Air War Research Articles

Air Wars: Television Advertising in Election Campaigns, 1952-1992.

Air Wars: Television Advertising in Election Campaigns, 1952-1992.

The Luftwaffe and the coalition air war in Spain, 1936–1939

(1995). The Luftwaffe and the coalition air war in Spain, 1936–1939. Journal of Strategic Studies: Vol. 18, Air Power Theory and Practice, pp. 68-90.

Crisis in the Arabian Gulf: An Independent Iraqi View

Introduction: The Vietnam War--A Look Back, A Look Ahead by William Head Background and Overview Vietnam and Its Wars: An Historical Overview of U.S. Involvement by William Head The Global Dimensions and Legacies of a Brushfire War by Marc Jason Gilbert Decision Making and Policy Makers The Johnson Administration's Conduct of Limited War in Vietnam by George Herring From the Tonkin Gulf to the Persian Gulf: The Devolution of the Senate's Role in War Making by Caroline Ziemke China and the Revisionist Thesis by John Garver The Air War Bombing Our Way Back Home: The Commando Hunt and Menu Campaigns of 1969-1973 by Earl H. Tilford, Jr. Of Demons, Storms, and Thunder: A Preliminary Look at Vietnam's Impact on the Persian Gulf Air Campaign by Mark Clodfelter North Vietnamese Air Defenses During the Vietnam War by Douglas Pike The Ground War If At First You Don't Succeed, Try to Rewrite History: Revisionism and the Vietnam War by John M. Gates Everything is Perfect and Getting Better: The Myths and Measures of the American Ground War in Indochina, 1965-1968 by Larry Cable Legacies The Lessons and Ghosts of Vietnam by Lorenzo Crowell Reflections on the Vietnam War: The Views of a Vietnamese on Vietnamese-American Misconceptions by Bui Diem Selected Bibliography Index

Crosswinds: The Air Force's Setup in Vietnam.

Who lost the war in Vietnam? Popular mythology has blamed politicians, the press, or Jane Fonda and the antiwar movement. Crosswinds, a riveting and incisive analysis by a former Air Force officer who served as an intelligence specialist during the war, demonstrates convincingly that the U.S. Air Force was indeed set up for defeat, but not by an America that tied its hands. Rather, the Air Force was a victim of its own history, its institutional values, and an intellectually ossified leadership which could not devise a strategy appropriate to the war at hand. These factors within the Air Force itself created heavy flying. To many airmen and military analysts, the color of the flag over Ho Chi Minh City was the result of political betrayal of an Air Force that had delivered an unbroken string of unmitigated tactical victories. Many embrace the myth that the Christmas Bombing of December, 1972, for instance, had brought Hanoi to its knees before the politicians called the military off. Moreover, these commentators argue that the same victory could have been had at any time during the war if only air power had been unleashed. Yet, Earl Tilford convincingly demonstrates that - in spite of the nearly eight million tons of bombs dropped in Indochina, the 2,257 Air Force planes lost, and the untold thousands of people killed - air power failed to achieve victory. This book examines the entire Air Force experience in Southeast Asia, including the secret wars in Laos and Vietnam. Using previously untapped, recently declassified sources, Tilford challenges the accepted Air Force interpretation that it was betrayed. Tackling the issues of the air war, he traces the doctrine of strategicbombing from its roots in World War II through its development in the 1950s and early 1960s as a response to the Soviet threat abroad and interservice rivalries at home. In concluding, he compares the debacle of the Vietnam air war with the strategies of the subsequent Gulf war. Crosswinds is a powerful piece of writing, thoroughly researched and convincingly argued. It will contribute mightily to the ongoing attempt to understand what happened in Southeast Asia and why.

Reviews of Book

Reviews of Book

The German Air War in Russia.

The German Air War in Russia.

“WHEN THE GREAT PLANES CAME AND MADE ASHES OF OUR CITY …”1: TOWARDS AN ORAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE DISASTERS OF WAR.

ABSTRACTSThis paper reconstructs a view of armed violence from the personal testimony of civilians who survived massive bombing of their neighborhoods. A majority of raid victims are “ordinary” civilians, primarily women, children, and the elderly. In World War II the most destructive city‐wrecking campaigns were directed against the “morale” of these civilians. Their concerns and experience receive little consideration in the literature of air war, yet huge wartime and postwar surveys recorded first hand testimonies of those in heavily bombed cities in Germany, Japan and England. Women's words are given priority: they represent the majority of able‐bodied persons under the bombs, and bear witness to the human ecology of violent experience: the disruptions of everyday life; the worlds of blackout and underground; the losses of home places and urban culture. They testify as well to the uneven social and spatial distribution of harm within cities, where death, damage and homelessness overwhelmingly affected working class and inner city areas. The paper also suggests that personal testimony should be recovered and incorporated into studies of neglected and disadvantaged people in “oral geography.” Some of the radical departures and methodological rethinking involved are considered in a final section.

Air Wars of the Later 20th Century

Air Wars of the Later 20th Century

The Politics of International Aviation by Eugene Sochor

960 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE The authors conclude that the major contribution of strategic bombing had been the attrition of Luftwaffe fighters and that the campaign for aerial superiority ranks in importance with such battles as Midway, Britain, and Stalingrad in the turn of the tide in World War II. To Command the Sky is a compelling book, clearly written and convincingly argued using both American and German sources. The authors discuss such topics as fighter technology and its relationship to the outcome of the aerial encounters and the roles of the men engaged, from commanders to fighter aces and bomber crews, with equal aplomb. To Command the Sky, which includes an informative bibliographical essay, should be must reading for anyone interested in the air war of World War II. John H. Morrow, Jr. Dr. Morrow is professor of history at the University of Georgia. The Politics of International Aviation. By Eugene Sochor. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1991. Pp. xix + 288; notes, appendixes, bibliography, index. $36.00. This timely book provides instructive insight into the relationship between technology and the larger historical process in which it is embedded. Under the impact of globalization, deregulation, Third World unrest, never-ending technological change, and constantly shifting political and economic realities, the system of rules, regula­ tions, and administrative structures governing international passen­ ger flight has become increasingly anachronistic. That system, now almost half a century old, was established by the Chicago Convention of 1944 and has been subsequently modified to only a limited degree by piecemeal annexes and amendments. Its dominant note is bilater­ alism, based on Article I of the agreement reached in Chicago after what Eugene Sochor characterizes as a “classic power struggle” between nations fiercely determined to protect their own individual interests: “The contracting States recognize that every State has complete and exclusive sovereignty over the airspace above its terri­ tory” (p. 266). Because of this apparently unalterable premise, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), with which Sochor’s book is largely concerned, faces mounting problems as it seeks to cope with burgeoning traffic, shrinking safety margins, crowded airports, cease­ less technological innovations, ever-changing forms of terrorism, and an increasingly confusing jurisdictional maze of conflicting national and supranational entities. In a few brief sentences, Sochor neatly underscores the awesome challenges confronting a small group of devoted but largely hamstrung officials who must wrestle with a real-life version of “Mission Impossible.” The International Civil TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 961 Aviation Organization “has only limited authority,” he writes in a masterpiece of understatement. “It sets standards but cannot enforce them. It devises solutions but cannot impose them. It has drafted conventions but is powerless to deal with states that fail to live up to their provisions. To implement its rules ICAO must rely on the goodwill of states rather than legal requirements ... it is not allowed to exercise any kind of regulatory authority in the field of economics which remains the sole prerogative of sovereign states” (p. 222). Considering the overwhelming obstacles ICAO faces, its record of accomplishment, as traced by Sochor in a series of chapters dealing with its origins and development, is nothing short of remarkable. The first few chapters set the stage by discussing the political conflicts that attended the birth of ICAO and outlining major technological changes that have transformed commercial aviation since the organi­ zation’s inception. Sochor then explains how ICAO has evolved within the basic structure of the United Nations, established workable decision-making processes in the face of political and military pres­ sures, and attempted to meet the needs of poor and developing nations despite being dominated by representatives of the world’s major powers. Moving to specific problem areas, later chapter*’ shew how ICAO has tried to deal with skyjacking and other forms of terrorism, to maximize safety as air routes have proliferated, abd to deal with the conflicting interests of such chronically opposed do en­ tries as North and South Korea, Greece and Turkey, Pakistan nd India, Israel and its Arab neighbors, and the major proiagbblsts in the recently concluded Cold War. Surveying a series cd irfdhbdual crises, Sochor explains how ICAO has functioned wiien...

Killing the peace

Norman Schwarzkopf reveals in his new book It Doesn't Take A Hero that he was pressured during the Gulf War by Bush administration “hawks” to start the ground war before diplomatic efforts were exhausted. Schwarzkopf refers specifically to eleventh‐hour attempts by the Soviets to head off a costly ground assault in mid‐February 1991. These peace proposals have been virtually forgotten, largely because they were instantly abandoned by mainstream media, especially the television networks. With’ peace efforts stifled, the ground assault proceeded. Thousands of Iraqi soldiers—many of them young conscripts—were killed while in full retreat from Kuwait. Dozens of U.S. soldiers also died. When the Soviets proposed five weeks into the air war that the Iraqis withdraw from Kuwait shortly after a cease‐fire, NBC's Fred Francis insisted, “It is the Pentagon's worst fear that a cease‐fire takes place.” But Schwarzkopf gives a different military view. After Washington rejected a Soviet plan, Schwarzkopf says his chief...

The German air war in Russia

The German air war in Russia

<sc>Daniel Wirls</sc>. <italic>Buildup: The Politics of Defense in the Reagan Era</italic>. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1992. Pp. xi, 247. $31.50

Daniel Wirls. Buildup: The Politics of Defense in the Reagan Era. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1992. Pp. xi, 247. $31.50 Wirls Daniel. Buildup: The Politics of Defense in the Reagan Era. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1992. Pp. xi, 247. $31.50. Michael M. Boll Michael M. Boll Air War College Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 98, Issue 1, February 1993, Pages 275–276, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/98.1.275 Published: 01 February 1993

At war in the Gulf: a chronology

The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, unleashed a conflict that had both diplomatic and military fronts. Using contemporary accounts and recently released military documents, Col. Arthur H. Blair, USA (Ret.), traces both fronts as they developed day by day. Efforts to avoid war, coalition formation, mobilization of public support, military build-up in a foreign desert--all of these aspects of Desert Shield are presented in clear detail. Then, from the beginning of the air war through the final ground assault, Blair recounts troop movements, tactics, munitions, and casualties leading to the unconditional surrender of Saddam Hussein on February 28, 1991. With military maps of principal troop movements and photographs of many of the stunningly accurate aircraft and tanks involved, this chronology puts into sequence and perspective the dramatic events that reshaped global alliances, revitalized the United Nations, and brought victory to the American military. Blair, a twenty-seven-year veteran of the U.S. Army, with combat experience in Korea and Vietnam, is now deputy director of the Mosher Institute for Defense Studies at Texas A&M University and served as a media analyst and commentator during the Gulf crisis. His clear and concise description will provide context and a starting point for scholars, students, and analysts of the war and of the U.S. military. For those who cared about and tried to follow this first technological war as it happened, it brings order and sense to what was at the time a desert whirlwind.

The Conduct of the Air War in the Second World War: An International Comparison.

The Conduct of the Air War in the Second World War: An International Comparison.

Fewer Dollars and More Reform? Defense Acquisition in the United States After the Cold War

This article reflects only the views of the author and does not necessarily represent the positions of the Air War College, The U.S. Air Force, or the U.S. Department of Defense. Grant T. Hammond, David G. Blair, Robert L. Wendzel and Peter Denega have provided helpful comments on an earlier draft. A previous version of this article was presented at the 1991 Annual Conference of the International Security Studies Section of the International Studies Association.

War and the media: propaganda and persuasion in the Gulf War

Introduction: Image and reality in the Gulf War. Chapter One: 'A controlled information environment': allied media management in the Gulf War. Chapter Two: Reporters under fire: Iraqui media mismanagement in the Gulf War. Chapter Three: War on the mind: preparing for the ground offensive. Chapter Four: 'Collateral damage': the air war and the issue of civilian casualties. Chapter Five: 'Apocalypse where?': the 100 hour land war and the 'highway to hell'. Conclusion. -- .

Lessons of air warfare

By the outbreak of war in 1939, the RAF was seriously underequipped to carry out real reconnaissance and intelli‐gence work. This was despite the realisation in the First World War that aerial reconnaissance and air to ground cooperation were essential for successful ground warfare. John Terraine here explores the development of air war‐fare in the First World War, concluding that Air Force planners between the wars virtually ignored the first air war, misplacing their faith in the bomber and making a mockery of the practical experience and initiatives achieved by the Royal Flying Corps at such cost.

Blackboard metaphor in tactical decision making

The objective of this paper is to give an overview of some work we have done on tactical decision making within a blackboard framework. A dedicated simulation facility to provide a military commander with the capability for two-sided interactive air war gaming has already been built under support from the Yugoslav Army. To complete the training environment an automated gaming scenario generator was lacking. Therefore, we try to provide an intelligent decision aid to shorten the time needed for game preparation and to make the tool suitable for future commander training in tactical decision making.

This People’s Navy: The Making of American Sea Power by Kenneth J. Hagan

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 633 Interestingly, Omissi finds that the experience in air control did foster two innovations of some importance: low-pressure balloon tires and auxiliary fuel tanks. These are but some of the revelations to be found in this well-turned monograph. Lee Kennett Dr. Kennett is research professor of history at the University of Georgia, where he specializes in military history. Among his publications are A History ofStrategic Bombing (1982) and The First Air War, 1914-1918 (1991). This People’s Navy: The Making of American Sea Power. By Kenneth J. Hagan. New York: Free Press, 1991. Pp. xiii + 434; illustrations, bibliography, index. $27.95. Kenneth Hagan’s This People’s Navy is a thoughtful and enjoyably written history of the U.S. Navy that tells us much about the relationship between naval strategy and naval technology. Hagan stresses the conventional distinction between the guerre d’escadre and guerre de course (attempts to win the naval war either by destroying the enemy’s battle squadrons or by driving opposing commerce from the seas). According to Hagan, “The competition between these two strategies . . . constitutes the real essence of American naval history from the Revolution to the present” (p. 20). Wisely, Hagan does not try to claim victory for either school, and he is especially critical of Mahan’s claim that “history” has somehow decided in favor of the guerre d’escadre, no matter what changes take place in the technology. Unlike Mahan, Hagan is very sensitive to the ways that strategy and technology are ruled by circumstances. He is even willing to commit the ultimate naval heresy, admitting that many times it makes no difference who wins the naval war. In 1775, the American colonies resolved to fight the world’s greatest sea power. Britain proceeded to win the sea war, smashing the tiny flotillas and blockading American ports—but the Americans won anyway because defeating Britain on land was all that mattered. (Much is made of the temporary FrancoAmerican sea control won near Yorktown, but by then the war was decided; if the British army had any hope of retaking and holding territory it would never have been trapped in coastal enclaves like Yorktown.) The Spanish-American War was merely the colonial mugging of a naval invalid. Vietnam, Korea, the Mexican and Indian wars, even the War of 1812 and World War I fill out the list of wars in which the U.S. Navy played at best a supporting role. As often as not the side enjoying overwhelming naval superiority settled for less than victory, or flat-out lost. Only two major U.S. wars were in any sense decided by sea power—the Civil War and World War II. The Union navy prevented the Confeder­ ates from marketing cotton and being freely supplied by England, 634 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE dooming rebel armies to eventual defeat. World War II in the Pacific was the ultimate guerre d’escadre—the only time two major efficient steam navies have gone head-to-head, fighting to the last ship for sea control. But even these resounding naval victories left no clear strategic lessons. Both the Civil War and World War II were won by massive naval build-ups that began after fighting had broken out. In both cases, battle fleets built during peacetime had little or no effect on the war. Ironclads and aircraft carriers proved to be crucial, not the ships-of-the-line and battleships favored by peacetime navalists. The “secret” of U.S. naval success might easily be keep your navy small until you know what you will need—then build a lot of them. Given the absence of clear strategic necessity, Hagan is correct to note that naval construction is mainly shaped by domestic socialpolitical decisions. Countries build the type of navies they think they need. And Hagan is probably right when he suggests that the United States will now decide to do with even less ofa navy. As long as Germany and Japan remain disarmed at sea, the United States has no real naval rivals. The prolonged attempt to prop up the Soviets as a serious naval challenge is collapsing, and...

The First Air War, 1914–1918 by Lee Kennett

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 379 The First Air War, 1914—1918. By Lee Kennett. New York: Free Press, 1991. Pp. xii + 275; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $24.95. During the Great War, the exploits of the early fighter “aces” excited popular imagination in a way the dismal trench slaughter never could. Immediately after the Armistice, former pilots discov­ ered a lucrative market for their memoirs, and a stream of popular writing of the “blazing skies” variety has flowed steadily since. Lee Kennett’s admirable survey of the Great War in the air is a deliberate and stylish rejection of this kind of sensationalism. In a series of coolly analytical chapters, sensibly organized around major themes, he shoots down in flames one obsolete myth after another. Basing his conclusions on a wide variety of published sources— English, French, Italian, German, and Russian (summarized in a useful bibliographical essay)—Kennett shows that reconnaissance remained the prime purpose of all air services during the war. Fighters were used mainly to protect friendly observation airplanes (and balloons) and to deny airspace to those of the enemy. Kennett lucidly discusses the emergence of aerial interdiction, and he carefully measures the small-scale strategic bombing offensives, which usually occupy a place in the literature out of all proportion to their contemporary effect. Kennett supplies some tantalizing details about the social history of the new technology. He shows that most aircrew were not upper-class former cavalry officers, whom trench stalemate had thrown out of work, but were from a variety of social and military backgrounds. This, combined with the close-knit life of the squadron, encouraged an informality in dress and speech that would have been unthinkable in a cavalry regiment—the use by French ranks of the tu form to address their pilot officers being only one telling example. Kennett is at his sensitive best when he examines attitudes to the emergent technology of destruction, whether the periodic zeppelin scares that swept the British press, or the way in which airmen came to see themselves as a breed quite apart from their earthbound comrades. He also takes pains to exonerate the various high com­ mands from the charge of obstructive “blimpery” so often leveled at them by frustrated airmen; instead, he shows that the military leadership in most European states was only too willing to exploit the airplane but was merely more realistic about its possibilities than were the air fanatics. The book might have contained more on the processes of aircraft production and their effects on the course of the war and on social relations at home. Richard Overy’s volume on the Second World War is a possible model in this respect. Although Kennett has a chapter on maritime aviation, he does not refer in the bibliography or footnotes to Arthur Marder’s magisterial work on the Royal Navy in the Fisher era, to Geoffrey Till’s survey Air Power and the Royal Navy, or to the 380 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE collection of contemporary documents published in Britain by the Navy Records Society. These omissions do not much detract from this eloquent, useful, and most welcome survey. It is likely to become a favored textbook, and a point of departure for further research. Kennett never forgets that the first duty of a historian is to be interesting, and he peppers his analysis with lively detail. On the shortcomings of aerial reconnais­ sance by untrained observers, for example, he mentions the inexpe­ rienced German aircrew who reported that the men in a British post “were thoroughly disorganized and running about in blind panic” (p. 30). The Germans had flown over a group of Tommies playing soccer. David Omissi Dr. Omissi read history at the University of Lancaster, then moved to the Department of War Studies at King’s College, University of London, where he gained an M.A. and a Ph.D. Formerly a lecturer in history at the University of Edinburgh, he is now a Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College, University of Oxford, working on a social and political history of the Indian Army. He is the author of Air Power and Colonial Control: The Royal Air Force, 1919...