Strike from the Sky: The History of Battlefield Air Attack 1911–1945 by Richard P. Hallion

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 445 opment and adoption of sophisticated fire control systems proved beyond the managerial capacities of the naval bureaucracy. Despite his title, Sumida says little about innovations (e.g., in propulsion) outside of gunnery, although fire control was undoubt­ edly central to Fisher’s plans. He records in excessive detail, so it seems to me, contract negotiations between Pollen and the admiralty that were often difficult and protracted. The index is organized not alphabetically but by topic—which is adequate if one is sure where to search for an entry, but difficult otherwise. Last, the few diagrams add little to verbal descriptions of complex machinery and fail to dojustice to the author’s careful study of important devices. But these are quibbles. Sumida has written an admirable and finely detailed study of the men, machines, and institutions that played a part in an early arms race. Explorations such as this are essential for understanding the marriage of military power and technological change that marks the modern world. Larry Owens Dr. Owens teaches in the Department of History at the University of Massachusetts— Amherst. Strike from, the Sky: The History of Battlefield Air Attack 1911—1945. By Richard P. Hallion. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989. Pp. xx + 323; illustrations, glossary, notes, bibliogra­ phy, index. $24.95. Richard Hallion’s Strike from the Sky chronicles the history of battlefield air attack from 1911, when the airplane was first used in war, to the end of World War II. His work, based largely on secondary sources, is a very useful study of the role of aircraft in battlefield support operations in major and limited wars in the first half of the 20th century. The author’s discussion of the doctrine, command and control, operational circumstances, and aircraft technology of battle­ field air operations traces the development of this crucial but oftenneglected aspect of air power. The importance of these operations in the first and second world wars and in smaller conflicts of the interwar era including the Russo-Polish War, British colonial operations, the American intervention in Nicaragua, the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, and the Spanish Civil War becomes evident in Hallion’s fast-paced narrative. The book concentrates on the battlefield experience in World War II and concludes with a short epilogue that briefly discusses the role of aircraft in support operations since 1945. Hallion examines the use of various types of aircraft in battlefield support, emphasizing the role of the fighter bomber on the Western and Eastern European fronts during World War II. 446 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE The author sets the development of these air operations in the general context of the evolution of aircraft technology, but the book concentrates nearly exclusively on frontline operations, with relatively little attention given to the aviation technology and production involved in the development of aircraft suitable for the role of battlefield air support. In its discussion of World War I, the book suffers from errors that a more in-depth study of available primary and secondary sources would have avoided. Hallion distinguishes between Allied ground attack aircraft as largely products of the single-seat fighter experience and German craft as products of the two-seat battlefield cooperation aircraft and paints an unduly favorable picture of the British experi­ ence. His concentration on the British to the near exclusion of the French means that the generalization about the Allies is not valid for the French, whose fighter pilots left battlefield cooperation to two-seat bomber and observation craft, the Breguets and Salmsons, in 1917 and 1918. The French, in fact, regretted their failure to develop two-seat light attack fighters like the Germans. Hallion suggests that the Germans designed their light attack fighters, the CL class, based on experience with Allied fighters in 1917, when in fact they established the specification for the type in September 1916 based on the experience of the Somme. The Ger­ mans were the only combatants to develop ground attack planes and fighters during the war, as the only British ground attack fighter, the Sopwith Salamander, appeared too late for wartime service. In 1917 and 1918, the British consequently were forced to...