MARK CLODFELTER. Beneficial Bombing: The Progressive Foundations of American Air Power, 1917-1945; ROBERT S. EHLERS JR. Targeting the Third Reich: Air Intelligence and the Allied Bombing Campaigns.

Abstract

Reassessing the history of aerial bombing is a timely pursuit in an era dominated by military operations in which aerial bombing plays a starring role. In the twenty-first-century wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, bombing looms large, as it has in every U.S. war since World War II, despite the invisibility of aerial bombers and drones in popular images. The monographs of Mark Clodfelter and Robert S. Ehlers, Jr., historians and former U.S. Air Force officers both, turn to World War II, the war in which aerial bombing came of age, in search of lessons about its efficacy as a military tactic. Both books suggest how wartime technology, bureaucracy, and strategy evolved together in a manner that catapulted aerial bombing to prominence. These books should be of interest to scholars seeking to understand the rise of aerial bombing, trace its role in shaping military institutions, and identify the factors that made it a popular option in the arsenal of commanders and political leaders alike.