other US government agency. Cleared for public release: distribution unlimited.

ii

Air University Press

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Contents

Chapter Page

DISCLAIMER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii

ABOUT THE AUTHOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

PREFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

PART 1

Biographies and Autobiographies

1 INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

2 THE AIRMEN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Mason M. Patrick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

William “Billy” Mitchell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Benjamin D. Foulois . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Oscar M. Westover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Clarence L. Tinker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

William A. Moffett . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

John H. Towers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Henry H. “Hap” Arnold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Warner Robins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Claire L. Chennault . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Ira C. Eaker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Carl A. Spaatz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

iii
Chapter Page

Laurence S. Kuter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

George C. Kenney . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Donald Wilson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Kenneth N. Walker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Haywood S. Hansell Jr. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Ennis Whitehead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

Lewis H. Brereton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

Hugh J. Knerr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Elwood R. “Pete” Quesada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Hoyt S. Vandenberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

Orvil A. Anderson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

Howard A. Craig . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Dale O. Smith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Frank Armstrong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Charles P. Cabell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Nathan F. Twining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

Curtis E. LeMay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Edwin W. Rawlings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

William H. Tunner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

George E. Stratemeyer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

Lauris Norstad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

Benjamin O. Davis Jr. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

Daniel “Chappie” James Jr. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

iv
Chapter Page

Edward G. Lansdale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

George S. Brown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

James V. Hartinger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

Charles A. Horner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

3 ANTHOLOGIES AND ORAL HISTORIES . . . . . . . 85

4 CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

PART 2

The Historiography of Airpower

Theory and Doctrine

5 OVERALL TREATMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

6 EARLY THINKING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

7 GIULIO DOUHET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

8 WILLIAM “BILLY” MITCHELL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

9 AIR CORPS TACTICAL SCHOOL . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

10 OTHER US THEORISTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

11 THE ROYAL AIR FORCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

12 THE EUROPEAN THEORISTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

13 NAVAL AVIATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

14 WORLD WAR II AND THE POSTWAR ERA . . . . . 129

15 VIETNAM AND NATO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

16 THE CURRENT DEBATE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

17 ANTHOLOGIES ON MODERN AIRPOWER . . . . . 149

v
Chapter Page

18 CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

GLOSSARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159

vi
A 1970 graduate of the United States Air Force Academy, Col

Phillip S. Meilinger, USAF, retired, received an MA from the University of Colorado and a PhD from the University of Michigan.

After a tour at the Academy, Colonel Meilinger was assigned to

the Air Staff’s doctrine division in the Pentagon, where he wrote

and edited numerous Air Force and joint-doctrine publications,

worked roles-and-missions issues, and participated in the planning cell for Instant Thunder during the Gulf War of 1991. A

command pilot who flew C-130s and HC-130s in both Europe

and the Pacific, he has also worked as an operations officer in

the Pacific Airlift Control Center at Clark Air Base, Philippines.

From 1992 to 1996, Colonel Meilinger served as dean of the

School of Advanced Airpower Studies (SAAS), the Air Force’s only

graduate school for airpower strategists. After leaving SAAS, he

served as a professor of strategy at the Naval War College.

His publications include Hoyt S. Vandenberg: The Life of a

General (1989; reprint, Air Force History and Museums Program, 2000); 10 Propositions Regarding Air Power (Washington, D.C.: Air Force History and Museums Program, 1995);

and several dozen articles and reviews on airpower history and

theory in journals such as Foreign Policy, Armed Forces and

Society, Armed Forces Journal International, Comparative

Strategy, Journal of Military History, and Aerospace Power

Journal. He also edited and contributed to The Paths of

vii

About

the Author

Col Phillip S. Meilinger
Heaven: The Evolution of Airpower Theory (Maxwell Air Force

Base, Ala.: Air University Press, 1997).

After he retired, Colonel Meilinger became the deputy director of the AEROSPACENTER for Science Applications International Corporation in McLean, Virginia, where he may be

reached by E-mail at meilingerp@saic.com.

viii
Preface

Any researcher knows that a good bibliography, especially

an annotated one, is worth its weight in gold. We are all too

busy to slog through the mass of information, good and bad,

available on any given subject. We hope to separate the wheat

from the chaff without actually having to go through the onerous threshing process ourselves. So we talk to experts in the

particular area and ask for guidance. Alternatively, we trudge

over to the library and ask someone at the reference desk for

help. In either case, we usually resort to a specialized bibliography on the topic of interest. That gets us started. My intent

in this book is to spin some gold, or at least some silver or

bronze, to help overloaded researchers get started in their

quest for good sources on airpower.

I wrote the two parts of this book separately and for different audiences. Part one, “Biographies and Autobiographies,”

appeared as American Airpower Biography: A Survey of the

Field, published in 1995 by Air University Press, which also issued a revised edition in 1997. I wrote part two, “The Historiography of Airpower Theory and Doctrine,” at the request of

the editorial board of The Journal of Military History after it decided to publish a historiographical article in each quarterly

issue. My article on airpower historiography appeared in the

April 2000 issue of JMH.

I have edited and updated both pieces for this book. I can

only hope that my efforts prove useful to long-suffering researchers.

ix

PHILLIP S. MEILINGER

Potomac Falls, Virginia
PART 1

Biographies and Autobiographies
Chapter 1

Introduction

The involvement of people has given history its enduring

fascination and popularity. One field within history, biography, has always held special appeal. All of us have a deep

interest in knowing how others, perhaps like ourselves, have

met challenges, dealt with failure, and accommodated themselves to victory and fame. On a more mundane level, we like

to know how great people lived their day-to-day lives and how

they handled their loves, shortcomings, attributes, frailties,

and quirks. We find comfort in knowing that great men and

women were quite human. This knowledge also provides hope

and encouragement because it means that even the humblest

of us can aspire to greatness.

Certainly, geniuses live among us, but the lives of most of

the ones we consider noteworthy are marked by an unexceptional background and a fortuitous turn of events. Sincere,

hardworking, and courageous people find themselves in positions of responsibility when circumstances of great pith and

moment are thrust upon them. Predicting how individuals will

react in such circumstances is remarkably difficult. Often,

people groomed for leadership are found wanting in times of

crisis, and those who do step forward come from unexpected

quarters. Such has been the case with many of our country’s

great airmen.

This part of the book reviews the state of American airpower

biography and autobiography. I have set certain parameters to

define the boundaries of my discussion. I discuss biographies

and autobiographies, anthologies, and oral histories of military officers who served in senior positions. Thus, although

the stories of great aviators like Eddie Rickenbacker, Charles

Lindbergh, and Chuck Yeager are important, those men did

not command large forces either in combat or in peace; they

had only a temporary effect on the development of strategy

and doctrine. Similarly excluded are civilian political leaders

and industrialists like Stuart Symington and Donald Douglas,

3
even though they played key roles in their own spheres. What

follows are the stories—some published, some not—of America’s greatest military airmen—some told by themselves, others by biographers. The order of presentation is roughly

chronological, according to the time during which these men

served. The fact that a surprising number of air luminaries do

not appear here means that much work remains to be done.

4

AIRMEN AND AIR THEORY
Chapter 2

The Airmen

Unfortunately, one of the greater gaps in the historiography of

airpower lies in the area of biography. Both Noel Parrish and

David MacIsaac in their Harmon Memorial Lectures in Military

History commented on this deficiency and encouraged historians to rectify it. Some listened, but too few. At the same time,

the dearth of autobiographies by senior airmen is an even

greater problem. Surprisingly and significantly, air leaders have

published only two memoirs since Curtis LeMay’s effort three

decades ago. The absence of such personal reminiscences is

perhaps even more serious than the lack of biography.

Mason M. Patrick was the first real

head of American aviation. Although

he served as an Army engineer for 30

years, in 1918 Gen John J. Pershing,

Patrick’s West Point classmate, appointed him commander of the Air

Service in France. In Pershing’s

words, the air arm had many fine

people, but they were “running

around in circles”; he wanted Patrick

to make them go straight. Although

he knew virtually nothing about aviation at that point, Patrick was an excellent organizer and administrator. By the end of the war, the Air Service had become an

efficient and well-run combat arm. After the armistice, Patrick

returned to the Corps of Engineers, but in late 1921 the Air Service recalled him. His predecessor, Charles Menoher, could not

get along with the most famous airman of the day, William “Billy”

Mitchell, and Menoher lost the resulting power struggle. Because

Patrick had managed the difficult airman during the war, he was

given the opportunity to do so again. For the next six years,

Patrick remained at the helm although Mitchell left the service in

1926. Patrick’s memoir The United States in the Air (Garden City,

N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran, and Co., 1928), as the title implies, is a

5
rather sweeping look at the function and organization of airpower in this country rather than a strictly autobiographical

work. A disappointing book written in a leaden style, it provides

very few insights into the personalities and issues so turbulent

at the time. Except for the oft-repeated story of how Patrick—

upon his assumption of command in October 1921—confronted

Mitchell and won, it barely mentions the controversial airman.

Similarly, the key issues of air strategy during and after the war,

the organization of the new air arm and its role in national defense, and its relationships with the Navy are extremely muted.

In short, although Patrick was a key player at a most important

time in American airpower history, this book sheds little light on

anything of importance during that era.

We have two biographies of Patrick. Bruce A. Bingle’s “Building the Foundation: Major General Mason Patrick and the Army

Air Arm, 1921–1927” (MA thesis, Ohio State University, 1981)

does a workmanlike job of presenting a bureaucratic history of

the Air Service as seen through Patrick’s eyes. A fairly sympathetic account, it portrays the air chief as an airpower advocate

as determined as Billy Mitchell but possessing far more tact and

political acumen. Missing, however, is more personal insight

into Patrick’s personality and leadership style.

A far more important effort is Robert White’s Mason Patrick

and the Fight for Air Service Independence (Washington, D.C.:

Smithsonian Institution Press, forthcoming). White argues

convincingly that Patrick was the real impetus behind reforms

in the Army’s air arm after World War I; specifically, he was

largely responsible for passage of the landmark Air Corps Act

of 1926. Although the flamboyant Mitchell often overshadowed

Patrick, White argues that Patrick’s low-key style, extensive

and friendly contacts within the Army hierarchy, and quiet

but relentless pressure achieved results, whereas more aggressive actions would have failed. He also shows that Patrick

began as a skeptic, but over his years as Air Service chief, his

strategic vision broadened, and he became a staunch advocate

of airpower. By the mid-1920s, he had become a believer in

both “independent air operations” and the growing dominance

of airpower in war. Unlike Mitchell, however, Patrick believed

that it would take a long time to establish an independent air

6

AIRMEN AND AIR THEORY
force. The Air Corps Act was a transitional but necessary step

towards that goal—nothing more radical could have gotten

through Congress.

More significantly, because of his long background as an engineer, Patrick was well aware of the need for a sound logistics

base and industrial infrastructure to back airpower. In his view,

without the existence of a robust aeronautical industry in the

United States that included a powerful commercial-aviation

component, the Air Service would remain merely a collection of

airplanes. Towards that end, Patrick totally revamped the Air

Service engineering division at Wright Field, Ohio, taking it out of

the aircraft-design business—which had produced a series of

costly failures—and made it responsible for testing the designs

provided by commercial builders.

White’s handling of Patrick’s relationship with Mitchell is

balanced and believable. Patrick realized that Mitchell was a

highly talented and innovative leader who inspired his men to

great efforts, but he also understood that Mitchell needed firm

supervision to prevent self-inflicted wounds. Significantly, virtually all of the hot water in which Mitchell found himself

throughout his career occurred either before Patrick’s tenure

as Air Service chief or after Mitchell left his guidance.

Patrick left behind few papers, so White’s book contains regrettably few details about either his personal life or his 40-year

Army career before his duty with the Air Service. Overall, however, it is an excellent effort.

William “Billy” Mitchell is the most

famous and controversial figure in

the history of American airpower.

The son of a wealthy Wisconsin senator, he enlisted as a private during

the Spanish-American War. Quickly

gaining a commission due to the intervention of his father, he joined the

Signal Corps. He became an outstanding junior officer, displaying a

rare degree of initiative, courage, and

leadership. After challenging tours in

the Philippines and Alaska, Mitchell

7

THE AIRMEN
was assigned to the General Staff—at the time its youngest

member. He slowly became excited about aviation—then part of

the Signal Corps—and in 1916 at age 38, he took private flying

lessons.

Arriving in France in April 1917, only a few days after the

United States had entered the war, Lieutenant Colonel

Mitchell met extensively with British and French air leaders

and studied their operations. Quickly taking charge, he began

preparations for the American air units that would follow. The

story of the mobilization of American aviation in World War I is

not a glorious one. Months passed before pilots arrived in

France and even more before aircraft arrived. Nevertheless,

Mitchell rapidly earned a reputation as a daring, flamboyant,

and tireless leader. He eventually became a brigadier general

and commanded all American combat units in France. In September 1918, he planned and led nearly 1,500 Allied aircraft

in the air phase of the Saint-Mihiel offensive. Recognized as

the top American combat airman of the war (he received the

Distinguished Service Cross, the Distinguished Service Medal,

and several foreign decorations), Mitchell still managed to

alienate most of his superiors—both flying and nonflying—

during his 18 months in France.

Returning to the United States in early 1919, Mitchell became deputy chief of the Air Service, retaining his one-star

rank. His relations with superiors continued to sour as he

began to attack both the War and Navy Departments for their

lack of foresight regarding airpower. His fight with the Navy

climaxed with the dramatic bombing tests of 1921 and 1923

that sank several battleships, proving—at least to Mitchell—

the obsolescence of surface fleets. Within the Army, he also experienced difficulties, notably with his superiors Charles

Menoher and, later, Mason Patrick. In early 1925, he reverted

to his permanent rank of colonel and was transferred to Texas.

Although such demotions were not unusual at the time—

Major General Patrick himself had reverted to colonel upon returning to the Corps of Engineers in 1919—many people interpreted the move as punishment and exile. Not content to

remain quiet, when the Navy dirigible Shenandoah crashed in

a storm, killing 14 of the crew, Mitchell issued his famous

8

AIRMEN AND AIR THEORY
statement accusing senior leaders in the Army and Navy of incompetence and “almost treasonable administration of the national defense.” He was court-martialed, found guilty of insubordination, and suspended from active duty for five years

without pay. Instead, Mitchell elected to resign as of 1 February 1926 and spent the next decade writing and preaching the

gospel of airpower to all who would listen. Mitchell viewed the

election of Franklin D. Roosevelt as advantageous for airpower

even though Roosevelt was a Navy man. In fact, he believed

that the new president would appoint him assistant secretary

of war for air or perhaps even secretary of defense in a new

and unified military organization. Such hopes never materialized. Mitchell died in 1936 of a variety of ailments, including a

bad heart and influenza.

Unquestionably, the most balanced and useful treatment of

this important airman is Alfred F. Hurley’s Billy Mitchell, Crusader for Air Power, rev. ed. (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1975). Hurley deals sparingly with the general’s

early career and personal life, concentrating instead on his

war experiences, the postwar years, and his theories of airpower employment. Mitchell was the first prominent American

to espouse publicly a vision of strategic airpower that would

dominate future war. He believed that aircraft were inherently

offensive, strategic weapons that revolutionized war by allowing a direct attack on an enemy country’s “vital centers”—the

mighty industrial areas that produced the vast amount of armaments and equipment so necessary in modern war. He did

not consider such use of aircraft either illegal or immoral. In

fact, in light of the trench carnage of World War I that slaughtered millions, he argued that airpower provided a quicker and

more humane method of waging war. To carry out this mission

of strategic attack effectively, he argued for the necessity of

separating aviation from the traditional, surface-oriented

Army and Navy. Mitchell’s persistent gibes at the Navy were

especially nasty, and Hurley argues that they not only fostered

bitter interservice rivalry but also spurred the Navy to greater

efforts in developing carrier-based aviation—precisely the opposite of Mitchell’s intent. Nevertheless, Hurley concludes that

these shortcomings were more than offset by Mitchell’s vision

9

THE AIRMEN
and foresight regarding the future of war, later proved substantially correct, which sustained the fledgling Air Force during its early, difficult years.

Most of the other published accounts of Mitchell’s life are

hagiographies written during or soon after World War II that

depict him as a prophet without honor and as a martyr for airpower. Surprisingly, few of them discuss his airpower theories,

concentrating instead on the sensational aspects of his career.

The best of this genre is Isaac Don Levine’s Mitchell, Pioneer of

Air Power, rev. ed. (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1958).

Levine addresses Mitchell’s personal life, including his early

years as a junior officer, basing his story largely on letters and

interviews. Although he includes no notes or bibliography,

Levine obviously did a great deal of research. Unfortunately,

besides employing overly breathless prose, the book glorifies

Mitchell and ignores his very real character flaws. Mitchell was

vain, petulant, racist, overbearing, and egotistical. Although

his aggressive advocacy of airpower proved entertaining and

won much publicity, his antics probably had little effect on

swaying either public opinion or Congress. Indeed, one could

even argue that his incessant and vicious attacks on the Navy

did more harm than good and induced an animosity between

sailors and airmen that has never really abated.

Biographies that have, frankly, little value include Emile

Gauvreau and Lester Cohen’s Billy Mitchell, Founder of Our Air

Force and Prophet without Honor (New York: E. P. Dutton and

Co., Inc., 1942); Roger Burlingame’s General Billy Mitchell,

Champion of Air Defense (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1952); and

Ruth Mitchell’s My Brother Bill, The Life of General “Billy”

Mitchell (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1953). His sister’s book

does, however, quote heavily from Mitchell’s unpublished

manuscript describing his tour in Alaska from 1901 to 1903.

This little-known story of the Signal Corps’s efforts to string a

telegraph line across the territory is quite interesting. Burke

Davis’s The Billy Mitchell Affair (New York: Random House,

1967), a cut above those just mentioned, is unique in that it

covers in some detail Mitchell’s famous report of his visit to

Hawaii in 1924. In that document, he predicted a future war

with Japan that opened with a carrier-based air attack on

10

AIRMEN AND AIR THEORY
Pearl Harbor. Additionally, Davis, who had access to the transcript of Mitchell’s court-martial, covers that event fairly extensively. Although his treatment is evenhanded, it tends to

put the airman in a favorable light, portraying him as a victim

of Army conservatism.

Michael L. Grumelli’s “Trial of Faith: The Dissent and CourtMartial of Billy Mitchell” (PhD diss., Rutgers University, 1991)

takes a different view of the court proceedings. This absorbing

and detailed account of Mitchell’s 1925 trial for insubordination argues that the general was convicted not only because he

was guilty as charged but also because his defense lawyer,

who bungled cross-examinations, proved woefully inept. Furthermore, a clever prosecutor produced testimony from expert

witnesses revealing that virtually all of Mitchell’s charges of

military incompetence and negligence were unfounded.

Grumelli concludes that Mitchell’s decision to provoke a public court-martial was a serious miscalculation that quickly revealed his “tremendous arrogance, extreme self-righteousness,

gross exaggerations and blatant inaccuracies.” He further concludes that Mitchell, surprised at his conviction, spent the rest

of his life vainly seeking vindication but faded quickly into obscurity, devoid of either influence or importance. His rejection

by Roosevelt for a senior post in the administration was the

last straw.

Raymond R. Flugel’s “United States Air Power Doctrine: A

Study of the Influence of William Mitchell and Giulio Douhet at

the Air Corps Tactical School, 1921–1935” (PhD diss., University

of Oklahoma, 1965) argues that a direct link existed between the

two air theorists. Flugel even argues that Mitchell’s writings

owed a heavy but unacknowledged debt to Douhet, basing this

charge on the discovery of a partial translation of Douhet’s Command of the Air dated 1922 (published in Italian in 1921) in

the Air Service archives. This predates by a decade a French

edition translated for the Air Corps by Dorothy Benedict and

George Kenney. Unfortunately, this discovery—an important one

indeed—is totally wasted by the author’s flawed methodology.

Through textual analysis of Command of the Air, Flugel attempts

to show that Mitchell’s writings of the mid-1920s and the Air

Corps Tactical School (ACTS) textbooks of the same era plagia11

THE AIRMEN
rized Douhet. He actually reproduces several paragraphs, underlining words and phrases to show their similarity. However,

rather than using the newly discovered 1922 translation that he

trumpets—presumably available to Mitchell—Flugel relies instead on the Dino Ferrari translation of 1942! Because the two

versions have significant differences, Flugel’s charges remain

unproven.

Published over two decades after his death, Mitchell’s Memoirs of World War I: From Start to Finish of Our Greatest War

(New York: Random House, 1960) compiles his experiences in

France from April 1917 to the armistice, based on his diaries

(now lost, parts of which appeared serially in Liberty magazine

in 1928). As with any such work, no one can tell how many of

its opinions and predictions were of later device. Not surprisingly, Mitchell comes across looking quite prescient concerning the unfolding of the war. The book does, however, reveal

some notable matters. It makes apparent, for example,

Mitchell’s distaste and low regard for Benjamin Foulois, his

nominal superior. It is a pity that two of the most senior and

important American airmen, who should have been close allies

in their advocacy of airpower, were bitter enemies. Also apparent is Mitchell’s remarkable curiosity about all things regarding air warfare. Memoirs of World War I is replete with descriptions of myriad and diverse details, such as what time weather

reports arrived at a fighter squadron and in what format, the

construction of shock absorbers on a captured German aircraft, and the type of parachutes used by balloon observers.

One other revealing aspect of this memoir is Mitchell’s already

emerging disdain for “nonflying officers” in Washington who

“know nothing about airpower” yet try to direct its course. According to this book, Mitchell returned to the United States in

1919 already convinced of the need for a separate service liberated from the control of narrow-minded surface officers.

Another notable work of Mitchell’s is General Greely: The Story

of a Great American (New York: G. P. Putnam’s, 1936). Adolphus

W. Greely, one of the more interesting characters of his era,

fought in the Civil War, strung telegraph wire across the southwest United States, and made a name for himself internationally

as an Arctic explorer. In 1887 he received a promotion to

12

AIRMEN AND AIR THEORY
brigadier general and became chief signal officer of the US Army,

a post he held until his retirement in 1906. During those two

decades, he modernized the Signal Corps dramatically, but, perhaps most significantly, he pushed for a rejuvenation of the Balloon Corps and encouraged experimentation in heavier-than-air

flight. Although Greely retired before the Wright brothers sold

their first airplane to the Army’s Signal Corps, Mitchell credits

him with creating an atmosphere of innovation that made such

a contract possible. Mitchell’s use of this biography as a vehicle

for recounting some of his own experiences as a junior officer in

Greely’s Signal Corps gives us some insights into his activities

during the Spanish-American War, his tour in the Philippines

during the insurrection there, and his rugged adventures in

Alaska. Mitchell wrote this biography in 1935, the year Greely

died; it came out in print the following year, soon after Mitchell’s

own death.

Benjamin D. Foulois taught himself to fly, largely through correspondence with the Wright brothers

in 1909. Although many of his contemporaries died in plane crashes

or quit flying, he continued as an

operational pilot until World War I.

He then went to France, where, as

a brigadier general, he had responsibility for all Air Service support

functions. After the war, he served

as an air attaché in Germany, commanded Mitchel Field in New York,

and in 1931 became chief of the Air Corps.

John F. Shiner’s Foulois and the U.S. Army Air Corps,

1931–1935 (Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History,

1984) is a solid treatment of the Air Corps chief and his times.

Foulois came from a humble background and was physically

unimpressive; worse, he lacked the charisma of his contemporary and chief rival within the air arm, Billy Mitchell. Nevertheless, Shiner argues that Foulois’s steady perseverance in

working to shift War Department views regarding the importance of airpower gradually paid off, resulting in the increased

13

THE AIRMEN
autonomy of the General Headquarters (GHQ) Air Force,

formed in 1935. On the other hand, perhaps because of his

humble origins, Foulois was not popular among his Army

brethren. Moreover, the disastrous performance of the Air

Corps in the airmail fiasco of 1934 (probably more Foulois’s

fault than Shiner acknowledges) earned him the ill will of President Roosevelt. Looking for a scapegoat, Congress—also embarrassed by the miserable Air Corps performance—held

hearings on the issue of aircraft procurement. Foulois was

reprimanded for “misleading” Congress and violating the spirit

of procurement laws. The Air Corps chief’s relations with the

Navy were also stormy during this period. But in truth, given

the budget crunch during the bottom of the Great Depression,

their inherently conflicting views regarding the role of airpower

in war, and the poisoned atmosphere created by Mitchell, such

difficulties were inevitable. Without friends in or out of the

Army and with his usefulness clearly limited, Foulois retired

in December 1935, a bitter and lonely man.

Shiner depicts Foulois as a poor administrator, noting that

he was not a deep thinker and did little to foster the development of strategic-airpower doctrine during his tenure. Nevertheless, this was the golden age for such development in the

Air Corps, and Shiner credits Foulois with creating a climate

that allowed such intellectual ferment to occur. Overall, his

book is a solid account of an important figure.

With the help of C. V. Glines, Foulois tells his story in From

the Wright Brothers to the Astronauts: The Memoirs of Benjamin

D. Foulois (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968), an exciting, witty,

and enjoyable memoir that combines insightful details about

the early years of American aviation and an explanation of

Foulois’s own conduct during World War I and his years as Air

Corps chief. The most illuminating aspect of this book, however, is the gusto with which Foulois attacks Billy Mitchell.

Foulois reveals that the animosity between him and Mitchell

began in 1916, when Foulois accompanied the 1st Aero

Squadron to Mexico with Pershing in a futile attempt to catch

the bandit Pancho Villa. At the same time, the chief of the Signal Corps had to leave office due to financial improprieties,

14

AIRMEN AND AIR THEORY
and Mitchell, who had not yet even flown an airplane, became

temporary chief. The poor performance of the aviation unit in

Mexico resulted in mutual finger pointing between Mitchell

and Foulois, and the rift never healed. Mitchell’s World War I

memoirs—not published until 1960—apparently offended

Foulois (Mitchell refers to him as an incompetent “carpetbagger” who “no longer flew”). So Foulois decided to tell his side of

the story at age 86 and “set the record straight.” He portrays

Mitchell as an inept braggart who was all talk and no action,

a lousy pilot, and a prima donna who did more harm than

good. The truth, as usual, probably lies between these two extremes. Pershing clearly respected both of them but thought

that neither had the experience or maturity to run the Air Service; hence, he appointed Mason Patrick to lead the air arm

and control its two main recalcitrants. Overall, Foulois delivers good pyrotechnics and an entertaining read.

Oscar M. Westover succeeded

Foulois as chief of the Air Corps,

holding that position from 1935 to

1938. Originally, Westover was a

balloonist, and fellow airmen saw

him as insufficiently air-minded.

Precisely for that reason, he was

popular with the General Staff, who

thus named him Foulois’s successor. He died in a plane crash in

September 1938, and Henry H.

“Hap” Arnold became chief. It is interesting to speculate whether he

would have played a role in the expansion of the Air Corps in the years leading up to Pearl Harbor or if, like Malin Craig in the Army, he would have been

shunted aside just as the crisis approached. No one has written a biography of Westover, but Frank Faulkner includes a

chapter on him in his handbook Westover: Man, Base and Mission (Springfield, Mass.: Hungry Hill Press, 1990). Decidedly

not analytical, this chapter is little more than an expanded resume that lists his various assignments and promotion dates;

however, it does contain a number of interesting photographs.

15

THE AIRMEN
Air Force historian James L. Crowder Jr.’s discovery of a footlocker

containing the personal papers of

Maj Gen Clarence L. Tinker led him

to write a biography of this unusual

airman—an Osage Indian and the

first American general officer to die

in World War II (Tinker’s B-17 went

down at the Battle of Midway in June

1942). In Osage General: Maj. Gen.

Clarence L. Tinker (Tinker AFB,

Okla.: Office of History, Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center,

1987), Crowder states that his book “is neither a psychological

analysis of the individual nor a study of aviation doctrine in the

emerging air force.” Rather, it is a mildly interesting, if somewhat

chatty, account of Tinker’s military career and life.

Although the book tells us nothing of Tinker’s theory of air

warfare, his speeches during the war reflect his strong advocacy of strategic airpower. Osage General’s major flaw is that,

instead of relating what made Tinker successful, it dwells

upon his personal life and character traits. Although one

might find such information useful, the fact that it comes from

an adoring wife, sister, and daughter renders it something less

than completely reliable. Thus, we find much anecdotal information but little real analysis. Nevertheless, the bulk of the

book is a workmanlike story of a career soldier during peacetime who served in many capacities all over the world. A man

who loved to fly, Tinker was highly competent, well respected

within the Air Corps, and probably destined for high rank and

responsibility had he lived.

Although not an aviator, William A.

Moffett was chosen to form the

Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics in

1921. He had served over two

decades as a surface sailor, won the

Medal of Honor for action at Veracruz in 1914, and commanded the

battleship Mississippi from 1918 to

1920. Despite his lack of experi16

AIRMEN AND AIR THEORY

Photo courtesy of HomeOfHeroes.com
ence in aviation, he was one of the first high-ranking naval officers to appreciate the importance of the airplane and the impact it would have on the fleet. He eagerly accepted the challenge of forming an aeronautical bureau within the Navy and

proved extremely successful in this endeavor. Because aviation was a politically and militarily contentious issue throughout the interwar period, Moffett had to use all of his diplomacy, tact, tenacity, and savvy to see the infant air arm

through its formative years. He did, however, have an unfortunate affection for airships, a technological dead end that

squandered millions of dollars. Ironically, in April 1933 he

jumped on board the airship Akron for a flight from Lakehurst,

New Jersey, to Newport, Rhode Island. The ship went down in

a severe storm off the coast of New Jersey, killing Moffett and

most of the crew.

William F. Trimble writes about the life of this “essential

man” in Admiral William A. Moffett, Architect of Naval Aviation

(Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994), an

excellent book that gives a clear and sympathetic portrait of

Moffett, arguing that his firm but enlightened leadership

proved essential to the successful development of naval aviation. Despite the presence of many younger, more aggressive,

and more knowledgeable naval aviators, Moffett’s strong background as a surface officer gave him credibility and won his

superiors’ trust—qualities the others could not match. Moffett

did not challenge his superiors, as did Billy Mitchell in the

Army, and he did not demand a separate service. Instead, he

preached the necessity of keeping aviation an integral part of

the fleet. He told his young aviators to always remember that

they were naval officers first and airmen second, a deft and

crucial handling of the loyalty issue that, Trimble implies,

saved the air arm from amputation. At the same time, the author argues that Mitchell’s tactics and his propaganda campaign provided Moffett the lever he needed to energize the

naval hierarchy to form the aeronautical bureau. In this balanced account, Trimble notes that Moffett, often dictatorial

and stubborn, tended to push projects like large airships and

small aircraft carriers long after it was clear they were bad

ideas. Nevertheless, the admiral was indeed the right man at

17

THE AIRMEN
the right time. Without his vision and political acumen, naval

aviation would have evolved far differently.

In Admiral John H. Towers: The

Struggle for Naval Air Supremacy

(Annapolis: Naval Institute Press,

1991), Clark G. Reynolds relates

the history of American naval aviation from its earliest days to the

dawn of the nuclear age, as seen

through the eyes of premier naval

aviator John H. Towers. It recounts the “struggle” of Towers and

his fellow airmen not only against

the Japanese but also against the

Army and nonaviators within their own service.

Reynolds’s account of these early years (Towers entered aviation in 1911) is detailed and fascinating. Surprisingly, in

these difficult and dangerous times, early naval aviators began

resenting and questioning the actions of fellow seamen who

did not fly. Depicted as traditional, conservative, and closed to

new ideas, surface sailors are charged with deliberately retarding naval aviation by holding up budgets, promotions, and

doctrinal reform. Similarly, naval aviators suspected as early

as 1914 that Army airmen had designs on their planes, pilots,

and missions. Billy Mitchell’s attacks on the Navy after 1919

served to confirm these fears.

The bulk of this book deals with Towers’s role behind the

scenes in Washington and then in Hawaii during World War II.

Never holding a combat command, Towers instead played a

key role in planning, mobilizing, and administering the Navy

at war. Although his is an important story, it is not a dazzling

one. Yet, Towers was important as one of the first and most innovative tactical thinkers regarding carrier operations. Early

wartime experience proved the accuracy of two of his earliest

admonitions—that carriers should be employed in task forces

rather than singly or as part of a battleship flotilla and that

they should never venture within range of land-based airpower

until the establishment of air superiority. Moreover, from his

position as chief of the Bureau of Naval Aeronautics in Wash18

AIRMEN AND AIR THEORY

Photo courtesy of Ralph Cooper
ington, Towers selected those airmen, his protégés, who would

command the carriers in combat. Surprisingly, however,

Reynolds’s portrait is not complimentary. Towers emerges as

vain, ambitious, overbearing, political, and paranoid. Perhaps

the most damning depiction of him concerns his vociferous efforts to block unification of the armed forces after the war.

Towers played a leading role in the sorry story of the Navy’s attempts to prevent the formation of the Defense Department

and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), fearing they would encroach upon Navy prerogatives.

Clark Reynolds is a masterful naval historian; his research

is prodigious; and his writing style is pleasant. His book, however, lacks a concluding chapter that sums up Towers the man

and his impact on American military affairs. Overall, Admiral

John H. Towers is an important work about a largely forgotten

figure.

Henry H. “Hap” Arnold was one of

the truly great men in American

airpower. Taught to fly at the

Wright brothers’ flying school in

1911, he rose steadily in rank and

responsibility throughout the

1920s and 1930s and became commanding general of the Army Air

Forces (AAF) during World War II.

In 1944 he was promoted to fivestar rank, but his poor health—he

suffered several heart attacks during the war—forced him to retire six

months after Japan surrendered.

Thomas M. Coffey’s Hap: The Story of the U.S. Air Force and the

Man Who Built It, General Henry “Hap” Arnold (New York:

Viking Press, 1982), which relies heavily on interviews and

memoirs of Arnold’s contemporaries to portray his life, is an

interesting though incomplete study.

Graduating from West Point in 1907, Arnold had hoped to

join the cavalry. However, due to his dismal performance as a

cadet, he instead found himself in the infantry. After a tour in

the Philippines, he reapplied to the cavalry but was again re19

THE AIRMEN
fused. Largely out of a desire to escape the infantry, Arnold

then applied for the Signal Corps and became one of America’s

first military pilots. Aviation was extremely dangerous in those

early days, and after several crashes and near crashes, Arnold

grounded himself. After more than three years of desk work,

he overcame his fears and returned to flying. Because of his

relatively extensive experience in aviation, he was forced to remain in Washington on the Air Service staff during World War

I, much to his chagrin. For the following two decades, he commanded wings and bases, became a protégé of Billy Mitchell,

twice won the Mackay Trophy for aeronautical achievement,

received the Distinguished Flying Cross for leading a flight of

B-10 bombers to Alaska to display the range of strategic airpower, and became assistant to the chief of the Air Corps in

1935. When Oscar Westover was killed in a plane crash in

1938, Arnold succeeded him as chief. In this position, he was

instrumental in laying the groundwork for the massive industrial expansion the war required. During the war itself, he sat

as an equal member of the JCS, responsible for guiding the air

strategy of the various theaters. Belying his nickname “Hap”

(short for “happy”), Arnold was a difficult taskmaster, continually interfering in the affairs of his subordinates and refusing

to use or even organize his staff effectively. His mercurial temper often made him quite nasty. Nevertheless, his great weaknesses were also his great strengths. His drive, vision, and

sense of initiative proved indispensable in leading the air arm.

Coffey has done an excellent job of bringing Arnold’s complex personality to life. Although his portrait is largely sympathetic, Coffey leaves one with the image of a difficult and irascible husband, father, subordinate, and commander. Yet,

Arnold’s genius for accomplishing great things and inspiring

others to do likewise is apparent. Because the author relies so

heavily on interviews, however, his story is incomplete and biased. For example, Arnold’s decision to personally command

B-29 forces in the Pacific was an unprecedented action for a

member of the joint chiefs. Although Coffey notes this, he fails

to explain how Arnold was able to convince the other chiefs—

to say nothing of the theater commanders involved—to accept

such an unusual command arrangement. More significantly,

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AIRMEN AND AIR THEORY
although Coffey alludes to Arnold’s vision as an air strategist

and strategic-bombing advocate, he gives readers almost no

insight into this area and scarcely mentions Arnold’s extensive

writings on this subject (he authored or coauthored four books

plus his memoirs). As a result, this biography is more of a

sketch than a portrait, providing an outline and some intriguing hints but lacking detail.

Flint O. DuPre’s Hap Arnold: Architect of American Air Power

(New York: Macmillan, 1972), a fairly short character sketch

based on Arnold’s memoirs, is of little use. Murray Green,

however, spent several years conducting an enormous amount

of research on Arnold, including dozens of interviews with

friends, family, and colleagues. He began work on a biography,

tentatively titled “Hap Arnold and the Birth of the United

States Air Force,” a draft that takes Arnold up to the start of

World War II. Unfortunately, he never completed it. Despite the

fact that this draft covers only the first 20 years of Arnold’s career, it remains an excellent start. Green’s in-depth research

offers insights and provides information not available elsewhere: Arnold’s cadet experiences and the unique culture of

West Point at the turn of the century, his relationship with

Charles Lindbergh and the America First organization, and the

general’s problems with President Roosevelt concerning the

shipment of aircraft to Europe in the late 1930s. One can find

Green’s unfinished manuscript in the Special Collections

Branch of the Air Force Academy library, along with all the

notes and interviews he conducted over the years.

Dik A. Daso takes an extremely interesting and fresh look at

Arnold in Architects of American Air Supremacy: Gen Hap

Arnold and Dr. Theodore von Kármán (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air

University Press, 1997). Daso explores one of the general’s

most unusual facets: his fascination with technology. Airmen

have always been known for their affinity for and reliance

upon machines, but Arnold had a particularly well honed appreciation for the importance of technology to airpower. Having true airpower and not just a collection of airplanes required that a country possess the industrial infrastructure to

design and build aircraft and their engines. For the United

States, this meant a powerful aviation industry, airline indus21

THE AIRMEN
try, airway structure, and—most importantly—a research and

development (R&D) base second to none. From his earliest

years as an officer, Arnold realized these truths, and during

his assignment to Washington in World War I, he witnessed

firsthand how a lack of these assets could lead to waste and

ineffectiveness. For the rest of his career, Arnold strove to ensure that such problems would not recur.

Daso does a masterful job of detailing Arnold’s efforts to

build a link between the Air Force and the technological base

upon which it so heavily depended. His approach is especially

useful in that he intertwines Arnold’s career with that of his

close colleague Dr. Theodore von Kármán, the brilliant, Hungarian-born aeronautical engineer. The climax of Daso’s work

comes with the discussion of “Toward New Horizons,” the futuristic vision statement commissioned by Arnold and produced by Kármán in December 1945. This intellectual tour de

force, which foresaw with remarkable clarity the evolution of

the Air Force in, inter alia, space, ballistic missiles, unmanned

air vehicles, and cruise missiles, served as the blueprint for

technological development in the Air Force for the next three

decades. Daso’s work is an important addition to the literature, not only about Hap Arnold but more generally about the

vital interface between technology and airpower. Because the

Arnold family granted the author access to a wealth of information previously unavailable to researchers, he was able to

shed new light on Arnold’s personality.

Daso then wrote another, more complete, biography of

Arnold titled Hap Arnold and the Evolution of American Airpower (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press,

2000), an excellent effort that covers Arnold’s early career and

personality in far more detail than we have seen previously.

Once again, he focuses on Arnold’s zeal in ensuring a close relationship between airpower and technology. Daso also identifies Arnold’s holistic approach to airpower as one of his great

insights. The United States needed a strong industrial base; a

robust R&D program; a broad aviation infrastructure; a large

pool of qualified personnel; and, perhaps most importantly, a

clearly devised, coherent, and codified doctrine for employing

those air assets. Possessing an unshakeable belief in the im22

AIRMEN AND AIR THEORY
portance of strategic airpower, Arnold labored to ensure that

America possessed all of these necessary elements.

One of the most interesting and insightful portions of this

account is the epilogue, wherein Daso expands upon a letter

that Arnold wrote shortly before his death regarding his views

on leadership. The general noted several vital qualities: technical competence, hard work, vision, judgment, communication skills, a facility for human relations, and integrity. One

could also add mental and physical courage. As he progressed

in command and responsibility, Arnold continuously faced

tough decisions. Having the courage to do the right thing regardless of the consequences and regardless of the effect on

friends and family is enormously difficult. This list of attributes, which Arnold displayed in abundance throughout his career, serves as the perfect summation for both the book and

the man.

One might quibble with Daso over what his book omits. For

example, he spends almost no time discussing broad issues of

strategy in World War II, targeting debates, interservice rivalries,

or Arnold’s relationships with his commanders. Furthermore, it

is useful to note here that Arnold was indeed “commanding general” of the AAF, his official title, insofar as he had far more control over his air forces and personnel than does a present-day

chief of staff. Had Daso elected to explore this subject, it no

doubt would have made for interesting reading.

Nevertheless, Daso’s research is prodigious, the numerous

illustrations are excellent, and his writing style is eminently

pleasing. Hap Arnold and the Evolution of American Airpower is

an excellent biography of a great commander and is must

reading for airmen of all ranks. It is by far the best book written on Arnold to date.

William R. Laidlaw assisted Arnold in writing Global Mission

(New York: Harper and Row, 1949), memoirs that tend to resemble the man who wrote them: energetic, enthusiastic, advocative, mixing broad vision and intimate detail, and somewhat disorganized. Arnold’s legendary temper is not in

evidence here. Obviously, he had mellowed in the four years

since his retirement; thus, the spirited arguments with the

other services—and even with individuals in his own service—

23

THE AIRMEN
are muted. Arnold notes his differences with the Navy, but he

has nary a contrary word for Adm William Leahy, Adm Ernest

King, Adm Chester Nimitz, or Adm John Towers, his main antagonists. Although such restraint is commendable, it finesses

some of the key strategic issues of the war, and we are left with

rather bland comments like, “After some discussion we were

able to reach a compromise.” He reserves his biggest barbs for

the Chinese—whom he saw as hopelessly corrupt—and the

Soviets—whom he viewed with increasing distrust as the war

progressed. By the end of the war, Arnold was already a cold

warrior, and he concluded his memoirs with a warning to

maintain an air force powerful enough to counter the Soviet

Union. Especially useful are his fascinating stories of the early

years of aviation and the evolution of airpower in the two

decades following World War I. His detailed account of the war

years is also quite insightful, and the sheer number of problems he encountered is clearly illustrated. In seven pages, he

lists the subjects of dozens of memos he had to write in a typical day—everything from the design of buttons (actually

miniature compasses designed to assist downed aircrews) to

the location of B-29 bases in China. Overall, Global Mission is

an enjoyable and very readable book—one of the best of the

wartime memoirs of a senior leader.

The corpus of airpower literature

contains very few sound biographies of American airmen involved

in engineering or logistical matters.

With his biography Every Inch a

Soldier: Augustine Warner Robins

and the Building of U.S. Airpower

(College Station, Tex.: Texas A&M

University Press, 1995), William

Head, an official historian with the

Air Force, helps fill this void with a

study of perhaps the first and most

important of the air logisticians.

Warner Robins was born in Virginia in 1882 to a patrician

family whose men had fought in the Revolutionary War, the

War of 1812, and the Civil War. Following in such footsteps, he

24

AIRMEN AND AIR THEORY
entered West Point in 1903, the same class as Hap Arnold.

After graduating in 1907, Robins spent a decade in the cavalry, and in 1916 his troop accompanied General Pershing to

New Mexico for the “punitive expedition” against Pancho Villa.

The famous Mexican bandit escaped, but Robins did not. Intrigued by the possibilities of flight embodied in one of the

other units on the border—the 1st Aero Squadron, a group of

flimsy airplanes engaged in reconnaissance operations—he

submitted his papers for a transfer to the air arm.

Because of his relatively senior rank—he was a major by

that point—Robins found himself in an administrative position

almost as soon as he won his wings. Although he thereby

missed the chance to serve in France, Robins did establish a

reputation as a first-rate organizer. In 1919 he was assigned

to the Supply Division of the Air Service, and, in a sense, he

never really left. For the next 20 years, Warner Robins would

toil in the world of logistics, mostly at Wright Field in Ohio.

These crucial, if not glamorous, assignments put him in the

forefront of technological development. Airpower remained

only a word unless industry developed and built planes to

carry out the theories of the air advocates. Combined with this

need, however, was the contradictory requirement to cut

spending for defense in a period of fiscal conservatism heightened by the Great Depression—a tremendously challenging

situation for an airman in Robins’s position.

Head tells us that Robins became an outstanding logistician, largely responsible for putting the Air Service—later the

Air Corps—on a sound administrative footing. He instituted a

supply-accountability system that remained in effect until the

advent of computers 30 years later. Likewise, in 1927 he

moved to open a logistics school for nonflying officers to obviate the need to rely upon officers transferred from the cavalry!

Missing from this account are details of precisely how Robins

went about his task and how his ideas differed from standard

practice. Clearly, however, the author’s conclusion regarding

his subject’s impact is accurate—a series of air chiefs found

his work indispensable. As the air arm expanded between the

wars and as its materiel functions became more complex,

Robins advanced in rank to assume greater responsibility for

25

THE AIRMEN
these efforts. In 1935 he was promoted to brigadier general—

one of only four in the Air Corps at the time—and assumed

command of the Materiel Division at Wright Field.

For the next four years, Robins oversaw the entire logistical

side of the Air Corps. He pushed hard for increased funding for

R&D, as well as for key technologies ranging from the B-17 to

the Norden bombsight to the high-octane gasoline needed to

power new, high-performance engines. More importantly, he

headed the logistics end of the air arm just as the country

began its massive expansion for World War II.

An indifferent pilot, Robins suffered a nearly fatal crash in

1921 that broke his jaw and right arm; the following year, he also

developed severe high blood pressure. Each year thereafter,

passing his physical became a chore, and in some cases he had

to check into a hospital two weeks prior to the exam to bring his

condition under sufficient control to get a clean bill of health. In

1939 he took over Air Training Command in Texas, but in June

of the following year, the stress of approaching war, combined

with his poor health, resulted in a fatal heart attack at the age of

57. Three years later, the Warner Robins Army Air Depot at

Robins Field, Georgia, was dedicated to his honor.

Head has written an enjoyable and heavily researched account of an important airman. Not an overly exciting subject,

logistics nevertheless remains absolutely essential to military

operations. As the old adage goes, “Amateurs discuss strategy,

but professionals talk about logistics.” Warner Robins played

a key role in establishing a foundation for Air Force logistics

that would stand the test of war and the transition to an independent service.

Movies and novels have immortalized Claire L. Chennault, one of

America’s more famous airmen and

leader of the Flying Tigers. He also

has been the subject of a number of

biographies—probably more than

he deserves. The best of these is

certainly Martha Byrd’s Chennault:

Giving Wings to the Tiger (University, Ala.: University of Alabama

26

AIRMEN AND AIR THEORY
Press, 1987), a portrait of someone who at turns could be

gruff, stubborn, iconoclastic, gentle, or cultured.

Chennault arrived at ACTS in 1930 with a reputation as a

premier pursuit pilot. His ideas concerning pursuit employment evolved from much thought and practical experience.

But Air Corps doctrine was shifting decisively in favor of bombardment, and Chennault’s attempts to stem that tide proved

futile. As Byrd points out, Chennault’s abrasive personality

negated his arguments, and his colleagues found it more satisfying simply to ignore him. Suffering from a variety of physical ailments and realizing that his theories were out of tune

with Air Corps policy, he retired in 1937. Soon after, he moved

to China, where he served as an adviser to Chiang Kai-shek

and formed the Flying Tigers volunteer group to fight against

the Japanese. Chennault found the much-storied group of

misfits-turned-heroes well suited to his aggressive, unconventional personality. When America entered the war, the Flying

Tigers were incorporated into Fourteenth Air Force, and Chennault was promoted to brigadier general and became its commander. Never on good terms with his Air Corps colleagues,

Chennault persisted in infuriating his superiors by constantly

complaining and circumventing the chain of command by

dealing directly with Chiang and President Roosevelt. Consequently, George Marshall thought him disloyal and unreliable,

Hap Arnold considered him a “crackpot,” and Joe Stilwell (his

superior in China) termed him “a jackass.”

Even if his strategic theories had been correct, his method of

promoting them ensured their demise. In fact, his ideas were not

sound. He believed that a small force of aircraft, mostly pursuit

with a handful of bombers, could so disrupt enemy logistics that

it would lead to Japan’s eventual defeat. But interdiction campaigns do not win wars, and it is doubtful that any amount of

tactical airpower could have prevented Japan from overrunning

China, much less brought about its defeat. Although he was an

outstanding tactician whose determination in the face of overwhelming supply and equipment difficulties kept Fourteenth Air

Force in the field, one can only classify Chennault’s strategic

ideas as puerile. Nevertheless, Byrd’s book is excellent—the best

available on this important airman.

27

THE AIRMEN
A step below Byrd’s effort is Jack Samson’s Chennault (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1987). Samson, who flew in the

Fourteenth during the war and afterwards often went fishing

and hunting with his former boss, provides some useful insights into Chennault’s personality as well as a fairly detailed

account of combat operations. Relying heavily on Chennault’s

personal papers (located at Stanford University), the book recounts the voluminous correspondence between the general

and Chinese leaders. In addition, Samson covers the decade

after the war, when Chennault organized the Civil Air Transport (CAT) company—especially interesting because CAT

worked closely with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and

eventually became Air America, an airline secretly owned by

the CIA. Unfortunately, the author’s portrayal of Chennault is

far too laudatory, glorifying the general throughout and depicting those who disagreed with him—Clayton Bissell, Stilwell, and Marshall—as uninformed, narrow-minded, and selfserving. A work of similar quality is Daniel Ford’s Flying

Tigers: Claire Chennault and the American Volunteer Group

(Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991).

Sam Mims’s Chennault of the Flying Tigers (Philadelphia:

Macrae-Smith, 1943) is a piece of wartime propaganda and a

boys’ adventure story. Books of only slightly higher caliber include Keith Ayling’s Old Leatherface of the Flying Tigers: The

Story of General Chennault (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill

Co., 1945); Robert B. Hotz’s With General Chennault: The Story

of the Flying Tigers (1980; reprint, Washington, D.C.: Zenger

Publishing Co., Inc.); and Duane P. Schultz’s The Maverick

War: Chennault and the Flying Tigers (New York: St. Martin’s

Press, 1987). Robert L. Scott’s Flying Tiger: Chennault of China

(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1959) is interesting because

Scott was a successful fighter pilot (author of God Is My CoPilot) and therefore speaks with some authority regarding

Chennault’s tactical ideas and his early-warning network. A

pamphlet published by the Fourteenth Air Force Association

and edited by Malcolm Rosholt, Claire L. Chennault: A Tribute

(Rosholt, Wis., 1983), provides some interesting insights into

Chennault’s personality and leadership traits. Anna Chennault, the general’s Chinese wife, whom he married in 1946,

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has also written two books that show a more personal side of

the Flying Tiger, depicting him as kind, loving, romantic, and

stubborn: A Thousand Springs: The Biography of a Marriage

(New York: P. S. Eriksson, 1962) and Chennault and the Flying

Tigers (New York: P. S. Eriksson, 1963). In addition, the books

contain information from Chennault’s early career that he

presumably related to her during their marriage.

The title of Chennault’s memoirs—Way of a Fighter, ed.

Robert Hotz (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1949)—sums up

the general’s view of his life—an endless stream of battles

against incompetent superiors. The foreword decries the situation then present in China, which he maintains resulted from

the ineptitude of Stilwell and Marshall. In other words, Chennault has some old scores to settle in this memoir. No one

emerges looking very dignified in this account of constant

bickering; indeed, one is left with the impression that Washington very cleverly sent its most difficult senior officers to a

minor theater, where they could fight amongst themselves and

stay out of the way. The book’s saving grace is its detailed account of fighter tactics used against the Japanese and the

hardships of operating in the Chinese theater at the end of the

American supply line.

James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle’s racing-plane exploits, the Doolittle

Raiders’ “30 seconds over Tokyo”

fame, and the fact that he lived well

into his 90s probably made him

America’s best-known airman. A

number of authors have written biographies about him, including several by Carroll Glines, who ghosted

Doolittle’s autobiography near the

end of the general’s life. Despite the

copious amount of ink spilled on the

general, we have yet to see a serious

study that looks closely at his career

and its effect on American airpower. Doolittle, one of the pioneers

of instrument flying and advanced technology, was also an outstanding combat leader, commanding the Twelfth, Fifteenth, and

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Eighth Air Forces during World War II. Yet, no one has addressed

the issue of Doolittle’s beliefs on the proper employment of airpower other than simply stating it should not be used as a tactical weapon. Surely, Doolittle must have held some strong opinions on what German target system was most important and

vulnerable to Allied attack. Even the issue of Doolittle’s stand regarding the oil-plan-versus-rail-plan controversy of 1944—an

issue of enormous strategic importance—has evaded examination. In short, the definitive Doolittle biography has not yet appeared. Attempts include Lowell Thomas and Edward Jablonski’s Doolittle: A Biography (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976);

Carroll V. Glines’s Jimmy Doolittle: Daredevil Aviator and Scientist (New York: Macmillan, 1972) and Jimmy Doolittle, Master of

the Calculated Risk (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Co.,

1980); Carl Mann’s Lightning in the Sky: The Story of Jimmy

Doolittle (New York: McBride, 1944); and Quentin Reynolds’s The

Amazing Mr. Doolittle: A Biography of Lieutenant General James

H. Doolittle (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1953).

Unfortunately, his autobiography, I Could Never Be So Lucky

Again (New York: Bantam Books, 1991), recounts the same

anecdotes told elsewhere and offers no new insights into the

man. The book does not offer a frank appraisal of Doolittle’s

effectiveness as a combat commander and fails to discuss key

strategic issues such as the choice of industrial targets in Germany, the morality of strategic bombing, the development of

the long-range escort fighter, and command relationships

among senior Allied leaders.

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Ira C. Eaker, another of the great

pioneer airmen, met Arnold and

Carl A. Spaatz at Rockwell Field,

California, in 1918, and the three

became friends and colleagues for

life. One of the premier pilots between the wars, Eaker participated

in the Pan American flight of

1926–27 and piloted the Question

Mark, a Fokker C-2A, in the recordbreaking air-refueling flight of
1929. He was also politically well connected, serving not only

as an aide to Maj Gen James Fechet, the Air Corps chief, but

also as the private pilot of Gen Douglas MacArthur. An excellent writer with a graduate degree in journalism, he figured

prominently in airpower public-relations efforts during the

1930s and coauthored several aviation books with Hap

Arnold. During World War II, he joined Spaatz in England to

head VIII Bomber Command and, eventually, Eighth Air Force.

In early 1944, Eaker moved down to Italy to command

Mediterranean Allied Air Forces. James Parton, Eaker’s aide

through much of the war, tells this story in “Air Force Spoken

Here”: General Ira Eaker and the Command of the Air

(Bethesda, Md.: Adler & Adler, 1986).

Fortunately for the country but perhaps unfortunately for

Eaker, the task of organizing and standing up the Eighth

proved extremely daunting, requiring his talents as a leader

and manager. Strategic bombing had yet to prove itself; the

green Eighth would enter combat against a battle-tested

enemy; and the prodigious production capacity of America had

not yet manifested itself. Moreover, just as the Eighth appeared strong enough to play a major role in the war against

Germany, it was stripped of men and machines for operations

in North Africa and then Italy. Arnold badgered Eaker unmercifully to do more yet at the same time throttled the resources

necessary to do so. In what many (including Eaker himself)

considered a “kick upstairs,” Eaker received a promotion and

moved to Italy, while Jimmy Doolittle took his place at the

Eighth. Soon after, Eaker’s labors bore fruit: the Allies established air superiority over the Luftwaffe, the invasion of France

took place, and the sweep across northern Europe began,

which eventually led to victory.

Parton relates Eaker’s trials and challenges very well. Because he participated in the events of which he writes, he has

a familiarity with the people and issues possessed by few other

authors. And because he has a flair for history, he understands the context and significance of those issues. The main

objection to his book is its unabashed admiration of Eaker.

Apparently, the only mistakes the general ever made resulted

from his intense loyalty to his subordinates or superiors—a

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weakness that many would perceive as strength of character.

For whatever reason, it was clear by the end of the war that

Eaker would not receive consideration for a fourth star (although he eventually got one, in 1985). Evidently, something

in his performance or personality led Arnold, Spaatz, and Stuart Symington (the first Air Force secretary) to look elsewhere.

After retiring, Eaker became a wealthy businessman and a

prolific writer on airpower matters. Admiration aside, “Air

Force Spoken Here” is an extremely well written and well researched book about a very important airman.

Carl A. Spaatz was the top American air commander of World War II;

indeed, both Dwight Eisenhower

and Omar Bradley rated him the

best combat leader in the European

theater. After the war, he became

the first chief of staff of the newly

independent Air Force. Two authors have written excellent biographies of this important airman. In

Master of Airpower: General Carl A.

Spaatz (Novato, Calif.: Presidio

Press, 1988), David R. Mets of the

School of Advanced Airpower Studies, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, relies heavily on the voluminous

Spaatz papers in the Library of Congress as well as dozens of

interviews, but the general’s personality remains somewhat

elusive. Mets provides a survey of the evolution of American

airpower through World War II rather than an in-depth look at

the man who mastered the new air weapon.

Master of Airpower portrays Spaatz as a “doer,” a problem

solver who achieved results, and an outstanding pilot who

shot down three German aircraft in World War I (for which he

won the Distinguished Service Cross) and flew aboard the

Question Mark in 1929. When war broke out in Europe in

1939, Spaatz became the Air Corps’s chief planner and then

moved to England to command Eighth Air Force in 1942,

Northwest African Air Force in 1943, and US Strategic Air

Forces (USSTAF) in Europe in 1944. He was perhaps the only

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AIRMEN AND AIR THEORY
man whom Hap Arnold totally trusted—Eisenhower also held

him in high regard. Although he compiled a very thorough

piece of scholarship, Mets had trouble with his sponsors, who

insisted upon removing much material considered either “too

personal” or insufficiently complimentary towards Spaatz and

the Air Force. The result is a somewhat impersonal portrait

that glosses over some of the controversial issues in which

Spaatz played such a major role.

Spaatz’s other biographer, Richard G. Davis, wrote Carl A.

Spaatz and the Air War in Europe (Washington, D.C.: Office of Air

Force History, 1993), an outstanding effort. Unlike Mets, Davis

did not write a full-length biography but concentrated on

Spaatz’s activities during World War II. The result is an extremely

detailed, exhaustively researched, balanced, and quite readable

account. Some of the issues examined in especially effective

fashion include the North African invasion and the difficulties experienced in command and control (C2) of air assets; Army Field

Manual 100-20, Command and Employment of Air Power, the

“Magna Carta” of airpower, which proclaimed airpower the equal

of ground power; Spaatz’s error in not recognizing the importance of long-range escort aircraft; the momentous Casablanca

conference of January 1943 and its impact on air operations; the

bombing assault on the island of Pantelleria (Italy) that resulted

in surrender without requiring an invasion; Eaker’s transfer to

the Mediterranean and Doolittle’s assumption of command at

Eighth Air Force; the thorny command relationships among senior Allied leaders prior to the Normandy invasion; the controversy surrounding the rail and oil plans in early 1944; and the

use of strategic bombers in a tactical role during the campaign

in France. The book also includes excellent maps, organizational

charts, and statistical appendices.

In addition, Davis provides a particularly good discussion of

the attack on Dresden, Germany, in February 1945. This has always been a contentious issue because of the number of lives

lost, the lateness of the war, and the cultural significance of the

city. Davis concludes that the city was a legitimate military target, that the AAF did attempt to precisely bomb the city’s marshaling yards, and that if opprobrium attaches to anyone it

should be Winston Churchill, who specifically requested the

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bombing of east German cities to create refugees and spread

havoc. Interestingly, although he claims that Dresden was an

unfortunate victim of circumstance, Davis argues that such was

not the case for Berlin. He maintains that Spaatz placed the German capital in a different category, ordering attacks on “city center” and employing the maximum number of incendiary bombs.

As a result, USSTAF’s attacks on Berlin were largely indistinguishable from the area attacks of Bomber Command.

Overall, Davis provides much detail and excellent insight into

how Spaatz led and managed the American air effort in Europe

as well as how he increased the magnitude of air attacks and

made them both efficient and effective at destroying assigned

targets. If the book has a shortcoming, it is Davis’s inability to

explain clearly how Spaatz and his staff selected targets, what

specific effect they were trying to achieve (collapse of morale, revolt, decrease in production, loss of fighting spirit at the front,

etc.), and how they measured success. Davis argues strenuously

that oil was the key target and that Spaatz was correct in singling it out, but he provides no cogent logic or analysis to support this contention. Nevertheless, Carl A. Spaatz and the Air War

in Europe is an outstanding book—perhaps the best, though partial, biography of an airman written to date. It sets a high standard by which other biographies should be measured.

Laurence S. Kuter, one of the

more accomplished air planners

and staff officers in Air Force history, served on the ACTS faculty

from 1935 to 1939. A staunch advocate of strategic bombardment,

he was one of four officers tasked in

1941 to write Air War Plans Division (AWPD) 1, Munitions Requirements of the Army Air Force, the

seminal war plan that served as the

blueprint for the air assault on Germany. Promotion followed quickly.

The youngest general officer in the Army in 1942, he served on

the War Department staff and Arnold’s staff, commanded a

bomb wing in England, served as deputy commander of the

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AIRMEN AND AIR THEORY
Northwest African Tactical Air Force, and then returned to

Washington for the rest of the war, even representing the AAF

at the Yalta conference in 1945 during Arnold’s illness. After

the war, he again served on the Air Staff, headed the Military

Air Transport Service during the Berlin airlift, commanded Air

University and then Pacific Air Forces, and completed his career as a full general and commander of North American Air

Defense Command (NORAD). Kuter, along with his wife, had a

deep sense of history and left behind an astounding collection

of scrapbooks and papers covering his entire career. Located

in the Special Collections Branch of the Air Force Academy library in Colorado, this archive gives a remarkable picture of

life in the Air Corps during the 1930s and sheds light on all

other facets of the Air Force over a 40-year period.

Kuter’s collection includes an autobiography that covers his

life up to mid-1943, including his stay at West Point, service

as a junior officer in a flying squadron, the hectic days in

Washington at the start of World War II, and some very interesting character sketches of contemporary airmen who would

later achieve high rank. Interestingly, his somewhat controversial personality comes through in these pages. For example,

his extremely rapid promotion raised many eyebrows in the

AAF. Additionally, since he was a trenchant observer, Arnold

often sent him on troubleshooting tours around the world. But

few local commanders liked what he reported back to Arnold.

Consequently, many airmen viewed Kuter with a mixture of

fear, awe, and resentment. Unfortunately, Kuter did not complete this most interesting 300-page memoir.

Because of Hap Arnold’s illness—one of his several heart attacks—Kuter, then a major general, was selected to attend the

Allied conference at Yalta in February 1945 as the AAF representative. Kuter tells this story in Airman at Yalta (New York:

Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1955). However, the book’s title does

not accurately describe its contents, most of which covers the

preliminary meetings in Britain and on Malta prior to the main

event in the Crimea. Barely 10 percent of the book actually

deals with Yalta, and much of that addresses unimportant

protocol details. Moreover, the actual air discussions between

Kuter and representatives from the Royal Air Force (RAF) and

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the Red Air Force proved completely fruitless. The Americans

had hoped to establish a communication system to coordinate

the air efforts of the three countries and thus avoid the danger of fratricide. In addition, the United States pushed for an

agreement to locate B-29 bases near Vladivostok for the purpose of bombing Japan. Because the war in Europe was ending, however, the Soviets had little incentive to be agreeable

and rejected both proposals. Overall, Airman at Yalta misses

badly, containing few real insights into air strategy and spending too much time describing the fare at the seemingly endless

stream of formal dinners during the conference.

George C. Kenney, America’s top

airman in the Pacific theater during

World War II, had served as a fighter

pilot in World War I, downing two

German aircraft and winning the

Distinguished Service Cross. Between the wars, he attended Command and General Staff College and

the Army War College and then

taught at ACTS. He also earned a

reputation as an accomplished engineer through assignments at Wright

Field, Ohio, and became recognized

as an expert in tactical aviation. Significantly, while serving as an

air attaché to Paris during the German invasion of France in

1940, he witnessed the effectiveness of airpower in that campaign. Soon after Pearl Harbor, Arnold selected Kenney as

MacArthur’s air deputy. For the rest of the war, the short, fiery,

and tireless Kenney served as commander of Fifth Air Force and

then Far East Air Forces (FEAF) under the difficult and demanding MacArthur. His achieved dramatic success in such

battles as Bismarck Sea, Rabaul, Wewak, and the Philippine

campaign and has become the prototype for the modern concept

of an “air component commander”—the individual in charge of

all aviation assets in a theater. Because Kenney had an outstanding grasp of what is today called “operational art” and of

how airpower could be used to complement the operations of

land and sea forces, many people considered him the most ac36

AIRMEN AND AIR THEORY
complished combat air strategist of the war. In April 1945, he became a full general—one of only four American airmen holding

that rank during the war. However, he never seemed to hold

Arnold’s complete confidence, as did Spaatz, and when B-29s arrived in the Pacific theater at the end of 1944, they were not assigned to Kenney but were commanded directly from Washington. This attitude was reinforced after the war when Spaatz

succeeded Arnold and was confirmed when Hoyt Vandenberg—

nine years younger than Kenney—replaced Spaatz as chief of

staff in 1948. Instead, Kenney became commander of the new

Strategic Air Command (SAC) after the war, but because he

seemed more interested in dabbling in politics, he performed

poorly. When the Berlin crisis of 1948 broke out, Vandenberg

conducted an investigation of SAC’s war readiness. The results

were unacceptable, so he relieved Kenney and replaced him with

Curtis LeMay. Kenney then assumed command of Air University,

retiring from that position in 1951.

Kenney wrote one of the more interesting memoirs of the

war, General Kenney Reports: A Personal History of the Pacific

War (1949; reprint, Washington, D.C.: Air Force History and

Museums Program, 1997), which clearly reveals his aggressive

and somewhat flamboyant personality. The book makes apparent Kenney’s popularity with both his subordinates and

MacArthur. Believing that a commander’s first responsibility

was to his troops, Kenney worked hard to ensure that his men

had adequate housing and food but also recognized that

largely intangible factors such as pride and recognition of a job

well done were the greatest motivators. In addition, because

the Southwest Pacific was considered a minor theater compared to Europe and even the Central Pacific, Kenney had to

improvise, doing more with less throughout the war. He had

the remarkable ability to squeeze effective combat results out

of a small force at the end of a 10,000-mile supply line.

The book also reveals Kenney’s ideas on airpower employment.

First and foremost, he believed in air superiority. Repeatedly, he

lectured MacArthur and other surface commanders on the need

to destroy Japanese airpower and then establish bases within

range of projected Allied operations. At the same time, he made

his mark as an ingenious and clever tactical innovator, largely

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responsible for such successes as the combat use of the parafrag

bomb, skip-bombing techniques, and “commerce destroyers”—

B-25s armed with eight machine guns and heavy cannons for

use against enemy ships. On the other hand, this ability as a tactician made him suspect among strategic-bombing advocates

like Arnold. When B-29s were due to arrive in-theater in late

1944, Kenney argued that they would be most effective against

Japanese targets in the East Indies, such as oil refineries, and

would thus assist MacArthur in his drive northward. Arnold,

however, wanted the heavy bombers to strike directly at Japanese industry in the home islands, not in an interdiction campaign supporting the Army. In a sense, Kenney’s close relationship with MacArthur thus negatively affected his standing within

the AAF, which experienced further erosion due to Kenney’s forays into presidential politics. In April 1943, Kenney met with

Sen. Arthur Vandenberg (the general’s uncle) of Michigan, one of

the leading Republicans in the country, to discuss MacArthur’s

presidential candidacy in 1944. Arnold undoubtedly knew of

these discussions and would not have welcomed them. As a consequence, when Twentieth Air Force went to the Pacific, Arnold

took the unprecedented step of commanding it personally from

Washington. After the German surrender, Arnold still did not

grant control of the B-29s to Kenney but sent Spaatz to the Pacific as commander of all strategic air units.

Certainly, Kenney’s calculated efforts to portray himself as

the ragged, rugged warrior who worked hard, played hard, and

got results in the face of adversity wear a bit thin as the book

progresses. His overtly racist statements—such as “Nips are

just vermin to be exterminated”—are also jarring to modern

ears. In addition, Kenney’s unalloyed affection for and admiration of MacArthur and all his works give the impression that

one is reading a press release for the famous general. Despite

his shortcomings, Kenney proved himself an outstanding combat commander, and General Kenney Reports gives readers a

wonderful view of the unique difficulties encountered in the

Pacific war. Airpower played an enormously important role in

this theater, and the book clearly demonstrates Kenney’s part

in its success. It is must reading for all airmen.

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The only biography of Kenney to date is MacArthur’s Airman:

General George C. Kenney and the Air War in the Southwest Pacific (Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 1998) by Col

Thomas E. Griffith Jr. This excellent study begins with Kenney’s

early experiences as an observation pilot in World War I and follows his career during the interwar years. Most of the book concentrates on Kenney’s activities during the war—specifically,

how he exploited airpower’s advantages to accomplish

MacArthur’s strategic objectives. It also investigates Kenney’s

problems in balancing MacArthur’s demands with Arnold’s, as

well as those of the commanders of the ground and naval forces

within his theater. Griffith concludes that part of Kenney’s success lay in his flexible use of airpower, both operationally and organizationally. His capacity to innovate and make do with meager resources seemed endless. Nevertheless, although Kenney

was a brilliant theater air commander, he had little appreciation

for the strategic problems facing Arnold. This attitude caused

tension between the two men, and their relationship appreciably

worsened during the war. 

Integrating a wide variety of primary and secondary sources,

Griffith has produced an excellent, in-depth study of Kenney’s

contribution to the war. Of particular note is his focus on the role

of intelligence and logistics—specifically, aircraft and engine

maintenance—in Kenney’s success. Traditionally, historians of

airpower have paid little attention to these areas, despite their

crucial importance to winning the air war. Griffith presents a balanced account, not averse to criticizing Kenney when appropriate. As a result, he notes Kenney’s anti-Navy parochialism,

which did little to foster smooth relations in the Pacific, as well

as his tendency to exaggerate his command’s accomplishments.

In addition, despite Kenney’s predilection for tactical airpower,

he considered interdiction more important than close air support, which caused some problems with ground commanders.

Unfortunately, MacArthur’s Airman ends at the conclusion of the

war and does not follow through on Kenney’s postwar career. As

a result, we still have no good analysis of why Kenney succeeded

so well in the war but failed so miserably as SAC’s first commander. We can only hope that Griffith will soon extend his

study to tell this important story as well.

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Donald Wilson played a relatively

minor role in World War II, serving as

George Kenney’s chief of staff for

nearly two years. More importantly

in some respects, he also served as

an instructor at ACTS in the early

1930s, when American airpower

doctrine was being codified. Wilson

tells his story in his privately printed

and somewhat eccentric memoirs

Wooing Peponi: My Odyssey thru

Many Years (Carmel, Calif.: Angel

Press, 1973). Fancying himself a philosopher, Wilson includes

discussions on life, education, politics, war strategy, and automobiles. (Incidentally, peponi is allegedly a Swahili term for paradise, so Wilson’s book chronicles his search for it.) Unfortunately, the coverage of his years at ACTS is self-serving and

egotistical: Wilson claims sole credit for devising the doctrine

used by the AAF in World War II, and he is obviously quite irritated at not having received due credit for his ideas. On the other

hand, his description of military life during the interwar years is

very interesting—the frequent moves, the often spartan living

conditions, the camaraderie and naïveté bordering on childishness exhibited by early aviators regarding weather and navigation techniques, and so forth. It is truly amazing how many Air

Corps pilots crash-landed or were lost because they forgot their

maps, followed railroad tracks into box canyons, or failed to

check the weather before takeoff. Wilson therefore provides an

interesting portrait of a bygone age.

Kenneth N. Walker, another of the

major players in the formulation of

doctrine at ACTS, served as a bombardment instructor during the

crucial years from 1929 to 1934.

Walker epitomized the strategic

thinkers at the school, and his famous statement in one of his lectures set the tone for their beliefs:

“The well-organized, well-planned,

and well-flown air force attack will

constitute an offensive that cannot be stopped.” He pushed

this theory with a vehemence and stubbornness that rivaled

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AIRMEN AND AIR THEORY
Chennault’s contrary point of view. The AAF benefited and suffered from the attitudes and personalities of both men.

In August 1941, Walker and three colleagues (Hal George,

Larry Kuter, and Haywood “Possum” Hansell) put together

AWPD-1. Soon after, Walker was sent to the Pacific. Kenney

wanted Walker as his bomb commander because of his intensity and single-mindedness. Indeed, the tireless Walker drove

himself so hard that Kenney feared he would snap and have to

be sent home. Instead, contrary to orders, Walker led a bombing strike on Rabaul on 5 January 1943 and was shot down.

For his courage and self-sacrifice, he received the Medal of

Honor posthumously.

Martha Byrd, Chennault’s most successful biographer,

wrote a manuscript that outlines Walker’s short but significant career but died before completing it. She left behind a

readable portrait of a driven man—not only an accomplished

and dedicated professional but also a vain, ambitious, and inflexible individual. However, Byrd’s study lacks a contextual

basis that explains fully the role of doctrine, ACTS’s part in

formulating doctrine, and Walker’s influence at the school. In

addition, Byrd did not adequately flesh out her subject’s tour

at V Bomber Command. The opening year of the Pacific air war

was plagued by shortages of men and materiel, and the overall strategy for defeating Japan had not yet become clear.

Walker’s role in those crucial months, therefore, could have

been pivotal and needs further exploration.

Air University Press has edited Byrd’s manuscript and added

a chapter written by David R. Mets to provide the requisite context. Kenneth N. Walker: Airpower’s Untempered Crusader, which

appeared in the spring of 1997, is well worth the wait.

Haywood S. Hansell Jr., another

man who taught strategic bombardment theory at ACTS and later

served as a planner and commander in World War II, joined the

Air Corps in 1928. After flying for

five years, “Possum,” as he was

known to his friends, attended

ACTS as a student and remained

there as a faculty member. Although he joined the “bomber

clique” at Maxwell Field, Alabama,

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he was also an excellent fighter pilot, and Claire Chennault

chose him as a member of his acrobatic team. When war broke

out in Europe, Hansell joined the Air Staff and set up the airintelligence section. In August 1941, he joined three other officers in writing AWPD-1. The following year, he played a major

role in updating this plan—AWPD-42, Requirements for Air Ascendancy—while also serving as a bomb-division commander

in Eighth Air Force. After the Casablanca conference of January 1943, Hansell drew up a plan for the Combined Bomber

Offensive. Thus, he played a key role in all three of the major

strategic air plans used against Germany.

After Hansell’s return to the Air Staff in Washington, Arnold

formed Twentieth Air Force, consisting of the first operational

B-29s. Although stationed thousands of miles away, Arnold

chose to command the Twentieth himself—to keep the new

bombers out of the unenlightened hands of the Army and Navy

commanders in the Pacific. Hansell became chief of staff of the

Twentieth, but because of Arnold’s other duties and his chronically poor health, Hansell became de facto commander of the

new air force. His role became more direct in October 1944,

when he went to the Mariana Islands to head XXI Bomber Command. His position there seemed almost hopeless. The new

B-29s were having severe teething troubles—the weather was

abysmal, the distances were enormous, the supply lines were

slow and sporadic, and all the while Arnold issued impatient demands for greater results. In an attempt to spur Hansell to more

creative tactics that would produce greater damage to the

Japanese war industry, Arnold advised him to abandon his attempts at high-altitude precision bombing and opt for low-level

area attacks that employed incendiaries. But Hansell resisted.

His patience—never copious in the best of circumstances—at an

end, Arnold relieved Hansell in January 1945 and replaced him

with Curtis LeMay. Hansell returned to the United States, served

briefly as a base commander in Arizona, and retired in 1946. He

was recalled to active duty during the Korean War and promoted

to major general, serving first as chief of mobilization on the Air

Staff and then as the senior airman on the Weapons Systems

Evaluation Group. He retired again in 1955.

Hansell tells his life in two privately printed volumes. The first,

The Air Plan That Defeated Hitler (1972; reprint, Washington,

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AIRMEN AND AIR THEORY
D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1975), relates his years at

ACTS and then his combat experience in Europe. The second

volume, Strategic Air War against Japan (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air

War College, Airpower Research Institute, 1980), covers Hansell’s

experiences as chief of staff of Twentieth Air Force and then as

commander of XXI Bomber Command. (In 1986 the Office of Air

Force History revised and combined these two volumes into The

Strategic Air War against Germany and Japan: A Memoir [Washington, D.C.].) Hansell believed passionately in the concept of the

daylight, strategic, precision bombing of industrial systems. He

helped formulate and then implement this doctrine in war, remaining committed to it even when certain aspects proved wanting. Significantly, Hansell argues that a sustained air attack

could have brought Germany to its knees prior to Operation

Overlord, but “diversions” constantly thrown in the path of

Eighth Air Force (e.g., the battle against the submarine; the invasions of North Africa, then Sicily, then Italy, then Normandy;

and the destruction of the German V-1 and V-2 rocket sites) prevented the execution of this concentrated campaign. But this is

a politically naive view. The Battle of the Atlantic and the destruction of the rocket sites were strategic requirements of the

first order. Our closest ally was in dire straits—we had to act. In

addition, airpower was absolutely essential if any of these amphibious landings were to succeed; troops could not be left on

the beaches to be slaughtered. Although Hansell questions the

utility of such landings, he forgets the life-and-death struggle occurring on the Eastern Front. Stalin demanded a second front,

and the fate of the Grand Alliance—and thus ultimate victory—

depended on Britain and the United States opening such a front.

Nevertheless, Hansell’s is one of the most articulate accounts of the development of strategic-bombing doctrine and

practice. One can argue with his postulates and conclusions,

but the arguments remain clear and stark. These books are

the best defense of American airpower doctrine during World

War II yet written.

Charles R. Griffith, Hansell’s only biographer, wrote The

Quest: Haywood Hansell and American Strategic Bombing in

World War II (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, 1999), a

much needed revision of the author’s PhD dissertation at the

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University of Tennessee. Griffith achieves more balance than

in his earlier effort and is more willing to admit some of

Hansell’s mistakes. However, he still relies far too heavily on a

few secondary sources (mostly the official history), Hansell’s

memoirs, and interviews with family members. He employs almost no archival material to examine the assumptions behind

AWPD-1 and AWPD-42—or Hansell’s role in shaping American

strategy in the Combined Bomber Offensive. Clearly, Griffith

feels that Hansell suffered at the hands of several colleagues—

Arnold, LeMay, Larry Norstad, and Emmett “Rosie” O’Donnell—who simply did not understand airpower. Griffith acknowledges that Hansell was too inflexible in his thinking and

that this intransigence contained the seeds of his downfall.

Importantly, the author also makes a moral argument for

Hansell’s rigid adherence to the doctrine that he helped formulate. This is a useful discussion that the author could have

expanded to deal more rigorously with arguments for and

against the B-29 campaign against Japan. Griffith admits that

Hansell’s tactics were not successful, whereas LeMay’s certainly were—at least according to the Strategic Bombing Survey. Moreover, Hansell seems to have disagreed with the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan, but the book

contains no discussion of the implications of such dissent in

terms of American, Allied, or Japanese lives saved or spent. In

addition, Griffith does not cover Hansell’s recall to duty and

his service during the Korean War. Still, The Quest is a useful

book about one of our great thinkers and planners.

Another of the largely forgotten figures of American airpower, Ennis

Whitehead played an important role

at an important time. Enlisting in the

Army in 1917, Whitehead quickly

joined the Air Service, won his wings,

and went to France. An excellent

flyer, he became a test pilot and thus

saw no combat. After the war, his

reputation as an aviator grew within

the small coterie of military airmen:

he participated in Billy Mitchell’s bombing tests against the Ost44

AIRMEN AND AIR THEORY
friesland in 1921, joined the Pan American flight of 1927—narrowly escaping death in a midair collision over Buenos Aires—

and set a speed record from Miami to Panama in 1931. When

war came, he went to the Pacific, where he became George Kenney’s strong right arm. Whitehead stayed in Asia for the next

seven years, becoming commander of Fifth Air Force in 1944;

after Kenney left the theater, he took over FEAF. Returning to the

States in 1949, Whitehead commanded the short-lived Continental Air Command and then Air Defense Command until his

retirement in 1951.

Donald M. Goldstein tells his story in “Ennis C. Whitehead:

Aerospace Commander and Pioneer” (PhD diss., University of

Denver, 1970). The author, who later edited the immensely

popular histories begun by the late Gordon Prange, argues

that Whitehead was a tactical genius and the brains behind

such stunning air victories as Wewak, Rabaul, Gloucester, and

Bismarck Sea. Additionally, although Kenney has received

credit for such innovations as skip bombing, parafrag bombs,

nose cannons in medium bombers, and the use of mass-troop

transport, Goldstein argues that Whitehead actually pioneered

them. His research is impressive, but Goldstein merely asserts

his points rather than proves them. Unquestionably, Whitehead was an outstanding tactician who performed extremely

well in the Southwest Pacific theater, but attempting to pinpoint credit is generally far more difficult than assigning

blame. Victory does have a thousand fathers. Furthermore,

Goldstein repeatedly states that Whitehead was an outstanding planner but does not explain precisely what this means:

how did he actually go about the crucial business of determining objectives, allocating resources, anticipating enemy

counters, and measuring results? Whitehead himself emerges

in this portrait as a hard, uncompromising man with a heavy

twinge of anti-Semitism and chauvinism; he was a good combat commander who engendered respect rather than admiration among his subordinates. Also, some members of the Air

Force hierarchy thought him too attached to Kenney and

MacArthur, too political, too outspoken, and too tactically focused. Whitehead was disgusted by the appointment of Vandenberg rather than Kenney as chief of staff in 1948 and was

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outraged when the new chief quickly relieved Kenney as commander of SAC. Reputedly, he also resented not being named

vice chief of staff and not receiving a fourth star. These feelings, combined with ill health, caused him to tender his resignation in early 1951. Despite Goldstein’s obvious and exaggerated affection for his subject, his dissertation is a very solid

piece of scholarship.

One of the more well-traveled airmen

of World War II, Lewis H. Brereton

graduated from the Naval Academy,

served on Billy Mitchell’s staff during

and after World War I, and rose

steadily through the ranks in the

years thereafter. At the time of Pearl

Harbor, he was commander of

FEAF—such as it was—under MacArthur. When that command collapsed a few months later, he went to

Australia for a brief stay, to India to

command Tenth Air Force, and

thence to Egypt to head Ninth Air

Force. In 1943 he took the Ninth to England in preparation for

the Overlord invasion, and in August 1944 he was selected to

lead the First Allied Airborne Army for Operation MarketGarden, an Anglo-American operation designed to secure

bridges in Holland. After the war, Lieutenant General Brereton

served as a senior military adviser to the Atomic Energy Commission until his retirement in 1948. He was a key figure in several important events of the war, including the destruction of his

air force at Clark Field, Philippines; the fall of Burma; the British

success at El Alamein, Egypt; the low-level strike on Ploesti, Romania, in August 1943; D day; and “a bridge too far” at Arnhem,

Netherlands. He recounts his experiences in The Brereton Diaries: The War in the Air in the Pacific, Middle East and Europe, 3

October 1941–8 May 1945 (New York: W. Morrow and Co., 1946).

Unfortunately, this account is not enlightening. Because

Brereton tells us in the preface that he began thinking of publishing his diaries in 1942, we get the strong suspicion that he

is writing not only after the event but also with an eye to how

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he would look in print sometime in the future. Frankly, the

memoir contains much unimportant detail but little real insight into air strategy or command problems. For example, the

text barely hints at severe personality conflicts between Allied

leaders at the time of D day and fails to mention the enormous

struggle over targeting priorities that occurred at the same

time, which nearly caused both Eisenhower and Spaatz to resign in protest. Overall, The Brereton Diaries is an unsatisfactory account of little value.

A far more useful effort is a lengthy, two-part article written

by Roger G. Miller, “A ‘Pretty Damn Able Commander’: Lewis

Hyde Brereton,” Air Power History 47 (Winter 2000): 4–27 and

Air Power History 48 (Spring 2001): 22–45. Because Brereton

left no papers and died over three decades ago, Miller had a

difficult time researching his subject. Nevertheless, he sheds

much light on Brereton’s energetic and aggressive personality,

as well as his shortcomings. Always better as an operator than

as a staff officer or planner, Brereton emerges as a capable

though not outstanding combat leader. Miller’s discussion of

Brereton’s role in the initial days of World War II, when his

forces were largely destroyed in short order by Japanese airpower, is especially good. Even so, he breaks off his story as

Brereton is about to take Ninth Air Force to Europe in preparation for Overlord. In short, the story ends as we approach

the climax of Brereton’s career. Hopefully, Miller will continue

his efforts to uncover this forgotten airman.

Like Brereton, Hugh J. Knerr

was a graduate of the Naval Academy who transferred to the Army

so he could be a pilot. Knerr made

the change after three years, joining the Army in 1911 as an artillery officer and finally wrangling

a pilot-training slot in 1917. Over

the next two decades, he flew observation and bombardment aircraft while acquiring a reputation

as an excellent administrator. As a

result, after the formation of GHQ

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Air Force in 1935, its commander, Frank Andrews, selected

Knerr as his chief of staff. Unfortunately, because of his

reputation as an outspoken advocate of strategic airpower,

in 1939 he was banished to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, to the same position occupied by Billy Mitchell the previous decade. Knerr chose to retire, but when war broke out,

he was brought back on active duty and sent to Europe as

Eighth Air Force’s deputy commander for administration.

He retired again after the war, but due to a scandal involving a senior officer, he was activated once again in 1947 and

became the first inspector general of the Air Force. He retired a third time in 1949.

Knerr wrote an unpublished memoir “The Vital Era,

1887–1950,” now located in the Air Force Academy library’s

Special Collections Branch. In truth, this work is not overly

useful, conveying no hint of the fire that drove Knerr out of the

service on two occasions. Although he overtly supported Frank

Andrews over Hap Arnold, the memoir fails to mention that

affinity. Furthermore, he received praise for his outstanding

work administering and supplying American bomber forces in

England, but “The Vital Era” scarcely discusses how he

achieved such successes. Instead, we have a barely interesting memoir of anecdotes, stories, and opinions that provide

little insight or analysis.

One of the more noted tactical

airmen in World War II, flamboyant and handsome Elwood

R. “Pete” Quesada entered the

Air Service in 1924 and, upon

winning his wings, lived a most

unusual life as a junior officer.

He served as the personal pilot

for the chief of the Air Corps;

assistant secretary of war; secretary of war; George Marshall,

when the future five-star was a

colonel at Fort Benning, Georgia; and the ambassador to

Cuba. Such activities made him

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politically well connected to an unusual degree and served him

in good stead in the years ahead. In addition, in 1929 he

joined Spaatz and Eaker on the famous Question Mark flight

over San Diego.

After a stint on Arnold’s staff, Quesada became commander

of an air defense group on Long Island in July 1941. He took

his group to North Africa in 1943 as a brigadier general and

was soon named deputy commander of the Coastal Air Force,

responsible for defending Allied ports against Luftwaffe attacks and interdicting enemy shipping in the Mediterranean.

After some initial difficulties with his British superior, Quesada settled down and performed well. In late 1943, he went

to England as head of IX Fighter Command to prepare for the

Normandy invasion. For the three months prior to D day, his

aircraft flew escort missions for the heavy bombers of Eighth

Air Force and bombed bridges, rail yards, and enemy fortifications in western France. When the Allies landed, Quesada’s

fighter-bombers worked closely with ground forces in the drive

across France and into Germany. His reputation grew, and by

the end of the war, he had become a major general widely recognized as a tactical air expert. After the war, he took over Tactical Air Command (TAC) and received a third star. But in the

financial austerity of the Truman era, Air Force leaders decided to downsize TAC, combining it with Air Defense Command to form Continental Air Command, thus nudging out

Quesada. After a series of unremarkable assignments that included command of atomic-bomb tests at Eniwetok, Quesada

retired in 1951, embittered by what he considered poor treatment by the Air Force.

The only biography of Quesada is Thomas Alexander

Hughes’s Over Lord: General Pete Quesada and the Triumph of

Tactical Air Power in World War II (New York: Free Press, 1995).

Although this study is wonderfully written and engaging, it appears that Hughes became too attached to his subject; moreover, his bias against strategic airpower tends to distort his

story. Part of the problem lies in the common tendency of the

biographer to inflate the role and importance of his subject

while denigrating or ignoring the other players involved.

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The truly fascinating question that Hughes does not adequately address is how Pete Quesada, with virtually no operational experience prior to the war and a stint in North Africa

that focused on air defense and interdiction, could learn the

intricacies of tactical air support so quickly and effectively. Regrettably, the author sheds little light on this transformation;

instead, he portrays Quesada as a creative genius who pioneered a number of tactical devices that saw their first use in

the months following D day. The truth is different. Other people

devised most of the innovations Hughes lauds, but these airmen—Sir Arthur “Mary” Coningham and Sir John “Jack”

Slessor of the RAF, Gen John “Joe” Cannon in North Africa

and Italy, and Kenney in the Pacific—receive scarce mention

and even less credit. These airmen introduced the concepts of

air-ground radio communications and forward air controllers

and collocated air and ground headquarters, all of which Quesada adopted in France. Also of concern is the author’s treatment of Hoyt Vandenberg, Quesada’s superior as commander

of Ninth Air Force and as chief of staff after the war. Clearly,

Quesada believed that he should have commanded the Ninth

in the fall of 1944, not Vandenberg. Hughes’s treatment of this

relationship is not convincing.

Nevertheless, no one questions tactical airpower’s status as

a decisive factor in the Allied victory, and Pete Quesada remains a recognized expert in applying that weapon. Hughes

has done a fine job of telling this vital story.

After an illustrious showing in

World War II, Hoyt S. Vandenberg

became Air Force chief of staff in

1948. In that position, he played an

important role in the significant

events of his time: the formation of

SAC, unification of the armed services, formation of an independent

air force, Berlin airlift, B-36/supercarrier controversy with the Navy,

development of the hydrogen bomb,

and Korean War. Graduating from

West Point in 1923, Vandenberg

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served as a fighter pilot for the next decade, becoming one of

the Air Corps’s outstanding flyers. When war broke out in Europe, he was assigned to the Air Staff in Washington as an air

planner for the North African and Normandy invasions; he

also served as a diplomat in Moscow, chief of staff of Twelfth

Air Force, deputy commander of Allied Expeditionary Air

Forces, and commander of Ninth Air Force, the largest tactical

air unit in history. After the war, Vandenberg returned to

Washington where, after brief stints on the Air Staff and as the

War Department’s intelligence chief, President Harry S. Truman named him director of central intelligence. Returning to

uniform in 1948, he became Spaatz’s deputy and won a fourth

star. When Spaatz retired, Vandenberg became chief of staff, a

position he held for over five years.

In my book Hoyt S. Vandenberg: The Life of a General (1989;

reprint, Washington, D.C.: Air Force History and Museums

Program, 2000), I conclude that Vandenberg was an exceptionally well rounded officer: an outstanding pilot, accomplished planner and staff officer, effective commander, and a

passable diplomat. Moreover, his appealing personality, one of

his greatest strengths, helped him make more friends than enemies. In short, he embodied the superb blend of leader and

manager that the new Air Force needed to get off the ground.

In retrospect, perhaps I underestimated his effectiveness as

a member of the JCS. After I wrote this book, my tenure at the

Air Staff showed me the extremely competitive environment

that exists among the services. Consequently, I can now better understand the challenges facing an infant service led by

such a youthful general. The fact that the Air Force not only

survived but indeed thrived—receiving nearly half of the entire

defense budget by 1953—is a clear tribute to Vandenberg’s exceptional political and organizational skills.

Vandenberg is the subject of two dissertations: Jon A.

Reynolds’s “Education and Training for High Command: Hoyt S.

Vandenberg’s Early Career” (Duke University, 1980) and Robert

L. Smith’s “The Influence of USAF Chief of Staff General Hoyt S.

Vandenberg on United States National Security Policy” (American University, 1965). Reynolds takes an interesting approach,

studying the early career of a future general. Although little per51

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sonal documentation remains from Vandenberg’s early life,

Reynolds examines in-depth the operational units to which Vandenberg was assigned during the interwar years. This approach,

an invaluable foundation for my own study, allows Reynolds to

construct a portrait of a junior officer’s life during the Roaring

Twenties and the Great Depression.

Smith (a political scientist, not a historian) concentrates on

Vandenberg’s tenure as chief, emphasizing his role in the formulation of national security policy. Relying heavily on congressional testimony, Smith concludes that Vandenberg was extremely effective in selling not only the public but also Congress

on the idea of airpower as the first line of American defense.

Orvil A. Anderson, a minor figure

who nevertheless played a role in

some key events in airpower history,

entered the Air Service during World

War I and gained fame as one of the

top balloonists in the country. In

fact, he achieved an altitude record

for balloons in 1935 that lasted for

22 years and which won him both

the Harmon and Mackay trophies.

After converting to airplanes and flying for several years, Anderson

joined the Air Staff’s Plans Division. In 1943 he moved to England to become the chief planner of Eighth Air Force; the following year, he became a major general and director of operations

for the Eighth. As the war in Europe drew to a close, he assumed

responsibilities as the senior military adviser to the US Strategic

Bombing Survey for both the European and Pacific divisions. In

this capacity, he had a number of heated arguments with the

Navy over who played the more important role in the defeat of

Japan. In late 1946, he became the first commandant of the new

Air War College at Maxwell Field. Anderson had trouble controlling his temper and tongue, a problem that became painfully apparent in 1950. Soon after the outbreak of the Korean War, he

told a newspaper reporter that the Soviet Union was clearly behind the invasion of South Korea and that, given the order, he

would willingly wipe out Russia with atomic strikes within a

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week. Because MacArthur and the secretary of the Navy had

made inappropriate statements only a few days before—earning

rebukes from President Truman—Anderson’s comments were

especially inopportune. Within days he was relieved of his command and pushed into retirement. In the atomic age, loose cannons were most unwelcome. John H. Scrivner’s “Pioneer into

Space: A Biography of Major General Orvil Arson Anderson” (PhD

diss., University of Oklahoma, 1971) relates the life of this outspoken airman who epitomized the “cold warriors” spawned in

the aftermath of World War II. Scrivner’s is a sympathetic and

workmanlike account of a man whose retirement was in some

ways more important than his career.

Howard A. Craig, another solid

and dependable airman who entered the service during World War

I, stuck with it through the lean

years of the next two decades, rose

to high rank during World War II,

and then helped shape the new era

and the new Air Force that followed. Known as “Pinky” throughout his career, Craig was a bomber

pilot during the interwar years—he

participated in Mitchell’s bombing of the battleships in 1923—

and in 1941 joined the Air War Plans Division in Washington.

He helped plan the North African invasion, staying on to command a fighter group in Tunisia. Returning to the Air Staff in

1943, he led the Operations and Requirements Division and

then moved to the War Department’s general staff, where he

won a second star. After the war, he headed Alaskan Command for two years—a difficult tour marked by harsh operational conditions and low priority—and became a lieutenant

general. In 1947 Craig was named deputy chief of staff for materiel in the new Air Force. Following a brief stint as inspector

general, he assumed command of the National War College in

1952, retiring from that position in 1955.

After Craig’s death, Dale L. Walker edited the general’s memoirs, published as Sunward I’ve Climbed: A Personal Narrative of

Peace and War (El Paso, Tex.: Texas Western Press, 1975). Like

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many such efforts written late in life, Craig recalls his earlier experiences more clearly and more fondly than the later ones. In

this case, such recollection is a plus because the author’s memories of his life as a junior officer are both interesting and entertaining. In 1909 he saw his first aircraft on the beach at Atlantic

City; the pilot, who actually offered him a free ride, was the noted

pioneer aviator Walter Brookins. Craig was bitten by the aviation

bug that summer and never recovered. His account of life in the

Air Corps is one of the best portraits of garrison life in peacetime,

relating a disturbing number of plane crashes brought on by

poorly maintained and outmoded equipment and by insufficient

training. Missing, however, is a discussion of the many problems

faced by the new Air Force after it achieved independence in

1947. Nevertheless, the memoirs of Pinky Craig, not one of our

more famous airmen but a reliable and highly capable professional who served his country well, are certainly worth reading.

Dale O. Smith graduated from West

Point in 1934 and attended flying

school. Too big to fit comfortably into

fighters (he was six feet, seven inches

tall), Smith flew bombers most of his

career. At the outbreak of World War

II, he was a B-17 squadron commander, and for more than a year he

hunted German submarines in the

Atlantic. In late 1943, he joined

Eighth Air Force in England as a

bomb-group commander and flew 31

combat missions. Following this

tour, he returned to the Pentagon

and after the war served on the faculty of the Air War College. In

the 1950s, Smith served as chief negotiator with the Saudi Arabians regarding basing rights in the peninsula and then became

an air division commander on Okinawa. In 1961, now a major

general, Smith became special assistant for arms control to the

JCS; two years later, he moved to the Joint Strategic Survey

Council, retiring from that position in 1964.

A gifted writer, Smith published two partial memoirs and a

book on strategy; he also coauthored another work on defense

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policy with Curtis LeMay. His Cradle of Valor: The Intimate Letters of a Plebe at West Point between the Two World Wars

(Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1988), a

collection of letters between Smith and his family during his

first year as a cadet, includes detailed explanations of everything from daily routines, conduct at the dining table, athletics, drill, the cadet honor code, and relations (very few) with

the opposite sex. The book includes some wonderful and

touching insights and stories, but few readers other than

academy graduates will find it interesting.

Smith’s Screaming Eagle: Memoirs of a B-17 Group Commander (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill,

1990) recounts his combat experiences during World War II.

The confusion and unpredictability of war emerge as one of the

book’s dominant themes. We see these elements in the unreliable weather that closed landing fields and caused crash landings and midair collisions; in the tired mechanics who installed an engine part incorrectly, causing an in-flight fire; and

in the constant surprises of the enemy, who never fought at

the time, place, or in the manner expected.

In November 1943, Smith assumed command of the hardluck 384th Bomb Group, based at the English village of

Grafton Underwood in Northamptonshire. Smith had the task

of whipping this B-17 unit, reputedly the worst in Eighth Air

Force, into shape, restoring its morale, and, more importantly,

improving its performance. He began by setting strict discipline and training requirements. Although his initial attempts

were met with apathy or downright resentment, Smith persevered, and within a year he had transformed the 384th into

one of the top combat air units in Europe. This highly personal

book—as was his work on his cadet experiences—also recounts the author’s failing marriage to a woman worn down by

a war that continually kept her man away. Such a story, familiar though it is, has seldom been told more objectively and

understandingly. Screaming Eagle is well written, well conceived, and well balanced. Smith is forthright about his many

mistakes and errors of judgment as both a leader and a man.

He has no axes to grind or darts to hurl. Instead, he simply

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tells the story of a professional soldier who, like countless others, did his best under very trying circumstances.

Frank Armstrong had the distinction of serving as the model for

Brig Gen Frank Savage in the

best-selling novel, movie, and television series Twelve O’Clock

High. Although a professional

baseball player, he gave up the diamond for the cockpit in 1929. He

flew a variety of aircraft over the

next decade and in 1942 joined

Eighth Air Force as first operations officer at headquarters and

then as bomb-group commander.

He led his group on the first American B-17 strike of the war against the Axis (Rouen, France,

on 17 August 1942), and in January 1943 he led his group

again on the first American mission against a target inside

Germany. These experiences led to his portrayal as the fictional General Savage. After tours stateside, Armstrong returned to combat as a B-29 wing commander in the Pacific.

Following the war, he taught at the Armed Forces Staff College and commanded a base, an air division, and a numbered air force. In 1956 he pinned on his third star to take

over Alaskan Command. Believing that his command was

being shortchanged in defense matters, he angrily retired in

1961.

Armstrong wrote two memoirs. The first, “So Near Heaven,

Surrounded by Hell,” a diary recounting his experiences in

Eighth Air Force, is a bit breathless and exuberant, but his intent is to memorialize the brave bomber crews who fought over

Germany against heavy odds. His description of the mission

over Wilhelmshaven in 1943—the first for the B-17s against a

target in Germany—is especially interesting.

After retirement, Armstrong wrote his life story “Awake the

Sleeping Giant.” Like his first effort, it remains unpublished,

and both manuscripts are located in the library of East Car56

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olina University in Greenville, North Carolina. (Copies of “So

Near Heaven” are located in the archives at Maxwell AFB, Alabama, and the Air Force Academy.)

Probably the most accomplished intelligence officer in Air Force history,

Charles P. Cabell graduated from

West Point in 1925, flew observation

and fighter aircraft for the next

decade, and became well known as a

photoreconnaissance expert. During

the London blitz, he went to Britain

to study RAF photointerpretation

procedures, and his subsequent report greatly impressed his superiors.

As a result, Hap Arnold formed an

“advisory council” in early 1942 that

initially consisted of only two people,

Lauris Norstad and Cabell. Their

task was to perform “blue sky thinking” and handle any special

projects Arnold threw their way. Often referred to as the “brain

trust,” the council played an important role in Arnold’s somewhat anarchic management style. In 1943 Cabell went to England to command a bomb wing and thence to the Mediterranean

to serve as Eaker’s chief of intelligence. During the last year of

the war, he had fairly extensive dealings with the Soviets over

events in the Balkans and soon acquired a healthy respect for

and distrust of them. After the war, he served briefly on the US

delegation to the United Nations (UN) discussions in London and

then returned to the United States in 1948 to become the deputy

chief of staff for intelligence for the Air Force as a major general.

After two years, he became the director of the joint staff as a

three-star, and in 1953 he became the deputy director of the CIA.

He remained in that position as a full general until his retirement

in 1962.

Cabell wrote a very detailed and interesting autobiography

titled “Memoirs of an Unidentified Aide,” held by the Air Force

Historical Research Agency (AFHRA) at Maxwell AFB, Alabama

(although one must obtain permission from his family to quote

from the manuscript). Throughout, Cabell takes pains to describe the people with whom he serves, providing excellent personality sketches of such men as Arthur Tedder, Trafford LeighMallory, George Patton, Carl Spaatz, and Ira Eaker. Also of

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interest is his discussion of the oil campaign conducted by the

strategic air forces in 1944–45. This issue caused a great deal of

controversy then and has continued to do so. Cabell’s treatment

is insightful, as is his explanation of the need for a special type

of air intelligence that differed fundamentally from the intelligence traditionally required by surface forces. One needed a new

organization to gather, analyze, and disseminate this new type of

air intelligence; Cabell was instrumental in performing that role.

Overall, “Memoirs of an Unidentified Aide” is an excellent study

that deserves to be published.

Nathan F. Twining succeeded Vandenberg as Air Force chief and then

became chairman of the JCS, the

first airman to hold that position.

Twining came from a rich military

background; his forebears had

served in the American Army and

Navy since the French and Indian

War. Twining entered the military for

service in World War I but soon received an appointment to West Point.

Because the program was shortened

so as to produce more officers for

combat, he spent only two years at

the academy. After graduating in

1919 and serving in the infantry for three years, he transferred

to the Air Service. Over the next 15 years, he flew fighter aircraft

in Texas, Louisiana, and Hawaii while attending ACTS and Command and General Staff College. When war broke out in Europe,

he went to the Operations Division on the Air Staff; then in 1942,

he was sent to the South Pacific, where he became chief of staff

of the Allied air forces in that area. In January 1943, he assumed

command of Thirteenth Air Force, and that November he traveled

across the world to take over Fifteenth Air Force from Jimmy

Doolittle. When Germany surrendered, Arnold sent Twining

back to the Pacific to command the B-29s of Twentieth Air Force

in the last push against Japan, but he was there only a short

time when the atomic strikes ended the war. He returned to the

States and became commander of Air Materiel Command, and in

1947 he took over Alaskan Command. After three years there, he

was set to retire as a lieutenant general, but when Muir

Fairchild, the vice chief of staff, died unexpectedly of a heart at58

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tack, Twining was elevated to full general and named his successor. When Vandenberg retired in mid-1953, Twining became

chief; during his tenure, massive retaliation based on airpower

became the national strategy. In 1957 President Eisenhower appointed Twining chairman of the joint chiefs.

Surprisingly, the only biography of this famous airman is a

dissertation that covers his career up to 1953: J. Britt McCarley’s

“General Nathan Farragut Twining: The Making of a Disciple of

American Strategic Air Power, 1897–1953” (Temple University,

1989). Based largely on secondary sources, official histories, and

interviews Twining gave many years after his retirement, McCarley’s account provides little insight into Twining’s personality,

leadership, reasons for success, or his impact on the great events

happening around him. In short, the man is lost in the description of events, and by the end of this study, we know little more

about Twining than if we had read his entry in Who’s Who. It is

not clear, for example, why Twining was chosen as vice chief of

staff in 1953; after all, his performance in the five years after

World War II was not impressive. Twining admitted he did not

understand why he became commander of Air Materiel Command, and at the time, people considered Alaskan Command a

backwater. In fact, McCarley states that the main attraction of

this assignment was that it entailed “normal work hours” and allowed Twining plenty of time for hunting and fishing. There is a

story here, and McCarley’s argument that Twining was chosen

because LeMay was unacceptable is inadequate. In addition, McCarley insists on referring to American air doctrine from the

1930s on as “Douhetian.” Overall, this dissertation is a poor effort; the important story of Nate Twining still needs telling.

One of the icons of American military history, Curtis E. LeMay rivals Mitchell in his importance and

controversial career. From middling

origins, LeMay did not attend West

Point, earning his commission

through the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) in 1928. Over the

next decade, he became widely

known as one of the best navigators

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and pilots in the Air Corps. In 1937 he located the battleship

Utah in exercises off California and “bombed” it with water

bombs, despite receiving the wrong coordinates from Navy

personnel; the following year, he navigated B-17s nearly 800

miles over the Atlantic Ocean to intercept the Italian liner Rex

to illustrate airpower’s ability to defend the American coasts;

and in 1938 he led flights of B-17s to South America to display airpower’s range and its role in hemispheric defense.

War brought rapid promotion and increased responsibility.

LeMay began as a group commander in Eighth Air Force, but

within 18 months he had progressed from lieutenant colonel

to major general and had become an air-division commander.

He had earned a reputation as an unusually innovative tactician and problem solver, so when Hap Arnold had difficulty

bringing the new B-29 into combat service, he chose LeMay to

spur the program and then take over B-29 operations in

China. LeMay’s ability led Arnold to name him commander of

the B-29s in the Mariana Islands, where the Allies had concentrated their main air effort against Japan. Always a tactical innovator, LeMay took the risky and controversial step of

abandoning the long-held American doctrine of high-altitude,

daylight precision bombing; instead, he stripped his B-29s of

guns, loaded them with incendiaries, and sent them against

Japanese cities at night and at low level. The new strategy

proved remarkably successful; Japan was devastated, and the

dropping of the atomic bombs in August 1945 brought the Pacific war to an end without an invasion of the Japanese home

islands, avoiding the hundreds of thousands of casualties that

action would have entailed.

Returning to the States, LeMay served briefly as the head of

the AAF’s R&D effort and then went to Germany as commander of the air forces in Europe arrayed against the Soviets. In this position, he was responsible for getting the Berlin

airlift started in mid-1948, after the Soviets had instituted a

ground blockade of the city. This crisis precipitated a major

reshuffling in Washington. A war with the Soviets appeared increasingly possible, and many people considered SAC, which

would bear the brunt of such a war, deficient. Consequently,

Vandenberg relieved Kenney as commander of SAC and named

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LeMay his successor. Building SAC into an effective and efficient war-fighting arm was LeMay’s greatest accomplishment.

One remembers the well-known story of how he demonstrated

his command’s poor state of readiness by a “bombing raid” on

Dayton, Ohio, in which not a single SAC aircraft carried out

the mission as planned. He then set about the difficult but essential task of retraining SAC. Using the authority delegated

him by Vandenberg, LeMay built new bases, facilities, and

training programs; began a “spot promotion” system for rewarding his best aircrews; and, through his legendary use of

iron discipline, soon transformed his command into one of the

most effective military units in the world.

In 1957 LeMay became vice chief of staff, and when Thomas

White retired in 1961, he became chief. Partly because LeMay

was one of the coldest of America’s cold warriors, his tenure as

chief was neither successful nor happy. Under the new management policies of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and

the “flexible response” military strategy of JCS chairman Gen

Maxwell D. Taylor, LeMay found himself constantly at odds. In

his four years as chief, LeMay argued strenuously for new air

weapons like the Skybolt missile and B-70 bomber and

against the swing-wing “fighter” plane—the General Dynamics

TFX (later named the F-111). He lost all these battles. Moreover, LeMay had strong feelings regarding American involvement in Vietnam, arguing against the gradual response advocated by the administration. Once again he was ignored. When

he retired in 1965, LeMay was widely regarded—probably

rightly so—as a great commander of SAC but as a poor chief.

His abortive political “career” as George Wallace’s running

mate in the 1968 presidential election only further tarnished

the reputation he had built as a war commander and leader of

SAC.

LeMay’s only biographer to date is Thomas M. Coffey. Like

his work on Arnold, discussed above, Iron Eagle: The Turbulent

Life of General Curtis LeMay (New York: Crown Publishers,

1986) relies too heavily on interviews, newspaper reports, and

published memoirs. The book succeeds as an entertaining account of a great man’s life and career, but it provides little detail or serious analysis. Coffey is at his best in describing

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LeMay’s personality: unsophisticated, taciturn, dedicated,

tactless to the point of rudeness, more ambitious than he

cared to admit, extremely hard working, and possessed of unquestioned physical courage. In addition, Coffey shows that

LeMay was also a good family man and sincerely concerned

(sensitive would be too strong a term) about the welfare of his

troops (although the author implies that LeMay’s concern

stemmed more from his belief that happy subordinates were

productive subordinates rather than from any feeling of innate

humanitarianism).

This book fails, however, to reveal details surrounding the

events in which LeMay participated. His decision to reverse

three decades of American airpower doctrine with incendiary

attacks against Japanese cities raises profound questions of

morality and legality. Coffey simply restates LeMay’s rationale

that all war is awful and that killing Japanese was better than

having them kill Americans. There is something to be said for

that point of view, but it is entirely too facile. Are there no limits whatever in warfare? Coffey would seem to imply that none

exist. More seriously, the book fails to discuss LeMay’s role in

the military strategy—or nonstrategy—of the Vietnam War.

Unquestionably, the fact that many of his sources remained

classified presented a problem, but other than arguing that

LeMay never said he wanted to “bomb Vietnam back into the

Stone Age,” Coffey does not take on this crucial but thorny

subject. Later, LeMay stated vehemently that he disagreed

with administration policy during the war, but Coffey provides

no details about an alternative. Precisely how would LeMay

have fought the war? What targets did he intend to strike with

airpower, and what effect did he expect those strikes to have?

Did he think the Vietcong insurgency in the south would collapse if the leaders in the north were coerced into withdrawing

their support? These fundamental questions regarding the

role of airpower in a “minor” war have great importance—but

they remain unexplored.

Similarly, Coffey identifies the doctrine LeMay advocated as

the epitome of strategic bombing, but, once again, he does not

examine the implications of such a statement. The book affords no insights into LeMay’s theories of warfare and the role

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of airpower in modern war other than his belief that strategic

bombing—lots of it—would be decisive. Was LeMay’s thinking

truly that simplistic? Perhaps so, because it is unquestionably

the case that tactical airpower dangerously atrophied during

LeMay’s tenure and that the Air Force as a whole became seriously unbalanced. One could argue that because of this

overemphasis on SAC, the Air Force found itself woefully unprepared for Vietnam. In light of the subsequent discrediting

of airpower, one could legitimately ask whether LeMay actually

hurt the cause of American airpower.

One of the more interesting and potentially significant issues that Coffey touches upon is LeMay’s strained relations

with both Defense Secretary McNamara and Air Force Secretary Eugene Zuckert. Clearly, LeMay believed that these men

undermined his prerogatives as chief and military adviser. In

fact, McNamara’s tenure at Defense serves as a watershed in

American military history. Prior to that time, military leaders

had some latitude in discussing military affairs with Congress

and, to some extent, the public. McNamara saw such a tradition as chaotic and moved to change it by placing constraints

on what the chiefs could say and to whom. This is an important story, and although Coffey introduces it, he does not

seem to realize its implications. Overall, Iron Eagle is a useful

read, but we need a more serious study of one of America’s

most important airmen.

Novelist MacKinlay Kantor assisted LeMay with his autobiography, Mission with LeMay: My Story (Garden City, N.Y.:

Doubleday, 1965), which is engaging and well written. LeMay’s

abrupt, no-nonsense personality comes through clearly, and

the book provides excellent insight into air leadership. LeMay

had intelligence and physical courage—two qualities generally

cited as crucial for successful leadership—but his sustained,

outstanding performance grew out of his insistence on following a job through until its completion. He relentlessly emphasized rigorous training, and it was this dogged and selfless determination to practice and work hard that made his success

possible. One certainly finds a lesson here: great commanders

are often made and not born.

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Edwin W. Rawlings in some ways

exemplifies the new Air Force generals who emerged after World War II.

Although he had been an observation pilot before the war, he went to

Harvard Business School to learn

the latest techniques regarding supply and inventory control. As a result, he never secured a combat assignment, which limited his

experience during the war to materiel and supply. After the war, he became the first comptroller

of the Air Force and in that capacity was instrumental in introducing the first computers into the service. He finished his career in 1959 as a full general and commander of Air Materiel

Command. His privately printed autobiography, Born to Fly (Minneapolis, Minn.: Great Way Publishing, 1987), recounts these

events but is a disappointment. Quite simply, the fact that Rawlings waited too long to write his story clouded his memory of the

great events of his career. Instead, we have a series of anecdotes

loosely strung together between a discussion of various fishing

trips that convey little point or purpose.

Like Rodney Dangerfield, military

airlift never gets any respect. Yet,

cargo planes and their crews are

often the first to respond in a crisis.

From Kenney’s use of troop transport in the Southwest Pacific to the

“Hump” operation over the Himalayas, the Berlin airlift, the reinforcement of Khe Sanh, the resupply of Israel in 1973, and the

dropping of food packages in

Bosnia, airlift has been a prime factor in American foreign policy. Over

the Hump (1964; reprint, Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force

History, 1985), the autobiography of William H. Tunner, the

father of airlift, stands as an excellent chronicle of this important function of airpower.

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Tunner begins by describing how in 1929 he received orders

to fly a Fokker trimotor from San Diego to Sacramento. He had

never flown that type of plane before, had never seen an operator’s manual, had no one to explain the plane’s systems or

characteristics, had no weather forecasters to brief him on the

conditions en route, and had a Texaco road map as his only

aeronautical chart. He made the flight without incident, but

this cavalier attitude towards flying at the time—so well depicted by this anecdote—had a profound effect on Tunner and

his subsequent career. After that experience, he became a systematic, organized, and careful pilot.

During World War II, Tunner served as chief of the Ferrying

Division of Air Transport Command, performing so well that in

1944 he was selected to take charge of the Hump airlift over

the Himalayas. Although his goal was efficiency, one of his

prime concerns was safety: the units he supplied wanted their

planes and equipment in one piece and in good working order.

The feats performed by the C-46s and C-54s that flew supplies

into China are the stuff of legend. After cutting his teeth over

the Himalayas, Tunner was the obvious choice to direct the

operation of the Berlin airlift in 1948–49. Upon arriving in

Germany, he found well-meaning, hard-working, and dedicated individuals who were totally disorganized, knew little or

nothing about major airlift operations, and were thus quite ineffective. He immediately brought order to the operation, installing flight schedules, precomputed flight plans, rigid airtraffic-control procedures, centralized weather briefings,

statistical analyses to determine bottlenecks and problem

areas, and strict guidelines for crews’ flying times and rest

schedules. The results were dramatic: tonnage rates soared,

and accident rates dropped. Tunner repeated such performances during the Korean War, and by the time of his retirement in 1960 as a lieutenant general, he had put the Military

Air Transport Service (now Air Mobility Command) on a firm

professional footing. One of his basic tenets was the uniqueness of airlift. Efficiency and safety were the keys to success—

not risk taking and rugged individualism. Tunner’s description of the challenges he faced in these operations and his

method of dealing with them is insightful, to the point, and ex65

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tremely interesting. He clearly demonstrates the often forgotten fact that airlift is a tool of peaceful airpower diplomacy.

Despite its omission of any evidence of Tunner’s legendary

temper, Over the Hump is an excellent book.

George E. Stratemeyer graduated from West Point in 1915—the

“class that stars fell on.” Among his

illustrious classmates were Dwight

Eisenhower and Omar Bradley. Initially detailed to the infantry, he

switched to the Air Service soon after

and became a pilot. Over the next

two decades, he flew a number of different aircraft and served in a variety

of capacities worldwide. After graduating from the Army War College in

1939, he went to the Air Staff and a year later became the executive officer to Hap Arnold. After a tour as a training-center commander, Stratemeyer returned to Washington to become

Arnold’s chief of staff as a major general. In mid-1943, he went

to the China-Burma-India theater and soon became commander

of all air forces in China as a lieutenant general. After the war,

he commanded Air Defense Command, Continental Air Command, and FEAF in Tokyo when the Korean War erupted in June

1950. Stratemeyer remained commander through the hectic first

year of the war that saw a UN defeat, counterattack and victory,

Chinese intervention, a second retreat, and then stabilization of

the front. The month following the relief of MacArthur, Stratemeyer suffered a severe heart attack and retired soon thereafter.

Stratemeyer’s diary, The Three Wars of Lt. Gen. George E.

Stratemeyer: His Korean War Diary, ed. William T. Y’Blood

(Washington, D.C.: Air Force History and Museums Program,

1999), begun at the start of the Korean War, is a fine effort that

includes not only Stratemeyer’s diary entries but also copies of

numerous messages sent and received by him at the time.

Y’Blood has included overviews of historical events then unfolding as well as detailed annotations throughout. The result

is a very useful and insightful look at the war from the perspective of the senior airman in-theater.

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Like everyone else, Stratemeyer and his command were

caught by surprise on 25 June but soon recovered. He quickly

realized, however, that his position only partly dealt with leading air forces in war. The book’s title speaks to the situation:

Stratemeyer felt that he not only had to fight the North Koreans and Chinese but that he also had to engage in a constant,

running firefight with the other services and the media. His relations with the other services consumed an enormous

amount of time, and his diary is replete with accounts of runins with colleagues in different uniforms. These rivalries

leaked into the press, precipitating his attempts to shape the

reporting of air operations in the war. He seldom passed up an

opportunity to solicit tributes from ground commanders regarding the performance of his forces, which he then passed

on to the media. Besides the major controversies with the

other services over close air support and C2 of air assets, The

Three Wars also covers the possible use of nuclear weapons,

relations with the Nationalist Chinese, intelligence operations,

and technical experiments with precision-guided munitions

(PGM) and aerial refueling.

Emerging from these pages is a picture of a competent though

not dazzling commander. (His main subordinate, Maj Gen Earle

“Pat” Partridge, commander of Fifth Air Force, comes across

much better.) One cannot help thinking that Stratemeyer, sitting

in his air-conditioned office in Tokyo, was somewhat removed

from the war—too many entries detail his dinner engagements

with noted visitors and golf outings. Additionally, Stratemeyer

remained a devoted and loyal follower of MacArthur, often noting

what a “great and brilliant man” he was. Just as MacArthur’s

fortunes waxed and waned, so did Stratemeyer’s reflections become more strident. In November 1950, he actually submitted a

recommendation for an oak-leaf cluster to MacArthur’s Medal of

Honor simply because MacArthur was a great American and because he flew a number of reconnaissance missions over Korea

in unarmed aircraft. Similarly, when MacArthur commented to

him that his superior, Defense Secretary George Marshall, was

“an old man” who has “gone nuts,” Stratemeyer seems to have

concurred. Not surprisingly, Stratemeyer was shocked and dismayed at MacArthur’s relief. Six weeks later, he suffered a severe

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heart attack on a golf course and returned to the States. The

Three Wars is an important, nicely packaged source for all readers interested not only in the Korean War but also in key, related

issues such as interservice rivalry and civil-military affairs.

Lauris Norstad, one of the most

important and powerful airmen in

American history, capped his career as supreme allied commander

Europe (SACEUR) from 1956 to

1962. A diplomat as well as a military commander, he was the paradigmatic diplomat-warrior of the

modern era.

“Larry” Norstad graduated from

West Point in 1930, joined the Air

Corps, and for the next decade

served as a bomber pilot and staff

officer. Despite his youth, he

caught Hap Arnold’s attention and was one of his principal

staff officers throughout World War II. In addition, Norstad

flew combat in North Africa, became operations chief for

Mediterranean Allied Air Forces, and was chief of staff of

Twentieth Air Force during the strategic-bombing campaign

against Japan. After the war, Norstad saw duty on the Air Staff

in Washington, commanded United States Air Forces Europe,

and in 1956 became SACEUR.

At this time, the height of the Cold War, our national strategy called for massive retaliation with nuclear weapons delivered by air. As tactical nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles

became available, a major controversy arose within the North

Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as to where in the theater

the Alliance should deploy these weapons and who should

control them.

The British had their own nuclear weapons as well as a

“special relationship” with the United States; France aspired

to nuclear status and resented US and British primacy within

NATO; and West Germany, the obvious battleground if war did

break out, was ever fearful of NATO’s commitment to West

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German security. Norstad had the task of assuaging French

pride, maintaining British allegiance, reassuring the Germans, and avoiding any provocation of the Soviets—all the

while deterring them from aggressive action. He fulfilled these

varied tasks with skill and delicacy.

Robert S. Jordan, a prolific author and NATO expert, tells

Norstad’s story with unusual insight in Norstad: Cold War

NATO Supreme Commander: Airman, Strategist, Diplomat (New

York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000). The highlight of Norstad’s

tenure as SACEUR, and the event that occupies one-third of

the book, is the reemergence of the Berlin crisis. West Berlin,

an island in the middle of Soviet-occupied East Germany, was

a lightning rod for tension throughout the Cold War. In 1948

the Soviets had blockaded land routes into the city, resulting

in the highly successful Berlin airlift, which saved the city

from Soviet domination. Beginning in late 1958, the Soviets

pressured Berlin once again. The crisis ebbed and flowed over

the next four years, culminating in the building of the Berlin

Wall. NATO experienced intense strains during that time. The

reader may feel a bit overwhelmed by Jordan’s detailed account of the crisis, but this is actually a wonderful case study

illustrating the enormous complexity that a theater commander must often face in both the military and diplomatic

spheres.

Therein lay a problem. The military had heavily involved itself in American politics since the beginning of the Republic,

and this involvement intensified after World War II, when numerous military officers served as members of the Cabinet, as

ambassadors, and, of course, as president. During his long

tenure as SACEUR, Norstad was expected to be a politician as

well as an airman. He not only worked with his military counterparts but also dealt frequently and routinely with prime

ministers, presidents, and foreign secretaries as well. Troubled

by the power and influence Norstad wielded in NATO, President

Kennedy and Secretary of Defense McNamara decided to do

something about it.

The proximate cause of the rift between Norstad and the

Kennedy administration was the issue of flexible response. Al69

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though Norstad had long advocated an increase in NATO’s

conventional strength, he thought Kennedy’s calls for a major

conventional buildup in Europe were excessive. Throughout

the Cold War, some NATO allies felt uneasy over the depth of

America’s commitment to European defense. To them, a massive conventional buildup served as a signal of the unwillingness of the United States to continue providing a nuclear

shield to Europe. According to this view, for deterrence to succeed, one could never allow the Soviets to doubt that the

United States would respond to an attack on NATO with nuclear, not conventional, weapons. Norstad also disagreed with

Kennedy’s calculated strategy of gradual escalation during the

Berlin crisis. Along with Konrad Adenauer in West Germany,

Norstad thought this approach “lacked firmness” and sent the

wrong signal to the Soviets. He undoubtedly felt some vindication when the policy of gradual escalation failed so miserably in Vietnam in the years that followed.

Truthfully, the real problem was that Norstad considered

himself an international commander first and an American

general second. He believed it his duty to pass on the American president’s views to NATO and serve as an honest broker

in any negotiations that followed. To him, it was not appropriate to follow the orders of a single NATO country—even his

own. This belief did not sit well with either Kennedy or McNamara. They wanted a more pliant and less politically visible

SACEUR, so in 1962 they nudged Norstad into retirement.

Jordan’s book is a first-rate piece of scholarship that contains compelling insights and lessons. Today, one hears much

talk that the American military has become politicized and

that military involvement in politics runs contrary to American

tradition. Although even a cursory review of US history would

cast doubt on that contention, our political leaders unquestionably have grown increasingly uneasy with senior military

officers straying into the political arena. Norstad was one of

the first to fall because of these new concerns. Jordan has

done an outstanding job not only of telling the story of an important airman but also of identifying a key milestone in the

history of American civil-military affairs.

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Because Colin Powell has served

as the top military officer in the

country and is now secretary of

state, some younger Americans

have difficulty understanding that

the nation’s black citizens have not

always enjoyed such opportunities.

At one point, only a few decades

ago, the armed forces remained

segregated. Although blacks

served, they did so in specialized

units—generally commanded by

whites—and suffered discrimination not only in promotions but also

in fundamental human rights. We have come a long way, but

it is useful to recall when such equality did not exist and when

racial discrimination was both pervasive and humiliating.

During World War II, a group of blacks went to Tuskegee Institute in Alabama to train as pilots. The famous Tuskegee airmen went on to serve with distinction in the European theater

and in the nation’s military for years thereafter. The most notable of these men was Benjamin O. Davis Jr.

The first black to graduate from West Point in the twentieth century, Davis did not have a pleasant four years there.

Because of his race, he was officially “silenced” by all

cadets—no one spoke to him during his entire stay except

on official business; he roomed alone; and he had no

friends. That so many cadets, faculty members, and senior

officers could allow such behavior is astonishing and surely

stands as one of the most shameful chapters in West Point

history. Nevertheless, Davis graduated but was promptly

turned down for pilot training—no black officers were allowed in the Air Corps. While he served in the infantry in

1940, however, the service reconsidered this policy, and

Davis went to Tuskegee for pilot training. Because of the war

and his ability, promotion followed rapidly, and he soon

found himself a lieutenant colonel commanding the 99th

Fighter Squadron in combat. After one year with this allblack unit in Italy, Davis was promoted to colonel and

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tasked to form the 322d Group, a black fighter unit that

served admirably for the remainder of the war.

After a presidential decree ended segregation in the services

in 1948, Davis attended Air War College, served in the Pentagon, and went to Korea in 1953 to command a fighter wing.

The following year, he received his first star and moved to the

Philippines as vice commander of Thirteenth Air Force at

Clark Air Base (AB). After tours in Taiwan, Germany, the Pentagon, and a return to Korea—gaining two more stars in the

process—Davis became commander of the Thirteenth. Obviously relishing this command at the height of the Vietnam

War, he was reluctant to leave in July 1968 to become deputy

commander of US Strike Command. He retired from that assignment in 1970.

Surprisingly, no one has written a biography of the first

black Air Force general. For now, however, we must content

ourselves with his autobiography, Benjamin O. Davis, Jr.,

American: An Autobiography (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian

Institution Press, 1991), an extremely well written memoir.

Some reviewers have commented that Davis was obsessed by

his West Point experience; although that is too strong a statement, clearly he was deeply affected by it. (Actually, most

cadets are deeply affected by their academy experience, but

few have such negative memories as did Davis.) The humiliation he suffered there stayed with him his entire career, and

not until 1987—more than 50 years after his graduation—did

he return for a visit. This book is marked throughout by a

sense of patriotism and faith—especially in himself and his

cadet sweetheart, who became his wife and supported him unfalteringly throughout his career. In one sense, this is a moving and touching love story. One may, however, criticize Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., American for its insufficient discussion of

the key operational issues Davis faced in his several commands in three different wars. The issue of race overshadows

everything and takes priority in his recollection of events. As a

consequence, we are left with a poignant story that reveals

clearly why Benjamin Davis became a successful man but not

why he became an equally successful senior commander.

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Another of the great Tuskegee

airmen, Daniel “Chappie” James

Jr., won his wings and a commission in 1943 but did not see combat

in World War II. After the war,

James quickly earned a reputation

as an outstanding fighter pilot. In

Korea he flew 100 combat missions, and in Vietnam—by 1965 he

was a full colonel—he flew over

threescore more. Not only was that

war unpopular but also racial unrest was exploding into violence all

over the United States at the time.

Returning from Vietnam, James was often called upon to defend America’s racial policies as well as its military policies. An

articulate speaker with great physical presence (he was six

feet, four inches tall and weighed nearly 250 pounds), he was

an especially effective spokesman for the Air Force. In 1967 he

became commander of Wheelus AB in Libya just as Mu‘ammar

Gadhafi succeeded in his revolution there. Gadhafi demanded

that the air base—which he saw as a vestige of European colonialism—be closed and its facilities turned over to the Libyan

people. This obviously was an extremely delicate position for

James, requiring restraint, tact, diplomacy, and grit, which he

displayed in abundance. Upon leaving Wheelus a year later, he

received his first star. After four years in the Pentagon working in Public Affairs, where he won two more stars, he became

vice commander of Military Airlift Command (MAC). After less

than two years at MAC, he received a fourth star—the first

black in American history to attain that rank—and assumed

command of NORAD. For a man of his size and appearance,

James was in surprisingly poor health. After suffering a heart

attack in 1977, he elected to retire soon thereafter. His health

continued to decline, and in February 1978, one month after

retirement, he suffered a fatal heart attack.

In one of the two biographies of the general, James R. McGovern’s Black Eagle, General Daniel “Chappie” James, Jr.

(University, Ala.: University of Alabama Press, 1985), the au73

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thor portrays James as a patriotic, hard-working, articulate,

and measured individual who served as a convincing

spokesman for the black cause without becoming radicalized.

James constantly stressed the qualities of determination and

sincerity, arguing that people should be judged by their performance, not skin color. McGovern takes a balanced approach. He notes the rumors that James avoided combat in

Vietnam and that his rapid rise in rank was politically motivated, but also points to his abilities as a more-than-capable

commander and his outstanding performance in the difficult

Libyan situation. Clearly, James deserved his promotion to

flag rank. Less satisfactory is McGovern’s explanation of

James’s advancement from that point on. Granted, he was an

effective and dynamic speaker who performed his duties in

public affairs in an exemplary fashion, but those duties do not

in themselves justify promotion to lieutenant general. Moreover, the decision to give James his fourth star—usually, only

about 12 full generals serve in the Air Force at a given time—

rested on his performance as vice commander of MAC. But

McGovern dismisses this two-year assignment with a single

sentence. Also, the book devotes barely one page to James’s

three-year tenure as NORAD commander. As a result, although readers have a clear portrait of James’s role as a civilrights pioneer, they do not acquire an understanding of his

performance as a senior commander.

The other biography of James, J. Alfred Phelps’s Chappie:

America’s First Black Four-Star General: The Life and Times of

Daniel James, Jr. (Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1991), is even

less satisfactory. Phelps uses James as a symbol of integration, showing how blacks rose from their inferior status in

World War II to acceptance three decades later. Unfortunately,

this portrayal is marred by a tone both too strident and too

glowing. For example, the author devotes several chapters to

the racial problems faced by the Tuskegee airmen during the

war but admits that James played almost no role in those

events. Like the McGovern work, from which Phelps borrows

heavily, this book’s explanation of James’s mercurial rise in

rank after 1969 remains inadequate. Phelps asserts rather

than demonstrates the general’s competence and relies far too

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heavily on public-relations speeches by James to illustrate his

points. As a result, both of these biographies leave readers

with more questions than answers.

Edward G. Lansdale, one of

the most unusual senior Air

Force leaders, originally served

as an Army intelligence officer

and an agent for the Office of

Strategic Services in World War

II, transferring to the Air Force

when it became a separate service in 1947. At the same time, he

joined the CIA and for the next

two decades pursued dual careers. CIA director William Colby

later called Lansdale one of the 10 greatest spies of all time.

Because Lansdale had closely studied the theories of revolutionary warfare espoused by Mao Tse-tung—undertaken

during his stay at the Pentagon between 1948 and 1950—he

was posted to the Philippines in late 1950, at the height of the

communist-backed Huk rebellion. Lansdale soon became

close friends with Philippine defense minister Ramón

Magsaysay. The two men exchanged ideas and worked closely

together on a plan to eradicate the Huk menace. In essence,

both realized that attempts to deal with the rebellion up to

that time had involved solely military forces. Yet, the concerns

of average Filipinos that made them susceptible to Huk propaganda were largely economic and political in nature. The solutions, therefore, had to be economic and political as well. A

measure of the veracity of this insight—so radical at the time—

is its acceptance today as conventional wisdom in counterinsurgency strategy.

Lansdale was largely responsible for developing a robust

psychological-warfare campaign to win back the hearts of the

Filipino people. The election of Magsaysay as president in November 1953 ensured the swift and effective implementation

of these ideas, resulting in the rapid elimination of the Huks

as a threat—militarily, politically, and psychologically.

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In January 1954, Lansdale, now a colonel, arrived in South

Vietnam as a “special adviser” as well as CIA station chief.

There, he attempted to replicate his success in the Philippines,

becoming a close adviser to Ngo Dinh Diem, whom he saw on

almost a daily basis over the next three years, and laboring to

nudge him towards a broader-based and more open form of

government. This difficult task was exacerbated by the sizable

French military presence in the south, which bitterly opposed

not only Diem but also the upstart Americans. Moreover,

Lansdale found himself frequently at odds with his own government, which was little disposed towards Diem. Nevertheless, the south made progress against the communist insurgents, and when Lansdale left Vietnam in 1956, he had reason

for optimism—which would prove unfounded. After several

years in the Pentagon as special assistant to the secretary of

defense in the area of special operations, he retired in 1963 as

a major general.

As events worsened in Vietnam, Lansdale was asked to return in 1965, in mufti, as a special assistant to Ambassador

Henry Cabot Lodge. This tour, largely a failure, proved enormously frustrating for him. His ideas ran contrary to those of

Lodge, as well as those of Gen William C. Westmoreland. Like

virtually everyone else, the Tet offensive of February 1968

caught Lansdale by surprise. He resigned soon after and retired again to Virginia. A unique individual widely known for

his dual role as military officer and spy, he became the model

for main characters in two best-selling novels: The Ugly American and The Quiet American (in the former, his character went

by the unlikely name of Ed Hillandale). In a sense, he symbolized all the best and worst of American involvement in Southeast Asia.

Several things call attention to themselves in Lansdale’s

very personal, interesting, and provocative memoir In the

Midst of Wars: An American’s Mission to Southeast Asia (New

York: Harper & Row, 1972), which focuses exclusively on his

years in the Philippines, 1950–53, and in South Vietnam,

1954–57. First, he believed deeply that protracted revolutionary wars were not inevitably destined for success—a contrary

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opinion at the time. Such rebellions represented a new form of

war that governments were unprepared to deal with effectively; once they understood the nature of such wars, however,

they could produce counterstrategies. The key to success

against insurgents lay in using political action to win the support of the people. That achieved, the insurgency would wither

and die. Lansdale also stressed the need for American advisers to truly understand the needs and desires of the common

people by getting out into the countryside and avoiding the bureaucracy of the capital city. He followed his own advice almost too well, barely evading ambushes and assassination attempts on numerous occasions. Nevertheless, these personal

insights were essential to a successful counterinsurgency because, in Lansdale’s view, “Washington” almost never understands the true state of affairs.

Clearly, Lansdale had some axes to grind. His depiction of

the French in Vietnam is uniformly bad: they come across as

haughty, corrupt, spiteful, and duplicitous, whereas Diem is

portrayed as an honest, hardworking, and courageous patriot

who simply did not have adequate support from the US government—an unusual interpretation. This account suffers

from two glaring omissions. First, Lansdale never mentions

his status as a CIA agent; second, he does not discuss his return to Vietnam in the mid-1960s, which ended so unhappily.

No doubt, security considerations contributed to these oversights, but one cannot help feeling that Lansdale is simply indulging in another of the innumerable “disinformation campaigns” at which he proved so adept.

One finds a more detailed and completer portrait of this unusual figure in Cecil B. Currey’s Edward Lansdale, The Unquiet

American (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1988). In one sense, Currey’s timing was ideal: Lansdale, alive and candid, had achieved

a sense of perspective concerning the events he helped shape,

and he willingly revealed to his biographer some of his secret activities. Clearly, Currey established excellent rapport with his

subject; unfortunately, Lansdale died while Currey’s manuscript

was in draft. Although the author relies far too heavily on Lansdale’s account of events, we still have a fairly balanced chronicle

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of a man who, in some ways, was a near genius in his ability to

understand Asian cultures and see to the core of complex problems. On the other hand, Lansdale’s opinions, aggressiveness,

and petulance earned him numerous enemies throughout the

US military and government, as well as among foreign militaries

and governments. Overall, Lansdale’s extraordinary abilities

come through in this biography, but at the same time, Currey

deftly paints a highly critical portrait of America’s (and Lansdale’s) unsubtle efforts to manipulate and bribe foreign officials

and shape their policies—activities that eventually created far

more problems than they solved.

One of the young pilots sent to

Europe in World War II who quickly

rose to high rank because the life

expectancy of combat aircrews was

so brief, George S. Brown graduated from West Point in 1941 and

only three years later became a full

colonel. On one of his most famous

missions, he led a bomb group over

Ploesti, winning a Distinguished

Service Cross for his efforts. The

downside was that it took him an

additional 15 years to receive his

next promotion. In those intervening years, Brown served as

commander of bomber, transport, and fighter units; as assistant operations officer of FEAF during the Korean War; and as

executive officer for Thomas White, the Air Force chief of staff.

After two years in this last position, Brown received his first

star and became military assistant to Secretary of Defense McNamara. After leaving the Pentagon in 1963 as a major general, Brown became commander of Twentieth Air Force (airlift)

for two years and then returned to the Pentagon as special assistant to the chairman of the JCS (Gen Earle Wheeler). Promoted to full general, he went to Vietnam in 1968 to command

Seventh Air Force. Interestingly, as Brown left for Vietnam,

John Ryan, then the Air Force chief of staff, told him he was

being groomed to take over as chief a few years hence. As a result, when Brown returned to the States in 1970, he was

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named commander of Air Force Systems Command, “to make

him well rounded.” As promised, when Ryan retired in 1972,

Brown became chief. After less than nine months in that position, however, Brown was elevated to JCS chairman, the first

airman to hold that position since Nate Twining 15 years earlier. During his tenure as chairman, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fell; SALT II was negotiated; Cyprus erupted; US

marines stormed the Mayaguez; and North Koreans hacked an

Army officer to death. In addition, Brown found himself in hot

water on two occasions when he gave speeches interpreted as

“anti-Israel.” Although some people called for his immediate

dismissal, the chairman survived these incidents. Unfortunately, he did not survive cancer. Like Hoyt Vandenberg two

decades before, Brown spent his last months in office in constant pain. He retired in June 1978 and died of cancer six

months later.

In the only biography of Brown, Edgar F. Puryear Jr.’s

George S. Brown, General, U.S. Air Force: Destined for Stars

(Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1983), the author concludes

that the general’s honesty, integrity, sincerity, and intelligence

made him successful. More of a character study than a biography, the book relies on scores of interviews that relate what

Brown was like, how he interacted with his superiors and subordinates, how he managed his staff meetings, and so forth.

However, this focus on George Brown the man and the officer

omits the actual environment in which he worked and the

problems he had to address. What we have is a seemingly endless stream of anecdotes and testimonials regarding the general’s personality—but precious few facts on precisely what he

did as a senior leader. For example, Puryear relates how

Brown, the assistant operations officer for FEAF during the

second year of the Korean War, interacted with his colleagues

and what they thought of him—but includes scarcely any discussion of the war. The book also fails to mention issues such

as the close air support controversy with the Army and

Marines and the definition of “coordination control” with the

Navy. The result is a somewhat unsatisfactory character

sketch devoid of substance.

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Regrettably, only a handful of

senior airmen have written memoirs in the past four decades. One

of these, James V. Hartinger’s

From One Stripe to Four Stars (Colorado Springs, Colo.: Phantom

Press, 1997), provides a fairly brief

overview of his long career, which

began when he was drafted into the

Army during World War II. In 1945

he pinned on sergeant’s stripes

shortly before receiving an appointment to West Point. Graduating in 1949, Hartinger transferred

to the Air Force “because you get more money there,” earned

his wings, and became a fighter pilot. He flew combat tours in

Korea and Vietnam, served as a wing commander and an action officer in the Pentagon, became commandant of the Air

War College, twice commanded a numbered air force (Ninth

and Twelfth), and in 1980 became commander in chief of

NORAD soon after receiving his fourth star. Significantly,

when Air Force Space Command stood up in 1982, the “dual

hatted” Hartinger served as its first head. He retired from

those positions in 1984.

Hartinger’s is not a traditional memoir in that it provides

little insight into most subjects regarding his career. Although

each chapter corresponds to a specific assignment, some of

them are only a page or two long. Moreover, he completely ignores crucial topics that would ordinarily be de rigueur for

such a memoir. For example, although he flew in both Korea

and Vietnam, the book scarcely mentions his activities in

these wars. In the case of Vietnam, this slight is especially remarkable because Hartinger was chief of Seventh Air Force’s

command center in Saigon and flew 100 combat missions. In

his words, “few people in Vietnam knew more about the conduct of the war than I did.” Yet, he never discusses the many

things he saw and learned: American goals, the targets selected for air attack and the rationale for their selection, the effectiveness of air strikes, logistics, intelligence operations,

interservice cooperation/rivalry, and so forth. Similarly,

Hartinger played a pivotal role in the decision to form Space

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Command, which has had far-reaching and long-lasting consequences, yet the only justification he provides for this momentous proposal is that “space is like the land, the sea, and

the air. It’s a theater of operations.” Certainly, a great deal

more thought went into it than that. Although he served as

commandant of Air War College, Hartinger has almost nothing

to say about education. What was the mission of the school?

What were the students supposed to learn about the application of airpower? How would this education enhance their professionalism and utility to the Air Force? What qualifications

did he look for in his faculty members? Indeed, the sole comment he makes on his role as one of the Air Force’s chief educators concerns his obvious pleasure in cutting the length of

student writing assignments!

Rather, Hartinger has written a book on leadership by

demonstrating how individualism, involvement, and energy

shaped his own career and how they can shape anyone else’s.

Beginning with his experiences as a star athlete in high school

and college—a member of the Lacrosse Hall of Fame, he was a

three-time All American lacrosse player at West Point—he offers many examples of how he practiced the art of leadership.

As a consequence, the reader encounters numerous vignettes

and morality plays designed to demonstrate how leaders

should take care of their troops, build teamwork, accomplish

the mission, and offer unpopular advice to superiors. In this

respect, From One Stripe to Four Stars achieves some success

and, therefore, is useful as a leadership primer for cadets and

junior officers.

Charles A. Horner, an Iowa farm

boy who had a hankering to fly,

joined the Air Force ROTC unit at

the University of Iowa, receiving his

commission upon graduation in

1958. A fighter pilot, he flew two

tours in Vietnam, and over a 35-

year career, he served as commander of a squadron, a wing, an

air division, and an air force—and

as commander in chief of US Space

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Command. He is most remembered, however, for his stint as

coalition air commander during the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

In that position, Horner presided over one of the most decisive

military victories in history, achieved with astonishingly low

casualties. With Tom Clancy, he tells his story with unusual

candor, clarity, and force in Every Man a Tiger (New York: Putnam, 1999).

All too often, such ghosted memories are little more than

adventure stories with few insights—but this book is an exception. The Clancy/Horner combination has produced an

outstanding effort. Switching back and forth between Clancy’s

narrative and Horner’s “color commentary,” we read things

that either man alone probably would not have written. For example, who would describe himself, as Clancy does Horner, as

having “a comfortable but not pretty, bloodhound face, sandy,

thinning hair, and a bulldog body”? Similarly, could Clancy

have known that Horner has a strong aversion for people arguing about whether aircraft are “strategic” or “tactical”?

Horner tells us that only “airheaded airmen” continue to

abuse such terms. 

Horner provides an excellent description of the frustration

and anger that he and so many of his colleagues felt during

the Vietnam War. We are all products of our past, and it is

plain that Horner was deeply affected by the stupidity, waste,

and duplicity he saw in Vietnam. When he got his chance to

lead in combat in Operation Desert Storm, he was determined

to do things differently. In a frank and self-deprecating fashion, Horner relates his thoughts on the crisis of 1990–91 and

his use of airpower. Horner’s insights are the best written to

date and, given his position, are the best likely to be written.

When Saddam Hussein’s forces invaded Kuwait in August

1990, Horner was commander of Ninth Air Force, which

meant he also functioned as joint force air component commander for all air assets that would see action in Desert

Storm. He sheds fascinating light on the planning and execution of the air campaign. With neither anger nor hubris, he offers character sketches of the key coalition players, discusses

the Instant Thunder air campaign plan devised by John Warden, and shares his thoughts on the relief of Gen Mike Dugan,

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then the Air Force chief of staff. He takes much pride in his account of the war, basking in the professionalism, courage, and

ingenuity demonstrated by airmen of all ranks, services, and

countries during the greatest aerial success story in history.

One must remember that such stunning success was not inevitable. Many ideas put forth during the crisis would have

tragically misused the unique advantages of airpower. He singles

out Gen Norman Schwarzkopf for having the wisdom to see

beyond his experience as a soldier and understand the possibilities of an air campaign. If Schwarzkopf had not had such

flexibility of vision, the war could have lasted far longer and

been far bloodier.

Horner is especially good at discussing the importance of

coalition relationships. Remembering how condescendingly

Americans had treated their South Vietnamese allies and the

problems such an attitude had caused, he insisted on treating

the coalition members as equals. The book makes clear that

the duties of a senior coalition commander entail far more

than the “mere” planning and executing of a military campaign. Similarly, Horner emphasizes the necessity for jointness. War is too important to compound its risk with foolish

interservice rivalries. In this regard, the Marines were a constant disappointment to him, “playing games” throughout the

war and seemingly unable to put service parochialism aside,

even though lives were at stake.

The other valuable aspect of this memoir is its insight into

the employment of airpower. Horner spends much time explaining his thought processes for various decisions, constantly asking himself, “What will the enemy do next; what

could he do next; how would I respond?” He recounts the air

battle at Khafji, Saudi Arabia, where coalition airpower

mauled three Iraqi divisions, thus ending any chance of an

enemy ground offensive. Horner repeats the key principle that

all of us must ever bear in mind: air superiority is always the

first and most important priority; without it, all military operations become difficult, if not impossible.

At the same time, Horner admits his mistakes. He grossly

underestimated the danger from Scud missiles, failing to devise tactics to effectively halt their use. Furthermore, he per83

THE AIRMEN
mitted low-level operations that resulted in the loss of several

coalition aircraft. Horner’s concluding thoughts on space and

the way it has changed war are also important, although one

would like to see this section expanded. Nevertheless, Every

Man a Tiger is an excellent and enjoyable book—one of the

finest memoirs written to date by a high-ranking airman.

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Chapter 3

Anthologies and Oral Histories

Several anthologies contain brief biographies of leading airmen. Edgar F. Puryear Jr. writes about leadership in Stars in

Flight: A Study in Air Force Character and Leadership (San

Rafael, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1981), concentrating on the first

five leaders of the modern Air Force: Hap Arnold, Carl Spaatz,

Hoyt Vandenberg, Nate Twining, and Thomas White. He bases

his research largely on his interviews and correspondence

with general officers who knew or worked for these men.

Puryear concludes that one can sum up the key to leadership

in five qualities—duty, honor, service, courage (both moral and

physical), and decisiveness—possessed by his subjects. As

with his biography of George Brown, this book is not successful. Because Puryear’s audience consists of cadets or junior

officers, the biographical sketches amount to hero building

rather than critical analysis. In addition, his heavy reliance on

interviews and letters reduces the study to little more than a

series of quotations and stories strung together with little

cohesion or overall point. One does, however, gain some

insight into the personalities of these men—a useful starting

point for someone wanting to undertake a serious study.

In Fighting Airmen (New York: Putnam, 1966), Curt Anders

aims to describe the lives of seven great American airmen:

Billy Mitchell, “who had the initial vision”; Curtis LeMay, who

brought that vision “to its closest approximation in practice”;

and five others who kept that vision alive through their combat leadership—Eddie Rickenbacker, Hap Arnold, Jimmy

Doolittle, Claire Chennault, and George Kenney. Unfortunately, the book amounts to little more than an unbalanced

series of tributes. As with Puryear’s book, however, it contains

some information that would prove useful to someone starting

a serious investigation of air leadership.

David MacIsaac’s “Leadership in the Old Air Force: A Postgraduate Assignment,” the Harmon Memorial Lecture for 1987,

in The Harmon Memorial Lectures in Military History, 1959–1987,

85
ed. Harry R. Borowski (Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1988), is an extremely well written and unusual piece about

the early careers of Hap Arnold, Carl Spaatz, and Ira Eaker. 

The best of the anthologies, Makers of the United States Air

Force, ed. John L. Frisbee (1987; reprint, Washington, D.C.: Air

Force History and Museums Program, 1996), contains chapterlength biographical sketches of Benjamin Foulois (by John

Shiner), Frank Andrews (by DeWitt Copp), Harold L. George (by

Haywood Hansell Jr.), Hugh Knerr (by Murray Green), George

Kenney (by Herman Wolk), William E. Kepner (by Paul Henry),

Elwood R. Quesada (by John Schlight), Hoyt S. Vandenberg (by

Noel Parrish), Benjamin O. Davis Jr. (by Alan Gropman), Nathan

F. Twining (by Donald Mrozek), Bernard A. Schriever (by Jacob

Neufeld), and Robinson Risner (by T. R. Milton). Frisbee selected

these individuals not only because of their importance but also

because they had received insufficient attention from historians. Although the essays lack documentation, they are of a high

caliber and describe both the personalities of the men and their

significance.

The most interesting essays deal with “the forgotten airmen.”

Frank Andrews, the first commander of GHQ Air Force in 1935

and the first airman ever promoted to three-star rank, served as

commander of the European theater at the time of his death in

a plane crash in 1943. Hal George, one of the key figures in the

development of bombardment doctrine at ACTS in the 1930s,

helped author AWPD-1 and served as wartime head of Air Transport Command. A famous balloonist in the interwar years and

head of VIII Fighter Command at the time of “Big Week” in February 1944, William Kepner finished the war as commander of

Eighth Air Force. Bernard Schriever was a pilot-turned-engineer,

now considered the father of the ICBM program. And Robbie Risner, a fighter pilot and ace in the Korean War, won the first-ever

Air Force Cross in 1965 over the skies of Vietnam and endured

seven years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. Makers of the

United States Air Force is an excellent book and should encourage historians seeking a topic worthy of a full-length biography.

All of its subjects are excellent candidates.

Another effort, sponsored and published by the Office of Air

Force History in 1986, is Air Leadership: Proceedings of a Con86

AIRMEN AND AIR THEORY
ference at Bolling Air Force Base, April 13–14, 1984, edited by

Wayne Thompson. Several contributions to the book emphasize

differing leadership styles. Papers on two airmen, Carl Spaatz (by

Dave Mets and I. B. Holley) and William Moffett (by Thomas

Hone), were singled out for examination. (Other papers discussed RAF-AAF relations during World War II and the managerversus-leader debate in the postwar Air Force.) Although these

biographical sketches are useful, of greater interest are the panel

discussions by luminaries such as Gen Curtis LeMay, Gen Mark

Bradley, Gen Bryce Poe, Gen Brian Gunderson, and Gen Alfred

F. Hurley. The reminiscences of these men, prompted by questions from the audience, are quite enlightening.

DeWitt S. Copp wrote two very popular books that trace the

history of Army aviation from the Wright brothers through World

War II: A Few Great Captains: The Men and Events That Shaped

the Development of U.S. Air Power (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday,

1980), which ends in 1939, and Forged in Fire: Strategy and Decisions in the Air War over Europe, 1940–45 (Garden City, N.Y.:

Doubleday, 1982), which covers the war years. Though not biographies, they tell the history of the air arm through the eyes of

various air leaders, especially Hap Arnold, Frank Andrews, Carl

Spaatz, and Ira Eaker. The biggest disappointment for the reader

is that Copp never finished the story—he spends barely 30 pages

on the last two years of the war—and never completed a projected third volume. Consequently, the great airmen who would

dominate both the last two years of war and the postwar era—

Vandenberg, Twining, White, and LeMay—barely receive an

introduction. In addition, despite Copp’s prodigious research, he

includes few notes—most of them explanatory—which prevents

readers from taking a closer look at his sources and interpretations. Finally, his treatment of the icons of American airpower

borders on hagiography; one finds scarcely a discouraging word.

Nevertheless, Copp’s very entertaining, mostly accurate books

tell the story of American airpower with passion and verve.

Flint O. DuPre’s U.S. Air Force Biographical Dictionary (New

York: Franklin Watts, 1965), a reference work that has proven

invaluable to many researchers, contains biographical

sketches of American airmen who achieved at least three-star

rank or who became famous for other reasons (e.g., Medal of

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ANTHOLOGIES AND ORAL HISTORIES
Honor winners, Air Service/Air Corps chiefs, Air Force secretaries, etc.). Sadly, this well-done and important tool is now

out of date and in need of a major revision that would add

sketches of airmen from the past three decades.

Oral histories can also be of great use to a researcher,

despite serious pitfalls peculiar to the genre (e.g., memories of

past events are often clouded; people sometimes tell the interviewer what they think he or she wants to hear; few people are

willing to admit their biggest or most embarrassing mistakes;

and score settling is common fare). Interviews can set a tone

for a particular era or event as well as provide valuable context. In addition, interviews often reveal personality traits,

quirks, conflicts, and connections not recorded in written histories. For example, it came as a great surprise to me to learn

from one transcripted interview that a certain high-ranking

individual was an alcoholic. The issue came up in passing—

something that had not entered my mind as a possibility but

that had significant implications. With this revelation—confirmed in other interviews—other issues, decisions, and

actions took on a far different light. The major caveat to consider is that the interview can open doors to interesting rooms,

but a thorough examination of those rooms requires more

conventional and definitive research methods.

Three organizations in particular have been especially active

in interviewing distinguished airmen regarding their careers:

the AFHRA at Maxwell AFB, Alabama; the History Department

at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs; and a group of

researchers at Columbia University in New York City. AFHRA’s

collection is by far the largest of the three, containing over

2,000 interviews. It is also quite broad, covering all periods

and subjects. The Air Force Academy, on the other hand,

tends to concentrate on specific subjects dealing with the

academy’s history. For example, interviewers have conducted

fascinating sessions with a number of graduates held captive

during the Vietnam and Persian Gulf Wars. For abstracts of

interviews conducted by the AFHRA and the Air Force Academy, see Catalog of the United States Air Force Oral History Collection, ed. Maurice Maryanow (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: AFHRA,

1989). Columbia University’s very large collection of oral his88

AIRMEN AND AIR THEORY
tories contains only a small number of interviews concerning

airpower. For a list of them, see The Oral History Collection of

Columbia University, 4th ed., ed. Elizabeth B. Mason and

Louis M. Starr (New York: Oral History Research Office, 1979).

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Chapter 4

Conclusion

Excluding the thousands of oral histories extant, I have

included 93 studies in part one of this book—more than I

expected to find when I began this project. Their quality is

quite uneven, and one finds other anomalies: too many books

on Claire Chennault and too few on Jimmy Doolittle. Despite

Doolittle’s importance and the six biographies of him, his significance and leadership remain obscure. Although we know

enough of the details of Doolittle’s life, we still need an analysis of and explanation for his success as the commander of

some of our most important air units at particularly crucial

times. Similarly, one doubts that new facts about the lives of

Billy Mitchell, Hap Arnold, or Curtis LeMay will come to light;

yet, works that analyze the impact these men had on the Air

Force and its perception by the other services, Congress, and

the public would add significantly to the literature.

Amazingly, however, biographers have virtually ignored

some truly great airmen. First among them is Nate Twining.

Others in need of a biography include John P. McConnell,

chief of staff during the early years of the Vietnam War; John

D. Ryan, who succeeded McConnell as chief during Vietnam;

Muir “Santy” Fairchild, an instructor in the Bombardment

Section at ACTS, joint planner during World War II, and vice

chief under Vandenberg; Thomas White; Frank Andrews; Larry

Kuter; Emmett “Rosie” O’Donnell, who commanded B-29s in

World War II and Korea and retired while commander of Pacific

Air Forces at the beginning of the Vietnam War; Bernard

Schriever; Otto “Opie” Weyland, another great tactical airman

who fought in three major wars; Harold L. George; David

Jones, chief of staff and chairman of the JCS, who led the fight

to reform the military during the first Reagan administration;

James Fechet, Air Corps chief between Patrick and Foulois;

Benjamin Davis; Jeanne Holm, the first woman to reach flag

rank in the Air Force; and William Momyer, perhaps the most

creative and innovative of the tactical airmen, who com91
manded Seventh Air Force in Vietnam and TAC afterwards.

Information about airmen who served as engineers or involved

themselves in R&D constitutes another gap in the literature.

Perhaps a volume that includes the biographies of men like

George Brett, Oliver Echols, Benjamin Chidlaw, Laurence

Craigie, and Donald Putt, and that discusses the technical

evolution of airpower during and after World War II would be

appropriate.

In addition, something must be done to encourage senior air

leaders to write their memoirs. We desperately need to know

their stories. Those whose accounts would be most useful

include T. R. “Ross” Milton, bomb leader at Schweinfurt, Germany, chief of staff of the Berlin airlift, chief of staff of NATO,

and member of the [Walt] Rostow mission to Vietnam; William

Momyer (Momyer did publish a book, Airpower in Three Wars

[Washington, D.C.: Department of the Air Force, 1978], but it

is more a comment on tactical air operations in World War II,

Korea, and Vietnam than a memoir); Bernard Schriever; David

Jones; Lew Allen, chief of staff and transitional figure between

the era dominated by SAC and the one dominated by TAC;

Russell Dougherty, commander of SAC and one of the great

strategic thinkers in Air Force history; Robin Olds, fighter ace

and war hero in two different wars; Brent Scowcroft, national

security adviser to President George H. Bush; Larry Welch,

chief of staff when the Soviet empire collapsed; and Merrill

McPeak, chief of staff during the Gulf War and during the

momentous reorganization and downsizing that followed.

Another overlooked but important biographical source is the

papers—both official and personal—of senior airmen. Located

in the Library of Congress, the papers of Mitchell, Arnold,

Spaatz, Vandenberg, Twining, LeMay, Eaker, and others are

enormous and detailed, giving vital insights into key events in

airpower history. One can find numerous other such collections of papers archived at the AFHRA, the Air Force Academy,

various presidential libraries, and other private repositories

around the country. It is time someone collected, edited, annotated, and published some of these collections. The papers of

Arnold and Spaatz are the two most obvious places to start,

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not only because of the important roles these men played but

also the size and significance of their collections.

Tellingly, the papers of Army leaders like George Marshall,

Dwight Eisenhower, George Patton, and Lucius Clay have

been published in multivolume sets. These have proven

invaluable to researchers and historians who require primarysource materials but cannot spend several weeks on a

research trip to Washington, D.C., or, in the case of Eisenhower, Abilene, Kansas. Airpower demands the same availability of such materials. We need editors knowledgeable of

airpower history along with agencies willing to lend financial

support to such a great effort. The publication of Selected

Works, 1990–1994 (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press,

1995), the speeches made by Gen “Tony” McPeak when he was

chief of staff, is a welcome addition to the literature; all the

chiefs should follow suit.

In sum, although much has been done already, very much

more remains to be done. Carl Builder has commented that

the Air Force culture is dominated by technology, not people.

In one sense, he is correct, but technology is always the tool of

men and women, and we must never lose sight of the human

element in air warfare. Although biography has its limitations—a tendency to exaggerate the significance of individuals

and to forget that institutions, groups, and simple fate can

also determine history—the insights into character, culture,

behavior, and emotion far outweigh any potential drawbacks.

We have much to learn from our past leaders. The challenges

they faced are not so different from those we confront today

and will meet in the future. Thorough, critical, dispassionate,

and honest biographies and autobiographies are essential in

assisting future airmen meet their challenges.

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CONCLUSION
PART 2

The Historiography of Airpower Theory

and Doctrine
Chapter 5

Overall Treatments

The history of military theory and doctrine is a subset of military history. Theory and doctrine deal with the realm of ideas,

not operations, and partly because of this, fewer people have

been inclined to write about this more esoteric subject. As a

result, tracing the history of ideas has proven to be a fairly

barren field. The problem becomes far worse regarding airpower. Airmen, regardless of nationality, have seldom been

accused of being thinkers, and precious few have taken up the

pen to write down their thoughts on how one should employ

airpower in war. Added to this is the relatively short length of

time airpower has existed: just in the past century. As a

result, only a limited number of books, articles, and manuals

that deal with the theory and doctrine of airpower have

appeared to date.

The aim of this and the following chapters is to enumerate

and assess those works of airpower theory and doctrine and to

reveal the historiography of ideas on conventional airpower

employment.* The subject of nuclear-deterrence theory and its

associated doctrines of mutual assured destruction, strategic

sufficiency, and the like are a separate and enormous field

that I do not address here. Similarly, I do not discuss space, a

field growing in importance and interest. In addition, I admit

to a major limitation: I cover only those items written or translated into English. Undoubtedly, many more important works

have appeared in French, German, Russian, and other languages. Those I must leave to someone more capable.

Only one book attempts to give a history of airpower theory

and trace its evolution during the twentieth century. The compendium produced by the School of Advanced Airpower Studies (SAAS), The Paths of Heaven: The Evolution of Airpower The97

*A version of Part 2, “The Historiography of Airpower Theory and Doctrine,” here

including chapters 5–18, originally appeared in the Journal of Military History 64

(April 2000): 467–502. Reprinted by permission.
ory (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, 1997), is an excellent start, offering chapters on Giulio Douhet, Hugh Trenchard

and the RAF, Billy Mitchell, ACTS, US naval aviators, various

lesser European thinkers prior to World War II, Alexander de

Seversky, the nuclear theorists of the postwar era, John Boyd,

and John Warden. Furthermore, topical chapters deal with airpower in low intensity conflict, airpower and the ground battle,

airpower in NATO, and Soviet air theory in the aftermath of

Vietnam. The book concludes with a look ahead to space-power

theory. The contributors were instructors or students at SAAS,

with the exception of I. B. Holley Jr., who wrote the concluding

essay. The quality of the essays, as is typical of such works, is

somewhat uneven, and one notes gaps in the story—no discussion of Japanese or Chinese airpower, for example. Nevertheless, The Paths of Heaven is the first place to begin a study

of airpower theory.

The best account of the evolution of airpower theory and

doctrine in the United States is Robert Frank Futrell’s Ideas,

Concepts, Doctrine: Basic Thinking in the United States Air

Force, 2 vols. (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, 1989),

an enormously detailed, thorough, and insightful work. Futrell

begins with the early days of aviation, showing how the Army

began its slow and painful appreciation of the new air weapon.

After reviewing the “Mitchell era” and its influence on the Air

Corps and ACTS, where American air doctrine was formulated, he then examines how World War II fulfilled, modified,

and in some cases rejected that doctrine. Futrell then discusses the postwar era, when the US Air Force, like the other

services—indeed, the world in general—struggled to cope with

the changes in war caused by nuclear weapons. He shows how

the Vietnam War rudely shook these new ideas and how that

war shaped modern concepts of airpower employment. No one

has a better understanding of the Air Force’s intellectual history than Futrell. Prodigious research went into these two volumes. Although Futrell’s prose can at times be hard going,

Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine is essential reading for anyone serious about airpower theory and doctrine.

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Chapter 6

Early Thinking

Most early writers on airpower quickly realized that aircraft

would have a significant impact on military operations. Generally, they saw this impact primarily in the area of reconnaissance and communications. (That is why the first military

aircraft in the United States were assigned to the Army’s Signal Corps.) Examples of these early, guarded treatments

include Capt G. L. Townsend’s “The Use and Effect of Flying

Machines on Military Operations,” Infantry Journal 7 (September 1910): 244–59, and, more importantly, R. P. Hearne’s Aerial Warfare (London: J. Lane, 1909). Hearne recognizes that

aerial reconnaissance would have an enormous effect on

armies because it would more quickly and accurately determine their positions and possible intentions: “Aircraft will

destroy surprise, and therefore destroy strategy,” a prescient

preview of World War I. He also notes that aircraft would prove

very effective in terrorizing “savage races,” thus allowing easier government control in colonial possessions—another accurate prediction of how the RAF would conduct imperial policing duties during the interwar period.

Other writers were less farsighted. For example, in “The

Aeroplane in War,” Harper’s Weekly, 20 August 1910 (pages

11, 36) and 27 August 1910 (pages 11–13), the usually openminded Homer Lea asserts confidently that aircraft could

never become weapons of war because their use “is incompatible with organized and stable governments.” He stumbles on,

finally concluding that not even reconnaissance would be possible from the air because airplanes would travel too quickly

for pilots to see clearly. One finds a slightly less negative

appraisal in Sir George Aston’s Sea, Land, and Air Strategy: A

Comparison (London: John Murray, 1914). Aston believes that

aircraft would have little influence on war in the near term,

but he does register a caveat: if in the future, aircraft numbered in the “thousands rather than the hundreds,” he might

change his mind. Hudson Maxim, inventor of the machine

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gun, also wrote about airpower in Defenseless America (New

York: Hearst’s International Library Co., 1915); contrary to

most writers, he points out the physical limitations of aerial

bombing. He notes, for example, the exaggerated talk of bombardment’s destructiveness—bombs first had to hit the

intended building, penetrate its roof, and then explode to

cause any appreciable damage. These represented far more

serious challenges than most people realized. Maxim was correct, yet amazingly few writers on the subject realized it.

F. W. Lanchester, an eclectic thinker and engineer best known

for his “N Squared Laws” that attempt to predict casualties in

war based on the number of participants, explains these formulas and their relation to airpower in Aircraft in Warfare: The Dawn

of the Fourth Arm (London: Constable and Co., Ltd., 1916). In

this clever and thoughtful work, Lanchester sees great strategic

value in aircraft but nevertheless believes that their main importance will reside on the battlefield, where they will work in conjunction with the three other arms: infantry, artillery, and cavalry. In this regard, however, he believes that gaining air

superiority is absolutely essential, and its attainment should be

airpower’s first priority at the outbreak of war. In words soon

echoed by other air advocates, he states boldly, “The time will

come when the total and irrevocable loss of the command of the

air to an enemy will be regarded as a disaster of an altogether

irreparable and decisive kind.”

Other early writers on airpower seemed instinctively to recognize that aerial bombing would grow to dominate war, but

their thoughts were inchoate and lacked specifics. In this

regard, their work more closely resembled the fiction writings

of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne than of military theorists.

Examples of these early glimmerings of strategic thought

include Claude Grahame-White’s The Aeroplane in War (London: T. W. Laurie, 1912) and Aircraft in the Great War: A Record

and Study (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1915); Frederick A. Talbot’s Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War (London: William Heinemann, 1915); and Edgar C. Middleton’s Airfare of To-Day and

of the Future (London: Constable, 1917).

Prior to World War II, most of the writing on airpower was

surprisingly superficial and/or technical. Because of flight’s

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status as a revolutionary development in human history,

people found it fascinating but were a bit mystified as to how

it actually occurred. As a result, most books on aviation began

with an obligatory discussion of what makes airplanes fly, a

description of lift and drag, the difficulty of directional control,

the effects of rain and ice on airframes, and so forth. After

these introductory chapters, authors would then begin to

speculate—because they had so little empirical data to fall

back on—regarding the future of aviation. Most of these speculative accounts fall into one of two categories: the boy’s

adventure story and the apocalyptic vision of future war. In

particularly unfortunate cases, these two categories were combined under one cover—for example, Maj Gen James E.

Fechet’s Flying (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins Co. in cooperation with the Century of Progress Exposition, 1933).

Fechet, who had served as chief of the Air Corps and should

have known better, wrote a distressingly bad book on airpower. One extended quote sums up the message of Flying as

well as dozens of other such books written during the interwar

years, both here and abroad:

It takes no gazing into a crystal ball to visualize a huge trade center such

as New York City completely paralyzed if not entirely destroyed, razed and

depopulated in a single day by a very few flying machines. . . . Obviously

the airman, riding so high above the earth that cities look like ant hills,

cannot aim his deadly cargo at armed males. All below will be his impartial target. . . . The women and children and working men, extra-military,

are the ones who will suffer. Extended areas will be completely depopulated. We may safely forecast that the next war will be won or lost by air

effort.

This type of writing could hardly inspire people into liking

airpower and seeing it as a boon to mankind. Nevertheless,

airmen argued surprisingly often that airpower was a civilizing

and humane instrument because it would make war so awful

that it was less likely to occur. This logic is not entirely ridiculous—modern nuclear-deterrence strategy is based on the

same cataclysmic image—but it involves a moral paradox that

airmen have never sufficiently resolved.

Air Commodore L. E. O. Charlton, another of the prophets

of doom who wrote of how air attack would turn urban populations into panic-stricken mobs, published three books, all of

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EARLY THINKING
them much the same: War from the Air: Past, Present, Future

(London: Thomas Nelson, 1935); War over England (London:

Longmans, Green and Co., 1936); and The Menace of the

Clouds (London: William Hodge and Co., Ltd., 1937). This last

had an unusual twist: Charlton by that point had so frightened even himself with these tales of catastrophe that he now

called for worldwide air disarmament, envisioning an international air force under the aegis of the League of Nations to

keep the peace. In truth, the Geneva Disarmament Conference

had proposed just such an idea in 1933. But it went nowhere,

and by 1937—in the face of German rearmament—the idea

had become a fantasy.

Some of the better books that share the theme of the horror

and inevitability of strategic bombing include G. Blanchon’s

The New Warfare (New York: Thomas Crowell, 1918); “Neon’s”

(pseudonym for Marion W. Acworth), The Great Delusion: A

Study of Aircraft in Peace and War (London: E. Benn, 1927);

Commander Sir Charles Dennistoun Burney’s The World, the

Air and the Future (London: Alfred A. Knopf, 1929); Stuart

Chase’s (translated from the French by Fred Rothwell) Men

and Machines (New York: Macmillan, 1935); Frank Morison’s

(pseudonym for Albert H. Ross) War on Great Cities: A Study of

the Facts (London: Faber and Faber, Ltd., 1937); George Fielding Eliot’s Bombs Bursting in Air: The Influence of Air Power on

International Relations (New York: Reynal and Hitchcock,

1939); and Oliver Lyman Spaulding’s Ahriman: A Study in Air

Bombardment (Boston: World Peace Foundation, 1939).

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Chapter 7

Giulio Douhet

The first person to think seriously and deeply about the role of

airpower in war and then to write down those ideas, Giulio

Douhet, a mechanically inclined Italian artillery officer, began

writing about flight as early as 1910. Outspoken and arrogant,

Douhet often found himself in conflict with his superiors. As a

consequence, when war broke out in 1914, he was relegated to

the infantry and assigned to an unimportant post. He nevertheless continued to agitate and write, resulting in his court-martial

for insubordination in 1916. After a year in prison, he was

allowed to return to duty, but little had changed. He soon retired

and spent the last decade of his life writing books, articles, editorials, letters, and even novels dealing with airpower.

In 1921 Douhet published his most famous work, Command

of the Air (first translated into English by Dino Ferrari and

published by Coward-McCann in 1942; reprinted by the Office

of Air Force History in 1983). It consisted of the revised version

(1927) of his essay “Command of the Air”; “The Probable

Aspects of the War of the Future”; a collection of letters to the

editor termed “Recapitulation,” which had appeared in the

magazine Rivista Aeronautica; and “The War of 19__,” a fictional account of a future war between Germany and a

French-Belgian coalition. The Italian air force published

another translation, by Sheila Fischer, in 1958, which reads

quite differently from the Ferrari version. Fischer’s edition

contains “Command of the Air,” “Recapitulation,” a two-page

summary of “The War of 19__,” and three other essays not

translated elsewhere. Because Douhet was the first to write

about most of the important issues dealing with airpower and

because most of his successors, knowingly or not, merely

wrote commentaries on his ideas and predictions, I discuss

Douhet’s theories—and criticisms of them—in some detail.

Douhet believed that World War I had demonstrated the

inevitability and totality of wars and that modern technology

had produced an unbreakable stalemate on the ground. As a

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result, airpower—which, ironically, had helped produce the

trench stalemate by removing the element of surprise—would

now restore mobility to war. Because of their ability to operate

in the third dimension, airplanes could fly over the trenches,

mountains, and rivers that impeded armies. Moreover, they

could then bomb an enemy country’s “vital centers”—the key

industries and structures that allowed a state to function—

hitherto protected by armies and fortresses. Because aircraft

could travel in any direction, at any altitude, and at any time,

they would enjoy the advantage of tactical surprise. This, in

turn, meant they could not be intercepted or stopped. The only

defense against air attack was a good offense—countries

would not attack out of fear of enemy retaliation from the air.

Further, he maintained that this was such a radically new way

of thinking about warfare that only trained airmen who truly

understood this new weapon should be allowed to command

it. Thus, one should create an independent air force—consisting primarily of self-defending bombardment aircraft—separate from the stultifying control of the army and navy.

When discussing the vital centers of a country, Douhet

believed that the psychological effects of bombardment would

be more pronounced than the physical effects. Consequently,

he called for the use of incendiary and gas bombs (recall that

combatants had used poison gas extensively in World War I)

against a country’s major population centers, believing that

these attacks would cause such panic that the population

would demand an end to the war. Douhet speculated that

these attacks would occur before a lengthy and bloody ground

battle took place. He never called for the abolition of the army

and navy, but obviously he believed that in the unified defense

establishment he proposed, the air force would function as the

senior rather than the junior partner. As a result, he saw little

need for aircraft specifically designed to assist the ground or

sea battle.

Criticisms of Douhet’s theories are legion. He grossly overestimated both the physical and psychological effects of bombing. Populations did not break as quickly as he thought they

would under the weight of air attack. All wars are not total

wars, as the post–World War II era has repeatedly demon104

AIRMEN AND AIR THEORY
strated. A defense against air attack does exist. Ground war

did not irrevocably stalemate: a combination of mechanization,

new tactics, and airpower served to restore mobility. Of

course, this meant that tactical air was not “wasteful, harmful

and superfluous,” as Douhet had said; rather, it was essential.

Finally, legal and moral constraints do play a major role in

war—something that has become increasingly evident over the

past several decades.

Louis A. Sigaud, a true believer, wrote Douhet and Aerial

Warfare (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1941), the first indepth study of Douhet in English, which, predictably, had very

few criticisms of the Italian general. The book is more explanation than analysis. In Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton,

N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1959), one of the best,

though now dated, analyses of Douhet’s theories, Bernard

Brodie states that nuclear weapons vindicate Douhet, but this

is too much of a stretch. If the only thing that makes Douhet

relevant is nuclear weapons, then he is completely irrelevant. 

The only biography of Douhet in English, Frank J. Cappelluti’s “The Life and Thought of Giulio Douhet” (PhD diss., Rutgers University, 1967), not only gives much detail about

Douhet’s life but also provides an excellent description of his

many writings. The only drawback to this study is its lack of

critical analysis of Douhet’s ideas.

A stinging critique of Douhet, reflected in its title, is Thomas

Mahoney’s “Doctrine of Ruthlessness,” Popular Aviation, April

1940, 36–37, 82, 84. Maj Thomas R. Phillips published “Preview of Armageddon,” a less polemical but still negative

appraisal, in Saturday Evening Post, 12 March 1938, 12–13,

95–100. Two excellent discussions of Douhet’s ideas and influence include Edward Warner’s “Douhet, Mitchell, Seversky:

Theories of Air Warfare,” in Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler, ed. Edward Mead Earle

(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1943) and David

MacIsaac’s “Voices from the Central Blue: The Air Theorists,”

in Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear

Age, ed. Peter Paret (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University

Press, 1986). The three most recent—and best—analyses of

Douhet include Claudio Segré’s “Giulio Douhet: Strategist,

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GIULIO DOUHET
Theorist, Prophet?” Journal of Strategic Studies 15 (September

1992): 69–80; Phillip S. Meilinger’s “Giulio Douhet and the

Origins of Airpower Theory,” in The Paths of Heaven: The Evolution of Airpower Theory (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University

Press, 1997); and Alan Stephens’s “The True Believers,” in The

War in the Air, 1914–1994, American ed., ed. Alan Stephens

(Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, 2001). Stephens’s

essay is particularly valuable because it discusses the differences and similarities between the ideas of Douhet and those

of his contemporaries in Britain and the United States.

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Chapter 8

William “Billy” Mitchell

Billy Mitchell, the leading American air theorist prior to

World War II, began his Army career in the Signal Corps and

became more directly involved with aviation in 1915. The senior American combat air commander in World War I, he became

the Air Service’s chief of operations and training upon returning home in 1919. An extremely prolific writer, he published

three major books on aviation, as well as dozens of articles. He

wrote his first book, Our Air Force, the Keystone of National

Defense (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1921), shortly after

the war; compared to his later works, it is surprisingly mild.

Because Mitchell had not yet decided to launch a frontal

assault on the Army and Navy, he describes airpower as a revolutionary weapon but one that would take its place alongside

the other services. Foreseeing future war largely in terms of

what he had just witnessed in France, Mitchell proposed using

airpower as a major contributor to a land or sea campaign—not

as a substitute for them.

By 1925 he had changed his views dramatically. Disgusted

with what he viewed as conservatism and parochialism, he

began increasingly to attack the Navy and his own superiors

in the Army. In Winged Defense: The Development and Possibilities of Modern Air Power—Economic and Military (1925;

reprint, New York: Dover, 1988), he called not only for an independent air force based on strategic bombing but also for a

reduced emphasis on surface warfare. His attacks on the Navy

were especially harsh. 

Four years after leaving the military, his Skyways: A Book

on Modern Aeronautics (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co.,

1930), appeared. One finds little new here although by this

time, Mitchell’s ideas regarding the decisiveness of strategic

bombing, the diminishing importance of sea power, and the

need for an independent air force had become most pronounced. The articles that flowed in a steady stream from

107
Mitchell’s pen during his life are mere fugue-like variations on

a similar theme and, therefore, are of little import.

One must remember that, because Mitchell wrote to convince the American public, not his uniformed colleagues, some

critics have categorized most of his published writings—with

some justification—as mere propaganda and special pleading.

He did, however, write an important doctrine manual, not for

public consumption, that more truly reflects his ideas on how

he actually believed airpower should be employed in war.

Notes on the Multi-Motored Bombardment Group, Day and

Night, written and distributed in 1922, offers a clear and lucid

explanation of Mitchell’s operational concepts. He states here

that aircraft, although generally complementing surface operations, can at times dominate them. Especially critical of the

capability of naval vessels to defend themselves from air

attack, Mitchell at this stage viewed aircraft carriers favorably

because of their ability to defend the fleet. Later, he would

totally reject the viability of carriers, perhaps because he saw

them as a threat to his goal of unifying all air assets under a

separate service. Mitchell also notes the utility of strategic

bombing in disrupting and possibly destroying a large portion

of an enemy’s war-making capability. One should note, however, that he wrote this manual prior to his climactic confrontations with his superiors, which led to his court-martial—

an event that seriously radicalized his views.

Alfred F. Hurley’s Billy Mitchell, Crusader for Airpower, new

ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975), the best

treatment of Mitchell’s theories on airpower, is a well-balanced,

thoroughly researched, and detailed account that also puts the

airman’s ideas in context, describing his activities in war and

peace, personal life, and incessant arguing with his own superiors—especially the Navy. The best short treatment is Lt Col

Mark A. Clodfelter’s “Molding Airpower Convictions: Development and Legacy of William Mitchell’s Strategic Thought,” in

The Paths of Heaven: The Evolution of Airpower Theory (Maxwell

AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, 1997). See also Warner’s essay

in Makers of Modern Strategy (1943), and MacIsaac’s essay in

Makers of Modern Strategy (1986).

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Chapter 9

Air Corps Tactical School

The roots of American strategic bombing theory go back to

World War I. Edgar Gorrell, an officer on the Air Service staff

in France during the war, wrote a lengthy memo in November

1917 offering a theory of strategic bombing. An overlooked but

remarkably prescient document, it foretold to a great extent

where American air theory would go for the next 20 years. The

Gorrell memo is reproduced in The U.S. Air Service in World

War I, ed. Maurer Maurer, 4 vols. (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: AFHRA,

1978–79), 2: 141–51.

One of the earliest treatments of air doctrine’s evolution in the

Air Service is I. B. Holley Jr.’s Ideas and Weapons (New Haven,

Conn.: Yale University Press, 1953). The title of this work is well

chosen. Airmen are often so concerned with the development of

technology and their aircraft that they neglect to carefully think

through precisely what they intend to do with those aircraft once

they have obtained them. Using the American experience in

World War I as a case study, Holley reveals the omission of the

crucial link between ideas and weapons—largely because the Air

Service had no process to gather data, evaluate it, and then modify existing procedures. He argues that an appropriate doctrineformulation process has a mechanism for surfacing and examining new ideas on airpower employment. His advice on the need

to build such a process has too often been ignored, but the Air

Corps Tactical School, the intellectual center of the Air Corps

between the wars, definitely represented an attempt to eliminate

this problem.

As with any Army branch school, airmen aspiring to higher

rank and command had to attend ACTS. As a result, virtually

all of the top air commanders of World War II went through the

school, and many served there as instructors. Exhibiting a

surprising degree of independence from the War Department

hierarchy, the instructors at ACTS developed, refined, and

promulgated the doctrine of high-altitude, daylight, formation,

precision bombing of an enemy’s industrial infrastructure.

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This doctrine viewed an enemy’s society as an “industrial web”

with interconnected major structural components. Destroying

or neutralizing key nodes within the web would affect, perhaps

even paralyze, the entire system. Creating this dislocation

required an air force composed of heavy bombers and commanded by airmen—after all, only someone trained and educated in the intricacies of air warfare could plan and conduct

an air campaign. It was this doctrine that the Air Corps took

with it into World War II. 

Although some “operators” have downplayed the emphasis

placed on the fairly young “thinkers” at ACTS, arguing that

they have received a disproportionate share of attention simply because they wrote all the books, a close look reveals a real

and significant impact. When in 1941 General Arnold, commanding general of the AAF, called for an air war plan to

defeat Germany, he designated four former ACTS instructors

to write it. Not coincidentally, their product, AWPD-1, looked

very similar to the scenarios they had drawn up at Maxwell

Field, Alabama, a few years earlier. 

Robert T. Finney wrote the official history of ACTS, History

of the Air Corps Tactical School, 1920–1940, USAF Historical

Study 100 (1955; reprint, Washington, D.C.: Air Force History

and Museums Program, 1998), a workmanlike administrative

study useful for tracking the personnel who attended and

taught there, the titles of the courses, the hours allotted to

various topics, and so forth. But it gives little insight into the

ideas actually discussed and formulated there. One finds a

better study of the theory taught at Maxwell in Thomas H.

Greer’s The Development of Air Doctrine in the Army Air Arm,

1917–1941, Air Force Historical Study (1955; reprint, Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1985). Although dated

and lacking depth, it provides a useful starting point nevertheless. The best overall treatment to date is Lt Col Peter R.

Faber’s “Interwar US Army Aviation and the Air Corps Tactical

School: Incubators of American Airpower,” in The Paths of

Heaven: The Evolution of Airpower Theory (Maxwell AFB, Ala.:

Air University Press, 1997), a nicely written, insightful, and

important treatment that clearly traces the development of

strategic doctrine and places it into the contemporary context.

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William Sherman, an instructor at the school in the early

1920s, wrote Air Warfare (New York: Ronald Press Co., 1926),

one of the early treatments of ACTS theory. Largely based on

his lectures, it provides insight into Air Service thinking at the

time. Sherman maintained that, although potent armies

would decide warfare, their success would increasingly

depend upon the amount of air support they received and predicted that strategic bombing would become more important

in the years ahead. Significantly, he rejected the idea of bombing population centers, calling instead for the targeting of an

enemy’s industrial infrastructure. Indeed, one can see in Sherman’s writings an embryonic concept of the industrial-web

theory fleshed out in greater detail the following decade.

Maj Gen Donald Wilson, an instructor at ACTS from 1931 to

1935, expanded Sherman’s ideas. In a rather self-serving

attempt to garner credit for devising the theory of industrial-web

bombing, he reprinted one of his lectures “Origins of a Theory of

Air Strategy,” Aerospace Historian 18 (Spring 1971): 19–25, an

excellent account of ACTS bombing theory and therefore an

unusual primary source. One should keep in mind, however,

that several other important officers at Maxwell at this time—

specifically, Hal George, “Santy” Fairchild, Robert Webster, Larry

Kuter, and “Possum” Hansell—proved instrumental in codifying

this doctrine. Hansell, one of the “bomber-mafia” instructors at

Maxwell and one of the authors of AWPD-1, wrote The Air Plan

That Defeated Hitler (Atlanta: Higgins-McArthur/Longino and

Porter, 1972; edited and republished by the Office of Air Force

History as Strategic Air War against Germany and Japan, 1986),

a memoir that focuses mostly on World War II and includes an

interesting, informative look at ACTS during the author’s tenure

there. One finds it particularly effective in describing the personalities of his colleagues and their many arguments over the

issues of airpower theory and employment.

In The Foundations of US Air Doctrine: The Problem of Friction

in War (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, 1984), Barry D.

Watts criticizes the way Air Force doctrine has developed over

the decades, homing in on ACTS as the perpetrator of the original sin. Airmen have always tended to be technologically oriented in their thinking, for the obvious reason that technology

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is essential to their profession. The downside of this trait is the

inclination to treat all obstacles as if they were engineering

problems, capable of scientific analysis, measurement, and

solution. This “mechanistic” view of air warfare is a big mistake,

says Watts, because war is essentially a human and psychological event, and human actions are not governed by scientific

laws. Thus, ACTS doctrine predicted that a measurable and predetermined amount of ordnance would produce a specific

degree of destruction, which in turn would inexorably lead to a

failure of the enemy’s will. World War II demonstrated that this

cause-and-effect linkage was not nearly so neat or obvious as

expected. Watts therefore calls for a more humanistic and cultural-based method of formulating air doctrine to replace the

earlier and flawed mechanistic approach.

Stephen L. McFarland’s America’s Pursuit of Precision Bombing, 1910–1945 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution

Press, 1995), illuminates a very important aspect of the ACTS

story. One of the key tenets of Air Corps doctrine was “precision,” yet the actual bombing campaigns conducted during the

war proved far less than precise. A common assertion (see

Watts, above) held that ACTS thinkers merely wished away

this issue in their quest to develop a theory that would separate them from ground officers. McFarland shows that this

was not the case. The men at Maxwell well understood the

importance of precision to the effectiveness of their operations,

and they spent much time compiling data on various types of

bombs, bombsights, aircraft platforms, desired altitudes, and

types of targets. In a precomputer era, they nevertheless collected an enormous amount of data that lent a degree of specificity to their theories. Even if experiences in war turned out

differently, ACTS personnel at least made a serious attempt to

predict what their doctrine could and could not accomplish.

Unfortunately, although the works cited above give important details and insights into parts of the ACTS story, they all

lack comprehensiveness and depth. We still need a complete

intellectual history of this crucial institution.

The US Army had responsibility for approving Air Corps

doctrine manuals, two of the most important of which

included Field Manual (FM) 1-5, Employment of Aviation of the

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Army, first published in April 1940 and revised in January

1943, and its successor, FM 100-20, Command and Employment of Air Power, published in July 1943. FM 1-5 provided a

straightforward description of airpower’s various strategic and

tactical missions, including bombardment, interdiction, close

air support, air superiority, reconnaissance, and transport. All

of these missions received fairly balanced coverage, but the

manual clearly emphasized airpower in support of ground

operations. The far more radical FM 100-20, written after the

North African campaign and dubbed the “Magna Carta of

American airpower,” set the tone in the first sentence: “LAND

POWER AND AIR POWER ARE CO-EQUAL AND INTERDEPENDENT FORCES; NEITHER IS AN AUXILIARY OF THE

OTHER” (capital letters in original). Both soldiers and airmen

saw in the document the beginnings of an independent Air

Force, which, in fact, became reality in 1947. One should note

that the author of this manual was Larry Kuter, another of the

bomber-mafia instructors at ACTS the decade before.

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Chapter 10

Other US Theorists

“Hap” Arnold, the five-star commander of AAF during World

War II, was a fairly prolific writer. Besides authoring six Bill

Bruce adventure stories for boys, he also authored or coauthored four other books on airpower, plus his memoirs. His

Bill Bruce books, all published by A. L. Burt in 1928, offer

some interesting insights into life in the peacetime Air Corps.

The hero, named after Arnold’s young son, was an Air Corps

pilot who has a number of adventures, such as flying combat

during the war, patrolling forests looking for fires, and participating in the Transcontinental Reliability Test. Somewhat

autobiographical, these books also speak to an era of innocence and civility that seems foreign to us today. Arnold also

wrote Airmen and Aircraft: An Introduction to Aeronautics (New

York: Ronald Press, 1926) and This Flying Game (New York:

Funk and Wagnalls, 1936), the latter coauthored with Ira

Eaker. Written for a young or unsophisticated audience, these

books relate the history of flight, stories of famous airmen,

training of pilots in the Army, and commercial use of airplanes—pretty routine stuff. They contain very little discussion of airpower theory as such, but that changed when

Arnold and Eaker coauthored two other books: Winged Warfare (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1941) and Army Flyer

(New York: Harper and Brothers, 1942). Written during World

War II, they serve as primers for the layman by laying out

clearly and effectively the ACTS instructors’ more erudite ideas

about air theory. One finds in them all of the key elements of

American strategic air theory: the primacy of air superiority,

airpower’s inherently offensive nature, the need for centralized

control of air assets by airmen, the need for a close and symbiotic relationship with the civilian aeronautical industry, the

utility of transport aircraft, and, most importantly, a discussion of air targeting. Arnold and Eaker conclude that the

destruction of industrial infrastructure will have profound

effects on any enemy’s capability and will to fight.

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David E. Johnson’s Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers: Innovation in the U.S. Army, 1917–1945 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University

Press, 1998) attempts to explain the US Army’s unpreparedness

for World War II by focusing on what he sees as deficiencies in

American doctrine for tanks and aircraft, as well as in American

equipment. He identifies the culprits as intraservice parochialism and special interests. Although his treatment of the Air

Corps’s prewar strategic-bombardment doctrine is accurate if

not original, he misses the mark on tactical airpower. Undoubtedly, tactical aviation had troubles in its baptism of fire in North

Africa, but the campaign was still a success; moreover, airmen

learned very quickly. By D day, American tactical air assets had

become far superior to Germany’s, in both quantity and quality.

In short, Johnson provides an explanation for a nonexistent

problem.

Although Joseph J. Corn’s The Winged Gospel: America’s

Romance with Aviation (New York: Oxford University Press,

1983) is not about military aviation, much less airpower theory, I include his masterful work here because of its tangential importance to our subject. Corn has written the best

account of how aviation captured the popular imagination

during the first half of the twentieth century. Americans have

always tended to glamorize technology and see it as a panacea

for any problem, the airplane being the supreme technological

example. Furthermore, one cannot ignore the almost mystical

feeling that, by taking off into the pristine sky, people leave

behind the world’s sordidness, imperfections, and banality.

Flight brings transformation and renewal. This is an important concept to understand about that more innocent age

because military airmen believed that the airplane would bring

about the same sort of transformation in war. Although it

sounds paradoxical, people believed that the airplane, because

of its ability to dominate whole countries and their populations, had made war less likely. Airpower thus exerted a civilizing and peaceful influence on the world. Later disappointments and intrusions of reality should not obscure this earlier

and more benevolent vision.

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Chapter 11

The Royal Air Force

The British government reacted to German air attacks that

had caused near-panic among the British population by forming the Royal Air Force on 1 April 1918. Although the German

zeppelins and Gotha bombers caused only minor material

damage and casualties, the psychological terror they evoked

was enormous. Memories of the public’s reaction to the bombing stuck in the minds of British political and military leaders

throughout the interwar period and profoundly affected strategy and policy. It became an article of faith in the RAF—and,

to some extent, in the British government—that strategic

bombing sought to break the will of the enemy. The brief experience of the Great War seemed to indicate the attainability of

such a goal. Not until the far more intensive bombing campaigns of World War II did people discover that initial panic

gives way very quickly to mere fear and then to resignation.

Chosen to lead the new RAF, Hugh Trenchard, a former

infantry officer who had come to aviation late in life, remained

at the helm of the service from its inception until 1929, minus

a brief stint as commander of the British bombing force in

France at the end of the war. Termed “the father of the RAF,”

Trenchard has attained near-mythic proportions in the literature and traditions of the RAF for not-so-obvious reasons. He

wrote little, spoke poorly, and had neither the look nor the personality of a heroic leader. Yet, within the RAF his power

remained unquestioned. Although inarticulate, he had an

ability to make his points clearly and forcefully to his subordinates. An early skeptic of bombing, he soon became a

staunch advocate. Like Douhet, Mitchell, and ACTS, Trenchard thought that one could use strategic airpower most

effectively against an enemy country’s vital centers. Unlike

Douhet, he rejected strikes on the general population yet

called for attacks on enemy morale. He resolved this apparent

paradox with an approach that differed subtly though significantly from that of the Americans. Whereas they advocated

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bombing the enemy’s industry to destroy his capability to

fight, Trenchard advocated bombing that industry to destroy

the enemy’s will to fight. He believed that destroying the

enemy’s industry, communications, transportation network,

and economy would so disrupt the daily life of the working

population, causing unemployment and hardship, that the

people would demand an end to the war. This theory was certainly in keeping with British experience in the Great War.

Given the rudimentary technology of the time, however, it soon

became apparent in war that bombing accuracy made all airpower strategies, so different in theory, much the same in

actual practice.

Trenchard left behind few published writings from which

one can trace his thoughts. In “Aspects of Service Aviation,”

The Army Quarterly 2 (April 1921): 10–21, he lays out some of

the basic ideas noted above. In addition, perhaps out of a

bureaucratic imperative, he called for an air force in being that

was large and modern enough to fight at the immediate outset

of hostilities. The speed of aircraft and their ability to strike

virtually anywhere at the inception of war had made leisurely

mobilization a thing of the past. Like most other airmen, he

emphasized the need for air superiority. Though a believer in

the decisiveness of airpower, he cautioned against the notion

that it could end war in a matter of days or weeks. Because air

attack produced cumulative effects, operations had to remain

persistent and continuous.

Other than memos and speeches delivered here and there,

undoubtedly written by his staff officers, Trenchard did not

elaborate on his ideas again until World War II. In “The Effect

of the Rise of Air Power on War” (October 1943), in Air Power:

Three Papers (London: Directorate of Staff Studies, Air Ministry, 1946), he recaps the events of war up to that time, noting that airpower played key roles in every campaign. Especially significant was the realization that the RAF’s victory in

the Battle of Britain had saved the country. Could airpower

defeat Germany? Trenchard simply stated, “I do not know. I

have never claimed that we can. Equally, I have never suggested that we cannot.” He went on to argue that the Germans’

industry was slowly but surely being destroyed, “which will in

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time render them powerless to supply their armies and Air

Force in the field to carry on the war.” Trenchard called for a

greater effort to accomplish such destruction more quickly. In

the book’s two other essays, written after Germany’s defeat,

Trenchard merely recapitulates the key role played by the RAF

in victory.

The sole biography of Trenchard, Andrew Boyle’s Trenchard

(London: Collins, 1962), though too glowing an assessment,

offers rich detail and much discussion of Trenchard’s

thoughts on airpower. For a more focused appraisal, see my

article “Trenchard and ‘Morale Bombing’: The Evolution of

Royal Air Force Doctrine before World War II,” Journal of Military History 60 (April 1996): 243–70.

Robin Higham’s The Military Intellectuals in Britain,

1918–1939 (1966; reprint, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press,

1981), a useful overall discussion of British air theory in the

interwar period, contains two chapters on the RAF. The first

focuses on doctrine in general, while the second deals more

specifically with individuals such as P. R. C. Groves, John

Slessor, E. J. Kingston-McCloughry, and James Spaight.

Higham offers useful insights into the politics and inner workings of the RAF bureaucracy, but his antipathy towards Trenchard is ill disguised. Certainly we need a corrective to the

hagiography of Boyle, but Higham too readily accepts the

accounts of Trenchard’s opponents while dismissing those of

his advocates.

In his highly critical account of the RAF between the wars,

The Development of RAF Strategic Bombing Doctrine,

1919–1939 (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1995), Scot Robertson

looks at the issue of RAF doctrine formulation and overall preparedness through the eyes of the Air Staff. As a result of this

focus, his study never mentions the RAF’s doctrine manuals

or the educational apparatus responsible for disseminating

that doctrine. Nevertheless, Robertson concludes that air leaders talked themselves into an unproven doctrinal concept

based on faith and mirror imaging rather than on empirical

evidence. Worse, because they had no established process for

testing their doctrine, they could not identify and correct their

weaknesses before the harsh realities of war swept over them.

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This interpretation contains much truth. It is useful to

remember, however, that, on average, the RAF received less

than 15 percent of the British defense budget between the

wars. Given that the other services, who received the lion’s

share of funds, found themselves similarly unprepared for

war, it is small wonder that the paltry sums allotted to the RAF

proved insufficient to ensure a first-rate force.

Several works deal with the history of the RAF and include

a discussion of air theory and doctrine: Malcolm Smith’s

British Air Strategy between the Wars (Oxford: Clarendon

Press, 1984); H. Montgomery Hyde’s British Air Policy between

the Wars, 1918–1939 (London: Heinemann, 1976); Uri Bialer’s

The Shadow of the Bomber: The Fear of Air Attack and British

Politics, 1932–1939 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1980);

Neville Jones’s The Beginnings of Strategic Air Power: A History

of the British Bomber Force, 1923–1939 (London: Frank Cass,

1987); John James’s The Paladins: A Social History of the RAF

up to the Outbreak of World War II (London: Macdonald, 1990),

a quirky but interesting treatment; Barry D. Powers’s Strategy

without Slide-Rule: British Air Strategy, 1914–1939 (New York:

Holmes and Meier Publishing, 1976); and Sir Charles Webster

and Noble Frankland’s The Strategic Air Offensive against Germany, 1939–1945 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office,

1961), the first volume of the official history.

In 1922 Trenchard founded Britain’s counterpart to ACTS,

the RAF Staff College at Andover, calling it “the cradle of our

brain.” The most promising air officers and some of their

brethren from the other services studied war and the role of

airpower in this year-long school. Regrettably, we do not yet

have an adequate history of the Staff College, largely because

of clumsy record keeping at the time. A few odd pieces of lectures, exercises, and administrative notes survive in various

archives, giving us only a general impression of what was

taught there. The only treatment thus far is Allan D. English’s

article, based on his master’s thesis, “The RAF Staff College

and the Evolution of British Strategic Bombing Policy,

1922–1929,” Journal of Strategic Studies 16 (September 1993):

408–31. Certainly, the subject deserves much more attention,

but the limitations on sources may prove insurmountable.

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Besides the Staff College, RAF officers also learned the

details of their profession from official doctrine manuals. The

first of these, CD-22, appeared in 1922, simply titled Operations. Echoing the beliefs of Trenchard, CD-22 stated that air

forces must cooperate effectively with surface forces because

often the object of a campaign was the destruction of the

enemy’s forces. In addition, the manual discussed in detail the

conduct of a strategic-bombing campaign against an enemy’s

vital centers, with the object of both disrupting the enemy’s

ability to conduct war and undermining the will of its populace to continue. Replacing CD-22 in 1928, the RAF War Manual (AP 1300), revised several times during the next decade,

was a more sophisticated effort than its predecessor, discussing airpower in a broad sense and eliminating the bulk of

CD-22’s organizational and administrative material. Most

importantly, AP 1300 extensively discussed the rationale

behind strategic bombing and the selection of targets. It is

important to note that neither this manual nor any other official RAF publication ever referred to the bombing of civilian

population centers. All targets suggested throughout the manual were clearly of a military nature. Like its counterpart in

America, RAF doctrine differed significantly from the citybusting strategy advocated by Douhet. Interestingly, an

anonymous author (“Squadron Leader”), undoubtedly an RAF

staff officer, published Basic Principles of Air Warfare (the

Influence of Air Power on Sea and Land Strategy) (Aldershot,

UK: Gale and Polden, Ltd., 1927), a book that closely mirrored

the official doctrine manuals, including their rejection of population bombing. We thus have a rather curious situation in

which the military deliberately and vocally rejected the ideas

so current and popular among the populace at the time.

Because Brig Gen P. R. C. Groves, the RAF’s director of flying operations in 1918–19, was not in Trenchard’s camp, his

star rapidly sank in the postwar period. His well-written and

thoughtful book Our Future in the Air: A Survey of the Vital

Question of British Air Power (London: Hutchinson and Co.,

1922) advocated the growing importance of strategic bombing,

noting that war had now become a “war of areas” rather than

of lines. He hailed airpower’s ubiquity and offensive nature,

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putting great faith in its psychological effects. Like many airmen, he decried the lack of vision among Britain’s political and

military leaders, mumbling that they consistently tried to

impose two-dimensional thinking on what had now become a

three-dimensional world, and reserving especially strong criticism for his rival Hugh Trenchard. He repeated the message of

this book in Behind the Smoke Screen (London: Faber and

Faber, 1934).

E. J. Kingston-McCloughry, a thoughtful and serious officer

who later rose to flag rank in World War II, wrote Winged Warfare: Air Problems of Peace and War (London: Jonathan Cape,

1937), a balanced and measured account of airpower’s potential. The book mirrors the doctrine of the RAF by pronouncing

the indiscriminate bombing of population centers both morally

and militarily wrong. Nevertheless, Kingston-McCloughry did

believe that bombing the enemy’s industry established the

quickest route to victory.

James M. Spaight earned a reputation as an important and

influential writer, not only because of his sharp intellect and

insight regarding air matters but also because of his expertise

in international law. Consequently, the British government

often called upon him to give an opinion on issues such as the

legality of bombing certain targets. In his first book on the

subject, Aircraft in War (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd.,

1914), he dismisses those who tried to condemn the use of aircraft in war as somehow illegal: “To question the legitimacy of

the use of aircraft in war is simply to plough the sand.”

Spaight argues that because of the absence of international

laws regulating aerial warfare, one had to fall back on those

laws that governed war on land and sea. His arguments,

which remained the standard interpretation for six decades

thereafter, included the premise that just as artillery could

indiscriminately shell a defended city to hasten its surrender,

so too could airplanes bomb that city for the same purpose.

Over the next three and a half decades, Spaight wrote a number of other books on the subject of airpower in war, most

dealing with its legal ramifications. His most important were

Air Power and the Cities (London: Longmans, Green, 1930), Air

Power in the Next War: A Sequel to Air Power and the Cities,

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1930 (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1938), and Air Power Can Disarm

(London: Air League of the British Empire in association with

I. Pitman, 1948).

The most reflective, disciplined, and impressive thinker in the

RAF, Wing Commander John C. “Jack” Slessor had served as a

combat pilot in World War I, on Trenchard’s personal staff after

the war, and in various staff and command positions prior to

World War II. As the RAF’s director of plans just before the outbreak of war, he issued documents fraught with trenchant logic

and stinging sarcasm. During the war, he served as head of

Coastal Command, and in 1950 he became chief of the air staff,

with the rank of Marshal of the Royal Air Force.

For our purposes, Slessor’s most significant assignment

occurred between 1931 and 1934, when he served as an

instructor at the British Army Staff College. Although one of

the staunchest of airpower advocates, his position as a teacher

of soldiers made too zealous an approach counterproductive.

In addition, close contact with the outstanding minds at Camberley no doubt modified his views on airpower. As a consequence, his lectures focused on a future war that postulated

an expeditionary force on the Continent, as in World War I,

which required close cooperation between the RAF and army.

In such a scenario, Slessor recognized that strategic bombing

was only tangentially related to the goals of the expeditionary

force. Instead, one needed to isolate the battlefield with airpower—to disrupt and destroy the enemy’s lines of supply.

This mission, now called interdiction, would entail the targeting of communications and transportation nodes, fuel depots,

supply and ammunition centers, and enemy field headquarters. Even so, he cautioned that the first priority, as always,

remained the gaining of air superiority. Without it, ground

operations would be nearly impossible. Significantly, Slessor

also discussed command relationships, insisting on the equality of air and ground commanders. They should plan their

operations together and then work together to implement

those plans, but neither should be subordinate to the other.

Upon leaving Camberley for an assignment in India, Slessor

collected his Staff College lectures and published them as the

classic Air Power and Armies (London: Oxford University

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Press, 1936), perhaps the most thoughtful, measured, and

articulate treatise on airpower written to that time. Its emphasis on targeting the enemy’s lines of supply was reflected in

the Allies’ “transportation plan,” which proved so instrumental in disrupting German ground operations before and after D

day. Similarly, his suggested command structure of coequal

air and ground headquarters working side by side became

accepted practice throughout the war. Higham’s The Military

Intellectuals (see above) discusses Slessor’s ideas and impact;

for a more thorough treatment, see my article “John C. Slessor

and the Genesis of Air Interdiction,” Royal United Services

Institute Journal 140 (August 1995): 43–48.

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Chapter 12

The European Theorists

For an overview of other Europeans who thought and wrote

about airpower employment, see James S. Corum’s “Airpower

Thought in Continental Europe between the Wars,” in The

Paths of Heaven: The Evolution of Airpower Theory (Maxwell

AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, 1997). Corum argues that the

Italians Amedeo Mecozzi and Italo Balbo, though usually overshadowed by their more famous countryman Giulio Douhet,

had more actual influence on the Italian air force than did

Douhet. He also covers events in Germany, France, and the

Soviet Union prior to World War II, noting that air leaders in

all three countries gave much thought to strategic bombing

but, in practice, emphasized tactical aviation.

For a more in-depth look at the roots of Luftwaffe doctrine,

see John H. Morrow’s Building German Airpower, 1909–1914

(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1976) and Corum’s

The Luftwaffe: Creating the Operational Air War, 1918–1940

(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997). Corum and

Richard R. Muller’s unique and invaluable source The Luftwaffe’s Way of War: German Air Force Doctrine, 1911–1945

(Baltimore: Nautical and Aviation Publishers, 1998), a collection of translated Luftwaffe doctrine manuals and documents,

provides an unusually clear and comprehensive look at the

official doctrine. The authors’ commentary and analysis are

also very useful. 

The continental background of Gen Nikolai N. Golovine, a

Russian expatriate who lived and wrote in France between the

wars, gave an unusual twist to his ideas, as seen in his Air

Strategy (London: Gale and Polden, 1936). Like many airmen,

Golovine was a technological determinist who believed that

airpower represented the epitome of advanced technology. He

especially advocated the importance of speed, with which one

could not only obtain surprise but also employ as a possible

antidote to air defenses. Golovine, who had an unusual

amount of respect for both ground-based and airborne air

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defenses, perceived the growing accuracy and effectiveness of

aircraft-detection systems. He even predicted the development

of infrared sensors to detect aircraft at night—as well as antiaircraft artillery. Also, unlike Douhet or Trenchard, he anticipated an air battle, which would require escort fighters to

accompany the bombers.

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Chapter 13

Naval Aviation

The peculiar demands of naval aviation and its relationship

to the fleet generated some unique ideas on airpower employment. The best short treatment of this subject is David R.

Mets’s “The Influence of Aviation on the Evolution of American

Naval Thought,” in The Paths of Heaven: The Evolution of Airpower Theory (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, 1997).

For more detailed treatments, see Clark G. Reynolds’s The

Fast Carriers: The Forging of an Air Navy (1968; reprint, Huntington, N.Y.: R. E. Krieger, 1978) and George W. Baer’s One

Hundred Years of Sea Power: The U.S. Navy, 1890–1990 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994), excellent studies

that clearly discuss the doctrinal, organizational, technical,

and administrative challenges facing the US Navy during the

interwar years. Due to the foresight of some exceptional individuals, the Navy was able to build an aircraft-carrier fleet second to none. Although the Navy had not codified the doctrine

necessary to employ these carriers effectively as powerful,

independent strike forces at the time of Pearl Harbor, it had

expertly and carefully laid the groundwork. In less than a year,

the service had devised and implemented the doctrine needed

to employ the “fast-carrier task forces.”

The British experience with naval aviation differed from that

of the US Navy. From the time of the RAF’s establishment in

1918, the service included all sea-based air assets previously

assigned to the Royal Navy. The doctrine of the Fleet Air Arm

(FAA) thus fell under the purview of the RAF, an unhappy

arrangement that produced very poor results. In 1937 the FAA

returned to the Royal Navy. One finds the best account of this

story and the doctrine of the FAA in Geoffrey Till’s Air Power

and the Royal Navy, 1914–1945: A Historical Survey (London:

Macdonald and Jane’s, 1979).

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Chapter 14

World War II and the Postwar Era

A Russian fighter pilot in World War I, Alexander P. de Seversky had emigrated to the United States near the end of the

war. He formed his own aircraft company and developed some

original and important designs, including the P-35 aircraft,

the ancestor of the P-47 “Thunderbolt.” As World War II

approached, de Seversky increasingly turned his attention to

writing about the use of airpower, and soon after Pearl Harbor

he published Victory through Air Power (New York: Simon and

Schuster, 1942), an enormously important book that was a

huge best seller and a Book of the Month Club selection. Over

five million people read it, and Walt Disney even made it into

an animated motion picture.

Despite his experiences designing fighter aircraft, de Seversky

had become a dedicated enthusiast of strategic bombing. Written

after the battles of Norway and Crete, when airpower had dominated events on the surface, but before the costly struggle for air

superiority over Germany, Victory through Air Power is a stark

book. In it, de Seversky denigrates all suggestions of defeating

Germany and Japan by relying on land and sea power—these

were outmoded forms of war. Instead, long-range airpower,

preferably based on American territory, would pummel the Axis

powers into submission at far less cost than a land campaign

and far more quickly than a sea campaign. Although filled with

hyperbole and questionable logic, de Seversky’s book enjoyed

tremendous popularity and helped shape American public opinion on the employment of airpower. 

Good contemporary critiques of de Seversky include David

Brown’s “Victory through Hot Air Power,” Pic, 5 January 1943,

7–9; Hoffman Nickerson’s “Seversky: ‘Air Power!’ Nickerson:

‘Not Enough!’ ” Field Artillery Journal 32 (July 1942): 543–49;

and Cy Caldwell’s Air Power and Total War (New York: CowardMcCann, 1943). The best recent analysis of de Seversky’s

works is my essay “Alexander P. de Seversky and American

Airpower,” in The Paths of Heaven: The Evolution of Airpower

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Theory (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, 1997). In

addition, Russell E. Lee gives us important background information and insights in “Victory through Air Power: American

Army Air Forces, Navy, and Public Reaction to the Book and

Film during World War II” (master’s thesis, George Mason University, 1992).

World War II brought a spate of books on the use of the new

weapon. One of the first, Maj Al Williams’s Airpower (New York:

Coward-McCann, 1940), recounts the conflicts in Ethiopia,

Spain, and the opening events of World War II. An “America

First” supporter and opponent of President Roosevelt, Williams

argues that America was woefully unprepared for war, particularly in the air—an especially serious deficiency because air

had become the decisive theater of war—and called for a crash

program to build up American air strength. Other books with

a “victory through airpower” message appeared during the

war. Like de Seversky’s, they all overestimated the physical

and psychological effects of bombing. Works in this category

include William B. Ziff’s The Coming Battle of Germany (New

York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1942); “Auspex’s” Victory from

the Air (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1941); Norman Macmillan’s Air

Strategy (London: Hutchinson and Co., Ltd., 1941); M. J.

Bernard Davy’s Air Power and Civilization (London: G. Allen

and Unwin, Ltd., 1941), which deplores air bombardment yet

stands in awe of its potential; Francis Vivian Drake’s Vertical

Warfare (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran and Co., Inc.,

1943); Flight Lt V. E. R. Blunt’s The Use of Air Power (Harrisburg, Pa.: Military Service Publishing Co., 1943); and Allan

Michie’s The Air Offensive against Germany (New York: Henry

Holt and Co., 1943) and Keep the Peace through Air Power

(New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1944).

In the aftermath of the war, a number of writers pointed to

the decisive results achieved by strategic bombing over Germany and Japan. The advent of nuclear weapons strongly—for

a time incontestably—reinforced this belief. Few military or

political leaders stated openly that war had remained

unchanged and that “the bomb” was just another weapon.

Numerous books published in the decade after World War II

espoused the thesis that war had forever changed and that

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airpower—specifically, the use of aircraft to deliver nuclear

weapons—now dominated war. It seemed a safe prediction.

Even the Korean War did little to shake this faith. All the services viewed Korea as an aberration. One should note that President (and former general) Dwight Eisenhower and Adm

Arthur Radford, chairman of the JCS, promulgated the American policy of “massive retaliation” and did so after the Korean

War. They hoped that airpower in the hands of the West would

keep the peace through its deterrent value—a sentiment that

Douhet would have understood. The concept of airpower “so

horrible it was humanizing” had returned.

A book that seems to deal only tangentially with our subject,

Steven T. Ross’s American War Plans, 1945–1950 (1988;

reprint, London: Frank Cass, 1996), deserves special mention

as a vital source because it is the most complete study to date

of American war plans devised in the half decade following

World War II. These war plans relied primarily on nuclear

weapons delivered by air—hence, their relation to the study at

hand. Soon after the war, military planners began to consider

a future war against their erstwhile ally, the Soviet Union. The

problems confronting these planners seemed enormous:

American military forces had virtually disintegrated in the

aftermath of VJ day; the Soviets maintained a huge military

structure; Soviet troops dominated, if not occupied, Eastern

Europe; Western Europe—our logical ally—lay prostrate; and

teetering China would eventually fall to communism. Given

this nightmarish scenario, planners inevitably turned towards

a reliance on nuclear weapons; they would be—they would

have to be—the equalizer in a confrontation with Soviet and

Chinese mass. Ross painstakingly goes through the series of

plans and their assumptions, arriving at sobering conclusions.

Not only were the plans themselves ill conceived and hastily

cobbled together but also they relied on a weapon—SAC’s

nuclear bombers—that was in fact a wooden sword. Until at

least the middle of the Korean War, we had only a very small

number of nuclear weapons and an equally small number of

aircraft modified to carry them. To a distressing extent, our

nuclear deterrent was merely a bluff.

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The most thoughtful treatment of airpower’s role in the early

nuclear era is Stephan Possony’s Strategic Air Power, the Pattern of Dynamic Security (Washington, D.C.: Infantry Journal

Press, 1949). Although reluctant to put all his eggs in the

nuclear basket, Possony does maintain that in a major war

against the primary enemy—the Soviet Union—nuclear

weapons would play the dominant role. The strength of this

book lies in its clear and detailed explanation of various strategic-targeting theories. One hears that targeting is the key to

airpower because, although all of an enemy country may be

open to air attack, not all targets can or should be struck.

Knowing which targets are more crucial than others is the

essence of air strategy. Yet, air theorists have disagreed

strongly over this fundamental issue. Possony discusses the

pros and cons of various air-targeting schemes—population/morale, industry, fielded forces, and transportation—in a

dispassionate and enlightening fashion. In truth, Strategic Air

Power is an overlooked gem, probably the best work on airpower theory in the post–World War II era.

Marshal of the RAF Sir John Slessor, who had come a long

way since Airpower and Armies, also wrote Strategy for the

West (New York: Morrow, 1954), another sophisticated and

impressive work that advanced the premise of “peace through

nuclear airpower.” It is a well-written and cogent argument for

a strong nuclear air force to ensure deterrence. He followed

this up with The Great Deterrent: A Collection of Lectures, Articles,

and Broadcasts on the Development of Strategic Policy in the

Nuclear Age (New York: Praeger, 1957), another book on the

same theme.

Lesser works that advance a similar premise include Air

Vice Marshal E. J. Kingston-McCloughry’s War in Three Dimensions: The Impact of Air-Power upon the Classical Principles of

War (London: Jonathan Cape, 1949); Alexander de Seversky’s

Air Power: Key to Survival (New York: Simon and Schuster,

1950); Asher Lee’s Air Power (New York: Praeger, 1955); Air

Marshal Sir Robert Saundby’s Air Bombardment: The Story of

Its Development (New York: Harper, 1961); and Dale O. Smith’s

U.S. Military Doctrine: A Study and Appraisal (New York: Duell,

Sloan and Pearce, 1955). In his book, Smith, a serving major

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general in the Air Force at the time, discusses classic military

theory and then explains how airpower had transformed and

revitalized theories of war. George H. Quester takes an interesting approach in Deterrence before Hiroshima: The Airpower

Background of Modern Strategy (New York: John Wiley, 1966);

he recognizes that nuclear weapons were the underpinnings of

deterrence policy but argues that conventional airpower

played—or attempted to play—a similar role prior to World War

II. He goes on to speculate about how conventional deterrence

could continue to work in the nuclear age.

As the United States became increasingly embroiled in Vietnam, some people decried the turn away from massive retaliation towards “flexible response.” According to them, this

action effectively threw aside the West’s greatest strength, and

we found ourselves playing the enemy’s game—one we could

not win. One finds this alarmist view, reminiscent of the call

for victory through airpower in World War II, in de Seversky’s

America: Too Young to Die! (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961),

even more bombastic than his earlier works; Gen Nathan F.

Twining’s (former chairman of the JCS), Neither Liberty Nor

Safety: A Hard Look at U.S. Military Policy and Strategy (New

York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966); and Gen Curtis E.

LeMay’s (with Dale O. Smith) America Is in Danger (New York:

Funk and Wagnalls, 1968).

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Chapter 15

Vietnam and NATO

Despite the cries of the alarmists, US air doctrine remained

basically unchanged, with the emphasis on strategic bombing.

As a consequence, American airmen were unprepared for the

type of unconventional war they had to fight in Vietnam. They

had the wrong doctrine, the wrong aircraft, the wrong ordnance, the wrong training regimen, and the wrong C2 system.

One would have thought, therefore, that the military would

have scrambled to understand this new kind of war. Such was

not the case, as is demonstrated by Dennis Drew in “Air Theory, Air Force, and Low Intensity Conflict: A Short Journey to

Confusion,” in The Paths of Heaven: The Evolution of Airpower

Theory (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, 1997). Drew

traces the story of the Air Force’s response to “low intensity

conflict” in general and Vietnam in particular, concluding that

the service gave amazingly little thought to the subject. Airmen quietly and unceremoniously seemed willing to jettison

their traditional theories of air warfare, but they had little or

nothing to offer in its place. Carl H. Builder confirms and elaborates upon this problem in The Icarus Syndrome: The Role of

Air Power Theory in the Evolution and Fate of the U.S. Air Force

(New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1994). 

Donald J. Mrozek bluntly describes the failures of airpower

doctrine in Vietnam in Air Power and the Ground War in Vietnam:

Ideas and Actions (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press,

1988). Another work highly critical of the Air Force’s intellectual

response to the Vietnam War is Lt Col David J. Dean’s The Air

Force Role in Low-Intensity Conflict (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, 1986). Both these works argue that the Air Force

ignored the lessons of Vietnam, choosing to maintain its emphasis on expensive, complex fighter aircraft, and that its official

doctrine continued to ignore low intensity conflict. David R. Mets

makes a far more hopeful assessment in Land-Based Air Power

in Third World Crises (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press,

1986) by looking at several examples: the Mayaguez affair, the

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Bay of Pigs, the Yom Kippur War of 1973, and various incidents

in sub-Saharan Africa. He concludes that a mix of factors such

as level of visibility, commitment, risk, range, destructive capability, and overall flexibility gives airpower, on balance, excellent

leverage for use in future crises.

Nevertheless, the war in Vietnam did have a major effect on

airmen. All the premises and assumptions of the previous four

decades seemed to evaporate over the skies of North Vietnam.

The primary response of airmen was to turn away from any

discussion of strategic theory—it seemed to have little relevance to wars like Vietnam, and nuclear theory was now in the

hands of civilian academics—to theory concerning the tactical

employment of airpower. The most important of such treatments, largely because it came from a senior airman who had

thought deeply on the subject, was Gen William W. Momyer’s

Air Power in Three Wars (1978; reprint, New York: Arno Press,

1980). One of the brightest officers of his generation and a

fighter pilot in World War II, Momyer also commanded Seventh

Air Force in Saigon during the Vietnam War. His discussion of

the mechanics of tactical airpower—C2, target selection, force

packaging, aerial tactics, and the like—is outstanding. From

this aspect, it is perhaps the best book of its kind. 

Similarly, the US Army changed its focus, turning back

towards the traditional Soviet enemy on the German central

front. This required the Army to wash its hands of the Vietnam

debacle and move on. It was more than willing to do so, and

the Air Force came along too. As a result of this tacit agreement to forget the past, a close relationship began to develop

between the two services. The Army devised its new doctrine

of AirLand Battle, and the Air Force—although refusing to

endorse this doctrine officially—was favorably disposed

towards it. Harold R. Winton explores the evolution of this

relationship in “An Ambivalent Partnership: US Army and Air

Force Perspectives on Air-Ground Operations, 1973–90,” in

The Paths of Heaven. One can find a more detailed description

of this cooperation in Donald J. Mrozek’s The US Air Force after

Vietnam: Postwar Challenges and Potential for Responses

(Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, 1988).

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Obviously, the Army’s new doctrine had significant implications for NATO, which meant that the alliance’s air doctrine had

to adjust to complement the new ground scheme. Col Maris E.

McCrabb covers this evolution in “The Evolution of NATO Air

Doctrine,” in The Paths of Heaven, as does David J. Stein in The

Development of NATO Tactical Air Doctrine, 1970–1985 (Santa

Monica, Calif.: RAND, 1987). In addition, Neville Brown’s The

Future of Air Power (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1986), written

in the waning years of the Cold War, is an excellent mix of history, analysis, current events, and prediction that uses the

NATO–Warsaw Pact confrontation as a backdrop. Unfortunately,

as memory of the Cold War fades, the sheer size, mass, and geographic setting of the European central front distract the reader

and distort the book’s analysis. Regarding the other side of the

hill, surprisingly little has appeared regarding Soviet air doctrine.

For overviews, see Air Force Pamphlet 200-21, Soviet Aerospace

Handbook, 1978, and Lt Col Edward J. Felker’s “Soviet Military

Doctrine and Air Theory: Change through the Light of a Storm,”

in The Paths of Heaven.

Thomas C. Schelling wrote an important book during the

Vietnam era, Arms and Influence (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1966), that has produced echoes ever since. An

economist whose earlier works dealt with nuclear strategy and

arms control, Schelling lays out the theory that came to be

known as “gradual escalation.” He argues that a steadily

increasing use of force (one usually encounters the metaphor

of a ratchet as a description of this phenomenon) can induce

an adversary to modify his behavior. If the force is effective,

the enemy will cease the objectionable conduct. The wielder of

the ratchet may temporarily ease the pressure to allow the victim time to think things over. If necessary, one could reapply

force at a slightly higher level to see if that would produce the

desired results. Such a scenario presumes that the adversaries are “rational actors” who understand the signals being

sent back and forth. In reality, though, war seldom fosters

rational behavior. We tried Schelling’s theory in Vietnam but

found it wanting. Yet, the theoretical logic of his ideas has lingered; indeed, it seemed to make a comeback in the air war

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over Kosovo. It will be interesting to see if future policy makers will look more favorably at a strategy of gradual escalation.

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Chapter 16

The Current Debate

The rest of the world did not remain idle while the United

States endured the agony of Vietnam and then recovered from

it. In Australia, airmen faced a problem not unlike the one the

United States faced in the years prior to World War II: how to

defend a large country with a very long coastline on a modest

budget. The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) posited a need

for long-range, mobile, and flexible strike forces—qualities

that obviously pointed towards airpower. The RAAF boasted a

vigorous and intellectually active core of individuals who

thought and wrote seriously about the role of airpower in Australian defense. One of them, Group Capt Gary Waters, wrote

The Architect of Victory: Air Campaigns for Australia, Canberra

Papers on Strategy and Defence no. 74 (Canberra, Australia:

Australian National University, 1991), which emphasized

three distinct but interrelated air campaigns that would prove

necessary in the event of war: the “prime” campaign for air

superiority, the “separate” campaign of strategic bombardment, and the “force-multiplier” campaign of air cooperation

with surface forces. Without the most important of these, the

air-superiority campaign, all military operations would find

themselves in dire straits. Waters provides an excellent discussion of air superiority and ways of achieving it. He

describes in detail the difference between defensive and offensive counterair operations, the former relying largely on passive measures such as air patrols and ground defenses and

the latter more aggressively focusing on efforts to seek out and

destroy the enemy air force. Waters identifies the strengths

and weaknesses of each and discusses circumstances and situations in which one might become more desirable than the

other. Overall, The Architect of Victory is an excellent book with

an Asian perspective.

Air Commodore Jasjit Singh of the Indian air force presents

another unusual and important view in his clear and forceful

book Air Power in Modern Warfare (New Delhi: Lancer, 1985),

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in which he stresses the importance of maintaining an offensive spirit so as to continually induce psychological and

dynamic shock in an enemy. In this regard, however, he

emphasizes the importance of air interdiction, arguing that

the effectiveness of strategic air attacks is debatable; he also

sees only limited utility in close air support, at the other end

of the spectrum. He states that economy of force remains one

of airpower’s greatest attributes—its ability to focus great

power quickly in a specific area––and that one should not

waste it on targets which can be handled by other means,

such as artillery or armored forces. Foreseeing land forces

becoming more supportive of air operations, rather than the

other way around, Singh declares that soldiers have begun to

realize this change although they will not acknowledge it publicly. Overall, Air Power in Modern Warfare is a most interesting book from a different perspective.

Rear Adm James A. Winnefeld and Dana J. Johnson examine the specific issue of C2 of all air assets in a given theater,

a thorny issue for decades, in Joint Air Operations: Pursuit of

Unity in Command and Control, 1942–1991 (Annapolis: Naval

Institute Press, 1993). Given not only the normal interservice

rivalry that routinely exists but also the added complication of

differing views on airpower between airmen of different services, this problem should not come as a surprise. The authors

examine a series of case studies—Midway, Guadalcanal,

Korea, Vietnam, and Desert Storm—to illustrate how these differences of opinion and focus have negatively affected air operations. Their suggested solution involves a call for an air component commander in charge of all air assets in-theater—Air

Force, Navy, Marine, Army, and allied—in order to more efficiently and effectively apply generally limited but highly potent

air assets. They argue convincingly that in times of fiscal austerity, which usually occur after every war, services tend to

become overly defensive and wary about their prerogatives;

but the new environment will not allow such parochialism.

“Jointness” is the new watchword for future air operations.

Anything by Air Vice Marshal R. A. “Tony” Mason will be of

interest since he is one of the most intelligent, rigorous, and

creative airpower thinkers we have today. In Air Power: A Cen140

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tennial Appraisal (London: Brassey’s, 1994), Mason covers a

wide area. Indeed, it is neither, as the title suggests, an overall treatment of airpower in all of its various roles worldwide

nor an assessment of how well airpower has performed in war.

Instead, it is a somewhat disparate collection of essays that,

although excellent, have no centralizing theme. Nevertheless,

one finds some true gems here; my favorites are the chapters

on arms control in the 1980s and the concluding chapter “The

Era of Differential Airpower,” a look to the future of airpower

in the post–Cold War era.

Mason’s colleague and countryman Air Commodore Andrew

G. B. Vallance wrote an overview of air warfare titled The Air

Weapon: Doctrines of Air Power Strategy and Operational Art

(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996). Like Mason, Vallance had

served as the RAF’s director of defence studies, charged with

thinking about airpower theory and doctrine, helping to evolve

it, and then disseminating it throughout his service. This book

is the culmination of those efforts. Vallance states boldly that

airpower today dominates military operations and that this

dominance will likely continue for the foreseeable future.

Paradoxically, most airmen—to say nothing of the other services and the public—do not adequately understand what airpower can and cannot do. Vallance, therefore, has written a

primer that discusses the fundamental characteristics of airpower and then explains in detail its various roles and missions, such as air superiority, antisurface attack, strategic

attack, and air transport. The strength of this presentation lies

more in its clarity than in any new insights.

In the United States, conventional strategic-airpower theory

had been throttled both by reliance on nuclear weapons and,

at the other extreme, by the largely tactical nature of the Vietnam War. This began to change with the work of Col John

Boyd, a fighter pilot at the Air Force’s Fighter Weapons School.

Intrigued by the astounding success of the F-86 in air combat

with the MiG-15 (a 10-to-one superiority) during the Korean

War, he decided that the F-86’s advantage was due largely to

its hydraulically operated flight controls and all-flying horizontal stabilizer, which allowed it to change from one aerial

maneuver to another more rapidly than the MiG. After further

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thought, Boyd saw broader implications of this theory. The

key to victory lay in acting more quickly, both mentally and

physically, than one’s opponent. He expressed this concept in

a cyclical process he called the OODA (observe-orient-decideact) Loop. As soon as one side acted, it observed the consequences, and the loop began anew. The most important portion of the loop was the “orient” phase. Boyd speculated that

the increasing complexities of the modern world necessitated

an ability to take seemingly isolated facts and ideas from different disciplines and events, deconstruct them to their essential components, and then put them back together in new and

unusual ways. He termed this process “destruction and creation,” which dominated the orient phase of his OODA Loop.

Significantly, Boyd later hypothesized that this continuously operating cycle applied not only in an aerial dogfight but

also at the higher levels of war. In tracing the history of war,

Boyd saw victory consistently going to the side that could

think more creatively—orienting itself—and then act quickly

on that insight. Although military historians tend to blanch at

such a selective use of history, the thesis is interesting.

Because of the emphasis on the orientation phase of the loop,

in practical terms, Boyd was calling for a strategy directed

against the mind of the enemy leadership. Although posited by

an airman, these theories encompassed far more than a blueprint for air operations. Warfare in general was governed by

this process. Nevertheless, because of the OODA Loop’s

emphasis on speed and the disorienting surprise it inflicts on

the enemy, Boyd’s theories seem especially applicable to airpower, which embodies these two qualities most fully.

Boyd never published his theories. Instead, he presented a

several-hours-long briefing, consisting of hundreds of slides,

titled “A Discourse on Winning and Losing,” generally accompanied by an eight-page typescript titled “Destruction and

Creation.” (Most staff college and war college libraries have

Xerox copies of the briefing.) Because the examples Boyd

pulled from military history to support his theories are highly

selective, one must view his entire edifice with great caution.

Although he is cited frequently as a guru of maneuver warfare,

we have surprisingly few critical analyses of his theories. The

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best critique thus far is Lt Col David S. Fadok’s “John Boyd

and John Warden: Airpower’s Quest for Strategic Paralysis,” in

The Paths of Heaven: The Evolution of Airpower Theory

(Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, 1997).

Col John Warden also has thought deeply on strategic airpower and has focused on enemy leadership as the key target

set. Like Boyd, a fighter pilot and combat veteran, Warden began

a serious and sustained study of air warfare as a student at the

National War College in 1986. The thesis he wrote that year soon

saw publication and remains a standard text at Air University:

The Air Campaign: Planning for Combat (Washington, D.C.: Pergamon-Brassey’s, 1989). Although this book has had a major

impact on Air Force thinking, its calls for strategic airpower are

relatively modest. That would come later. A subsequent assignment in the Pentagon put Warden in an ideal location when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in April 1990. Putting his theories

into practice, Warden designed an air campaign that called for

strategic attacks against Iraq’s centers of gravity. To illustrate his

plan, he used a target figure consisting of five concentric rings,

with leadership at the center—the most important target but also

the most fragile—and armed forces as the outermost ring—the

least important but also the most hardened. Warden posited that

the enemy leader represented the key to resistance—killing, capturing, or isolating him would incapacitate the entire country.

Warden explains this model in his essays “Employing Air Power

in the Twenty-first Century,” in Richard H. Shultz Jr. and Robert

L. Pfaltzgraff Jr.’s The Future of Air Power in the Aftermath of the

Gulf War (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, 1992), and

“The Enemy as a System,” Airpower Journal 9 (Spring 1995):

40–55. Of interest, Warden has coauthored another book with

Leland A. Russell, Winning in Fast Time: Create the Future with

Prometheus (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), in which he

attempts to translate his ideas on air-campaign planning and

war fighting to the commercial sector. Using historical examples

and drawing on his previous writings on air theory, Warden provides a formula for success in the business world. For our purposes, the book’s utility lies in the additional insight it provides

into Warden’s ideas on planning and strategy at the macrolevel.

One can find an excellent analysis and critique of Warden’s ideas

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in Fadok’s essay in The Paths of Heaven, mentioned above. David

R. Mets’s The Air Campaign: John Warden and the Classical Airpower Theorists (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, 1999)

places Warden in the broader context of airpower theory.

Apparently, both Boyd and Warden turned away from the

economic emphasis of previous airpower theorists, focusing

instead on the enemy’s leadership. However, whereas Boyd

seeks to disrupt the process of that leadership, Warden wishes

to disrupt its form. The Gulf War was the epitome of such an

air strategy. Air strikes against the Iraqi communications network, road and rail system, and electrical power grid made it

extremely difficult for Saddam to physically control his military forces; they also infused his decision-making process with

enormous confusion and uncertainty. His OODA Loop

expanded dramatically, and its cycle time slowed accordingly.

For an excellent discussion that takes the ideas of Boyd and

Warden to a higher level, see Maj Jason Barlow’s Strategic

Paralysis: An Airpower Theory for the Present (Maxwell AFB,

Ala.: Air University Press, 1994).

Robert A. Pape proposes a counter to the idea of targeting

leadership in Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War

(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996). A social scientist

well versed in the models and methodologies of that discipline,

Pape has adopted the lexicon that talks of war strategies in terms

of coercion, denial, punishment, and risk. Basically, the coercion

school argues that the key to victory lies in affecting the mind of

the enemy, who must be convinced that victory is impossible or

would cost too much to achieve. Denial strategy, on the other

hand, focuses on an enemy’s capability. If an enemy is disarmed,

the question of whether or not his will is broken becomes irrelevant. Theoretically, the choice of coercive versus denial strategy

will have a great impact on the types of targets selected by an air

planner. In practice, however, it is difficult to separate targets so

cleanly: almost every target will have both a coercive and denial

effect on an enemy. The issue thus becomes one of emphasis.

Boyd and Warden come down on the side of coercion, whereas

Pape believes in denial.

In Pape’s theory, the object of war remains what it has been

for centuries—destruction of the enemy army, which renders

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a country defenseless and likely to surrender. Only now, says

Pape, air forces can kill armies faster and easier than armies

can kill armies. Using examples from World War II, Korea,

Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf War, he argues that coercion

does not work, but denial does. The main criticism of Pape’s

theory centers on his methodology. As noted above, it is virtually impossible to separate coercion targets from denial targets. All the wars that Pape discusses obviously employed

both types of strategies simultaneously, thus preventing confirmation of the opinion that, for example, Saddam Hussein

surrendered because his army in Kuwait was being destroyed.

By the same token, however, one finds it equally impossible to

argue that surrender occurred because of the effects of air

attacks on Iraq’s industry, power network, transportation, or

communications networks—arguments made by John Warden

and others.

Although this issue poses questions that may be unanswerable, it in no way lessens the vigor of the debate. A series of

articles written by Pape, Warden, Barry Watts, and Karl D.

Mueller that appeared in the 1997 and 1998 issues of Security

Studies makes for fascinating and stimulating reading.

Although the bottom line on this debate seems to cast doubt

on any monocausal factor in victory—war is simply too complex to become that reductive—the spirit and depth of intellectual discourse over the past several years have proven

extremely valuable. Frankly, airpower has become an increasingly important policy tool in the past decade, as evidenced in

Iraq, Bosnia, and Kosovo. Thus, a dialogue that seriously discusses the most effective method of employing airpower would

benefit our national defense.

Strategy, Air Strike and Small Nations (Canberra, Australia:

Aerospace Studies Centre, 1999), by Wing Commander Shaun

Clarke of the New Zealand air force, is an unusually fresh and

original treatment. Because most current writings about airpower come from the pens of “large-nation” airmen, Clarke

questions their applicability to the air arms of the world’s 129

“small nations” that possess an air-strike capability. He therefore sets about examining the issue of strategic air attack and

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sesses 150 strike aircraft. In the past decade, the emergence

of highly effective and increasingly inexpensive PGMs has

made strategic air strikes exponentially more effective than

they were previously. The question then becomes one of targeting—and Clarke favors the leadership school. He coins a

term, “SPOT (strategic persuasion oriented targeting) bombing,” which employs a detailed intelligence assessment of an

adversary and utilizes PGMs to produce the maximum effect

on enemy leadership. Of course, one encounters problems

with the leadership model—there is precious little empirical

evidence to show how, or even if, such a targeting strategy will

work. Theoretically, the concept is logical, but in practice, only

a few times in history has a leadership change led to a change

of policy benefiting the attacker.

Nevertheless, his basic theme is inherently useful and

important. Small nations have limited resources with which to

gain their ends. Because every shot must count, their air planners must—without fail—focus, define, and prioritize. Precision attack by air now offers substantial opportunities for

small powers because it combines low risk with low cost to

achieve large results. Strategy, Air Strike and Small Nations is

fascinating reading for all planners, strategists, and airmen.

For Americans, grappling with the problems of small nations—

whether allies or adversaries—and understanding how they

address issues of air warfare can be a very rewarding process. 

Daniel L. Byman, Matthew C. Waxman, and Eric Larson’s

Air Power as a Coercive Instrument (Santa Monica, Calif.:

RAND Corporation, 1999), an excellent overview that is

broader and less doctrinaire than Pape’s or Warden’s, notes

several factors that help lead to successful coercion by using

airpower: achieving “escalation dominance,” negating the

adversary’s strategy, and bringing third parties to bear to

leverage or frighten the coerced party. If readers can get past

such elements of the social-science lexicon, they will see that

the authors’ ideas are first rate. They argue that the geopolitical environment of the new century will emphasize—at least

for the West—the lack of major threats to national interests,

coalition operations, the increasing role of nonstate actors,

and a growing concern for minimizing casualties—on both

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sides. In such an environment, the coercive use of airpower

should grow in importance.

Benjamin S. Lambeth’s The Transformation of American Airpower (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000) is an

excellent overview of air warfare during the last decade of the

twentieth century. Lambeth actually begins with a look at how

the Vietnam War shook the faith of airmen in their chosen

weapon. We made many mistakes in that war, and although

some military leaders would blame them on the politicians, the

author shows that the Air Force accepted its part of the blame.

Consequently, it began to transform itself—far more thoroughly than did the other services—into a service that

employed stealth aircraft and PGMs, and invested heavily in

space-based command, control, communications, computers,

intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) assets

that dominated the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and the conflicts

with Serbia that followed. In Lambeth’s words, “American airpower now possesses the wherewithal for neutralizing an

enemy’s military means not through the classic imposition of

brute force, but rather through the functional effects achievable by targeting his key vulnerabilities and taking away his

capacity for organized military action.” That is, airpower is

approaching a situation dreamed of by war theorists like J. F.

C. Fuller and B. H. Liddell Hart prior to World War II—paralysis of the enemy. This signals a significant move away from the

annihilation and attrition models of the past. 

Lambeth’s analysis of the air war over Kosovo is particularly

compelling, giving a balanced and insightful appraisal that

covers the bad along with the good. He warns that political

guidance during the war, as well as NATO’s decision-making

process, was weak, inconsistent, and cumbersome. NATO airpower saved a bad situation, but we need to address the systemic political problems witnessed in 1999 to avoid putting an

unreasonable burden on air forces in the future.

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THE CURRENT DEBATE
Chapter 17

Anthologies on Modern Airpower

Both the RAF and the RAAF have periodic conferences

where international scholars and serving officers gather to

present papers, debate, and exchange ideas on airpower

employment. Often, the papers are published. As with all such

collections, one finds some chaff along with the wheat: some

of the papers tend to be poorly written, researched, or argued.

Others are focused so narrowly that they have little utility and

longevity. But other papers are excellent, and they make these

books worthwhile.

One such compendium, The Future of United Kingdom Air

Power, ed. Philip Sabin (London: Brassey’s Defence Publishers,

1988), focuses on the British situation but also discusses the

employment of naval aviation. Regrettably, “land” airmen and

“water” airmen too often become adversarial and parochial;

indeed, they generally have little to do with one another. This

is unfortunate, so including this topic here is important. Other

volumes in this series—if we may call it that—include Air

Power: Collected Essays on Doctrine, ed. Group Capt Andrew

Vallance (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1990) and

three excellent compendiums edited by Alan Stephens, head of

the RAAF’s Air Power Studies Centre: Smaller But Larger: Conventional Air Power into the 21st Century (Canberra: Australian

Government Publishing Service, 1991); Defending the Air/Sea

Gap (Canberra: Australian Defence Studies Centre, 1992); and

New Era Security and the RAAF (Fairbairn: Air Power Studies

Centre, 1996). Under the enlightened guidance of Stephens,

the Australians have done most impressive work. Every one of

these volumes contains several thought-provoking essays that

look at airpower in a unique and interesting way. The most

recent effort from the RAAF is Airpower and Joint Forces, ed.

Wing Commander Keith Burt (Canberra: Aerospace Studies

Centre, 2000), whose title provides the focus of this work,

which contains a number of excellent essays by Richard P.

Hallion on asymmetric threats, Stephen Badsey on the media,

149
Brig Gen David Deptula on air-exclusion zones, Alan Stephens

on command and leadership, and Ian McFarland on ethics

and the airman. The Dynamics of Air Power, ed. Group Capt

Andrew Lambert and Arthur Williamson (Bracknell: Royal Air

Force Staff College, 1996) has some particularly interesting

and useful essays on airpower and coercion by Michael

Clarke, the role of the media in air operations by Wing Commander Mike Bratby, and several that deal with airpower in

peace-enforcement operations.

Perspectives on Air Power: Air Power in Its Wider Context, ed.

Group Capt Stuart Peach (London: The Stationery Office,

1998), an intriguing collection published by the RAF, has an

interesting thread that runs throughout. Warfare is becoming

increasingly joint, not only because of organizational imperatives but also because airpower has permeated all the services

to such a great extent. In the United States, for example, the

Army, Navy, and Marine Corps all have air arms that are

among the largest and most capable in the world. At the same

time, however, the Navy has its own land force of marines, the

Army has its own fleet of supply ships, and all of the services

rely heavily on space assets. In addition, the debate over

strategic versus tactical air has separated airmen from their

surface brethren for decades. Over the past decade, however,

surface forces have become far more interested in the “deep

battle”—an area they considered unimportant because they

could not reach it before. As these forces steadily encroached

into what had been “air territory,” airmen turned towards targeting strategies that have focused on C2 networks, fielded

forces, and leadership nodes. In short, the views of all the

services are beginning to focus on the same area, thus facilitating a more comprehensive and complementary approach to

war fighting.

The latest edition in this series is Airpower 21: Challenges

for the New Century, ed. Group Capt Peter W. Gray (London:

The Stationery Office, 2000). Michael Clarke, David Gates, and

Tony Mason all discuss the changing political climate in which

airpower must now be employed. Because airpower now seems

to offer the greatest likelihood of achieving political goals at

minimum cost, it has become the weapon of choice. However,

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AIRMEN AND AIR THEORY
given the lack of a serious threat to most NATO countries,

politicians recognize that any use of force depends upon an

unpredictable and possibly fickle public. To ensure domestic

support, politicians will therefore exercise close control of any

military operation. Air commanders must expect increased

scrutiny of their actions—what many in the service would consider micromanagement or meddling. Mason further notes

that the hated nonstrategy of “gradual escalation” may see

employment more often in the future. Although failing miserably in Vietnam, it seemed to achieve some success over

Kosovo. Because this approach allows close political control

throughout a crisis, it may prove irresistible for political leaders—always wary of public opinion.

Philip Sabin lists possible asymmetric strategies and tactics

that an enemy might employ to overcome our airpower advantage—after all, future adversaries probably won’t be so foolish

as to fight us on our own terms. Sir Timothy Garden takes an

insightful look at European airpower, noting that Europe as a

whole is as wealthy as the United States but spends far less

on defense. Worse, Europe’s defense funding is terribly unbalanced. It possesses far too many ground troops—nearly twice

that of the United States, counting all reserve forces—yet has

little intention of ever using such high-risk forces. Garden

calls for a decrease in troop levels and a corresponding

increase in spending on high-tech weapons to keep pace with

US advances. In addition, he notes that European air arms are

also unbalanced—they have too many aircraft devoted to air

defense and too few to attack. During the Cold War, when the

Warsaw Pact posed a serious threat, this mix made sense—but

no longer. In addition, airlift and tanker forces, though copious, are poorly managed. He suggests a system similar to that

which governs airborne warning and control system aircraft:

the airframes are pooled, perhaps even owned by NATO, and

used efficiently to service all the member nations.

Other anthologies include War in the Third Dimension:

Essays in Contemporary Air Power, ed. Tony Mason (London:

Brassey’s Defence Publishers, 1986), an excellent collection

that includes truly outstanding essays by Mason himself on

the air-superiority campaign, David MacIsaac on the evolution

151

ANTHOLOGIES ON MODERN AIRPOWER
of American air doctrine after World War II, Alan Gropman on

the air war in Vietnam, and Ben Lambeth on Soviet air doctrine and practice. Another outstanding effort is Air Power

Confronts an Unstable World, ed. Richard P. Hallion (London:

Brassey’s Defence Publishers, 1997). Hallion, himself an excellent historian and the US Air Force historian, has assembled a

worthy stable of airpower thinkers and writers. One finds

some truly seminal essays here by Barry D. Watts on technology, Group Capt Andrew Lambert on the psychological effects

of air attack, Rear Adm James A. Winnefeld on joint air operations, Hallion himself on the importance of the revolution in

precision weapons, Col Phil Meilinger on air-targeting strategies, Alan Stephens on restructuring air forces after the Cold

War, and Fred Frostic on the revolution in military affairs

occasioned by airpower and its effect on future war. War in the

Third Dimension is the best airpower anthology to date—the

standard by which other such efforts should be judged.

Gen Merrill A. “Tony” McPeak, the Air Force chief of staff

during the Persian Gulf War and the four years that followed,

did something after his retirement that no other chief has

done—collected and published the key speeches, briefings,

and press releases from his tenure as chief. This was a terrific

idea. Although some of the topics deal with contemporary

events of decreasing importance today—Air Force reorganization, personnel policies, gays in the military, and sexual

harassment in the wake of the Navy’s Tailhook scandal—some

discuss significant and timely issues. McPeak led the Air Force

during its most tumultuous period in decades, overseeing a

downsizing of nearly one-third, which caused him to think

through basic questions regarding the mission, vision, purpose, organization, and force structure of the Air Force.

Included in this collection, Selected Works, 1990–1994

(Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, 1995), are his

“mother of all briefings” to the press corps following the victory

in Desert Storm, the “mission of the Air Force” dinner address,

and various speeches that outline his thoughts on the future

of airpower. Perhaps most importantly, this work contains

McPeak’s views on future war. He advocated the division of

war into three distinct battles: close, deep, and high (air and

152

AIRMEN AND AIR THEORY
space). In his view, surface forces predominate in the close

battle, and airpower supports the ground commander in that

regime. In the high and deep battles, however, McPeak argues

that air and space assets dominate; hence, airmen should

command these battles, with surface forces in support.

Despite the clear and obvious logic of his argument, the other

services did not welcome his ideas, immediately closing ranks

to condemn them. As McPeak himself admitted, he advocated

“taking away too many of their rice bowls.” Nevertheless, with

the passing of time, his vision is evolving into reality.

153

ANTHOLOGIES ON MODERN AIRPOWER
Chapter 18

Conclusion

The body of literature surrounding airpower theory is fairly

large but uneven in quality. It is surprising that so much has

been written about a new kind of war that has existed for such

a short time. After all, it took millennia to produce a Carl von

Clausewitz and an Alfred Thayer Mahan. Still, one notices

some broad gaps. Someone needs to write the definitive history of the Air Corps Tactical School and its impact on the

employment of American airpower in World War II. Pieces of

this story are scattered about, but ACTS was so important

that it demands a fuller treatment. Similarly, the counterpart

of ACTS in Britain, the Royal Air Force Staff College, needs

some attention. No one knows whether the Staff College

played as crucial a role in the RAF as ACTS did in the Air

Corps, but even proving the negative would be useful. I suspect, however, that the Staff College played a key part in the

story and did have enormous influence in formulating and

then disseminating air doctrine, not only throughout the RAF

but also throughout the empire. 

Along these lines, no one has sufficiently explored the ideas

of Hugh Trenchard and Jack Slessor. Both men left behind

enormous amounts of material that beg for the attention of

researchers. Trenchard has had only one biographer and

Slessor none, and their theories have attracted only scattered

articles. Much work remains to be done on these two figures.

Giulio Douhet has also been neglected, partly because of

language difficulties. Surprisingly few of his many writings

have been translated into English. For example, it would be

fascinating to explore the articles on aviation he wrote as early

as 1910—to discover what his thinking was at that time. He

also carried on extensive correspondence with military contemporaries, aircraft builders, and magazines. The essay

“Recapitulation,” which appears in translations of Command

of the Air contains only Douhet’s responses to criticisms—the

criticisms themselves have never been translated and pub155
lished. Douhet also kept an extensive, untranslated diary during World War I. Finally, and most intriguingly, the 1921 edition of Command of the Air contained a 100-page appendix

that did not appear in the 1927 version—it too remains

untranslated. A huge lode of material needs to be mined. One

can easily imagine a multivolume project containing the collected writings of Giulio Douhet.

Language barriers have also limited our understanding of

French, Japanese, Russian, and—to a lesser extent—German

airpower thinkers, especially in the interwar period. Because

of the paucity of translations of primary material from that

era, one suspects that what has been written about the air

arms of these countries lacks depth and sufficient analysis.

Gen Tony McPeak’s idea of collecting and publishing his

most important speeches is truly outstanding. All future chiefs

should follow his example. In addition, however, someone

should make a serious attempt to collect and then publish the

most significant addresses and papers of former air leaders.

To be able to read how air commanders in Korea, Vietnam,

Desert Storm, and Kosovo, for example, viewed the mission

and how they learned various lessons from the conflicts in

which they played key roles would be invaluable.

The most encouraging development of late has been the

great resurgence of interest in and debate on airpower issues.

New technologies such as precision weapons, stealth, and

electronic sensors have dramatically altered the way air forces

fight. This, in turn, has spawned a debate of unusually high

tone and sophistication. One can only hope that this trend will

continue.

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AIRMEN AND AIR THEORY
Glossary

AAF Army Air Forces

AB air base

ACTS Air Corps Tactical School

AFHRA Air Force Historical Research Agency

AWPD Air War Plans Division

C2 command and control

C4ISR command, control, communications,

computers, intelligence, surveillance, and

reconnaissance

CAT Civil Air Transport

CIA Central Intelligence Agency

FAA Fleet Air Arm

FEAF Far East Air Forces

FM field manual

GHQ General Headquarters

JCS Joint Chiefs of Staff

MAC Military Airlift Command

NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NORAD North American Air Defense Command

OODA observe-orient-decide-act

PGM precision-guided munition

RAAF Royal Australian Air Force

RAF Royal Air Force

R&D research and development

ROTC Reserve Officer Training Corps

SAAS School of Advanced Airpower Studies

SAC Strategic Air Command

SACEUR supreme allied commander Europe

TAC Tactical Air Command

UN United Nations

USSTAF US Strategic Air Forces

157
Adenauer, Konrad, 70

aerial reconnaissance, 25, 67, 99, 113,

147

aerial refueling, 67

Air America, 28

air campaign, 82, 143–44

air component commander, 36, 82,

140

Air Corps, 6–7, 11, 13–16, 20, 25–27,

31–32, 35, 40–41, 48, 51, 54, 60,

68, 71, 88, 91, 98, 101, 109–13,

115–16, 155

Air Corps Act of 1926, 6–7

Air Corps Tactical School (ACTS), 11,

27, 34, 36, 40–41, 43, 58, 86, 91,

98, 109–13, 115, 117, 120, 155

aircraft

airborne warning and control

system, 151

Akron, 17

B-10, 20

B-17, 16, 26, 54–56, 60

B-25, 38

B-29, 20, 24, 36–38, 42, 44, 56, 58,

60, 91

B-36, 50

B-70, 61

bomber, 20, 27, 33, 38, 42, 45, 47,

49, 54, 104, 110, 116–17, 131

C-46, 65

C-54, 65

escort, 30, 33, 126

F-86, 141

F-111, 61

fighter, 57–58, 129, 135

fighter-bomber, 49

Fokker trimotor, 65

General Dynamics TFX, 61

Gotha, 117

MiG-15, 141

P-35, 129

P-47, 129

Question Mark, 30, 32, 49

strike, 146

zeppelins, 117

aircraft carriers, 9–10, 17–19, 108, 127

air defense, 10, 35, 45, 49–50, 66,

125, 151

Air Defense Command, 35, 45, 49, 66

air-exclusion zones, 150

Air Force Academy, 21, 35, 48, 88, 92

Air Force Historical Research Agency

(AFHRA), 57, 88, 92, 109

Air Force ROTC, 81

Air Force Space Command, 80

Air Force Systems Command, 79

AirLand Battle, 136

airlift, 35, 50, 60, 64–66, 69, 73, 78,

92, 151

Air Materiel Command, 58–59

Air Mobility Command, 65

Air Service, 5–8, 11, 13, 15, 20, 25, 44,

48, 52, 66, 88, 107, 109, 111

Air Staff, 35, 42, 51–53, 58, 66, 68,

123

air superiority, 31, 83, 100, 113, 115,

129, 139, 141, 151

Air Training Command, 26

air transport, 28, 35, 65, 86, 115

Air Transport Command, 65

Air University, 21, 35, 37, 41, 43, 93,

98, 106, 108, 110–11, 125, 127,

130, 135–36, 143–44, 152

Air War College, 43, 52, 72, 80–81

air war plan, 110

Air War Plans Division (AWPD-1, -42),

1, 4, 42, 44, 53, 86, 110–11

Alaskan Command, 53, 59

Allen, Lew, 92

Allied air forces, 51, 58, 68

Allied Expeditionary Air Forces, 51

Anderson, Orvil A., 52–53

Andrews, Frank, 48, 86–87, 91

antiaircraft artillery, 126

Armed Forces Staff College, 56

Armstrong, Frank, 56

Army, 5–9, 11, 13–15, 17–19, 26,

33–34, 36, 42, 44, 46–47, 58, 66,

75, 79–80, 87, 93, 98–99, 104, 107,

109–10, 112–13, 115–16, 118, 123,

130, 136–37, 140, 144–45, 150

Army Air Forces (AAF), 19, 23, 33, 35,

38, 40–41, 60, 110, 115, 130

Army War College, 36, 66

159

Index
Arnold, Henry H. “Hap,” 15, 19–25, 27,

30–39, 42, 44, 48–49, 57–58, 60–61,

66, 68, 85–87, 91–92, 110, 115

asymmetric strategies and tactics, 151

atomic bombs, 44, 49, 52, 58, 60

Axis, 56, 129

Balbo, Italo, 125

ballistic missiles, 22, 68

Balloon Corps, 13

balloonists, 15, 52, 86

battles

Atlantic, 43

Bismarck Sea, 36

Britain, 118

Khafji, 83

Midway, 16

Philippine campaign, 36

Rabaul, 36, 41, 45

Wewak, 36, 45

battleship Utah, 60

Bay of Pigs, 136

Berlin airlift, 35, 50, 60, 64–65, 69, 92

Berlin Wall, 69

Big Week, 86

Bissell, Clayton, 28

black officers, 71

bomber clique, 41

Bomber Command, 31

bomber-mafia, 111, 113

bombing, 8, 30–31, 33–34, 36, 41–45,

52–53, 60–63, 100, 102, 107–9,

111–12, 117–23, 125, 130, 144, 146

Boyd, John, 98, 141–44

Bradley, Mark, 87

Bradley, Omar, 32

Brereton, Lewis H., 46–47

Brett, George, 92

British air theory, 119

British Army Staff College, 123

Brookins, Walter, 54

Brown, George S., 78–79, 85

Bureau of Naval Aeronautics, 16, 18

Bush, George H., 92

Cabell, Charles P., 57–58

Cannon, John “Joe,” 50

Casablanca conference, 33, 42

centers of gravity, 143

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 28,

75–77

centralized control, 115

Chennault, Anna, 28

Chennault, Claire L., 26–29, 41–42,

85, 91

Chiang Kai-shek, 27

Chidlaw, Benjamin, 92

China-Burma-India theater, 66

Churchill, Winston, 33

Civil Air Transport (CAT), 28

civil-military affairs, 68, 70

Clark Field, Philippines, 46

Clausewitz, Carl von, 155

Clay, Lucius, 93

close air support, 39, 67, 79, 113, 140

coalition, 82–84, 146

Coastal Air Force, 49

Coastal Command, 123

coercion, 144–46, 150

Colby, William, 75

Cold War, 68–70, 137, 151–52

Combined Bomber Offensive, 42, 44

command and control (C2), 33, 67,

135–36, 140, 150

command, control, communications,

computers, intelligence, surveillance,

and reconnaissance (C4ISR), 147

Command and General Staff College,

36

Coningham, Sir Arthur “Mary,” 50

Continental Air Command, 45, 49, 66

conventional weapons, 70

counterinsurgency, 75, 77

court-martial of Billy Mitchell, 9, 11,

108

Craig, Howard A., 53–54

Craigie, Laurence, 92

Craig, Malin, 15

cruise missiles, 22

Davis, Benjamin O., Jr., 71–72, 86, 91

D day, 46–47, 49, 116

deep battle, 150

Defense Department, 19

denial strategy, 144–45

de Seversky, Alexander P., 98, 129–30,

132–33

deterrence, 70, 97, 101, 131, 133

Diem, Ngo Dinh, 76–77

doctrine, 11, 14, 16, 22, 27, 40–41,

43–44, 59–60, 62, 86, 97–98, 105,

160
108–12, 116, 119–22, 125, 127,

132, 135–37, 141, 149, 152, 155

Doolittle, James H. “Jimmy,” 29–31,

33, 58, 85, 91

Dougherty, Russell, 92

Douglas, Donald, 3

Douhet, Giulio, 11–12, 59, 98, 103–6,

117, 121, 125–26, 131, 155–56

downsizing, 92, 152

Dugan, Mike, 82

Eaker, Ira C., 30–33, 49, 57, 86–87,

92, 115

Eastern Front, 43

Echols, Oliver, 92

economy of force, 140

Eighth Air Force, 30–33, 42–43, 48–49,

52, 54–56, 60, 86

VIII Bomber Command, 31

VIII Fighter Command, 86

Eisenhower, Dwight, 32–33, 47, 59, 66,

93, 131

enemy leadership, 143–44

enemy morale/will, 34, 55, 115,

117–18, 119, 121, 132, 144

ethics, 150

European airpower, 151

European theater, 71, 86

Fairchild, Muir “Santy,” 58, 91, 111

Far East Air Forces (FEAF), 36, 46, 66,

78–79

Fechet, James, 31, 91, 101

Ferrari, Dino, 12, 103

Field Manual (FM) 1-5, Employment of

Aviation of the Army, 112–13

Field Manual (FM) 100-20, Command

and Employment of Air Power, 33,

113

Fifteenth Air Force, 29, 58

Fifth Air Force, 36, 45, 67

V Bomber Command, 41

Fighter Weapons School, 141

1st Aero Squadron, 14, 25

First Allied Airborne Army, 46

Fleet Air Arm (FAA), 127

flexible response, 61

Flying Tigers, 27–29

forward air controllers, 50

Foulois, Benjamin D., 12–15, 86, 91

Fourteenth Air Force, 27–28

Fuller, J. F. C., 147

future war, 10, 103, 107, 123, 131

Gadhafi, Mu‘ammar, 73

General Headquarters (GHQ) Air

Force, 14, 47–48, 86

General Staff, 8, 15, 36, 51, 53, 58

Geneva Disarmament Conference, 102

George, Hal, 41, 86, 111

Golovine, Nikolai N., 125

gradual escalation, 70, 151

Grand Alliance, 43

Greely, Adolphus W., 12–13

ground operations, 123–24

Groves, P. R. C., 119, 121

Gulf War, 82, 92, 143–45, 147, 152

Gunderson, Brian, 87

Hansell, Haywood S. “Possum,” Jr.,

41–44, 86, 111

Hartinger, James V., 80–81

high-altitude, daylight precision

bombing, 42–43, 60, 109

Holley, I. B., Jr., 98, 109

Holm, Jeanne, 91

Horner, Charles A., 81–84

Huk rebellion, 75

Hump airlift, 64–66

Hussein, Saddam, 82, 143–45

incendiary bombs, 34, 60, 62, 104

independent air force, 12, 26, 50, 75,

104, 107, 113

Indian air force, 139

industrial-web theory, 110–11

intelligence, 28, 39, 51, 57–58, 63, 67,

75, 79–80, 146–47

interdiction, 27, 38–39, 50, 113,

123–24, 140

interservice cooperation/rivalry, 9, 23,

68, 80, 140

interwar period, 17, 39–40, 52–53, 86,

99, 101, 110, 117, 119, 127, 156

Italian air force, 103, 125

Italian liner Rex, 60

James, Daniel “Chappie,” Jr., 73–75

Japanese airpower, 37, 47, 98

Japanese war industry, 42

joint air operations, 140, 152

161
Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), 19–20, 54,

58, 61, 78–79, 91, 131, 133

joint force air component commander,

82

Joint Strategic Survey Council, 54

Jones, David, 91–92

Kármán, Theodore von, 21–22

Kennedy, John F., 69–70

Kenney, George C., 11, 36–41, 45–46,

50, 60, 64, 85–86

Kepner, William E., 86

King, Ernest, 24

Kingston-McCloughry, E. J., 119, 122,

132

Knerr, Hugh J., 47–48, 86

Korean War, 42, 52, 65–66, 68, 78–79,

86, 131, 141

Kosovo, 147, 156

Kuter, Laurence S., 34–35, 41, 91,

111, 113

Lansdale, Edward G., 75–78

leadership, 3, 6, 17, 28, 59, 63, 81,

85–87, 91, 143–44, 146, 150

League of Nations, 102

Leahy, William, 24

Leigh-Mallory, Trafford, 57

LeMay, Curtis E., 5, 37, 42, 44, 55,

59–63, 85, 87, 91–92, 133

Liddell Hart, B. H., 147

Lindbergh, Charles, 3, 21

Lodge, Henry Cabot, 76

logistics, 7, 16, 24–27, 39, 80

low intensity conflict, 98, 135

Luftwaffe, 31, 49, 125

MacArthur, Douglas, 31, 36–39, 45,

53, 66–67

MacIsaac, David, 5, 85, 105, 151

Magsaysay, Ramón, 75

Mahan, Alfred Thayer, 155

Mao Tse-tung, 75

Mariana Islands, 42, 60

Marine Corps, 79, 83, 140, 150

Marshall, George, 27–28, 48, 67, 93

massive retaliation, 59, 68, 131, 133

Maxwell AFB, Alabama, 32, 57, 88

Maxwell Field, Alabama, 41, 110

Mayaguez, 79, 135

McConnell, John P., 91

McNamara, Robert, 61, 63, 69–70, 78

McPeak, Merrill A. “Tony,” 92–93,

152–53, 156

Mecozzi, Amedeo, 125

Mediterranean Allied Air Forces, 68

Menoher, Charles, 5, 8

military airlift, 64, 73

Military Airlift Command (MAC), 73–74

Military Air Transport Service, 35, 65

Milton, T. R. “Ross,” 92

Mitchel Field, 13

Mitchell, William “Billy,” 5–15, 17–18,

20, 44, 46, 48, 53, 59, 85, 91–92,

98, 105, 107–8, 117

Moffett, William A., 16–17, 87

Momyer, William, 91–92, 136

mutual assured destruction, 97

National War College, 53, 143

Naval Academy, 46–47

naval aviation, 17–18, 98, 127

Navy, 6, 8–10, 14, 16–19, 24, 42, 50,

52–53, 58, 60, 104, 107, 127, 130,

140, 150, 152

Nimitz, Chester, 24

99th Fighter Squadron, 71

Ninth Air Force, 46–47, 50–51, 80, 82

IX Fighter Command, 49

Normandy invasion, 33, 49, 51

Norstad, Lauris, 44, 57, 68–70

North Africa, 31, 43, 49–50, 68, 116

North African campaign, 33, 53, 113

North American Air Defense Command

(NORAD), 35

North Atlantic Treaty Organization

(NATO), 68–70, 92, 98, 135, 137,

147, 151

Northwest African Air Force, 32, 35

nuclear theory, 98, 136

nuclear weapons, 67–68, 105, 130–33,

141

O’Donnell, Emmett “Rosie,” 44, 91

Office of Strategic Services, 75

Olds, Robin, 92

OODA (observe-orient-decide-act) Loop,

142, 144

operational art, 36, 141

operations

Desert Storm, 82, 140, 152, 156

Instant Thunder, 82

162
Market-Garden, 46

Overlord, 43, 46

Ostfriesland, 45

Pacific Air Forces, 35, 91

Pacific theater, 36–37, 41, 45, 60

Pancho Villa, 14, 25

parafrag bomb, 38, 45

parochialism, 39, 83, 107, 116

Parrish, Noel, 5, 86

Partridge, Earle “Pat,” 67

Patrick, Mason M., 5–8, 15, 91

Patton, George, 57, 93

peace-enforcement operations, 150

Pearl Harbor, 15, 36, 46, 127, 129

Pershing, John J., 5, 14–15, 25

Persian Gulf War, 82, 88, 145, 147,

152

Philippines, 7, 13, 19, 46, 72, 75–76

photoreconnaissance, 57

pilot training, 71

planners/planning, 32, 34, 41, 44–45,

47, 51–53, 91, 131, 143–44, 146

Ploesti, Romania, 46, 78

Poe, Bryce, 87

Powell, Colin, 71

precision attack, 146

precision-guided munitions (PGM), 67,

146–47, 152, 156

psychological warfare, 75, 104, 117,

130, 152

Putt, Donald, 92

Quesada, Elwood R. “Pete,” 48–50, 86

Radford, Arthur, 131

Rawlings, Edwin W., 64

Red Air Force, 36

research and development (R&D), 22,

26, 60, 92

Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC),

59, 81

revolution in military affairs, 152

Rickenbacker, Eddie, 3, 85

Risner, Robinson, 86

Robins Field, 26

Robins, Warner, 24–26

Rockwell Field, 30

Roosevelt, Franklin D., 9, 11, 21, 130

Royal Air Force (RAF), 35, 50, 57, 85,

87, 98–99, 117–23, 127, 132, 139,

141, 149–50, 155

Royal Air Force/Army Air Forces relations, 87

Royal Air Force doctrine, 119, 121

Royal Air Force Staff College, 36, 56,

120–21, 123, 142, 150, 155

Royal Air Force War Manual (AP 1300),

121

Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF),

139, 149

Royal Navy, 127

Ryan, John D., 78–79, 91

Saint-Mihiel, France, 8

SALT II, 79

Savage, Frank, 56

School of Advanced Airpower Studies

(SAAS), 32, 97–98

Schriever, Bernard A., 86

Schwarzkopf, Norman, 83

Scowcroft, Brent, 92

Scud missiles, 83

sea power, 107, 127, 129

segregation, racial, 72

Seventh Air Force, 80, 92, 136

Shenandoah, 8

Signal Corps, 7–8, 10, 13–14, 20, 99,

107

skip bombing, 38, 45

Skybolt missile, 61

Slessor, Sir John C. “Jack,” 50, 119,

123–24, 132, 155

Smith, Dale O., 54–55, 132–33

Southwest Pacific theater, 45

Soviet air doctrine, 98, 152

Spaatz, Carl A., 30–34, 37–38, 47, 49,

51, 57, 85–87, 92

space assets, 153

space-power theory, 98

Spaight, James M., 119, 122

Spanish-American War, 13

special operations, 76

Stalin, Joseph, 43

stealth, 147, 156

Stilwell, Joe, 27–29

Strategic Air Command (SAC), 37, 39,

46, 50, 60–61, 63, 65, 68–70, 92,

131

163
strategic airpower, 9, 20, 23, 32, 42,

48–49, 58, 115, 117, 141, 143

strategic bombing, 21, 30–31, 34, 38,

41, 43–44, 52, 62–63, 68, 102,

107–9, 111, 117, 119–21, 123, 125,

130, 139

strategic doctrine, 14, 43, 110, 116

strategy, 3, 6, 20, 23, 26, 36, 40–41,

44, 47, 54, 60–62, 68, 70, 87, 99,

101, 105, 108, 111, 117, 120–21,

125, 130, 132–33, 137–39, 141–46

Stratemeyer, George E., 66–67

supreme allied commander Europe

(SACEUR), 68–70

Symington, Stuart, 3, 32

Tactical Air Command (TAC), 42, 49,

92

tactical airpower, 27, 39, 50, 63, 116,

136

targeting, 23, 47, 111, 115, 123–24,

132, 143–44, 146–47, 150, 152

Taylor, Maxwell D., 61

technology, 21–22, 26, 29, 93, 103,

109, 111, 116, 118, 152, 156

Tedder, Arthur, 57

Tenth Air Force, 46

Tet offensive, 76

Thirteenth Air Force, 58, 72

384th Bomb Group, 55

322d Group, 72

Tinker, Clarence L., 16

Towers, John H., 18–19, 24

Trenchard, Hugh, 98, 117–23, 126,

155

Truman, Harry S., 49, 51, 53

Tunner, William H., 64–66

Tuskegee airmen, 71, 73–74

Twelfth Air Force, 29, 51, 80

Twentieth Air Force, 38, 42–43, 58, 68,

71, 78, 97, 116, 147

XXI Bomber Command, 42–43

Twining, Nathan F., 58–59, 79, 85–87,

91–92, 133

unconventional war, 135

United Nations (UN), 57, 66

United States Air Forces Europe, 68

unmanned air vehicles, 22

US Strategic Air Forces (USSTAF), 32,

34

US Strategic Bombing Survey, 52

US Strike Command, 72

Vandenberg, Arthur, 38

Vandenberg, Hoyt S., 37–38, 45,

50–52, 58–61, 79, 85–87, 91–92

Vietcong, 62

Vietnam, 61–62, 70, 72–74, 76–82, 86,

88, 91–92, 98, 133, 135–37, 139–41,

145, 147, 151–52, 156

vital centers, 9, 104, 121

VJ day, 131

Walker, Kenneth N., 40–41

Wallace, George, 61

Warden, John, 82, 98, 143–46

War Department, 13, 34, 51, 53, 109

Warner Robins Army Air Depot, 26

Warsaw Pact, 151

Weapons Systems Evaluation Group,

42

Webster, Robert, 111

Welch, Larry, 92

Westmoreland, William C., 76

Westover, Oscar M., 15, 20

West Point, 5, 19, 21, 25, 35, 50,

54–55, 57, 59, 66, 68, 71–72, 78, 81

Weyland, Otto “Opie,” 91

Wheeler, Earle, 78

Wheelus AB, Libya, 73

Whitehead, Ennis, 44–45

White, Thomas, 61, 78, 91

Wilson, Donald, 40, 111

World War I, 6, 8–9, 12, 14–15, 20, 22,

32, 36, 39, 46, 52–53, 58, 103–4,

107, 109, 123, 129

World War II, 10, 16, 23, 31–32, 35–36,

40–41, 43, 46–50, 53–54, 59, 65, 69,

71, 74–75, 78, 87, 91–92, 98, 100,

107, 109, 111–12, 115–17, 119–20,

122, 125, 129–31, 133, 136, 139,

145, 147, 152

Wright brothers, 13–14, 19, 87

Wright Field, Ohio, 7, 25, 36

Yalta conference, 35–36

Yeager, Chuck, 3

Yom Kippur War, 136

Zuckert, Eugene, 63

164
Airmen and Air Theory

A Review of the Sources

Cover Design

Phil Meilinger

Air University Press Team

Chief Editor

Marvin Bassett

Copy Editor

Carolyn J. McCormack

Book Design and Cover Art

Steven C. Garst

Composition and

Prepress Production

Mary P. Ferguson

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